--Renowned anthropologist, Dr.Richard Leakey (Neal Barnard, The Power Of Your Plate, Book Publishing Company: Summertown, Tenn., 1990, p.170)

According to biologists and anthropologists who study our anatomy and our evolutionary history, humans are herbivores who are not well suited to eating meat.

Unlike natural carnivores, we are physically and psychologically unable to rip animals limb from limb and eat and digest their raw flesh. Even cooked meat is likely to cause human beings, but not natural carnivores, to suffer from food poisoning, heart disease, and other ailments.

 

People who pride themselves on being part of the human hunter tradition should take a second look at the story of human evolution. Prehistoric evidence indicates that humans developed hunting skills relatively recently and that most of our short, meat-eating past was spent scavenging and eating almost anything in order to survive; even then, meat was a tiny part of our caloric intake.

 

Humans lack both the physical characteristics of carnivores and the instinct that drives them to kill animals and devour their raw carcasses. Ask yourself: When you see dead animals on the side of the road, are you tempted to stop for a snack? Does the sight of a dead bird make you salivate? Do you daydream about killing cows with your bare hands and eating them raw? If you answered "no" to all of these questions, congratulations—you're a normal human herbivore—like it or not. Humans were simply not designed to eat meat.

 

Although many modern humans eat a wide variety of plant and animal foods, earning us the honorary title of "omnivore," we are anatomically herbivorous. Biologists have established that animals who share physical characteristics also share a common diet. Comparing the anatomy of carnivores with our own clearly illustrates that we were not designed to eat meat.

 

--William C.Roberts, M.D., editor, American Journal of Cardiology (Fact And Ideas From Anywhere, Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Oct.1999)

Although many modern humans eat a wide variety of plant and animal foods, earning us the honorary title of "omnivore," we are anatomically herbivorous. Biologists have established that animals who share physical characteristics also share a common diet. Comparing the anatomy of carnivores with our own clearly illustrates that we were not designed to eat meat.

 

To contrast human physiology with that of carnivores, start at the beginning of the digestive tract. Teeth, nails, and jaw structure indicate that nature intended for people to eat a plant-based diet. They have much shorter and softer fingernails than animals and pathetically small "canine" teeth (they're canine in name only). In contrast, carnivores all have sharp claws and large canine teeth capable of tearing flesh.

 

The jaws of carnivores move only up and down, requiring them to tear chunks of flesh from their prey and swallow it whole. Humans and other herbivores can move their jaws up and down and from side to side, a movement that allows them to grind up fruit and vegetables with their back teeth. Like other herbivores, human back molars are flat and allow the grinding of fibrous plant foods. Carnivores lack these flat molars. If humans had been meant to eat meat, they would have the sharp teeth and claws of carnivores. Instead, their jaw structure, flat molars, and lack of claws indicate that they are best suited for a plant-based diet.

 

Dr. Richard Leakey, a renowned anthropologist, summarizes, "You can't tear flesh by hand, you can't tear hide by hand. Our anterior teeth are not suited for tearing flesh or hide. We don't have large canine teeth, and we wouldn't have been able to deal with food sources that require those large canines."

 

After using their sharp claws and teeth to capture and kill their prey, carnivores swallow their food whole, relying on their extremely acidic stomach juices to do most of the digestive work. The stomach acid of carnivores actually plays a dual role-besides breaking down flesh, the acid also kills the dangerous bacteria that would otherwise sicken or kill the meat-eater.

 

As illustrated in the chart below, our stomach acids are much weaker in comparison because strong acids aren't needed to digest pre-chewed fruits and vegetables. In comparing the stomach acidity of carnivores and herbivores, it is obvious that humans fall into the latter category. We can cook meat to kill some of the bacteria and make it easier to chew, but it's clear that humans, unlike all natural carnivores, are not designed to easily digest meat.

 

Evidence of our herbivorous nature is also found in the length of our intestines. Carnivores have short intestinal tracts and colons that allow meat to pass through it relatively quickly, before it has a chance to rot and cause illness. Humans, on the other hand, have intestinal tracts that are much longer than carnivores of comparable size. Like other herbivores, longer intestines allow the body more time to break down fiber and absorb the nutrients from a plant-based diet.

