Humans are omnivores, so did our ancestors eat meat or vegetables?

Should people eat more meat or more vegetables? This is a very boring question. What's more boring is that people often argue about this question.

As an omnivore, humans should eat both meat and vegetables. Eating too much or too little of any kind of food will have adverse effects on health, just like forcing a lion to eat grass or a cow to eat meat. The principle is the same. According to their eating habits, animals can be divided into three categories, namely carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. The difference in eating habits has nothing to do with preferences, but is determined by their own objective conditions. If an animal wants to eat meat, it must first have the ability to bite meat. Sharp incisors and canines are essential, and herbivores often do not have these two things.

Sharp incisors and canines are not exclusive to carnivores. Omnivores also have these two things, such as humans, so humans have the ability to tear meat.

Eating meat requires special tools. Eating grass is not easy either, because it is much more difficult to obtain energy and nutrition from plants than from meat. Therefore, plants must be chewed thoroughly before entering the digestive tract, and this requires the use of well-developed molars. Almost all herbivores have such "plant grinders." Similarly, molars are not exclusive to herbivores. Omnivores also have molars, such as us humans, so humans also have the ability to chew vegetarian food. Teeth have a great influence on the diet of animals, but they are not the only factor.

Animals eat to obtain energy and nutrition, so whether they can consume the food smoothly becomes the key.

Carnivores have special proteases in their bodies that help them digest meat, while herbivores have abundant cellulases and cellulose symbionts, so they can digest plants and obtain energy and nutrition from plants. Humans, like carnivores, have proteases in their bodies that can digest meat, but lack the cellulases and cellulose symbionts that herbivores have. However, it doesn’t matter because humans have sucralose in their bodies that can help us digest the fruits of plants. In addition to teeth and digestive ability, there is another important factor that determines an animal’s diet, and that is the animal’s need for nutrition. Carnivores can obtain all the nutrients they need from meat, and herbivores can obtain all the nutrients they need from plants, but omnivores like humans cannot.

We know that to maintain human health, we need a balanced intake of multiple nutrients. Some of these nutrients are only found in meat, while others are only found in plants, so humans can only be omnivores.

Omnivores are a rare species in the animal kingdom. They only account for about 3% of all animal species, and they basically did not master the essentials of omnivory from the beginning, but evolved step by step. The vast majority of omnivores evolved from carnivores, but humans are an exception, because humans evolved from herbivores, which is actually a very strange thing. "Herbivory" itself is a very powerful ability, because plants are everywhere and readily available. Being able to obtain energy and nutrition directly from plants means having a very strong ability to survive, so the number of herbivores is usually very large. Relatively speaking, because it is much more difficult for carnivores to hunt, the population is often not large.

It is difficult for carnivores to hunt and their energy utilization efficiency is low.

A cow eats about 10,000 kilograms of grass a year, and a tiger eats more than 100,000 kilograms of grass a year. Because of this, it is much more difficult for carnivores to survive than herbivores. In order to gain a more favorable survival advantage, some carnivores gradually evolved and became omnivores. However, humans are an exception. About 6 million years ago, our primate ancestors were completely vegetarian. Later, as they gradually evolved, they slowly began to walk upright.

Walking upright gave human ancestors the ability to hunt. At this time, the climate changed suddenly, and the plants on which human ancestors depended for survival became increasingly scarce, so they began to try hunting.

At first, their meat-eating behavior was just a trial, because if they ate too much, their lives might be in danger. Slowly, their bodies gradually adapted to meat, and they became true omnivores from the inside out. There is no doubt that the speed of obtaining energy from meat is much faster than that from vegetarian food, and it is also more conducive to brain development, so the change in diet played an important role in the process of human evolution towards wisdom. Humans became omnivores as a result of natural selection, and as omnivores, it is really absurd to argue over whether to eat meat or vegetables.

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