I hope the robots are happy with batteries.
VBryan could you please clarify what you are trying to say?
Sure some primates eat mainly herbivorous diets but most if not all primates are to varying degrees omnivorous by nature.
Back to people (human beings), our body is by no means herbivorous. We have several biological factors which indicate that we are ‘meant’ to have an omnivorous diet. For starters our canines have grown as a result of our species need to tear apart meat. Some may argue that canines are for killing animals and that our mouth shape makes that impossible. But they are ignoring the obvious, our evolution of arms and the opposable thumb. We don’t need to bite directly into other animals because we use our hands to kill them, it’s just the way we work. Also, our stomach is made very well to process a mixed diet of both plant and animal substances. If we were to digest only plant life our stomach would be much longer so that it could digest down the plant parts more effectively (like the cow) whereas in actuality we have a relatively small stomach suited to meat as well as fruit and veg.
Human beings are, have been and should always be omnivores, it’s the way we’re made to be and this is made evident by the fact that there are NO surviving vegan societies.
Humans undoubtly have evolved due to swithching from plant based diet to meat based apart form other reasons like cooking food. It is now when we have a wide variety of plant foods available, there are lots of scientific studies on nutrition, thus we can manage on vegan diet.
Some articles on the issue to google:
- Mann, Meat in the human diet: An anthropological perspective, Nutrition & Dietics, 2007
- Gibbons, Food for thought, Science, 2007
- Leonard, Food for thought, Scientific American, 2007
A great collection of research besed articles on vegetariansim including those on relationship between human diet and evolution one can find at beyondvegdotcom.
An especially revalent article to the discussion is The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis (1995) by Aiello. Shortly: our brain size decreased 11 % since last 35.000 years. Perhaps due to drop in animal food in diet from nearly 50 % to 10 %. However, it seems absurd that the most dramatical development of our society, our knowledge, technology, culture and everything occured in the last several thousands years. How could it be??
Anyway, commercial production of cultured meat would benefit animals and us all from nutritional point of view and, especially if meat eating really has anything to do with our further evolution.
Canines in humans are quite equivalent to many herbivores, even horses have better ones than us 
Our small mouth and teeth are quite supportive of the herbivore idea. We have pursued every environment and “learnt” to supplement diet with meat to exist. Living as an omnivore does not mean best to be one or genetically evolved to be one. I did point out that you do by nature of living in natural environments as a herbivore ingest a lot of animal matter and this can be seen as a natural part of a herbivores diet.
Thumbs, hands – just great for gripping branches, (and tablet styluses) is the reason, not as natural weapons of mass destruction 
Digestive tract, rather than stomach are many,many meters long in humans and fine for living with plants/fruits as diet intake. People have been doing it and living so no debate there. In the evolutionary scale of things there is recent ingestion of meat broadly amongst human beings but much debate about how much meat has featured in much of our evolutionary ancestry on the true evolutionary scale. One ancestor was a very heavy grass eater recent evidence suggests.
I would rather keep my canine teeth than have them cut straight to make them look nice.
If meat eaters evolved, they would have discovered evolution, but they didn’t. Also, humans are herbivores and this is made evident by the fact that there are no societies where everyone eats meat.
Actually that proves that we’re omnivores. Learn your vores mate 
Meat eating is more efficient so people have evolved to eat meat using a combination of our mouths (canines) and something which is very unique to humans, our hands. We don’t need to huge canines of animals like wolves to rip meat from an animal, we have our hands and tools to do that. Claiming that because our canines are small we are meant to eat plants is a very simplistic view of anatomy as it ignores some of the most prominent features of human anatomy, the hands and arms.
From an anthropological perspective, every existing human society is omnivorous. This indicates that humans are meant to be omnivorous.
AdamD, the question is how will Human evolve without meat?
And the answer is, humans will not evolve because of diet. They will “evolve” if something bad will happen to earth and most people will die and only some mutated humans will remain that will be fit to live in new conditions. That will be evolution.
Considering current Globalization random micro-evolution due to gene drifting is very unlikely it can happen only in small populations.
So what is left for us in terms of evolutions is development: Development of culture, development of science, development of ethics.
LOL
Who writes, reads, exchanges information and uses science?
Humans.
What do All humans eat including Inuits and Eskimos? Vegetables and Fruits.
See the possible connection?
There is no connection! I can make the same connection between masturbation and intelligence.
Since humans masturbate much more often than primates and we are the “most intelligent” following your logic means that we evolved our brains when we started to masturbate which is total BS.
Why compare with other primates why not compare with tigers or crocodiles which definitely ate more meat for longer periods of time?
And how do you know that other primates have not eaten as much meat as human ancestors did?
How do you know how much meat human ancestors ate because the evidence is really scarce? It was more like they ate meat 2-3 times per month like the tropical tribes do in the present days with better hunting tools. It is more likely that they ate cooked tubers more often than meat. Other primates like Neanderthals clearly ate more meat than our ancestors and they disappeared for some reason.
Here is a satiric example:
During the last 100 years humans started eating much more meat, also during the last 100 years a scientific revolution happened.
See the possible connection? Eating more meat, leads to revolution in science.
You just proved that you can’t even compare adequately. You say there are no societies where everyone is vegetarian and ignore the fact that there are no societies where no one is vegetarian. SOME people eat meat and that doesn’t prove anything.
“There is no connection! I can make the same connection between masturbation and intelligence.
Since humans masturbate much more often than primates and we are the “most intelligent” following your logic means that we evolved our brains when we started to masturbate which is total BS.”
haha i love this. people so often dont know the difference between correlation and causation. it is one of the most common mistakes we make when we evaluate the results of research. just because eating meat and being intelligent are correlated it doesnt mean that one causes the other.
