We actually consume a LOT more animal products today than our ancestors did.
But, in general, we should strive to balance our diet. Going to either extreme will result in being less healthy than eating what our bodies are designed to eat (both animals and plants).
A few things to note:
Each person is different, and so their diet is going to be a bit different. Our bodies will tell us what it needs if we learn how to listen.
Meat eaters tend to eat too much protein and vegetable eaters tend to eat too little. The average male needs around 100g of protein a day (more/less depending on activity and body mass -- and less for women). As a rule of thumb, it's a good idea to strive for half of our protein intake to be from plant sources, and half from animal sources. Of course, this is easier said than done, and some will prefer to err on one side or the other (for me personally, I tend to lean more towards animal products than vegetables, while my wife, vegetables). Also, if you're like me, you may forget to eat enough fish. Fish is extremely healthy, especially fatty fish like salmon. If you find yourself eating a bit too much red meat, the Christian tradition of no meat on Fridays (and eating primarily fish) may be a good routine for you.
STOP EATING CHICKEN. Seriously. I know, it's delicious. And getting hot wings every now and again won't kill you, but the hormones in chicken (and other fowl) are extremely similar to the hormones in humans. So whether or not a chicken has been treated with artificial hormones (which DEFINITELY stay away from), their natural hormones can be absorbed by our bodies. Additionally, since we only eat the hens, we are primarily getting female hormones. But this brings me to another issue:
Most of the animals we consume are the FEMALE of the species, and when they're not, the males are castrated from an early age. A balanced diet means BALANCE in all things. Eating only the females is an imbalance. Try to find wild boar meat, or any other wild male animal meat. Or, if you're lucky enough to live near one of the few pig farms in the US that raise both males and females without castrating the males, buy from them (there is one I know of in Colorado).
The fruit we have available today is extremely high in sugar compared to what it was even 300 years ago. Carbs are good for you, but you want to focus on COMPLEX CARBS over simple carbs, and stay away from too much sugary fruit and refined sugar. Think of fruit as a treat, and moderate appropriately. There are many benefits to fresh and dried fruits, but plenty of problems can occur with too much.
Avoid seed (sunflower, canola/rapeseed) and vegetable oils. In general, fats that are a part of the food you're eating will be better for you, but pork lard, butter, olive oil, will generally still be better choices than, for example, corn oil.
Bake your own bread. If you are a bread-eater (I try to avoid it for weight loss), find sprouted whole-grain flour and make it yourself. Store-bought breads are highly refined, and often made with vegetable and seed oils, or lots of refined sugar. Grains are not the enemy, but the refined store-bought foods are.
The produce we buy in stores is generally not very fresh. Frozen and even canned produce can contain nutrients that "fresh" market produce won't have. Generally, it shouldn't make a huge difference, but if you happen to have symptoms of a lack of particular nutrients, do cross reference what you're lacking with the decomposition process of the produce you're eating, because you may be eating the right foods and still not getting the right nutrients.
And as mentioned by others, do not underestimate how important Vitamin D from sunlight is. If you supplement dietary vitamin D for boosting your immune system, make sure it's mixed with an oil, because D is oil soluble. There are many cheaper D supplements that are pointless to take because your body can't absorb it. I keep a bottle of D-fortified cod liver-oil pills around.
But again, everything in moderation. Stopping for a cinnabon every once in a while isn't going to kill you if you're eating healthy generally. Treats can be treats; the problem is when a treat becomes breakfast, or lunch, or daily post-dinner routines.
I’m thinking more until before common grocery stores in the western part of the world of the non elite class. Middle Ages to pre-industrial era.
You would own livestock. But if you have a flock of chickens, you don’t kill and eat one everyday. That was a luxury. You keep them and harvest eggs. Cows were for milk. Slaughtering a cow would have been a major luxury.
Yes you could hunt for fowl, rabbit, deer but unlikely to eat that everyday (edit: especially if the King’s forest was off limits). Grains, potatoes, corn (and rice) were subsistence foods.
