From the view of history, meat or vegetables ?
Meat plays a vital role in human’s evolution.
Millions of years ago,human’s ancestors ate only leaves, fruits and cereals. Their brains are much smaller and it takes them hours daily to chew and digest such raw food. Their body size is far smaller and their brains are just one third of their descendants today.
With the rising of earth temperature, the area of grassland increased significantly, making way for a growing number of herbivores. Humans got the benefit by taking meat left over by other animals like tigers. And it doesn’t take much time for our ancestors to get familiar with this calories-dense food. As a result, the brain, which is a high-consumption of energy, got more calories to grow, homo-sapiens also got some extra-hour daily for hunting, finding food, etc and naturally the body size grew significantly.
Does modern human being need animal foods that much ?
With the development of 21st century’s science, whatever nutritions meats contain, we can replace them with vegan foods like beans, fruits, cereal, etc. So the answer for the question “Do we still need meat for evolution” can be answered as “No”. The reason we are consuming huge amounts of animal food may lie on culture, habit and of course, the meat-favoring genes, which were generated from the time stone dated back 2.6 millions year ago.
However, is it necessary to replace such sources of diversified nutrition by plan-products? There are tons of articles out there pointing out the benefits, I am gonna figure out three main features, which I experience from the deepest days in my life. Firstly, from health perspective, through the difficult days when I was unable to eat almost everything due to a weak stomach, only some limited kinds of food can help me to survive at the time, like cookies, brown rice, banana, dragon fruit, etc. The way I eat seems like our ancestors millions of years ago, that it takes hours per day to chew the food. Since then, I have been on a diet mostly with fruits, vegetables, cereals, beans, nuts . My health has gotten better and better. Secondly, since I’ve been eating almost the natural-oriented foods, I have felt really fresh in my mind. Whatever food you take, your body will react the same way. Taking fresh foods growing naturally rather than industrially, your body and mind are going to respond worthily. Let’s imagine, an industrial chicken unable to jump or walk for one quarter of a meter in an industrial farm, how can such a food source be healthy, fresh, and naturally oriented ? And one last reason for switching into vegetables is love. Overall, when your love is enough, your happiness is fulfilled. Love doesn’t only limited among the human world, but also spreads into everything around us, which leads to us abstaining from killing or any related actions.
In conclusion, it makes sense to move into a vegetarian diet. But as our species has gone through millions of years relying on animal source, it is going to take a long time for the movement to become reality. But each one of us should take our own actions. We should start to make the smallest changes to live a happier life ourselves, also for a happier human world.