In the article Sorry, vegans: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains, Christopher Wanjek argues that eating meat and cooked food made our brain begin to expand and grow. Wanjek backs up his argument with several articles from live science, a website that reports extraordinary evolution in the fields of science. I have accumulated several articles agreeing with part of this article and disagreeing with the other half. Some ideas will we getting debunked in this essay. Two arguments are being presented in this article, one is that meat is one of the factors which made our brain expand and the second one is that cooked food is the other factor. After thoroughly researching this topic I have come to the conclusion that …show more content…
Think about it, so many other animals eat meat but the same effects that happened to us on our brains didn't happen to them. The one thing that humankind does that differs from other species is the fact that we cook our food. I agree with Wanjek when he writes about how humans wouldn't have been able to survive on a raw diet. Cooking has enabled us to eat foods like potatoes and grains that are hard to digest without cooking. These starchy foods are extra dense and have a higher component of carbohydrates that gives us the glucose needed to get more energy and thrive in the brain spectrum. In the beginning Wanjek begins to write about how “meat-eating was a crucial element of human evolution at least a million years before the dawn of humankind” but what seems strange to me is that he wasn't aware of the fact that prehistoric humans rarely, if even any at all, ate meat of any kind. Dr. Nathaniel Dominy, talks about his research on the diet of hominins, which are early human ancestors who came about nearly 2 million years ago (Jennifer McNulty, We Are What They Ate, University of California Santa Cruz News center). He talks about how meat only took less than 25% of the food pyramids of early humans and how the media has been making it …show more content…
If we lack these vitamins then how are gorillas and chimpanzees able to obtain these vitamins while still being herbivores? They are the animals we have the closest relation to so what works for them should work for us, shouldn't it? Wanjek also makes the false assumption of stating that the vitamin B12 is only found in animal products. How would that be possible when B12 doesn't form in animal products, the vitamin B12 comes from the soil in the form of cobalt. The only reason as to why there is B12 in animals is because they eat plants which contain cobalt from the soil. If animals get B12 from plants then in theory we would be able to get B12 from plants as
Lundberg describes how the demand for animal protein was incredibly higher than the production. She quoted Marlow’s article stating, “A nonvegetarian diet requires 2.9 times more water, 2.5 times more energy, 13 times more fertilizer, and 1.4 times more pesticide than does a vegetarian diet and the greatest difference comes from beef consumption” (Lundberg 483). She then questions: "Do we really want to wait until it’s too late to change our way of eating?” (Lundberg 485). These two points will make readers subconsciously pause to answer this question themselves, put themselves in the situation imagining the products used and having an immediate reaction to it.
In the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan talks about 4 different models that we consume, purchase, and add it to our daily lives. Michael Pollan travels to different locations around the United States, where he mentions his models which are fast food, industrial organic, beyond organic, and hunting. I believe that the 3 important models that we need to feed the population are fast food, industrial organic, and beyond organic. Fast food is one of the most important models in this society because people nowadays, eat fast food everyday and it is hurting us in the long run. We need to stick to beyond organic or industrial organic food because it is good for our well being. Ever since the government and corporations took over on what we eat, we have lost our culture. In the introduction of the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan states that we have lost our culture:
Terry Bisson questions human’s ability to think by studying human’s most vital organ. The brain is the most complex organ in the human body, and it is able to complete numerous tasks at the same time. However, it is surprising how we tend to use our brain with great ease and it takes minimal amounts of effort. Bisson writes, “These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat” (Bisson, #), and from the thousands of species that posses a brain in this world, none, are able to use it in the way that we are able to. Throughout his work, Bisson keeps stressing that “they're [humans] made out of meat”, which, is true because the brain is made out of meat, yet we are able to use it to build anything and solve any
Banned means to prohibit; to not allow someone to read it. It could be for many reasons, but most are for inappropriate topics for teens and kids. Most books are banned from libraries and schools. Vegan Virgin Valentine by Carolyn Mackler is one of the books that was challenged because of fowl language and references to sex and drugs.