Depends how far back you go. During much of civilization, people managed to barely survive on grains. As hunter-gatherers, we ate low sugar, high fiber pre-domesticated foraged plants and MEAT. The body needs fiber and MEAT. We can survive on grains, but we don't thrive on them. Domestication has made plants taste better, but not necessarily made them healthier.
The idea of early man as a hunter-gatherer is a myth. The earliest archeological digs show no signs of plant foods. Back then, the "foods" we think of as plant foods today did not exist. They have all been gentically selected over a long period of time to make them more palatable to humans.
Humans were hunters. They may have started out as scavengers, but they soon became hunters. Humans did not eat much of any plant foods until it became necessary, around 10,000-20,000 years ago, when the big animals were killed off -- and the interglacial period of the current ice age began.
Fast forward to ancient Egypt (5,000 years ago), and they ate a lot of bread. They also have the worst teeth of any people examined. Plant foods rot the human teeth, due to the sugar.
When Weston Price traveled the world looking at the diets of primitive people, about 100 years ago, he was hoping to find vegetarians in great health, because he was a vegetarian and he thought it was a healthy diet.
Instead, he found no vegetarians at all, and in every case, the people who ate the most meat were by far the healthiest.
I remember reading about a tribe that tried to eat only grains. It was some sort of bread they were making. They almost all died out, until they started adding milk.
That's just how it is. Our stomach and digestive track is all geared towards eating meat, but with the added ability to get by on plants if necessary. But we are primarily meat eaters.
Also, fruit isn't necessarily bad for you either and shouldn't be treated as exclusively a treat.
Melons of various kinds for example are high in water and good for hydration as well as filling your stomach.
Limes and lemons, despite being pretty sweet in terms of smell and flavor, are actually considered keto friendly because of their low carb content. Very good to add some freshly squeezed juice into the mix.
Oranges are much more sweet, as are blood oranges.
Nuts are also very good for you, but moderation is important. They're high in fats and therefore calories, and their carbs add up fast.
It does absolutely depend how far back you go. But I don't believe the modern "scientific" belief that all of humanity were cave-dwelling Neanderthals 10,000 years ago, especially since there is vast archaeological data that suggests advanced civilized nations more than a hundred thousand years ago, who were presumably cultivating grains. (I would argue there is substantial evidence that humanity, and event he Earth is much, much older than is currently believed).
But it would follow then, that one's genetic lineage can also be an important factor in diet.
Either way, I agree with you. And while grains do provide some nutrients, they are not for everyone, and certainly not as critical as animal products (meat, dairy, fish, eggs), nor as greens. Obviously veganism/vegetarianism is foolish from even just a nutritional point of view, but so is the opposite extreme of exclusively eating animal products.
Vegetarianism isn't foolish in regards to nutrition.
You can still get dairy, you can still have eggs, and you can increase proteins via cheeses, protein rich vegetables such as edamame, etc.
Veganism is the diet that's truly silly. You are missing out on a lot of important nutrients. Not eating a product of an animal is way sillier than choosing not to eat an animal. Milk is meant to be consumed.
'Protein Rich' vegetables. They are protein rich on paper, but in practice, you have to eat large volumes of them to get enough nutrition. Give me a steak. F*ck off with your three plates of broccoli. Barf me out.
I whole-heartedly agree, that dairy, especially milk should be consumed liberally. But it is not a substitute for meat. The reason I say vegetarianism foolish is because is because it accomplishes nothing while depriving our bodies from great sources of nutrients. MOST (not all) can be obtained from non-meat animal products (especially eggs), but not always as efficiently. I'll repeat: balance is key.
Our bodies are designed to sustain from both plants and animals. I will concede that western society in the last 150 years has perhaps indulged too much when it comes to meat, to the point where we now serve meat as side dishes to meat. Meat can definitely be reduced (especially since it's generally more expensive) and supplemented with non-meat animal products, but it would be wise for most people to have at least one serving of red meat a day (on average). And don't forget the fish!
