We are by nature omnivores. Our bodies need both. Vegans are often unhealthy. They don't think so but they have far less stamina. In fact a Vegan recently died trying to climb a mountain and died because of the diet. Meat is good for you provided it's not the only thing you eat. Same with veggies. In fact many vegetables you can starve to death eating them alone. Maybe cut to chicken and fish. I am no picture of great health mainly because lazy but I have learned a bit from my heart doctors and working with athletics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/05/23/woman-trying-to-prove-vegans-can-do-anything-among-three-dead-on-everest-two-more-missing-and-thirty-sick-or-frostbitten/

(1) Our intestines are a lot shorter than is expected from herbivores, but longer than expected for carnivores. But the results differ a lot. For humans I find lengths of 5-10 meters for the whole intestine:

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/AnneMarieThomasino.shtml

That puts us roughly around 1:10, with exceptions in each direction.

I find in different places that carnivores have between 3-6 times the length of the body. For instance here, it falls into the range:

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/carn_herb_comparison2.html

I find given the length-relation for herbivores like cows and sheep given with more than 20:1. For instance here (sorry german, it puts the sheep at 24:1): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darm#L.C3.A4nge

Humans seem to fit in the range well between pure herbivores and pure carnivores. Matching the description of Omnivores.

Overall it seems that the length-relation is a weak description, as there are herbivores with extremely short relation as the panda with around 3-5:1 and carnivores like the dolphin with a relation of around 30:1. But there is a tendency towards longer intenstines in herbivores and and a tendency towards shorter in carnivores and humans are pretty much in the midst: http://www.vivahealth.org.uk/wheat-eaters-or-meat-eaters/length-digestive-tract

(2) It has been shown that prehistoric men used the resources they found. While the northern tribes usually put together as eskimos have suaully eaten mostly fish and meat of seals and caribous, other regions used more fruit or meat of big animals. This really differs a lot depending on there it was located. Seemingly being able to digest a broad range of foods allowed the humans to settle all over the world.

(3) There are also a lot of study that show connection between some plant foods and diseases. For instance tomato and testicular cancer. That is all difficult, because humans are no lab, results are difficult to reproduce and are dependent on a lot of cofactors.

(4) German link again: http://www.dgkj.de/uploads/media/1406_EK_Empfehlungen_Ernährunggesunder_Säuglinge.pdf

This recommends:

"Eine vegane Ernährung (rein pflanzliche Ernährung ohne Gabe von Milch und Ei) ohne Nährstoffsupplementierung ist abzulehnen, da sie zu schwerwiegenden Nährstoffdefiziten führt."

roughly translated: A vegan nutrition (purely plant-based nutrition without milk or eggs) without nutritional supplements has to be disapproved. as it leads to serious nutritious deficits.

As I research it, the stand in english literature is a bit different, but still recommends the suplements. This is also clearly right, as a deficience of B12 especially while grwoing up leads to permanent brain and nerve damage. But the supplements can be produced andare also vegan as the Vitamin is synthesized in a chemical lab. With these supplement it is all right.

(5) I know it comes from bacteria, like a lot of chemical substances. Plants don't need B12, as they have no bervous system. Vertebrate do need it though. They usually have these bacteria inside their intestines. But these bacteria need time to break down foods and create B12. And here is the kicker: most herbivores have very long intestines (see above) and therefore the food stays long enough for the bacteria to produce enough B12. Other herbivores with shorter intestines like the elephant need to eat all day (more than 20 hours a day). Not only because of B12, but because their intestines aren't breaking down the plant food well enough to extract a lot of nutrients. Another group of herbivores like hare eat their own feces, to get the B12 bacteria produced and have a chance of another full round. Omnivores and carnivores get the missing B12 they don't produce themself from animals they eat.

First of all, mad props for the Segata Shanshiro avatar.  :D  That's where your post goes off the rails for me, though.

Secondly, our bodies do not "need both".  There's no RDA (recommended daily amount) for meat.  There's no nutrient that's exclusive to meat.  Vegans are not "often unhealthy" as you claim, and in fact vegans are deficient in fewer nutrients than omnivores are.  While both vegans and omnivores tend to be deficient in calcium and iodine, vegans are additionally typically deficient in vitamin B12.  However, omnivores are additionally deficient in dietary fibre, folate, magnesium, vitamin C, and vitamin E.  SOURCE:  http://nutritionfacts.org/video/omnivore-vs-vegan-nutrient-deficiencies-2/  And vegans are the only chunk of the North American population that averages in the ideal BMI range.  SOURCE:  http://nutritionfacts.org/video/thousands-of-vegans-studied/  Even pescetarians and vegetarians didn't manage that.  It seems to me like the omnivorous diet is the one that's hard to get right, which makes sense as meat, dairy, and eggs are so calorie dense that it means that successful weight management means less food eaten (and fewer nutrients consumed) in total.

