Shadow1980 said:
2) The human intestinal tract is closer to 4-5 times the body length on average, not 9. [...] |
My understanding is that the proper calculation for this is not x-times-body length, but x-times-trunk length. Our intestines are about 9-times trunk length. This sometimes gets mis-stated as body length, but trunk length is how it's actually calculated for mammals.
As for the rest. The reality is that each side of this debate can point to different traits to prove their point. It seems to me that if you add them up, however, about 2/3rds of our traits tend towards the herbivorous side of the spectrum, for what that's worth. No definition is perfect, or without exceptions, and perhaps we're an exception too.
Or perhaps not. I think it's broadly accepted that we evolved eating mostly fruit (back when fruits were kind of halfway between a modern fruit and vegetable). That's perhaps one of the reasons why we may see colours, whereas many carnivores and omnivores cannot perceive colour.
I think the most accepted modern thinking is that we can eat both plants and animals, but that plants are mandatory or that (short of supplementation) we'll get scurvy and die. Eating animals is optional, every nutrient available from an animal source is also available from a plant source (yes, even B12). Broadly accepted modern thinking appears to be that we've been eating plants longer than we've been eating animals and, as such, we're better adapted to eating plants than we are animals. Finally, the preponderence of the best evidence is that the growth in chronic disease is from the increasing amounts of animal products and refined foods in our diet.
Government health agencies that remove research funded by vested interests (whether it's a dairy marketing board, or the rice lobby, or what have you), are suggesting people should focus on whole plant foods and reduce their meat/dairy/egg consumption (such as the recent draft Canadian government health guidelines that raised beans above meat for protein, etc.). The vested interest research is all over the place, but the independent research is coming up with an extremely consistent message.