But in the end, it's that life must consume life. Plants are just as alive as any animal, and the wise would say even the minerals of the earth are tingling with life -- nothing is without it. It is good to be mindful of the life we consume, plant or animal, but to abstain from one as a false 'moral' decision based on the idea that because animals are more evolved than plants it is wrong to eat them, is unwise.
Not being able to digest fiber is precisely why we eat it.
You are correct that we don't need fiber. We certainly won't die without it. And too much can easily be problematic. But most people prefer to eat it because it promotes good intestinal health and can keep you regular if you struggle with that.
An important distinction should be made, however, that it is INSOLUBLE FIBER that can be beneficial to a diet. Soluble fiber is not very good, and while large amounts can act as a laxative, it is not particularly good for intestinal health.
INSOLUBLE FIBER means plant refuse from vegetables, nuts, etc., not the water-soluble "fiber" that is advertised in cereals and used in stool softeners in high quantities.
That’s a common misconception. Fiber actually constipates people. It’s indigestible and irritates the delicate lining of the intestines. Would you eat sticks and rocks? They’re also indigestible.
Benefits from eating fibrous vegetables upon digestion is probably a confusion with their water content. If you eat sticky or dry foods then having something with water that can’t be digested is probably going to assist excavation. Raw meat happens to have high water content and is like a gentle massage going down the intestinal track. Eat a pound of raw fish / sashimi / poke and see what a perfect stool looks and feels like.
Meat and fat are also highly assimilable and most gets absorbed in the small intestines.
Raw grassfed steak raw eggs and maybe once in a blue moon some raw fruit or cooked vegetable soup. This will lead to extreme levels of well being and health.
We actually consume a LOT more animal products today than our ancestors did.
But, in general, we should strive to balance our diet. Going to either extreme will result in being less healthy than eating what our bodies are designed to eat (both animals and plants).
A few things to note:
Each person is different, and so their diet is going to be a bit different. Our bodies will tell us what it needs if we learn how to listen.
Meat eaters tend to eat too much protein and vegetable eaters tend to eat too little. The average male needs around 100g of protein a day (more/less depending on activity and body mass -- and less for women). As a rule of thumb, it's a good idea to strive for half of our protein intake to be from plant sources, and half from animal sources. Of course, this is easier said than done, and some will prefer to err on one side or the other (for me personally, I tend to lean more towards animal products than vegetables, while my wife, vegetables). Also, if you're like me, you may forget to eat enough fish. Fish is extremely healthy, especially fatty fish like salmon. If you find yourself eating a bit too much red meat, the Christian tradition of no meat on Fridays (and eating primarily fish) may be a good routine for you.
STOP EATING CHICKEN. Seriously. I know, it's delicious. And getting hot wings every now and again won't kill you, but the hormones in chicken (and other fowl) are extremely similar to the hormones in humans. So whether or not a chicken has been treated with artificial hormones (which DEFINITELY stay away from), their natural hormones can be absorbed by our bodies. Additionally, since we only eat the hens, we are primarily getting female hormones. But this brings me to another issue:
Most of the animals we consume are the FEMALE of the species, and when they're not, the males are castrated from an early age. A balanced diet means BALANCE in all things. Eating only the females is an imbalance. Try to find wild boar meat, or any other wild male animal meat. Or, if you're lucky enough to live near one of the few pig farms in the US that raise both males and females without castrating the males, buy from them (there is one I know of in Colorado).
The fruit we have available today is extremely high in sugar compared to what it was even 300 years ago. Carbs are good for you, but you want to focus on COMPLEX CARBS over simple carbs, and stay away from too much sugary fruit and refined sugar. Think of fruit as a treat, and moderate appropriately. There are many benefits to fresh and dried fruits, but plenty of problems can occur with too much.
