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Alyssa Luck

Alyssa Luck

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Are Humans Herbivores?

Alyssa Luck · Mar 11, 2013 · 7 Comments

Note: this is one of my oldest posts, written when I was 19. While this post is certainly not the “fresh take” on the natural diet of humans that I probably thought it was at the time, it still has solid information, so I decided to leave it up! 

This is part three of my series on veganism. Follow the links to read part one and part two!

One source of disagreement between vegans and meat eaters is the question of what humans are supposed to eat. Many vegans claim humans are herbivores, while meat-eaters assert that humans are omnivores. So what are we, anyways? Herbivores? Carnivores? Omnivores? Most of you probably know the answer to this already, but it doesn’t hurt to look at the evidence. To answer this question, it makes sense to start with what humans eat in their ‘natural habitat,’ when they’re completely undisturbed by modern civilization. As such, this post will look at what traditional hunter-gatherer cultures ate!

One of the best sources of evidence for what humans eat in their natural habitats is Weston A. Price’s book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. His name gets tossed around quite a bit in the ancestral health community, so I was already somewhat familiar with his work, but I had never actually read his book. I figured it was high time I ordered a copy and read it for myself, and I’m glad I did! If you’re at all interested in nutrition and haven’t read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, I’d highly recommend that you do. The amount of wisdom contained in that book is absolutely incredible, and it’s a testament to the power of food in determining the health of individuals and communities.

Anyways, Weston Price traveled all over the world to study the diet and health of native populations to determine the cause of poor health in modern societies. Being a dentist, he mainly recorded the rates of tooth decay and the quality of dental arch and face formation. Those markers might seem relatively insignificant at first glance, but dental health and face structure is surprisingly indicative of overall health. When a native population adopts a modern diet of processed foods, tooth decay is quick to follow, with other degenerative diseases such as diabetes and obesity coming soon after. You could say that dental health is the proverbial canary in the coal mine; when people start getting tooth decay and malformed dental arches, you know something’s not right with their diet.

Some of the groups he looked at included the Swiss, Gaelics, Eskimos, North American Indians, Melanesians, Polynesians, African tribes, Aborigines of Australia, Malay tribes, the Maori, and isolated peoples in Peru. There’s a ton of data in that book (plus a ton of pictures of teeth), so I won’t review it all in-depth, but he did find some trends that are pretty significant to the question we want to answer. Of all the native people he came into contact with, the vast majority included some type of animal food in their diet. During a trip to the South Sea Islands, he actually made a special effort to find native people who lived entirely on plant foods, but he couldn’t find any. The people living in the interior of the island didn’t have ready access to seafood, and subsisted mostly on plants, but they weren’t vegan. The people had discovered that they couldn’t go longer than three months without some form of seafood and still remain in good health, so they went to great lengths to obtain seafood on a regular basis, even while they were at war with the coastal tribes.

Now, the fact that humans in a natural setting consistently eat both plants and animals (even when there isn’t ready access to animal products) is pretty strong evidence in favor of the idea that humans are naturally omnivores. I mean, wild animals in their natural environment tend to eat what they’re supposed to eat: cats hunt and eat small prey, birds eat bugs and seeds, cows graze. You probably wouldn’t see a cat trying to break open a pinecone to get the pine nuts, or a cow chasing down a rabbit for lunch. If other animals in a natural setting eat the diet that their bodies are adapted for, it makes sense that humans would too.

But what makes the argument much stronger is the fact that humans are healthy as omnivores. In fact, when the native people groups strayed towards a more plant-focused diet, their dental health tended to decline. Weston Price studied nearly 30 different African tribes, and he found the lowest percentage of tooth decay and facial irregularity in the tribes who depended heavily on animal products and marine life for their food. For example, the Masai eat a diet primarily of meat, blood, and milk from the cattle they raise, along with some fruits and vegetables. He examined 88 different people and found only 4 with tooth decay, affecting a total of 10 teeth, or 0.4% of all the teeth he examined. When he studied the Muhima Tribe, with diets very similar to the Masai, he couldn’t find a single tooth with tooth decay. On the other hand, the Kikuyu were primarily an agricultural people, eating sweet potatoes, corn, beans, bananas, millet, and Kafir corn. Their rates of tooth decay were much higher than that of the Masai at 5.5%. Now keep in mind, these people don’t have dentists and toothbrushes. The fact that they could get away with even that amount of tooth decay is pretty incredible, especially in the context of our society’s regular 6-month dental checkups. But the trend in favor of groups who ate more animal products shouldn’t be ignored.

