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[–] 10 points 7 months ago* (29 children)

Our monkey, or rather ape, ancestors were more vegan than meat eater.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Today, most people are "more vegan" than meat eater, too, as in they eat more grains and vegetables than meat. If that's what you meant.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (12 children)

    More vegan.

    What a curious phrase. Not just for the substitution of vegetarian for vegan, but for the use of "more". More vegan. I thought it was binary. Are there partial vegans? I thought that wasn't allowed.

    Because my diet includes more calories and nutrition from plant matter than meat most days, am I more vegan now?

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    You may already be a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexitarianism           

    "International research explains that flexitarianism is used as a broader term to describe partial reductions in meat consumption without fixed requirements.^[7]^^"^

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago*

    Its more fun to highlight that veganism is about ethics so its not dietary its about ethical consumption of animal products. Which humans are animals.

    And you could be a carnivore vegan - all you'd have to do is find volunteer meat to eat, so you'd need to be a cannibal or find that talking cow from the Douglas Adams books.

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  • [–] -3 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    And I'm sorry but why add the fucking picture I don't get how that is applicable to anything

    I was going to add a picture of Epstein and his super pals from a mural in sydney but I don't even see how to do that.

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  • [–] -4 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    In prehistory the are not eating dairy, but may eat dead animals, insects, shellfish, etc.

    So not all vegan, but moreso than not.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Humans evolved to proccess dairy, not once, not twice, but 3 times. Some studies even suggest up to 5 times.

    Seems like it was definitely advantageous to consume dairy

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Outside of mother's milk our ape ancestors weren't getting any dairy though. Maybe the last 10k, even longer, years. Not the last 100k, to say nothing of the last 10 million.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    You are right it is a newer adaptation, but one that was clearly advantageous to our species. There are not many evolutionary changes that occurred independently in 3-5 different populations.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase_persistence

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3048992/#%3A%7E%3Atext=Lactase+is+the+enzyme+responsible%2Ctrait+known+as+lactase+persistence.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    There's no evidence to support that. Best evidence is that our ancestors for the longest time were likely opportunistic omnivores. Plants of course were a large part of the diet, but looking back to about 3.9 mya meat was on the menu.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    They overwhelmingly ate more plants than meat we can safely presume. Meat they could get would be mostly insects, and an already dead or sick animals. Later when they came out of the trees shellfish.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Yes scavenging for meat is generally considered a very important part of human evolution. Our stomachs are particularly acidic when compared to other great apes. This is believed to have evolved due to a high consumption of scavenged meats.

    You are right though plants generally did form a large portion of our and our ancestors diets.

    Important to note that as our brain size increased it did correlate with increased meat consumption as well. This all goes into calorie densities, available nutrients, and evolutionary pressures.

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  • [+] -6 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    that's like comparing us to the primordial plankton that use to eat microbes.

    it's just really stupid.

    let's ignore 25 million years of evolution.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (7 children)

    Evolution is on a long scale, we have a lot longer as vegans than we do eating any meat to speak of outside insects and scavenging. Only a blink of an eye hunting our own meat to a large extent, a small fraction of a million years, compared to millions, and tens of millions, vegan ish.

    Longer when you include like passive meat eating, like shellfish, which is what people were thought to be following as they colonized the middle east and asia.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    "outside insects and scavenging"

    So, scavenger and omnivore... never vegan

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  • [–] -4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    if your argument is that we were herbivores longer than omnivores I've got some news for you. we ate planktons for alot longer than plants, mostly because plants didn't even exist for millions of years.

    so by your logic we should be eating phytoplanktons instead of plants and animals.

    you can't just dismiss millions of years of evolution on a whim based entirely on an emotional reaction.

    be vegan all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that you are an omnivore.

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Not millions though, tens of thousands eating meat, millions eating mostly vegan. I'm not a vegan btw don't have a dog in this fight.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    We, humans, have only existed for around 200,000 years, you are referring to multiple different species that are explicitly not Homo Sapiens Sapiens that all had different organic needs and requirements than what we require. This stance really does not hold any kind of scientific relevance to the human diet. We are inarguably evolved, as humans, to be omnivores, and arguably obligate omnivores if you’re trying to be scientific about it.

    Veganism is a choice based on modern subjective morality, there is no objective or scientific explanation or reason for humans to be vegan. It’s a choice, plain and simple, and it does not make you better or worse than anyone else.

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