Vegans dying on everst proves nothing.  You can be a vegan and eat oreo cookies.  And you have badly misrepresented the link you provided, I read it and it makes no suggestion that being vegan was part of the problem it goes on to demonstrate that 30 other people in that same period of time (presumably omnivores) failed and/or made themselves sick in the attempt at climbing everst.  If someone read your words but didn't click on the link they'd think it listed some medical evidence to suggest being vegan (as opposed to atmospheric conditions and dumb luck) was the difference, but the article doesn't say that.

Meat isn't healthy in any quantity, really.  One study in Japan studied Japanese buddhists (known for eating whole food diets).  The plant-based whole food buddhists were far healthier than even the whole food buddhists who ate small amounts of meat one day a week.  SOURCE:  http://nutritionfacts.org/video/plant-based-diets-and-diabetes/

Far less stamina?  A growing number of endurance athleses are converting to veganism (see source link in a previous post) because plant-based diets suffer less inflammation in the body which improves recovery times, and cultures in Central America and Africa with long histories of tremendous feats of endurance are extremely plant-based.

Eat meat if that's your choice, but spreading misinformation might encourage others to do so based on those falsehoods and that's all kinds of wrong.

Diets in the strict sense are never worth it. Eat the food you enjoy. Enjoying the taste of food is a huge quality of life, imo. What is the fun in living if you are hungry all the time or hate the taste of the food you eat?

Instead of sacrificing food, sacrifice something else. Play an hour less video games a night and use that time to go for a walk/run, work out, play in a league, essentially something active. In that hour, you will be able to burn the calories needed to enjoy the food you love.

Though final note. Eat the food you love, but eat in moderation. You do not need to go back for seconds, let alone thirds. Eat only a bowl full of chips instead of the entire bag, or better yet reserve your treats/desserts to only once or twice a week instead of every day.

1) I agree that intestinal length is not the primary criteria.  What is then?  Most (all?) omnivores have the ability to create vitamin C in their body, as the biologically ideal omnivore can thrive on just plants, or just animals.  That's true of wolves and canines, they can thrive on just meat because A) their bodies produce vitamin C so they don't need to consume it, and B) because their bodies have a mechanism to get rid of excess cholesterol.  Humans have the gene for creating vitamin C in our bodies, but it turned itself off hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of years ago because we ate mostly fruit and didn't lack for it.  Our bodies producing vitamin C would have more likely lead to an overdose than to ideal health, so we evolved in such a way as to turn it off.  A cat is considered a pure carnivore, yet can subsist on a plant-based diet for a time.  A cow is considered a pure herbivore, but could subsist of off animal products for a time.  Our ability to subsist off of animal products is therefore not surprising, but we're more herbivorous than otherwise so it's not surprising that eating even tiny amounts of meat dramatically increase the likelihood of us getting a raft of diseases.  We *can* eat meat, but we don't thrive on it.

2) Of course the inuit (Eskimo is considered a perjorative term by many nothern peoples, BTW) ate mostly meat.  They also were very unhealthy because of it.  Studies on inuit mummies showed signs of heart disease, and they lived far shorter lives than aboriginal peoples who lived even only a little bit further south.

3) I'd have to see studies on tomatoes and cancer to comment, but of course some plant foods are less healthy than others.  Oreo cookies are a plant-based food for that matter!  :P  Not all plant-based foods are created equal, and not all should be consumed with abandon.  Everyone should have a diet plan and follow it, IMO.  I don't eat tomatoes (or Oreo cookies, for that matter).  :)

4) Ich spreche ein bißchen Deutsche, but nur ein bißchen.  :)  The argument that vegan diets don't cover every nutrient unless carefully crafted is absolutely true.  But lost in that discussion is that omnivorous diets tend to be far worse.  The average vegan in North America is deficient in three essential nutrients, but the average omnivorous diet is deficiednt in *seven* essential nutrients.  And that's despite the fact that many vegans choose it for ethical reasons rather than health, so they may be eating a lot of processed food.  (Source posted a couple of times in recent posts here.)

