Jan 19th, 2015: Vegan's Savior

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I find a very weird dissonance in people who talk about what we (as a whole) are "meant" to eat due to evolution, as if evolution is akin to predestiny. The whole point of evolution is that if we have to change due to our environment, then we (as a whole) can do that. By definition we (as a whole) don't have to do what our ancestors did--if our environment suddenly makes it so that nothing but meat is available to eat, then we'll eat that, a bunch of us will die, but the ones whose metabolisms can manage it, if only barely, will have babies who are better at it, and in a few thousand years we'll be like lions scoffing at how we were never "meant" to eat produce.

On an individual level, it's an entirely different story. I know what works best for my one body, personally, and I don't give a shit what vegans or bacon-lovers or anyone else thinks I "should" be eating.

I feel similarly. To me, it's more correct to think of it as hearing blueboy56's statement as "our ancestors were successful (at eating and living and reproducing) by eating meat; that worked for them and we have the same tools (teeth), so let's go with the same plan!". It's too simplistic. It reverses cause and effect, with regard to evolution (and never mind the vast generational timescales involved to produce different teeth in a population).