i am a vegeterian. i wonder why people say we need and are ominvores.?

Question

I want to know who says we are born like this. i do not see a rule book.

Answer 1

People are just uninformed. I feel that if we were meant to eat meat, we would be equiped with the ability to hunt, kill, and consume animals without tools, like lions and other predators do. Most people couldnt eat meat if it wasnt packaged for sale in a store, or if they had to kill and butcher it themselves. I think we were given an imposable thumb to gather fruits and veggies. They say we have teeth designed to eat meat, but thats not true either-we have two incisor teeth, to puncture veggies and fruits. The rest of our teeth are flat, like vegetarian animals. Most people just don't want to wrap their brain around the facts

Answer 2

Well, yes, uneducated and lacking commonsense. I'll ramble a bit:

Basically every animal is an ominvore. We are all capable, but "best suited" would be a better way of putting it.

Around where I live, I see lots of coyote and bear poo (the dog poo is just disgusting). They both eat lots of vegetation and berries. But Coyotes, given the chance, will eat mostly rodents, rabbits, etc. On the otherhand, bears, given the chance will mainly stick to vegetation.

Just because I choose to eat some meat once in awhile doesn't make me a meat eater or an ominvore. Humans love to stick things in categories; I find it very annoying. We're not exactly designed to eat cookies either, but I'm not a bloody cookievore just because I eat cookies now and again. Actually, we're not designed to eat cooked food at all. But cooking allows access to foods we cannot otherwise eat. Sure, it's not good for us, but it's an alternative we've discovered during hard times. Not cooking has become so widespread that raw food has become the alternative. When was the last time you ate raw beef or chicken, or fish (outside of a Japanese restaurant). You'll discover that it all digests much better raw.

Let's go further back, before cities etc., What sounds easier, hunting or gardening? What sounds easier, gathering or hunting? Remember, the majority of humans are a very very lazy bunch and if they can just sit around and relax without lifting a finger, they'll do it. They only work out of necessity, "Hey man, you go off running around in the jungle hunting, and I'll lay here on the beach with my big pile of fruit I just got from other there. See ya!"

But if you are not migrating from place to place or populations get bigger and you've eaten all the food, you'll have to either learn to garden or keep going further and further from the village in search of food. This is where people start to look for alternatives to eat. Now we've spead all over the planet and nearly everything we eat is an "alternative".

Answer 3

As you can tell, the majority of the population is uninformed and undereducated. And, they show it by posting bunk on here and negging scientific studies and educated people. They HATE facts.

"Our teeth and bodies are set up for meat" Actually, this is false. Gorillas also have enlarged canines, yet are vegetarians. Dogs are omnivores, yet does our mouth look ANYTHING like that? Meat is very difficult for our system to digest and is linked to numerous health problems. We *can* eat rocks, too, but that doesn't mean that we should.

"Vegetarians are weak and bruise easy" Where are your studies for that? Or, did someone simply tell you this and you have NO support for it? I'm guessing the latter, as it's completely false. Omnivores bruise easily as well. I had a pure carnivore friend who bruised if you even looked at her funny.

"Chimps eat meat, so we should eat like them" So, we should be just like a species that we split from 5+ million years ago? Should we live naked in the forest, too?

"Doctors say that we NEED animal proteins" What doctors? Few recently educated doctors would actually say this. If we "needed" animal protein to survive, would vegetarians be able to survive? Think about it. . .

Obviously, there is a lot of rhetoric out there. I'd post tons of links, but I know that the people who think like this don't want to read scientific studies because it threatens their spewing of falsities. I just won't ever understand why vegetarians are so threatening to some people.

Answer 4

I've found a nice way to explain to folks that just because humans eat meat doesn't mean we were made to.

1) Get them to state that cattle (ruminants) are herbivores.

2) Point out to them the error of that statement. Cattle are *obviously* omnivores since they've been eating meat for over 30 years now.

3) When they tell you you're crazy, remind them that cattle feed has had animal ingredients for that long.

4) They will then tell you that putting meat into cattle feed was outlawed. Explain to them that putting *cattle* into cattle feed was banned, that it still contains other animals (primarily chicken and pork). In any event it doesn't change the *fact* that supposedly herbivorous cattle are eating meat. This is when you bring up step 5.

5) Obviously cattle are omnivores by practice since cattle are eating meat! Just like humans are omnivores by practice even though our bodies are *not* designed to correctly process meat.

