Should Humans Eat Meat?
Perhaps no question about diet and health has become more fraught than: Should we eat meat? Prosecution and defense were both greatly agitated by the recent WHO declaration, WHO is the World Health Organization, and they said that processed meats are a carcinogen, and red meat in general.
But no one consideration such as that, however provocative, can answer the general question. If meat “caused” cancer, but produces some good, such as enhancing brain or muscle development: well, then, should we, or shouldn’t we eat it?
What Do We Mean by 'Should'?
Our discussions about diet and health go off the tracks and down the tunnels into dark oblivion almost immediately when the word “should” is involved. That word takes on moral overtones, and evokes an image of me—or someone—wagging a finger, admonishing you. I protest that construct, right along with the libertarians among you.
Health is not a moral imperative. (Let’s leave out of this discussion the economics of public health insurance, and the fact that our ill health may burden our fellow tax payers; grist for a different mill.) Health is not the prize, either.
Living the life each of us wants is the prize. Arguably, if a given individual has a “better” life eating baloney sandwiches at each meal and cotton candy for dessert, whatever the health consequences, then that is what they “should” do, since health is in the service of living, not the other way around.
The reality, however, is that healthy people tend to have more fun. I’ve heard a lot of bravado about personal choice and health-be-damned over my 25 years of patient care, but never from people who have lost their health, and most eventually do. The bravado is inevitably from those who have not yet paid for playing. The conversions come fast and furiously in the aftermath of a first stroke or MI, or the onset of diabetes.
I am not interested in telling anyone what to do; but it is my job to tell people what’s what, based on the aggregation of information. To me, any idea of “should” is subordinate to the principle that you are the boss, and only you can determine your priorities.
That said, healthy humans tend to be happier humans. Healthy people do have more fun. When “should” functions in the service of quality of life, as it should, health does tend to emerge as a nearly universal priority.
Evolutionary Biology
The argument is routinely advanced to defend meat consumption that our species, Homo sapiens, and indeed our primate ancestors going back perhaps 6 million years, are constitutionally omnivorous.
We have physiologic adaptations to meat consumption and even, according to some experts, adaptations specific to the consumption of cooked meat.
But this only invites a series of secondary questions. How is the meat of today like, or unlike, Stone Age meat? How is health and vitality today compared to the Stone Age? Since we are omnivorous, what do we know about net effects on human longevity and vitality with a shifting emphasis between plant and animal calories, given an abundance of both?
We know, in fact, that the meat that prevails today is far removed from the meat to which we are natively adapted. We know that life expectancy today is generally twice that, or more, of the Paleolithic mean. We know that humans can and do thrive on diets that are mostly or even exclusively plant-based, and that adaptations to the consumption of both plants and animals means we have choices. Evolutionary biology clearly allows for meat in the human diet, but does not necessarily require it.
Epidemiology/Health
What we know about diet and health cannot exclude the possibility that a genuine “Paleo” diet would be among the variations on the theme of optimal eating for our species, even in the aftermath of the WHO report on meat and cancer risk.
As noted, what we know about the health effects of meat today is based on the meats we eat today, which resemble Stone Age fare very rarely, and even then, rather remotely.
Overwhelmingly, the modern evidence, spanning diverse research methods, populations, geography, cultures, and decades, tips decisively in favor of food, not too much, mostly plants. Free-living populations that adhere, however inadvertently, to this theme monopolize the claim to the longest, most vital lives on the planet. Free-living populations that consume mostly animal products are, in contrast, very rare, and a product of necessity rather than choice. They do exist, however, as illustrated by the Inuit; but are not known for enviable health or longevity. Rather the contrary, unfortunately, for reasons not limited to diet- but clearly not ameliorated by diet either.
Physical Performance
The customary civilities of cyberspace and social media include many insults directed at me for my “plant-leaning” dietary delusions by those who contend, usually on the basis of personal anecdote, that the only way to build lean body mass, fitness, and physical prowess- is with meat.
This simply isn’t true. I am at times tempted to counter such contentions with my own personal anecdote. I am at times tempted to point out the capacity of gorillas, our relatively close cousins, and horses, more distant kin, to build far more formidable mountains of muscle than our own out of plants alone. I am tempted as well to point out the vegetarians and vegans among the world’s athletic elite.
The simple fact is that physiology, not ideology, determines what is required to build muscle. Carnivores do it with meat; herbivores do it with plants. We, as noted, are omnivores. We get to choose.
Should human beings eat meat? This is a question that's still under debate and will be for decades to come. Personally though, I believe the over consumption of meat, red meat in general, is causing our weight problems and the epidemic of cancer that we see in this country. As much as I'm against more studies, I'm afraid that more studies will need to be done if we will ever be able to say that red meat or the animal fat from red meat causes cancer.
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