That’s just a blatant lie. People are always evolving to better survive in a modern society. Those who can’t function as well in modern society drift to the bottom of the economic scale and eventually die out. Evolution always has and always will be part of life for every species. It’s not as obvious now as it was before but it is definitely there.
No, the vast, vast majority of people have eaten meat and still do eat meat. Vegitarians throuhgout history have been almost irrelevant in terms of people per capita. My point still stands. Societies that predominantly eat meat have survived through to the modern day, this implies that meat causes a society to last (strong enough correlation does imply causation).
More popular doesn’t mean better. You can see this situation in Windows/Linux, Christianity/Buddhism, SA-MP/MTA and also omnivorous/vegan diet. The vast majority of people have health problems, so what, health problems cause the societies to last? From your statements we could say that the vast majority of people live a lifestyle perfect for the health. The more convincing correlation is between average lifespan in the community and plant/animal food consumption ratio. Also, why are you lying and telling “there are no vegan societies”? http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/tp-life/article2204749.ece
you begin to evolve once you stop eating meat…
Kensho 
Nowhere did I say that more popular means better, only that such a strong associating between omnivorous societies and surviving indicates some form of correlation between the meat eating and success when coupled with the added information that no vegan society has survived (or even formed on a relevant scale). As for you last question about health problems the answer is yes. An element of adversity has always been present in human existence and must always be present to whip us along the road to progress. If none of us had medical problems then medicine would hardly see cause to advance.
Although you could say that you would be completely misinterpreting what I said for the sake of furthering your own argument. That’s called straw-manning and is an argumentative no-no.
I would hardly call the existence of one tribe of savages who are locked in the stone age ‘survival’ nor would I see it as compelling if you did call it survival.
Evolution is so slow that by the time we’d evolve we’ll be so far ahead of nature that you couldn’t even call it evolution anymore.
Perhaps this analogy will increase your understanding. No culture has ever existed without sexual reproduction. I believe sex is natural. I find sex to be quite enjoyable. I believe it would be the end of human civilization as we know it if everyone stopped having sex. However, I believe I would be behaving like an ignorant fool if I approached a group of monks, or any other celibate subculture, and told them, “You need to get laid.”
Thought this study by the National Science Foundation was interesting. Basically, it shows that herbivores have evolved faster than carnivores and omnivores have evolved slowest of all.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123870&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click
no, no and no : so many veg monkeys’ societies still exist. So many bees’ societies still exist…
Sure they are threatened by the human monkeys but …
Anti-specism we call it…
I disagree with you, but not completely. I don’t think that humans aren’t meant to eat meat. But I also don’t think they are meant to eat meat. In other words, it isn’t necessary or sufficient, but it won’t hurt either and can be useful in some situations (e.g. starving in a wilderness or something).
Let me predicate this by saying that I am a vegan, but only because I don’t agree with how animals are treated before/during death. I think if they’re going to die for us, we should respect them highly. I don’t believe that eating animal products in and of itself is wrong. I do believe that treating animals horribly for it is.
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Humans are animals. They want to survive.
– As I mentioned, eating meat can be useful (higher calorie count than lettuce) when it is needed for survival. Not essential, however. No one ever died from not eating meat (you can get all your nutrients without it, even B12, which is from a bacteria, not meat itself). -
Humans are predominantly carnivorous.
–No, we’re not. We’re omnivorous and sometimes nearly scavengers. It’s just that in survival situations (like most of our history) meat has higher calories than veggies. More calories = longer survival. Especially in areas where plants aren’t abundant (wintery climates, etc.). We’re predominantly carnivorous in the USA, but that’s not natural. Really, humans eat what they can to survive, meat or no. -
Humans surviving on vegetarian diets are evolutionarily novel.
–Again, back to my point about meat = more calories = survive longer. Especially in areas with sparse vegetation. We also have no precedent for using iphones or getting laser eye surgery or using new drugs, etc. etc… And yet we do it and don’t consider it wrong. Again, my point about meat = calories, more calories = survival. -
Carnivores tend to be smart.
–Maybe. Or do smart creatures tend to eat meat? For example, the smart ones are smart enought to figure out how to kill other things? I sincerely doubt we are smart because we eat meat. That is a correlation and does not mean any causation at all. There are also other intelligent species that don’t eat mostly meat (cows, primate families, and so on). We are the most intelligent, but once again, correlation and not causation. We may eat meat because we can think up smarter ways to kill and eat it, you see?
–Also, there are totally carnivorous animals and they are CERTAINLY not smarter than we are, not by a long shot. -
Our primate cousins are also omnivorously adapted, though not as carnivorous.
–I repeat my point about smart things being smart enough to kill other creatures when needed for food. We are smarter than other primates, so we can think up smarter ways to kill and eat things.
–Again, there are totally carnivorous animals that are not more evolved or smarter than we are. “Eat more meat” does not equal “more intelligence.”
A) Losing a great deal of their intelligence.
–Meat consumption may be partially correlated with intelligence, but we do not know the nature of that relationship. And it does not in any way mean there is a cause between eating meat and being smart (I encourage you to look up the difference between correlations and causations). And again, there are animals that eat way more meat than we do and who are not smarter, more evolved, more capable.
B) Returning to meat-eating.
–This is predicated on your former argument A, which is not based on a causation but rather a partial correlation. Not enough support for this. And once again (again again), eating meat isn’t a must - it’s a convenience.
C) Being very violent in how they procure their meat.
–Um, killing things is always violent (have you seen how we factory farm our meat now? It’s even more violent than those apes you used in an example). We might just do it smarter (go for areas that kill things quickest) because we are smarter and know those things (once again, see my previous points).
Overall, not a great argument. Fun to think about, but there’s really no foundation here.