Cattle got BSE from meat eating. Humans get vCJD, heart disease, cancer and more by forcing our bodies to eat something it wasn't designed to do.

Answer 5

There is no question that humans are capable of digesting meat. But just because we can digest animals does not mean we're supposed to, or that it will be good for us. We can digest cardboard. That does not mean we should.
If the evidence shows that our anatomy favors the digestion of plant foods, and we're healthier when we eat less animal foods, what do we make of the fact that we're capable of eating animals? It's simple: We have the ability to eat a wide variety of foods as a survival mechanism. The fact that we can eat just about anything, including meat, is very handy, from a biological point of view. But the fact that we're able to doesn't mean that we're designed to. The evidence for this is that our biology is similar to that of other herbivores, and the more animal foods we incorporate into our diets, the more our health suffers. In fact, it is rather specious to claim that humans are natural meat-eaters considering how poorly we fare when we do so.

Dr. John McDougall, one of the most recognized experts on the relationship between diet and disease, explains how the ability to digest animal foods didn't hurt our survival as a race, although it takes a toll on our lifespan:

"Undoubtedly, all of these [meat-containing] diets were adequate to support growth and life to an age of successful reproduction. To bear and raise offspring you only need to live for 20 to 30 years, and fortuitously, the average life expectancy for these people was just that. The few populations of hunter-gatherers surviving into the 21st Century are confined to the most remote regions of our planet &endash;- like the Arctic and the jungles of South America and Africa &endash;- some of the most challenging places to manage to survive. Their life expectancy is also limited to 25 to 30 years and infant mortality is 40% to 50%. Hunter-gatherer societies fortunately did survive, but considering their arduous struggle and short lifespan, I would not rank them among successful societies."
Finally, our physiology is much more similar to that of other plant-eaters than it is of true omnivores.


Although humans are capable of digesting meat, human anatomy clearly favors a diet of plant foods. Our digestive systems are similar to those of the other plant-eaters and totally unlike those of carnivores. The argument that humans are carnivores because we possess "canine" teeth ignores the fact that other plant-eaters have "canine" teeth, and that ONLY plant-eaters have molar teeth. Finally, if humans were designed to eat meat, we wouldn't suffer from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and osteoporosis from doing so.

Answer 6

That's their own opinion, but I don't believe it. They say it only because our teeth are a little pointed and our bodies are able to digest meat. Our bodies can digest cardboard, too, but does that mean we should go out and start eating boxes?

Answer 7

As someone who is probably a LOT older than you, I can truthfully say, that's how we were taught.

Since people eat all sorts of things, we were taught, when I was in school, that humans are omnivores.

However, studies in physiology have shown otherwise. We are herbivores who have learned to eat meat. Since we are not designed to digest meat, colon and rectal cancers top the list of human illness. As well as diabetese, heart disease and obesity - which all stem from our consumption of animals and things derived from animals like milk and eggs.

Answer 8

I believe that they feel guilty. Because it's not necessary to eat meat to have a complete diet and this bothers to them.
And some omnivores are just ignorant.

sorry my english

Answer 9

I won't rehash what has already been stated about our teeth and organs obviously designed for meat, but to look at it from a couple of other perspectives:
If you believe in evolution then it is quite obvious that all higher primates, of which "man" is one, eat meat. In fact chimpanzees have been discovered sharpening the end of sticks to create spears to kill game, but they also pack hunt like wolves to drive smaller monkeys into their waiting hunter, and that one will grab the animal and bite its head off, and the rest will rush over and tear off pieces to eat.
If you believe in divine creation then it is even easier because God gave man dominion over all the animals on the planet and said use them for food, clothing, and work.
There is no debate that humans are omnivores, if you choose not to eat meat then don't, but don't make it sound unnatural because others do, vegetarianism is a fairly new concept by the so called enlightened masses, a thousand, or even hundred, years ago people would have thought you insane to make such a claim. Don't forget the world didn't start when you were born.

Answer 10

It's a biological fact that humans are omnivores: capable of eating both plants and meat.

There is little room for debating this and, frankly, no need to.

However, whether a human CAN live a healthy life on just plants (as is the case for vegetarians) is another matter. It is, obviously possible. However, many (but not all) vegetarians do not know how to adequately compensate for not eating meat. If you do it right, however, there's nothing stopping you from having a long and healthy life.