Humans Are Herbivores, Not Carnivores

Post date: Nov 03, 2017 2:58:42 PM

Published 10/20/17

By Caroline Horvath, '20

Imagine this, you are driving along the highway and see a dead squirrel, how do you feel? Do you want to stop and take a bite out of it? Or do you feel a little sorry for the helpless guy who probably had a squirrel family? Do you daydream about slaughtering cows? What about using your bare hands to kill and eat an animal? If you answered no, congratulations. You are a human, and believe it or not, you are also a herbivore.

Biologists and anthropologists who study humans, their anatomy and their evolutionary traits, say that humans are herbivores. Humans are not equipped with the right physical characteristics or the instinct to eat dead carcasses.

Humans have soft fingernails, while carnivores have claws used to rip the flesh of their food. Humans have small canine teeth, while carnivores have large canine teeth capable of tearing flesh. Humans are not physically able to tear the hide of an animal, unlike large canines. Instead, humans, like herbivores, have flat molars and a jaw that moves side-to-side allowing people to grind up plant foods and eat fibrous foods. Canines lack these molars and their jaws only move up and down.

Here is a scary picture: carnivores swallow their food whole, relying on their strong stomach acid to break down the food and kill all the bacteria hiding in the flesh. Humans have much weaker stomach acid, which explains why food poisoning from meat and poultry exist for people, but not for the animals eating raw meat for every meal.

A human’s intestines are also much longer than a carnivore’s. The longer the meat is in a human’s intestine, the more time it gives bacteria to grow, making it much more dangerous for humans to eat meat. In a human’s intestines, the meat begins to rot, increasing the risk for colon cancer.

Humans are a species that suffers from a lot of ailments including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes and obesity. Other animals rarely suffer from these conditions, so why do humans? It is because these diseases are caused by saturated fats and cholesterol found largely in animal flesh.

Heart disease kills 610,000 people every year, one out of every four deaths. Medical experts credit the main cause of heart disease to the consumption of animal products. Just by eating meat, people have a 32% higher chance of developing heart disease than vegetarians.

Most of our ancestors had largely plant based diets. With the discovery of fire, human ancestors were able to decrease the risk of parasites, therefore reducing risk of death, from meat, and continue life when plant foods were unavailable.

By abstaining from all animal products, humans would be able to decrease the amount of water used per day. To make one pound of beef is 441 gallons of water. Go ahead, take a shorter shower. But really, for every pound of meat consumed, someone could be taking 25.64 showers that last for eight minutes each.

By changing dietary habits, humans can foster a world where people who eat meat are outnumbered by those eating plant-based diets.

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