Dr. Doug Graham (80-10-10 raw vegan)

[The Grand Nudger]

That we can eat meat does not mean we need it or that it's actually healthy.

No, that's handled by the fact that we do require nutrients specific to it and going without those nutrients is predictably and demonstrably unhealthy. We can manufacture substitutes, of course (but this can be said of any food source). We'll still be using the same source, ultimately, we'll just add processing until it becomes comfortably distant in our own minds.

When we ate meat it was probably corpses left by more proficient predators that actually had claws or sharp teeth or high speed to kill things. Fossils of human teeth show we ate mostly plants anyway.

The "proficient predators" with claws and teeth are also just as often scavengers. We, ourselves -are- proficient predators, we simply don't require the claws and teeth to be so (though we have them nevertheless and they are dangerous for a variety of reasons most never consider...ever been bitten by a human being? Ever wondered about all the nasty shit that comes along with that bite?). We went a different route with it. We mostly ate (and still eat) whatever we could get ahold of whenever we could get ahold of it - that's omnivory. Plant's are immobile, you're going to find alot of them in the diet of a great many omnivores for that obvious reason if no other. One thing you'll rarely hear a midden heap described as is "discerning". We didn't "mostly eat plants" we "mostly couldn't get ahold of a whole lot else". It's an important nuance, I think. The meat we could (and can) get ahold of was very important to us, and it remains so. That we can get so much more of it, is, amusingly - due to our getting alot better at growing those plants we became so fond of. The meat industry itself is a byproduct. We still "mostly eat plants" in any case, and it's still for exactly the same reason. Nothing about this, particularly what we can our hands on, actually speaks to the point of contention.