[350] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
Re: Local Newspaper Article
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (richmond young)
Tue Jan 31 22:22:35 1995
To: aleung@das.harvard.edu
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 22:20:06 -0500 (EST)
From: "richmond young" <ryoung@cyber1.servtech.com>
Cc: dwhiting@cs.stmarys.ca, ar-talk@cygnus.com, vsg@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <9501310527.AA24537@dove> from "aleung@das.harvard.edu" at Jan 31, 95 00:27:20 am
Reply-To: ryoung@cyber1.servtech.com
-->From: aleung@das.harvard.edu
-->Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 00:27:20 EST
-->Message-Id: <9501310527.AA24537@dove>
>
> I don't quite see how the alleged conclusion could be drawn from the
> evidences presented in the article. Basically those anthropologists
> were saying that because homo-erectus started eating meat 1.8 millions
> years ago, meat must be responsible for the high intelligence of homo
> sapiens. Their reasoning? Well not much. Only that human has
> much smaller gut compared to other mammals, which must be a result of
> the "high quality" of the meat human consumed, and that the energy saved in
> the digestion process was therefore used in the development of human
> brain. They claimed the small size of human gut is a direct result of
> the consumption of meat, but never bothered to explain why human gut
> is small even when compared to carnivores, which according to their
> theory should have even smaller guts. Also they didn't say why the
> energy for brain development had to be coming from the savings in the
> digestion process. Smells like bad science.
[...]
I'm not convinced that their thesis is that simple. It sounded
to me more like the accidental discovery that meat was a more
"satisfying" meal, i. e., it lasted longer before hunger reappeared,
encouraged the search for more of the same. Success in obtaining
"more of the same" came to those who were more clever and inventive,
and because they were well-fed, they were more successful in mating,
so the process of natural selection resulted in ever larger and
more facile brains, which eventually figured out ways to get their
food when THEY wanted it rather than depending on happenstance, thus
hunting was born.
Of course, since no one was there, much of it is speculation, but
it does fit with other observations and says that it's probably no
accident that those companion animals we consider to be the most
intelligent happen to be meat-eaters.
Now, that, in no way, is an indication that those who eat meat
are smarter than those who do not eat meat in today's world, nor
does it mean that "meat is necessary for brain development" (how
incredibly silly!), nor does it mean that meat is "better for the
body". What it means is that the primitive desire to eat meat
was probably the factor that caused selection of ever more clever
pro-hominids. On the other hand, it IS true that a human will get
much more energy out of an ounce of meat than out of an ounce of
broccoli...mostly because meat can be digested completely by the
human gut, while the cellulose in broccoli remains untouched, and
also because meat contains fat which is a more dense energy source
than the carbohydrates and protein in broccoli. Humans are omni-
vores, which means that they can survive on a wide variety of foods,
even non-animal ones (as long as they get some B-12 now and then).
From Don Whiting:
> The members of the BBS took this article to mean (a)Meat is necessary for
> brain development, (b)meat is easier to digest than vegetables and
> therefore is better for the body, (c)meat takes less energy to digest and
> therefore to conserve energy, they should eat far more meat than
> vegetables.
These are not very intelligent meat-eaters, which serves to
illustrate my comments above...and I'm a meat-eater myself.
> They also took the article to show that man is *MEANT* to eat meat and
> therefore no moral obligation is due to animals. If humans need meat to
> survive as humans, as the article suggests, or even *HAD* the need to eat
> meat to become human - then it must be "proper" for us to eat meat.
Another very shaky argument. It's as ridiculous to say that
it's "proper" for humans to eat meat as it is to say that
it's "improper". We evolved eating it, but as omnivores, we
can choose either to eat it or not; there are no inherent moral
implications either way, unless we choose to add some just to
keep our huge brains occupied...but that's a whole other argument.
-Rich Young