I mentioned earlier that most of the groups Weston Price studied ate animal products. It’s important to note that he did find some groups living on vegan diets, but they did so purely for religious reasons. Within a generation, these people groups experienced significant levels of tooth decay and abnormal dental arches, indicating that their plant-based diet wasn’t sufficient for good health. It seems that the hill people of the South Sea Islands were correct in their assessment that they couldn’t be healthy without at least some animal products.

To me, all of this evidence points clearly to the conclusion that humans are omnivores. Native people groups overwhelmingly eat omnivorous diets, and the healthiest groups are those who consume more animal products. By contrast, the groups who attempt to subsist entirely on plants for religious reasons show a marked decrease in their health within one generation.

But while the anthropological evidence is strong, I would be remiss to ignore another huge evidence base: biology. Based on the information in this post, I think it’s safe to say that humans are naturally omnivores, and are generally healthiest on a diet that includes both plants and animals, but it would be helpful to know the biological mechanisms that account for this observation. That will be the focus of my next post, and it will help us answer another question: is it possible for humans to be healthy on a vegan diet? Stay tuned!

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Comments

  1. Molly says

    March 17, 2013 at 9:51 pm

    Is it fair, though, to broaden the conclusions of a study about dental health in particular to health in general? Isn’t it possible that if we look at other areas of health and compare vegetarianism vs. omnivorousness, we might turn up different results? (And isn’t it also possible that there was some deficiency in the Kikuyu version of vegetarianism that if corrected would clear up their dental troubles?)

    Reply
    • Alyssa Luck says

      March 18, 2013 at 8:24 am

      Based on what I’ve read so far of Weston Price’s work, dental health is a very good indicator of overall health. I might do a more in-depth post on that in the future, because it can seem a little counterintuitive that dental health could be so important! And yes, I think there is certainly a possibility that a supplemental food of some sort could have gotten rid of the Kikuyu’s tooth decay. But keep in mind that given the complete lack of modern dental hygiene, their low rates of tooth decay were still pretty remarkable, even if they weren’t quite as low as some of the other groups. (Also, I’m not sure if the Kikuyu were completely vegetarian; they were just much more agriculturally based than many of the other groups)

      We can’t extrapolate Dr. Price’s findings to a conclusion of what the optimal human diet is (if such a thing even exists), but I think it is fair to conclude that humans are naturally omnivores, rather than herbivores.

      Reply
    • Danny J Albers says

      March 27, 2013 at 11:59 am

      Sure, the same data is available documenting heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer in untouched populations. Such as the Inuit, which had none of these.

      You do not need to depend on the dental data. All the data you wish for can be found.

      They are called the diseases of Western Civilization because thats pretty much where they are found. Even hunter gatherers with atherosclerosis and tonnes of serum cholesterol are not having heart attacks, strokes or diabetes. So much for that modern theory and so much for “eating meat kills us”. Its right up there with “meat rots in your gut” which anyone with a colostomy bag can testisfy meat digests fully even before entering the bowels, its plants that rot in your gut.

      Kitavins, inuit, masai, kalahari, Australian aboriginals, etc.. all have full data available on all aspects of health.

      Reply
      • Alyssa Luck says

        March 27, 2013 at 12:19 pm

        Thanks Danny! You’re right, the hunter-gatherer populations were also free from other diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. I decided to focus on the dental issues for this post just because those issues tend to show up before other degenerative diseases when a population isn’t eating animal products. I also hadn’t finished reading Nutrition and Physical Degeneration yet, and didn’t want to write anything here before I fully researched it myself 🙂

        “…anyone with a colostomy bag can testisfy meat digests fully even before entering the bowels, its plants that rot in your gut.”

        True that!

