I know, I KNOW, we are omnivores (you, me, maybe not our llm friends, but most of us)... but that doesn't quite line up with biological necessity.

I would argue we are facilitative omnivores, but obligate carnivores. We can eat plants for efficiency (famines and whatnot), but they are not necessary for life. Meat, however, is necessary - at the very least we would have b vitamin deficiencies without meat, and babies wouldn't develop into healthy humans without it.

People will argue, and i love you all for it, that maybe this applies historically but in the modern food environment we can engineer our way out of this obligation - sure, that's true, but when speaking of our species appropriate and native diet - we would still be obligate carnivores

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[–] 4 points 10 hours ago (7 children)

Obligate implies exclusive sustenance on a specific diet, like the big cats, that can not sustain themselves with any other source of calories.

Human beings are capable of sustaining themselves with almost anything available in nature, hence the classification as omnivores. The generalist diet of the human species is an adaption for survival; it's harder to die of famine if nearly everything in the landscape can be turned into food.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 10 hours ago (6 children)

    i'm open to a better way to express the need to eat some meat, but being opportunistic to plants. Omnivore implies its totally optional either or, which isn't right.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 hours ago (5 children)

    In evolutionary terms, I risk we can see it the other way around.

    Our ancestors started as herbivores, being tree dwellers, and only later changed into the role of scavenger and after that predator, making the consumption of other animals a viable and reliable food source.

    The species evolved into the role of the omnivore, capable of eating nearly anything to survive, and it proved to be a winning strategy.

    If the concern is the apport of B12, eggs are a source for it and it would be an easy enough one for early humans to get it.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 hours ago (4 children)

    I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 hour ago (3 children)

    Where was I unclear in my point?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 hour ago* (2 children)

    I think you're saying that it's easy to get B12 in the wild without meat, as if humans didn't spend millions of years eating only meat when meat was available.

    Not sure what I was missing in the earlier read

    Most eggs are tiny, for example

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  • [–] 1 point 35 minutes ago (1 child)

    What I am stating is that B12 can be obtained from other sources besides meat and that such sources - one of which is eggs - could be accessed by early humans.

    The inclusion of meat in the diet of our ancestors has been demonstrated to be linked with the rapid increase of brain volume; meat is calorie and nutritionally dense, there is no denial of that.

    But it is not something to overlook that humans descend from tree dwellers, which were most probably exclusive herbivores. For many more millions of years than meat, as a food stuff, has been part of the diet.

    Thus, stating that humans are obligate carnivores makes no sense. Humans evolved to be omnivores, from herbivores.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 minutes ago

    Right. I think we kept some of the ability to detoxify some plants from the herbivorous apes we descended from, but then we spent millions of years scavenging (probably eating a lot of brains as we could smash skulls of lion kills open with a rock), then hunting, following migratory grass eaters

    Plants became emergency food. We're not as good at detoxifying them as a gorilla is

    Hunter gatherers universally (outside the wet tropics where fruit is plentiful year around) eat meat when meat is available, and only use plants when the hunt fails

    We classify animals as obligate carnivores when we see them in wild eating only meat. When we have found humans in the wild they eat only meat. If you study pre-agriculture bones you find they had a practically all meat diet.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 child)

    You can argue anything, but that's not what the words you're using mean, they aren't medically true, and I can only hope somebody snaps you out of your delusions before the self harm goes too far.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 11 hours ago

    as a thought experiment when designing a whole food plant based diet (including the necessary supplements) - imported foods are required... i.e. its not possible to live on whole plant based foods (even with supplements) eating in one geographic area

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