Humans Are Initially Intended To Eat A Plant Based Diet

Ladies and gentlemen, readers of this debate, welcome. This debate is a rather tricky one, for the resolution implies that humans are intended, by natures hand, to live off plants. I however am going to defend the position that humans are by default omnivores: Built by their own influenced evolution to be hunters and gatherers; building the original fireside society up on a mixed meat and berry diet. In order to debunk the resolution all I have to do is to give an “omnivorous” reasoning for our body traits that set us apart from carnivores: Show that our bodies are developed for eating meat among other things and show what really is setting us apart from other humans. So, let's begin. What can we eat?Humans are interesting, to say the least. On our own we seem to be completely without hope as predators. We cannot tear flesh: we cannot use our teeth to any reasonable lengths, and we could out sprint turtles at the best. As my opponent pointed out we have a lot of things in common with herbivores and a few key traits that identify carnivorous are missing. But the issue isn't that humans are unfit to be carnivorous, the issue is that we, as a species, took evolution into our own hand. In order to best fit the environment humans, or their early ancestors at the least, took a drastic route and changed the face of the species towards an omnivorous path all without the help of nature. Let's look at the beginnings:A decline in dental sizeIn order to see why our teeth are as small as they are we have to see where they really started to devolve. In what is called an evolutionary paradox our teeth have grown smaller and less fit for being teeth ever since our brains started to grow larger. The biggest drop in teeth size is between H. Habilis and H. Erectus. If we look at Habilis' skull below we see that it still has rather dominating teeth. Compared to a female Bonobo chimp, which is an omnivorous frugivore, the teeth are quite similar in size and strength: indicating that Habilis had the power to chew and digest raw meat. [H.Habilis skull] [H.habilis [l] next to a F.bonobo skull] But the next member of the homo line, H.Erectus, suddenly shows us a large drop in teeth size, almost looking akin to our teeth. [H.Erectus] this devolution just goes on as the homo line went closer and closer to our own species. Bigger brains meant that we needed a more nutritious food source: our calorie hungry brain cannot live off of raw plants without actually having to spend most of our lives eating whatever we gather[1]. It is possible to live off of raw food, but I'd recommend that you do not do it, since there are a lot of health issues that follow that life style, not to mention if you are only eating raw plant life, mostly connected to a lack of nutrients. But without a new food source our brain would never have had the opportunity to grow and would have remained a comfy small size. So where did we gain this new abundance of energy to sustain the newfound brain? The answer lies in the erectus line, where we have the largest drop: Man's best friend in all it's flaming glory.Richard Wrangham has suggested that we, as humans, developed smaller teeth, longer digestional tracks and other non-predator traits once we started to cook our food [2]. He has pointed out that H.Erectus is the first human that has been linked to actually taming fire. He points out that humans are not fit to live on the raw diet that other chimps are feeding off of simply because we have such small teeth, week jaws and inefficent digestive tracks. As the article states: “Wrangham found data showing that even at chimps’ chewing rate, which can deliver them 400 food calories per hour,H. Erectus would have needed to chew raw meat for 5.7 to 6.2 hours a day to fulfill its daily energy needs. When it was not gathering food, it would literally be chewing that food for the rest of the day. „ His research showed that cooked food breaks down a lot of nutrients making it a lot simpler to digest. Because cocked food is easier to digest, break down and harvest energy from our body does not need to actually spend all the energy that it used to when it comes to digesting. We no longer need to chew and break our food as much and as such large, powerful teeth became redundant, along with other reasons I'll go over in a short while. Our stomach didn't need to use as much effort to break down the proteins and thus spending so much energy maintaining a large stomach became inefficient and it started to shrink. And our digestive tracks didn't need to be short to avoid meat rotting because by cooking the meat it became less prone to rot in the short time period it used to be. Cooking meat kills off a lot of the bacteria that cause rotting and thus slow the rotting process down: meaning our body isn't in as much of a hurry to get rid of it from our body as with raw meat, enabling us to lengthen the colon and giving us a chance to harvest even more nutrients from the meaty remains as well as vegetarian meals have a longer digestion time. The extra energy saved by these “devolutions” where relocated and allowed us to spend more energy fuelling our growing brain that required more and more energy allowing us to advance further and further. With Erectus starting to eat softer animal tissues and cook the food it gathered it no longer needed the teeth and as such they started to shrink. So, all our devolving traits that we share with herbivorous animals are not explained because we are intended to live a vegan life, but because we are intended to cook our meals in order to actually sustain our big head. Cooking started to force our evolution towards a diet where we could eat everything and be omnivores. This set of arguments work just as well for H.Sapiens, but they originate here. Whatever is valid for Erectus is just as valid for us. Hunters like big butts.But why do we not have large claws or can sprint faster than any of our target prays? Simple, we don't need to. Humans have been using and making tools from the dawn of the family, with the earliest “advanced” stone tools being used as far back as by H.Habilis [4]. The usage of sharp tools used for hunting where then slowly becoming prominent when Erectus was making it's debut meaning they could chase, hunt and kill large energy rich pray in order to sustain the tribe. Males went out to hunt for meat while females gathered vegetation. We didn't need claws or sharp teeth to kill, hurt, hunt or chop up meat, so why bother evolving them? Our tools became a perfect replacement. But how does a species that hunts be so slow? Simple, the answer is in our buttocks See, humans may not be good sprinters: but give them enough distance, and they can easily outrun a horse, antelope or any larger pray. That is because our bodies are finely tuned to be able to run extreme distances without growing tired or exhausted. Human hunters could pick a pray, and start the chase. The pray would outrun them by a long shot, but would eventually grow exhausted and needed to rest. The human hunters however could chase them for miles and miles on at a slower pace and maintain the average speed thanks to our hips, butts, efficient sweat glands and superior muscle ability to convert elastic energy into kinetic energy. Vsauce covers this topic in great detail, and you'll find my source in the video linked as the fifth source. The hunter aspect of the video starts at around 6:30. Note that we are now talking about Sapiens, you could with a little bit of training hunt a gazelle on bare feet with a spear, you have the potential, you just need the pracitice and a bit of time. So, why would humans have such great hunting ability if we where meant to live of vegetation? Plants do not require us to run for long distances without stopping, since they don't move. It would be rather redundant to give humans a trait that they are not meant to use at all. This suggests that we are meant to eat meat as a part of our diet, along with vegetation. To round things up:To say humans are meant to eat this and that because of how they are is a wast oversimplification. We must like at how we were, from where we came. Our ancestors needed increasing amounts of energy to sustain the increasingly large brain. In order to do that we started cooking, building tools and getting a better source of food. Without meat it is doubtful that we could ever have had enough energy lined up to evolve to our current form, we are built to cook food and eat cooked food. We are built to gather plants and hunt animals on the run. Humans are not one way or another, a large brain need a large source of nutrients. Humans are omnivores: we are cookivores if we need a term to describe us. We eat everything and anything: but our body prefers it cooked and bountiful in energy. The best of both worlds. 1] http://www.thenakedscientists.com...2]http://www.scientificamerican.com...=13]http://wiki.answers.com...4]http://en.wikipedia.org...5] video from 6 minute, 30 second mark.