Inuit only ate meat right? Wrong, the Inuit have an extensive variety of plant foods as well, documented in this wonderful ethnography...
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Melissa McEwen
This blog is about the intersection between evolutionary biology and food. But also about practical applications, sustainable agriculture, and general tasty things. I originally started eating this way to heal from chronic health problems and...it worked!
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Amazing Stupidity
From Colin T. Campbell, author of The China Study
Then I often ask where, as a society, did we stray from that lifestyle of whole vegetables, tubers, grains, fruits and legumes because I am confident that evidence shows that we evolved using such foods, which comprised at least 95-98% of our diet. Before the 1850s, very few people ate animal based foods. The royalty did and their paintings and pictures and gout show it.
It's amazing...he's a doctor....doesn't he have access to Sciencedirect or any other scientific databases? There is ample and irrefutable evidence that humans have been eating meat and lots of it for a very very long time. Certainly he has access to Google Scholar. Hint: plug in "meat" + "human evolution" or "meat" + "isotope studies." If anything, Colin is a sad example of how increased specialization in science furthers ignorance. There is really no good excuse for a doctor to not draw on the vast wealth of anthropological research, especially if he is going to make claims like that.
The pharaohs, who suffered numerous health problems including gout and heart disease, were also big consumers of grain and alcohol.
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I guess Campbell never heard
I guess Campbell never heard of Jane Goodall either - who showed that our closest evolutionary cousins the chimpanzees eat meat when they can get it. Probably we have up to 5 million years of eating meat, at least 1.8 million with meat as our primary diet (to get enough fat for our growing brains), and at least .8 million cooking meat over a fire to preserve it.
If Campbell is religious, someone needs to tell him that although Adam and Eve could survive on fruits and herbs in the Garden of Eden, we have to eat meat now because we don't live there anymore (I heard that excuse from the Christian family I buy my grass fed beef from).
Veggies will usually cite
Veggies will usually cite some spurious competing research to establish that chimps are only incidental meat eaters by percentage (ignoring insect consumption even). But arguing about what our closest living relative eats is unnecessary now that we have stable isotope analysis for our closest *non* living relative: Neanderthal man, a pure (if not obligate) carnivore...and boy is he so much more close to us evolutionarily than a chimp.
Maybe he has access to a
Maybe he has access to a transcendent source of information to which the rest of us are not privy, to account for his great confidence.
The China Study is also blind
The China Study is also blind to the brutal practices of Chairman Mao (the original study was made when Mao was still in charge).
The provincial leaders in China were very aware of the horrible consequences that could follow from any offense.
It would take great courage to answer a survey regarding the number of cancers in your province with anything other than "zero." Check out the Chairman on Google or Wikipedia, etc.
Just my opinion.
Just wanted to note that T.
Just wanted to note that T. Colin Campbell is a scientist; not a medical doctor. And he grew up on a dairy farm (an interesting aside). That's all! :)
Well, then there is even less
Well, then there is even less of an excuse! He certainly has access to all the papers I read as a lowly science university lackey that dispute his claims.
what? how can books get
what? how can books get published that out right lie? my gransparents grew up eating mostly animal foods in eastern europe, and i am sure being born in 1908 my grandpas parents, who were born in the mid-late 1800s didnt "invent" eating meat. then again, perhaps the author is ultra religious and believes humanity is only 3000 yrs old...