Avoid seed (sunflower, canola/rapeseed) and vegetable oils. In general, fats that are a part of the food you're eating will be better for you, but pork lard, butter, olive oil, will generally still be better choices than, for example, corn oil.
Bake your own bread. If you are a bread-eater (I try to avoid it for weight loss), find sprouted whole-grain flour and make it yourself. Store-bought breads are highly refined, and often made with vegetable and seed oils, or lots of refined sugar. Grains are not the enemy, but the refined store-bought foods are.
The produce we buy in stores is generally not very fresh. Frozen and even canned produce can contain nutrients that "fresh" market produce won't have. Generally, it shouldn't make a huge difference, but if you happen to have symptoms of a lack of particular nutrients, do cross reference what you're lacking with the decomposition process of the produce you're eating, because you may be eating the right foods and still not getting the right nutrients.
And as mentioned by others, do not underestimate how important Vitamin D from sunlight is. If you supplement dietary vitamin D for boosting your immune system, make sure it's mixed with an oil, because D is oil soluble. There are many cheaper D supplements that are pointless to take because your body can't absorb it. I keep a bottle of D-fortified cod liver-oil pills around.
But again, everything in moderation. Stopping for a cinnabon every once in a while isn't going to kill you if you're eating healthy generally. Treats can be treats; the problem is when a treat becomes breakfast, or lunch, or daily post-dinner routines.
That is false.
I eat ONLY animal products. The more fat the better.
The average person could not afford to slay and eat a chicken every night.
Well we should define which "ancestors". Are we talking after the discovery of farming or before?
I’m thinking more until before common grocery stores in the western part of the world of the non elite class. Middle Ages to pre-industrial era.
You would own livestock. But if you have a flock of chickens, you don’t kill and eat one everyday. That was a luxury. You keep them and harvest eggs. Cows were for milk. Slaughtering a cow would have been a major luxury.
Yes you could hunt for fowl, rabbit, deer but unlikely to eat that everyday (edit: especially if the King’s forest was off limits). Grains, potatoes, corn (and rice) were subsistence foods.
Depends how far back you go. During much of civilization, people managed to barely survive on grains. As hunter-gatherers, we ate low sugar, high fiber pre-domesticated foraged plants and MEAT. The body needs fiber and MEAT. We can survive on grains, but we don't thrive on them. Domestication has made plants taste better, but not necessarily made them healthier.
The idea of early man as a hunter-gatherer is a myth. The earliest archeological digs show no signs of plant foods. Back then, the "foods" we think of as plant foods today did not exist. They have all been gentically selected over a long period of time to make them more palatable to humans.
Humans were hunters. They may have started out as scavengers, but they soon became hunters. Humans did not eat much of any plant foods until it became necessary, around 10,000-20,000 years ago, when the big animals were killed off -- and the interglacial period of the current ice age began.
Fast forward to ancient Egypt (5,000 years ago), and they ate a lot of bread. They also have the worst teeth of any people examined. Plant foods rot the human teeth, due to the sugar.
When Weston Price traveled the world looking at the diets of primitive people, about 100 years ago, he was hoping to find vegetarians in great health, because he was a vegetarian and he thought it was a healthy diet.
Instead, he found no vegetarians at all, and in every case, the people who ate the most meat were by far the healthiest.
I remember reading about a tribe that tried to eat only grains. It was some sort of bread they were making. They almost all died out, until they started adding milk.
That's just how it is. Our stomach and digestive track is all geared towards eating meat, but with the added ability to get by on plants if necessary. But we are primarily meat eaters.
Also, fruit isn't necessarily bad for you either and shouldn't be treated as exclusively a treat.
Melons of various kinds for example are high in water and good for hydration as well as filling your stomach.
Limes and lemons, despite being pretty sweet in terms of smell and flavor, are actually considered keto friendly because of their low carb content. Very good to add some freshly squeezed juice into the mix.
