Q: Jim, articles have appeared on the web recently claiming that anthropological studies show that our natural diet is grounded in animal protein. Can you comment?
J: I'd love to. Here's my take on the evidence that's available:
First, microscopic teethwear studies show absolutely no evidence that we were anything but exclusively fruitarians (including nuts, which are also botanically classified as fruits) until 1.7 million years ago, and possibly as late as 1 million years ago when the Ice Ages began.
And measurements from there to the oldest proto-human fossils available, at 12 million years old, show us to be exclusively fruitarians all during the time from ~12 million BC to ~1.7 million BC.
There is also considerable circumstantial evidence suggesting that we were fruitarians during the period from ~50 million years ago to ~12 million years ago.
Thus it is quite probable that we were fruitarians for approximately 50 million years, from ~50 million BC to 1.7 million BC or later.
This is by far the longest evolutionary time during which we ate a consistent type of diet. It is safe to say that our bodies became almost perfectly adapted to a raw-food fruitarian diet during that time.
All other variations of our diet occur during later and much shorter evolutionary time periods, beginning somewhere around 1.7- to 1.5-million BC, when fruit started to become scarce.
And there is ample evidence that our adaptation to other types of diets was partial at best.
For example, true carnivores have hydrochloric acid that is 10 times stronger than ours. They produce the enzyme uricase in order to detoxify the toxic uric acid in animal protein. We don't produce the enzyme.
All animal foods contain cholesterol. True carnivores produce the enzyme cholinesterase to neutralize cholesterol in animal foods. We don't produce that enzyme, and consequently cholesterol from animal food tends to wreak havoc in our bodies. True carnivores have sharp teeth and claws with which to kill and eat their prey in nature; we don't. And so forth.
Continuing, there is no evidence for human cooking before ~40,000 BC; and cooking does not seem to be widespread until ~12,000 BC. There is no evidence for the eating of tubers before ~40,000 BC, and for the eating of grains before ~17,000 BC. Such brief periods, in evolutionary terms, are the merest blink of an eye.
Unlike herbivorous animals, we do not have four stomachs, and so cannot break down cellulose for energy. It takes more energy for us to digest and metabalize stalks, leaves, weeds, etc. than the calories we get from them. Thus while such foods can be an interesting supplement to our diet, they cannot be our basic food in a state of nature.
As for the various arguments against vegetarian and vegan human diets, perhaps the best thing here is to just get empirical and practical: Who in fact are the healthiest peoples on earth, what are their diets, and what do they have in common?
The four healthiest and longest-lived peoples on this planet—Hunzas, Vilcambambans, Abkhasians & Tarahumaras—live in wildly different geographies and climates. Yet they all share a common trait: They are all 98-100% vegan.
Just a coincidence? I doubt it. This is empirical evidence of a very practical nature which shows our natural adaptation to foods from the plant kingdom.
Dr. Weston Price, in studies early in the 20th Century, found native peoples everywhere in the world thriving virtually disease-free on their natural, unrefined, mostly vegan diets. Only when these peoples were introduced to "modern" diets of animal and refined foods did their health begin to decline. Then the degenerative diseases that so plague "modern" societies began to show up.
But the real proof is in the pudding. Try a fresh, living fruit diet for yourself (including a 1/2 cup or less per day of nuts) and see for yourself. You'll have some healing crises as the body detoxifies, but as time passes, you'll probably find that you begin to reach a level of well-being and vitality that you didn't know was possible.
Search on the words "natural" and/or "fruitarian," button at left, for more info.
—jim sloman, for 6/23/02
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