 

The long human intestinal tract actually makes it dangerous for people to eat meat. The bacteria in meat have extra time to multiply during the long trip through the digestive system, and meat actually begins to rot while it makes its way through the intestines. Many studies have also shown that meat can cause colon cancer in humans.

 

Comparing our anatomies clearly illustrates the fact that the human body is built to run on a vegetarian diet. Humans have absolutely none of the distinguishing anatomical characteristics that either carnivores or even natural omnivores have. Read author John Robbins' discussion of the anatomical differences between humans and carnivores.

 

Here is a chart from "The Comparative Anatomy of Eating" by Dr. Milton Mills that compares the typical anatomical features of carnivores, omnivores, herbivores, and humans. Notice how closely human physical characteristics match those of herbivores. Review Dr. Mills' entire article on the topic.

 

 

While carnivores take pleasure in killing animals and eating their raw flesh, any human who killed an animal with his or her bare hands and dug into the raw corpse would be considered deranged. Carnivorous animals are aroused by the scent of blood and the thrill of the chase. Most humans, on the other hand, are revolted by the sight of raw flesh and cannot tolerate hearing the screams of animals being ripped apart and killed. The bloody reality of eating animals is innately repulsive to us, more proof that we were not designed to eat meat.

 

 

In addition to being anatomically ill equipped to digest meat in the short-term, the long-term damage that a meat-based diet wreaks on the human body confirms that we were not meant to eat flesh. Natural carnivores never suffer from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes, or obesity, ailments that are caused in humans by the consumption of the saturated fat and cholesterol in meat.

 

Dr. William C. Roberts, M.D., editor of the authoritative American Journal of Cardiology, sums it up this way: "[A]lthough we think we are one and we act as if we are one, human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores."

 

Studies have shown that even when fed 200 times the amount of animal fat and cholesterol that the average human consumes each day, carnivores do not develop the hardening of the arteries that leads to heart disease and strokes in humans. Indeed, researchers have found that it is impossible for carnivores to develop hardening of the arteries, no matter how much animal fat they consume.

 

Carnivores are capable of metabolizing all the fat and cholesterol in meat, but humans are a different story: Our bodies were not designed to process animal flesh, so all the excess fat and cholesterol from a meat-based diet makes us sick. Heart disease, for example, is the number one cause of death in America according to the American Heart Association, and medical experts agree that this ailment is the result of the consumption of animal products. In fact, meat-eaters have a 50 percent higher risk of developing heart disease than vegetarians, and a low-fat, completely vegetarian diet has been repeatedly used to unclog the arteries of heart disease patients—it not only prevents but also treats the disease!

 

In addition to pointing out the damage done by saturated fat and cholesterol, scientists have also shown that eating animal protein can be harmful to human health. We consume twice as much protein as we need when we eat a meat-based diet, and this leads to osteoporosis and kidney stones. Animal protein raises the acid level in human blood, causing calcium to be excreted from the bones to restore the blood's natural pH balance. This calcium depletion leads to osteoporosis, and the excreted calcium ends up in the kidneys, where it can form kidney stones. The strain of processing all the excess animal protein from meat can also trigger kidney disease in meat-eaters.

 

The consumption of animal protein has also been linked to cancer of the colon, breast, prostate, and pancreas. In fact, according to Dr. T. Colin Campbell, the director of the Cornell-China-Oxford Project on Nutrition, Health, and the Environment, "In the next ten years, one of the things you're bound to hear is that animal protein … is one of the most toxic nutrients of all that can be considered."

 

Eating meat can also have negative consequences for stamina and sexual potency. One Danish study indicated that "Men peddling on a stationary bicycle until muscle failure lasted an average of 114 minutes on a mixed meat and vegetable diet, 57 minutes on a high-meat diet, and a whopping 167 minutes on a strict vegetarian diet." Besides having increased physical endurance, vegans are also less likely to suffer from impotence.

 

Since we don't have strong stomach acids like carnivores to kill all the bacteria in meat, dining on animal flesh can also give us food poisoning. In fact, according to the USDA, meat is the cause of 70 percent of foodborne illnesses in the United States because it's often contaminated with dangerous bacteria like E. coli, listeria, and campylobacter. Every year in the United States alone, food poisoning sickens over 75 million people and kills more than 5,000. While carnivores can process all the saturated fat, protein, and bacteria in animal flesh, a meat-based diet can send humans to an early grave. Clearly, people were not intended to eat meat.