5) My understanding is that we traditionally got vitamin B12 not from out intestines, but from our mouths.  The bacteria that creates B12 would live in our mouthes, and the B12 it created would be absorbed into our bloodstream under our tongues.  Water treatment, toothpaste, and mouthwash put an end to that which requires supplementing.  Guess what though?  Omnivores are getting B12 supplements too, and B12 supplements are now routinely given to farm animals since they are usually factory farmed and also don't get B12 from bacteria anymore.  SOURCE:  http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/carnivores-need-vitamin-b12-supplements/2013/10/30#sthash.RerFgkfc.dpuf  If you believe that omnivores get B12 from eating meat, then that strengthens the argument that we're herbivores as we have a mechanism for hosting the bacteria in our body to get the B12 that way.

Ultimately, most of what you say is true, but the context is important and there's more to this story.  The peoples across the world that eat the most plants and the least meat are the healthiest, the longest-living, and the most vibrant in old age.  When a population increases its consumption of meat, dairy, and eggs, its health declines.  Look at Okinawa, which went from the most whole food plant-based and the most healthy in Japan, to the least whole food plant-based and the least healthy in Japan in just one or two generations.  Counter-arguments to this are based on theory, but it's theory that doesn't hold up when you put it to the test (eg. theories that eating more cholesterol doesn't raise cholesterol levels fail when put to the test in before-and-after comparison studies).

I agree with the argument, but take it in another direction.  You describe someone living on credit cards, but the bill eventually comes in the mail.  You die early or (worse yet) are sick and miserable in your later years due to not nourishing your body well.

14 of the top 15 things that make North Americans suffer and die are diet and lifestyle related.  Living it up in the first half of our lives all too often makes us miserable in the second half, sadly.  Heart disease, diabetes, many cancers, and many neurological disorders are correlated to diet and lifestyle.  And studies have clearly demonstrated that sedentary vegans have better heart health than omnivores who work-out like crazy, so no you can't just exercise it all away.  SOURCE:  http://nutritionfacts.org/video/arteries-of-vegans-vs-runners/

So I'm focused on improving the quality of my whole life, not just the 5% of it I spend eating.  I'm quite willing to be strict for the 5% of my life that I'm chewing, in exchange for the other 95% of my life being vastly better.

The longer you live the more you distrust nutritional studies.

They constantly flip flop on things, such as whether bacon or eggs is good for you for breakfast. Whether red meat is good for you or what diseases it may cause. My dad tells me of things he was told were bad for him growing up that they now say is super good. Vise Versa. Heck, even at my 30 years of age I've seen things that were the new "health craze" become something detrimental to ones health. And no i'm not talking about some fad diet, but something that sounded smart.

The point of my original post was not to say eat whatever the F you want and screw the consiquences. The point of my post was to be active and eat in moderation. I mean heck, eating chocolate and alcohal is not good for you in excess, yet a small glass a night or small piece a day is supposed to be healthy. Anything in excess is not healthy. Even working out in excess is not healthy.

Except, they don't flip very often in fact.  Occasionally they do, but it's rare.  An example of an actual flip was when decades of recommending cancer patients avoid soy was flipped about 7 years ago to cancer patients should eat a lot of soy, with the discovery that phyto-estrogen doesn't react in the body the same way actual estrogen does.  (Protip: dairy contains actual estrogen, so avoid it like the plague if you're a cancer patient.)

However, there's an incorrect sense that they flip all the time, but that sense comes from two things: the way medical studies are discussed in the media, and studies funded by vested interests (as opposed to less biased sources such as educational institutions).

The problem is most studies are akin to Microsoft paying for a study on what the best game console is.  Guess what?  That study either wouldn't conclude that a Playstation is the best console, or it wouldn't be published if it did.  However, if the study on what the best game console is was funded by (for example) the ESRB then you'd have a much better chance of getting an unbiased result.

The media reports on the equivalent of a game console study funded by Microsoft, and treats it as equal as the equivalent of a study funded by the ESRB.  They shouldn't be treated as equal.  They should also not typically report on the first study of a topic, only follow-up studies from reputable sources that are attempting to replicate the results of the first.

When you look at only reputable studies, and you look only at studies that have gone through peer review and had corroborative follow-up studies, then suddenly a clear picture emerges.  Eating cholesterol-laden foods raises bad cholesterol.  Eating processed meat definitely causes cancer, and eating any meat may increase cancer risk.  Eating dairy in any quantity significantly increases your diabetes risk.  That kind of thing.  The science is becoming more clear on those points, not less once you remove the noise.

