Richard Rangham, author of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, has developed a theory that may very well change the way we look at the world and ourselves. Looking back at human evolutionary history, he has realized that with the onset of the discovery of fire and the likely-accidental dropping of raw meat into the fire, our ancestors stumbled upon something that would change human history.

Cooked meat not only tasted better, but it made the food easier to digest and get more calories from. Getting more calories from the same food meant that these ancestors had more time to concentrate on other things, like thinking. So our brains grew because of the food, we lost our fur since we had fire and in the end, we became the humans we are today.

And it was all because of meat.

For thinking of such an incredible theory and writing a book to back it up, Richard Wrangham, you are a true Unvegan Hero!

Read a great article about the theory here.

Barry Groves is a man who knows a lot about health. And he’s not just some know-it-all with a blog (read: me), he has a PhD to back it up. So when he decided to write about the diet of some important mammals, as compared to humans, I took notice. In his article, “Should all animals eat a high-fat, low-carb diet?” he debunks some common theories that vegans cling to in order to justify their unnatural lifestyles.

Most notable is his comparison of humans to gorillas. Groves says,

In a herbivore such as the gorilla, the caecum and colon harbour huge colonies of bacteria which ferment carbohydrates, particularly fibre, and use it to produce short chain fatty acids (SCFA) … These are then absorbed into the body to be used as a source of energy.

The humans don’t have the luxury of this bacteria, so we must get our fatty acids directly from eating animals. It is natural for mammals to eat food high in fat, and while herbivores are able to get this fat from eating plants and letting the bacteria turn the plants into fat, humans simply don’t have the bacteria to do this.

So anytime a vegan points to herbivorous relatives of ours like gorillas as a reason that we should only eat vegetables, they should really take a closer look at the facts. Our bodies are just not made for that kind of lifestyle.

Groves later points out how much less healthy we humans are as a race than we were a century ago, or even twenty years ago, when so-called “healthy diets” were introduced. He says, “It is beginning to look as if these recommendations are not in the best interests of our health. They aim for a diet that is the exact opposite of what our natural diet should be.”

Amen to that.

For scientifically breaking down the need for humans to eat animals and for justifying my lifestyle in doing so, Barry Groves, you are a true Unvegan Hero!

(via Second Opinions)