        Reply
  2. Lieselathome says

    March 26, 2013 at 6:50 am

    Very interesting! I often have this discussion with people around me and I’m really lousy at arguing my point since I eat what I eat simply because it makes me feel great. (We follow a primal diet). But this post of yours gives a very interesting background to it all. I’m curious to see your next post – “is it possible for humans to stay healthy on a vegan diet?” is an interesting question!

    Reply
    • Alyssa Luck says

      March 26, 2013 at 7:58 am

      Glad you enjoyed it!

      Reply
  3. John Torres says

    April 23, 2013 at 8:50 am

    “I mean, wild animals in their natural environment tend to eat what they’re supposed to eat: cats hunt and eat small prey, birds eat bugs and seeds, cows graze. You probably wouldn’t see a cat trying to break open a pinecone to get the pine nuts, or a cow chasing down a rabbit for lunch. If other animals in a natural setting eat the diet that their bodies are adapted for, it makes sense that humans would too.”

    This made me laugh!!! Great post! I am sharing this link to my FB page!

    Reply

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Hi! I’m Alyssa. I like thunderstorms and cats, hate wearing shoes, and enjoy devising extensive research projects for myself in my free time. This is me in Bali with a monkey on my shoulder. And this is my blog, where I muse about health-related topics and document my relentless self-guinea pigging. If you want to know more about me, click here!

alyssa.luck

alyssa.luck
Photo dump from the last year. Thanks to everyone Photo dump from the last year. Thanks to everyone who made 28 the best yet - excited for 29🥰

(PS. In case anyone wants to know what it’s like in my head, I was going to write something like “year 28” or “my 28th year” but then I realized that the year between your 28th and 29th birthdays is not your 28th year of life, it’s your 29th year. I am turning 29 because I have been alive for 29 years. So then I had a whole thing about how to word it without being inaccurate and ended up going with what you see above which is vague and weird but the point is it was a good year and I love all the people in my life dearly)
Biology of Belief (2005) was written by Bruce Lipt Biology of Belief (2005) was written by Bruce Lipton, who earned a PhD in developmental biology in 1971 and was an anatomy professor and academic researcher in the 70s and 80s. Despite the book's presentation and Lipton's background, this is not a science book. It is an exposition of an ideology, supported by haphazard and poorly contextualized nuggets of evidence, rhetorical leaps, and a mind-boggling overuse of analogies. 

The book largely failed to deliver on its promised content. What it does is argue for the primacy of the environment over DNA in controlling life; propose that the cell membrane rather than the nucleus is the "brain" of the cell; invoke quantum physics to explain why modern medicine fails; explain that our behavior is largely controlled by our subconscious mind; inform parents that they therefore have a great deal of control over the destiny of their children; and conclude that humans must become nonviolent protectors of the environment and of humanity because Everything Is Connected.

It’s not that these points aren’t relevant to the topic at hand - they are. But they were not connected in a coherent way that would explain how “belief” actually works (like…biologically), and the treatment of scientific concepts throughout was careless, or perhaps disingenuous.

I think he's correct about many things, some of them being common knowledge. For instance, the "new" science of epigenetics is now old news, as is the critical role of parenting and early environment in shaping a child’s future. But however important these and attendant concepts may be, the book did not do a good job explaining, supporting, or connecting them. 

As far as practical guidance, he refers the reader to a list of resources on his website, which is fine, but I expected some scientific insight into how/why those modalities work. None was given. 

On the plus side, the book was quite thought-provoking, and I came away with loads of references and topics to follow up on. My favorite line? "There cannot be exceptions to a theory; exceptions simply mean that a theory is not fully correct."
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (section 382) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (section 382), as quoted in the introduction to Thus Spoke Zarathustra because I like the translation better.
This paper totally changed the way I think about e This paper totally changed the way I think about early nervous system development and the relationship between physiology and sociality. 

The authors propose that newborn babies are not inherently social, and have just one goal in life: physiological homeostasis. I.e. staying alive. This means nutrients, warmth, and regulation of breath and heart rate, i.e. autonomic arousal (it’s well-accepted that newborns sync their breathing and heart rate with caregivers through skin to skin contact). 

All these things are traditionally provided by a loving caregiver. So what the baby experiences during the first weeks of life, over and over, is a shift from physiological perturbation to homeostasis (a highly rewarding event inherently) REPEATEDLY PAIRED with things like the sound of a caregiver’s voice and seeing their face. Thus, over time, the face/voice stimuli become rewarding as well. 