In the mid-20th century "Big Tobacco" was desperate to confuse the science on whether tobacco causes cancer, or not.  Many of those same tactics are being used by organizations who don't want people trusting the science behind the dangers of meat, cholesterol, etc.  Here's a good video that goes into the tactics they're using to confuse the science:  http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-set-up-to-fail/

In short (in case you don't want to check out the link), everyone has differing levels of cholesterol depending on their genes.  Organizations who want to produce a study that suggests saturated fat doesn't harm us set up a study to attempt to prove that there's a link between saturated fat and cholesterol, but it's a study that's designed to fail.  They show that some people who eat very little saturated fat have higher cholesterol than some people who eat a lot of saturated fat and somenhow have lower cholesterol.  No correlation, in other words, right?  Well, if they instead had taken people who eat very little saturated fat, make them eat a lot more, and watch their cholesterol levels, their cholesterol levels would shoot up.  Everyone has different starting points, but the effect of eating high amounts of saturated fat on the body are consistent for all people.  But the news reports on the study's conclusions despite the fact that its methods were inherently flawed, and it was funded by a questionable source.

Science isn't the problem, it's journalists reporting press releases without any investigation, and studies that are engineered to come up with conclusions that confuse the public, that are to blame.  If you instead look at the preponderence of science, and especially the science not funded by vested interests, a vastly different and incredibly consistent picture emerges.

Edit to add:  As for alcohol in moderation supposedly being healthy, it's not.  Alcohol in any quantity is not healthy as it reduces the biodiversity of your intestinal flora, and your gut bacteria is key to optimal health.  There was a theory for a while that alcohol in moderation may help ward off heart disease, but when they put it to the test they didn't find that was true.  And why use alcohol to reduce the onset of heart disease when you can avoid and/or cure heart disease by eliminating cholesterol and refined carbohydrates from your diet?  That's a great example of how health recommendations rarely change if you follow what is proven, rather than what is merely theorized.

With regards chocolate being good for you, that's another one the media gets wrong.  Dark chocolate can be good for you, but rarely is because of the way they process it.  Cacao is processed into cocoa which is processed into dark chocolate.  The components of cacao that make it taste bitter are actually what's really good for you, but that's usually processed out.  So bitter dark chocolate is good for you in moderation, but non-bitter chocolate is not.  The science is simple, but the reporting on it confuses the issue.

Another example of how the media misreports on health studies: they frequently report on studies that suggest red wine is good for you, even in situations when the studies acknowledge the fact that eating the red grapes that the wine is made from is *vastly* more health promoting.  :)  Take junk science, add junk media, and the result is a confused populace.  I now go to health aggregators like Nutritionfacts.org that collate the science, look at who funded it, analyze the trends, etc.  That way you're not seesawing back and forth with every study, whether it's reputable or not.

Incorrect.

The Inuit people for example had undergone a few minor biological "changes" compared to the rest of the general population.

For example, because they weren't consuming things like vegetables, they weren't consuming much in the way of carbohydrates, which means protein is broken down in the liver via Gluconeogenesis, which has resulted in those people having abnormally massive livers to compensate... The downside is when they change their diet to something that is Vegetable/Plant based, they can suffer a myriad of health issues as their bodies haven't undergone generations to adapt.

Now life expectancy for those people is 63 - 67 years for women and men, respectively. - But I am sure you are aware (As you don't look like someone who is a moron) that things like immunisation, hostpitals can substantually raise that life expectancy rate and can have absolutely NOTHING to do with diet... These people live in some of the most remote places in the world, they don't have the modern privelages we tend to enjoy when it comes to health.

Same issues arise with the Aboriginal people in Australia, even if an Aboriginal has a relatively conservative diet, they can still suffer from a ton of health issues even with vegetable-rich diets.

Their main sources of food was Nuts and extremely Lean meat... Which was backed up with a small amount of Grubs and Berries.

No. You have misconstrued what I have said entirely. I am stating everything is okay in moderation.

I don't care what someone does to someone else, that's not my circus, not my problem. :P
I'm not responsible for any of that.

But if it get's pushed onto me, I will push back.

Correct. But when you start consuming an obscene amount of cholesterol, your starting amount of Cholesterol tends to be irrellevent.

With that said, I won't reply to the rest of your post, I haven't enough Coffee this morning, Some I agree with, some I don't.

Obviously eating fruits and proper veg food can give you enough nutrients.

It is absolute BS that you have to eat non-veg for your body to have a balance.