Thread: Fuck Peta!!!
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Old 01.23.2007, 12:46 PM   #73
noumenal
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Steven Pinker sums up the argument about human evolution and meat-eating in his book "How The Mind Works" (he gets a lot of his ideas from the authors of the article above):

"The key is to ask not what the mind can do for hunting, but what hunting can do for the mind. Hunting provides sporadic packages of concentrated nutrients. We did not always have tofu, and the best natural material for building animal flesh is animal flesh. Though plant foods supply calories and other nutrients, meat is a complete protein containing all twenty amino acids. Across the mammals, carnivores have larger brains for their body size than herbivores, partly because of the greater skill it takes to subdue a rabbit than to subdue grass, and partly because meat can better feed ravenous brain tissue. Even in the most conservative estimates, meat makes up a far greater proportion of foraging humans' diet than of any other primate's. That may have been one of the reasons we could afford our expensive brains."

Moving on, he explains:

1. Moving to the savanna made hunting more appealing
2. Eating meat allowed humans to move to higher altitudes and latitudes; there are no vegetarian eskimos.
3. Meat is a major currency in human social life in that it encourages reciprocity & whatnot
4. Meats figures strongly into sexual politics.

Of course, he isn't arguing against vegetarianism, but just explaining something about human evolution. I'm not suggesting that this has something to do with what modern humans should eat.
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