The authors argue that THIS is the beginning of humans’ wiring for sociality, and may explain why loving social interactions can have such a profound regulating effect on physiology throughout life: because the brain was trained for it at an early age. 

This framework holds all kinds of fascinating implications for what happens if that initial “training” isn’t so ideal. What if the return to nutritional homeostasis via feeding is paired with negative expressions and vocalizations rather than loving ones, perhaps as could occur with PPD? What happens if the caregiver has poor autonomic regulation, such that social stimuli become paired with cardiorespiratory overexcitement in the baby? Could that have potential for influencing later introversion vs extroversion? (Because if social interaction is paired with autonomic overexcitement, that could lead to social interaction literally being more energetically draining, which is what introverts experience. Thoughts?)

For my energy metabolism enthusiasts: Table 1 in the paper draws a link between metabolic rate and sociality across species. Swipe for a screenshot. 

Anyway, check out the paper! It’s free, just google “growing a social brain pdf.”
I’ll be under general anesthesia in a couple day I’ll be under general anesthesia in a couple days to have two tooth implants placed, and I think I’ll take the opportunity to have a little heart-to-heart with my subconscious mind. A bit of medically-assisted self-hypnosis, if you will. 

I randomly stumbled upon these papers a couple months ago - an RCT showing reduced post-op pain in patients who listened to recorded positive messages while under general anesthesia, plus a post-hoc analysis of the same data that found reduced post-op nausea and vomiting in a subset of high-risk patients. 

The full review paper from the first slide is unfortunately in German, but it has long been recognized that even when unconscious, the patient is listening (for better or for worse). 

It boggles my mind that it isn’t standard of care to have patients listen to recordings like this while under sedation, considering that almost nothing could be easier, safer, or cheaper, and we have at least some evidence of significant efficacy. I mean c’mon, what more could you want from an intervention? 

(Yeah, I know. Profit. If anyone still thinks that our medical system operates with patient well-being as the foremost goal, you’re deluding yourself.)

“There should be a fundamental change in the way patients are treated in the operating room and intensive care unit, and background noise and careless conversations should be eliminated.”

“Perhaps it is now time to finally heed this call and to use communication with unconscious patients that goes beyond the most necessary announcement of interventions and is therapeutically effective through positive suggestions. When in doubt, assume that the patient is listening.”
If you've seen "vagus nerve exercises" that have y If you've seen "vagus nerve exercises" that have you moving your eyes or tilting your head, you've probably encountered the work of Stanley Rosenberg. The exercises he created and introduced in his 2017 book now appear in instructional videos all over the internet. 
 
The book itself has much to recommend it: it's accessible, it's practical, it's inspiring. But it has one major flaw: the solid practical and informational content regarding the cranial nerves is framed in terms of the scientifically dubious polyvagal theory. 
 
I particularly enjoyed the book as an introduction to the therapeutic arena of bodywork, of which Rosenberg is a skilled practitioner. His book is full of case reports that demonstrate how immensely powerful extremely subtle movements and physical manipulations can be. These do need to be kept in perspective: it's a small sample size of the most remarkable cases, and the results were achieved within the supportive clinical environment of a skilled practitioner. You can tell from his descriptions how refined his technique is. But nevertheless, it was a paradigm-shifting read for me, and the exercises give you something concrete to play around with. 
 
The book also brought the cranial nerves and the concept of “social engagement” to the fore as arbiters of health. Rosenberg has a solid background in cranial nerve anatomy and shares many interesting tidbits and considerations that you don’t typically hear; for instance, the potential impact of dental and orthodontic work on cranial nerve function.
 
So, is it worth reading? If any of the above piques your interest, go for it! Just read my post on polyvagal theory first – you can use the book to practice separating the wheat (solid informational content) from the chaff (pseudoscientific framing). If nothing else, the book is a nice reminder that genuine healers who get lasting results for their patients do exist.

But if you just want to try the exercises, you can easily find them all on YouTube. 

“You learn techniques to understand principles. When you understand the principles, you will create your own techniques.” -Stanley Rosenberg
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