National Geographic article on the evolution of diet

[Take5]

I'm having an ongoing discussion with a scientist friend of mine, who maintains that we've evolved to thrive best on an omnivorous diet. To back up his argument, he quotes this article from the National Geographic:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of-diet/

What do you guys think?

[DarlBundren]

I cannot read the article right now, but I'll try to give you an answer anyway.


Eating meat is definitely part of our evolutionary heritage and our brains may be this large because of it. It's only speculation though. Some, for example, say gossip is the reason our brains are so big.

Reconstructing hominin diets of 2 million years ago is simply not possible. We know that at some point we started to eat meat, we know that meat sharing is still commonly practiced by chimpanzees, but we don't know how much meat we used to eat and how important for our evolution it was. Paleo diets, thus, are pure nonsense. Are they allowed to eat tomatoes? Because I doubt that hunters on Eurasian plains ate them. Cannibalism? Yay or nay? Because Neanderthals were apparently fond of human flesh when they didn't have anything else to eat.

[viddy9]

I'm having an ongoing discussion with a scientist friend of mine, who maintains that we've evolved to thrive best on an omnivorous diet. To back up his argument, he quotes this article from the National Geographic:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of-diet/

What do you guys think?

The evolutionary history of our diet is irrelevant. Even if we are omnivores, which I think is likely, we can choose to eat a vegan diet. We're not carnivores.

The question of whether we can thrive best on an omnivorous diet should be answered looking at recent empirical evidence. There's no evidence that well-planned vegan diets result in less thriving than an omnivorous diet, and in terms of commonly used health metrics, there's no evidence that veganism results in higher rates of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, cancer, Type 2 diabetes and so on.

Just like any diet, if a vegan diet isn't well-planned, it will lead to less thriving. Meeting your micro and macronutrient requirements is obviously essential. After that, the vegans who will achieve the greatest health benefits will have diets rich in fruits, vegetables, whole-grains, legumes and unsaturated fats found in things like extra virgin olive oil, canola oil, flaxseed oil, nuts and seeds.

[brimstoneSalad]

I'm having an ongoing discussion with a scientist friend of mine, who maintains that we've evolved to thrive best on an omnivorous diet.

That would only be true within a natural context.
Today we have more access to foods like beans, nuts, and seeds, as well as fresh fruits and veggies all year.

If you lived a few thousand years ago, of course you'd need to eat some meat to survive the times when other foods are not pentiful, and to get nutrients that weren't available from things like tubers which you might have been able to find.
Totally different situation today with global trade and modern agriculture.

Epidemiological evidence today suggests that a well planned vegan diet has advantages over similar diets containing meat. That's in the modern context.
As viddy said, it's just irrelevant what we evolved on. We're not in the situation anymore. Modern evidence is what matters today.

As an interesting note: We also had human flesh in our ancestral diet (there's evidence of regular cannibalism), ask him if he thinks we should be including regular long pig in our diets too.