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Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto
Humans are, by nature, omnivores.
It is, generally speaking, healthier to eat a mixture of vegetables, fruit and meat. Modern man (ie, [i]Homo Sapiens[i]) has recently, in the past 20,000 years, dramatically increased the amount of meat in our diet. But it is not true to say it did not form a fundamental part of our nutrition since time immorial.
Meat is good for you.
But a meat only diet is not.
Mr Mephisto
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I would say we have NOT dramaticly increased the amount of meat in our diet, and we have evolved for a higher meat diet than (until very recently) was 'suppose to' be healthy. Agriculture is a VERY new invention in evolutionary terms.
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Q: How did early humans cope with exposure to the elements while subsisting on such a limited diet?
A: A limited diet meant that people of the ice age sometimes lacked enough food to stay warm and the right types of food to stay healthy. We don't know much at all about the metabolism and physiology of ice-age people. Modern human populations of the last ice age, beginning 24,000 years ago, probably had inhabited Europe long enough to possess both the bodies and the cultural equipment to withstand the cold as effectively as arctic peoples today.
Archaeological sites show that some northern groups specialized in hunting reindeer, and all groups depended on fatty meat and a careful selection of nontoxic organs from the animals they dispatched. Lean meat is harmful to humans over the long term, since it leads to protein poisoning. But seasonal hunting of well-fed animals probably captured large amounts of fatty meat that could be stored by drying and freezing. Because of huge herds of game animals, the ice-age diet wasn't always limited — but it was constantly full of meat and fat, supplemented seasonally by berries and a few other plants available during the short summers.
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Being I am of European stock, these guys were my ansestors.