Oranges are much more sweet, as are blood oranges.
Nuts are also very good for you, but moderation is important. They're high in fats and therefore calories, and their carbs add up fast.
It does absolutely depend how far back you go. But I don't believe the modern "scientific" belief that all of humanity were cave-dwelling Neanderthals 10,000 years ago, especially since there is vast archaeological data that suggests advanced civilized nations more than a hundred thousand years ago, who were presumably cultivating grains. (I would argue there is substantial evidence that humanity, and event he Earth is much, much older than is currently believed).
But it would follow then, that one's genetic lineage can also be an important factor in diet.
Either way, I agree with you. And while grains do provide some nutrients, they are not for everyone, and certainly not as critical as animal products (meat, dairy, fish, eggs), nor as greens. Obviously veganism/vegetarianism is foolish from even just a nutritional point of view, but so is the opposite extreme of exclusively eating animal products.
Balance is key.
Vegetarianism isn't foolish in regards to nutrition.
You can still get dairy, you can still have eggs, and you can increase proteins via cheeses, protein rich vegetables such as edamame, etc.
Veganism is the diet that's truly silly. You are missing out on a lot of important nutrients. Not eating a product of an animal is way sillier than choosing not to eat an animal. Milk is meant to be consumed.
'Protein Rich' vegetables. They are protein rich on paper, but in practice, you have to eat large volumes of them to get enough nutrition. Give me a steak. F*ck off with your three plates of broccoli. Barf me out.
I whole-heartedly agree, that dairy, especially milk should be consumed liberally. But it is not a substitute for meat. The reason I say vegetarianism foolish is because is because it accomplishes nothing while depriving our bodies from great sources of nutrients. MOST (not all) can be obtained from non-meat animal products (especially eggs), but not always as efficiently. I'll repeat: balance is key.
Our bodies are designed to sustain from both plants and animals. I will concede that western society in the last 150 years has perhaps indulged too much when it comes to meat, to the point where we now serve meat as side dishes to meat. Meat can definitely be reduced (especially since it's generally more expensive) and supplemented with non-meat animal products, but it would be wise for most people to have at least one serving of red meat a day (on average). And don't forget the fish!
But in the end, it's that life must consume life. Plants are just as alive as any animal, and the wise would say even the minerals of the earth are tingling with life -- nothing is without it. It is good to be mindful of the life we consume, plant or animal, but to abstain from one as a false 'moral' decision based on the idea that because animals are more evolved than plants it is wrong to eat them, is unwise.
Don’t need fiber at all. We can’t digest fiber
Not being able to digest fiber is precisely why we eat it.
You are correct that we don't need fiber. We certainly won't die without it. And too much can easily be problematic. But most people prefer to eat it because it promotes good intestinal health and can keep you regular if you struggle with that.
An important distinction should be made, however, that it is INSOLUBLE FIBER that can be beneficial to a diet. Soluble fiber is not very good, and while large amounts can act as a laxative, it is not particularly good for intestinal health.
INSOLUBLE FIBER means plant refuse from vegetables, nuts, etc., not the water-soluble "fiber" that is advertised in cereals and used in stool softeners in high quantities.
That’s a common misconception. Fiber actually constipates people. It’s indigestible and irritates the delicate lining of the intestines. Would you eat sticks and rocks? They’re also indigestible.
Benefits from eating fibrous vegetables upon digestion is probably a confusion with their water content. If you eat sticky or dry foods then having something with water that can’t be digested is probably going to assist excavation. Raw meat happens to have high water content and is like a gentle massage going down the intestinal track. Eat a pound of raw fish / sashimi / poke and see what a perfect stool looks and feels like.
Meat and fat are also highly assimilable and most gets absorbed in the small intestines.
Raw grassfed steak raw eggs and maybe once in a blue moon some raw fruit or cooked vegetable soup. This will lead to extreme levels of well being and health.