Agriculture was a great innovation,
however, when man increased his intake of plants and
decreased his intake of meat, he lost on average 6 inches in
height.
Language, art, technology, and agriculture are considered
the hallmarks of our rise as a species, yet agriculture is a
double-edged sword.
the archaeological record shows the introduction of
agriculture to have been a mixed blessing, seriously harming
many people while benefitting others.
As Jared Diamond said in his "The Rise and Fall of the
Third Chimpanzee":
That transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture
is generally considered a decisive step in our progress,
when we at last acquired the stable food supply and leisure
time prerequisite to the great accomplishments of modern
civilization. In fact, careful examination of that
transition suggests another conclusion: for most people the
transition brought infectious diseases, malnutrition, and a
shorter lifespan. For human society in general it worsened
the relative lot of women and introduced class-based
inequality. More than any other milestone along the path
from chimpanzeehood to humanity, agriculture inextricably
combines causes of our rise and our fall...
...recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of
agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step towards a
better life, was actually a milestone for the worse as well
as for the better. With agriculture came not only greatly
increased food production and food storage, but also the
gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and
despotism, that curse modern human existence.
Lessons of natural history
- farmers vs. hunter/gatherers
While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like
rice and potatoes, the mixture of wild plants and animals in
the diets of surviving hunters provides more protein and a
better balance of other nutrients. The Bushmen's average
daily food intake is 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein,
considerably greater than the US RDA (Recommended Daily
Allowance) for people of their small size but vigorous
activity. Hunters are healthy, suffer from little disease,
enjoy a very diverse diet, and do not experience the periodic
famines that befall farmers dependent on few crops. It is
almost inconceivable for Bushmen, who utilize eighty-five
edible wild plants, to die of starvation, as did about a
million Irish farmers and their families during the 1840s
when a blight attacked potatoes, their staple crop.
"I nearly always find, when I ask a vegetarian if he
is a socialist, or a socialist if he is a vegetarian, that
the answer is in the affirmative."
Katharine
Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
U.S. author. Modes and Morals, ch. 3 (1920).
Paleopathology's
discovery
One straightforward example of what paleopathologists have
learned from skeletons concerns historical changes in height.
Many modern cases illustrate how improved childhood nutrition
leads to taller adults: for instance, we stoop to pass
through doorways of medieval castles built for a shorter,
malnourished population. Paleopathologists studying ancient
skeletons from Greece and Turkey found a striking parallel.
The average height of hunter-gatherers in that region towards
the end of the Ice Age was a generous 5 foot 10 inches for
men, 5 foot 6 inches for women. With the adoption of
agriculture, height crashed, reaching by 4000 BC a low value
of only 5 foot 3 inches for men, 5 foot 1 inch for women. By
classical times, heights were very slowly on the rise again,
but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the
heights of their healthy hunter-gatherer ancestors. (Source:
Jared Diamond - ibid)
Vegetarianism, as a way of life, has been around for
millennia – with relatively few adherents. Something less
than 5% of the population practice vegetarianism. Many of
these vegetarians are allied with left-wing causes and even
work in the news media, which they have used to promulgate
the notion that a vegetarian way of life is healthier.
Not surprisingly The Vegetarian Society has capitalised on
these reports using them to persuade members of the lay
public that their way is better for the animals, the
environment, and, not least, for human health – and numbers
are growing. Recently, they have been spreading more lies and
propaganda even proclaiming that vegetarians are smarter than the rest
of us!
Vegetarianism is unnatural for homo sapiens. We were
designed to eat an omnivorous diet, to do otherwise is unwise
and unhealthy. While limiting ones intake of red meat and
foods which contain high amounts of cholesterol is a good
idea, eliminating animal protein from one's diet is folly.
When misguided vegetarian and vegan parents do this to their
children, it is downright evil.
Compare the shape of a human to that of a gorilla, a
herbivore, as pictured above. The area between the chest and
the legs of the gorilla is much greater than the same part of
the man. The gorilla needs a much larger digestive system to
exist on a vegetarian diet. The walls of all plant cells are
made of cellulose, a form of dietary fibre. There is no
enzyme in the human digestive system that will break it down.
And with the cell walls intact, the nutrients in the cells
cannot be digested. Passing unaffected straight through the
gut, therefore, all the nutrients in the plant would be
ejected as waste. Horses and cows, also herbivores, have
several stomachs which will ferment and further break down
the complex cellulose that these vegetable fibers are made of.
Vegetarian parents do damage to their children that will
take generations to repair - the effects and damage of a
vegetarian diet will be observed in the intellectual and
physical development in the grandchildren of the
vegan/vegetarian parents!
How vegans and vegetarians harm their
children...
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