Are Vegetarians Healthier?

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Our Paleolithic ancestors were hunter-gatherers, and three schools of thought have developed as to what their diet was like. One group argues for a high-fat and animal-based diet supplemented with seasonal fruits, berries, nuts, root vegetables and wild grasses. The second argues that primitive peoples consumed assorted lean meats and large amounts of plant foods. The third argues that our human ancestors evolved as vegetarians.

The "lean" Paleolithic diet approach has been argued for quite voraciously by Dr.'s Loren Cordain and Boyd Eaton in a number of popular and professional publications. Cordain and Eaton are believers in the Lipid Hypothesis of heart disease--the belief (debunked in myth number six, above) that saturated fat and dietary cholesterol contribute to heart disease. Because of this, and the fact that Paleolithic peoples or their modern equivalents did/do not suffer from heart disease, Cordain and Eaton espouse the theory that Paleolithic peoples consumed most of their fat calories from monounsaturated and polyunsaturated sources and not saturated fats. Believing that saturated fats are dangerous to our arteries, Cordain and Eaton stay in step with current establishment nutritional thought and encourage modern peoples to eat a diet like our ancestors. This diet, they believe, was rich in lean meats and a variety of vegetables, but was low in saturated fat. The evidence they produce to support this theory is, however, very selective and misleading. Saturated fats do not cause heart disease as was shown above, and our Paleolithic ancestors ate quite a bit of saturated fat from a variety of plant and animal sources.

From authoritative sources, we learn that prehistoric humans of the North American continent ate such animals as mammoth, camel, sloth, bison, mountain sheep, pronghorn antelope, beaver, elk, mule deer, and llama. "Mammoth, sloth, mountain sheep, bison, and beaver are fatty animals in the modern sense in that they have a thick layer of subcutaneous fat, as do the many species of bear and wild pig whose remains have been found at Paleolithic sites throughout the world." Analysis of many types of fat in game animals like antelope, bison, caribou, dog, elk, moose, seal, and mountain sheep shows that they are rich in saturates and monounsaturates, but relatively low in polyunstaurates.

Further, while buffalo and game animals may have lean, non-marbled muscle meats, it is a mistake to assume that only these parts were eaten by hunter-gatherer groups like the Native Americans who often hunted animals selectively for their fat and fatty organs as the following section will show.

Anthropologists/explorers such as Vilhjalmur Stefansson reported that the Innuit and North American Indian tribes would worry when their catches of caribou were too lean: they knew sickness would follow if they did not consume enough fat. In other words, these primitive peoples did not like having to eat lean meat.

Northern Canadian Indians would also deliberately hunt older male caribou and elk, for these animals carried a 50-pound slab of back fat on them which the Indians would eat with relish. This "back fat" is highly saturated. Native Americans would also refrain from hunting bison in the springtime (when the animals' fat stores were low, due to scarce food supply during the winter), preferring to hunt, kill and consume them in the fall when they were fattened up.

Explorer Samuel Hearne, writing in 1768, described how the Native American tribes he came in contact with would selectively hunt caribou just for the fatty parts:

    On the twenty-second of July, we met several strangers, whom we joined in pursuit of the caribou, which were at this time so plentiful that we got everyday a sufficient number for our support, and indeed too frequently killed several merely for the tongues, marrow, and fat.

While Cordain and Eaton are certainly correct in saying that our ancestors ate meat, their contentions about fat intake, as well as the type of fat consumed, are simply incorrect.

While various vegetarian and vegan authorities like to think that we evolved as a species on a vegan or vegetarian diet, there exists little from the realm of nutritional anthropology to support these ideas.

To begin with, in his journeys, Dr Price never once found a totally vegetarian culture. It should be remembered that Dr. Price visited and investigated several population groups who were, for all intents and purposes, the 20th century equivalents of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Dr. Price was on the lookout for a vegetarian culture, but he came up empty. Price stated:

As yet I have not found a single group of primitive racial stock which was building and maintaining excellent bodies by living entirely on plant foods.

Anthropological data support this: throughout the globe, all societies show a preference for animal foods and fats and our ancestors only turned to large scale farming when they had to due to increased population pressures. Abrams and other authorities have shown that prehistoric man's quest for more animal foods was what spurred his expansion over the Earth, and that he apparently hunted certain species to extinction.

Price also found that those peoples who, out of necessity, consumed more grains and legumes, had higher rates of dental decay than those who consumed more animal products. In his papers on vegetarianism, Abrams presents archaeological evidence that supports this finding: skulls of ancient peoples who were largely vegetarian have teeth containing caries and abscesses and show evidence of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. The appearance of farming and the increased dependence on plant foods for our subsistence was clearly harmful to our health.

Finally, it is simply not possible for our prehistoric ancestors to have been vegetarian because they would not have been able to get enough calories or nutrients to survive on the plant foods that were available. The reason for this is that humans did not know how to cook or control fire at that time and the great majority of plant foods, especially grains and legumes, must be cooked in order to render them edible to humans. Most people do not know that many of the plant foods we consume today are poisonous in their raw states.

Based on all of this evidence, it is certain that the diets of our ancestors, the progenitors of humanity, ate a very non-vegetarian diet that was rich in saturated fatty acids.