Jonathan Safran Foer wrote “Eating Animals” for his son; although, when he started writing it was not meant to be a book (Foer). More specifically to decide whether he would raise his son as a vegetarian or meat eater and to decide what stories to tell his son (Foer). The book was meant to answer his question of what meat is and how we get it s well as many other questions. Since the book is a quest for knowledge about the meat we eat, the audience for this book is anyone that consumes food. This is book is filled with research that allows the audience to question if we wish to continue to eat meat or not and provide answers as to why. Throughout the book Foer uses healthy doses of logos and pathos to effectively cause his readers to question if they will eat meat at their next meal and meals that follow. Foer ends his book with a call to action that states “Consistency is not required, but engagement with the problem is.” when dealing with the problem of factory farming (Foer).
“The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that their treatment has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality."(Schopenhauer). I always wondered why some people are not so drawn to the consumption of meat and fed up with only one thought about it. Why so many people loathe of blood, and why so few people can easily kill and be slaughter animal, until they just get used to it? This reaction should say something about the most important moments in the code, which was programmed in the human psyche. Realization the necessity of refraining from meat is especially difficult because people consume it for a long time, and in addition, there is a certain attitude to the meat as to the product that is useful, nourishing and even prestigious. On the other hand, the constant consumption of meat has made the vast majority of people completely emotionless towards it. However, there must be some real and strong reasons for refusal of consumption of meat and as I noticed they were always completely different. So, even though vegetarianism has evolved drastically over time, some of its current forms have come back full circle to resemble that of its roots, when vegetarianism was an ethical-philosophical choice, not merely a matter of personal health.
In today’s society, humans are becoming more health conscious in what they consume. They strive to make sacrifices for their health betterment. Vegetarianism is a unique lifestyle choice that has various health benefits and makes our body feel good. In order to have the knowledge of a vegetarian versus meat diet, it’s good to look into the reasons to change eating habits. People do not decide their eating habits until they are at an age where they can do what they want. Adolescents under nineteen years old are starting to want a change in their lives by avoiding the consumption of meat. Teenagers everywhere are considering and deeply thinking about- is it really healthier to become vegetarian? According to the United States of Agriculture and
...e. "A Hypothesis to Explain the Role of Meat-Eating in Human Evolution." Www.cnr.berkely.edu. 4 Feb. 2001. Web. .
What the American culture is used to is eating three meals with a few snacks in between a day, and two out of the three meals usually involve eating meat. Most people don’t realize the risks of eating meat. Today’s medical experts say that avoiding meat helps you avoid saturated fat. They have found out from studies that women who eat meat daily have a fifty percent greater risk of developing heart disease than vegetarian women and a sixty-eight percent greater risk in men (staff writer). People may not know about serious diseases meat can obtain such as, mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease. In the September 1999 issue of the Emerging Infectious Diseases, approximately 76 million food borne illnesses- resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths occur in the United States each year from improperly cooked or diseased meat (Licher). That is a lot! You can also get salmonella poisoning from meat. People think that the problems come from eating red meat and are opting for fish over steak, but new evidence proves that fish can cause health problems too, risks that can’t be cooked away. This is a growing problem called histamine poisoning (Peck). Children are learning at a younger age that they don’t like meat, maybe because they don’t like the taste, or maybe it’s because they have a fear of eating their favorite cartoon or movie hero. For example, the pig from the movie “babe”.
If a plant based diet has all the nutrients an omnivore diet has, why are we still eating meat? Many say that it’s easy to be deficient in certain vitamins and minerals, but a well-planned vegetarian diet can provide all the nutrients and more. Vegetarianism not only is beneficial to your health, but to the environment too.
Various animal rights activists claim that eating animals increases and plays a dominant role in animal cruelty. Pollan refutes this claim stating that humans can eat animals as long as we honor them while they’re alive. Pollan uses narratives, compare and contrast as well as cited, all experts work that he researched to add credibility to his article. “There is, too, the fact that we humans have been eating animals as long as we have lived on this earth. Humans may not need to eat meat in order to survive, yet doing so is part of our evolutionary heritage, reflected in the design of our teeth and the structure of our digestion” (Pollan). Consuming meat has been a main source of food for humans since the beginning of time, and it's part of our nature. Animal consump...
People love to eat meat. For over two million years, humans have relied on eating meat in order to survive or simply just because they enjoy the taste. Early humans had more powerful jaws and larger teeth and relied on meat as one of their main sources of food. As evolution took place and humans evolved, they developed smaller teeth and were only able to eat the meat if it was cooked. With humans evolving and being able to survive on foods other than meat, meat does not have to necessarily be a part of human diet anymore. Although many people have opted for a vegetarian lifestyle, most people still continue to eat meat and do not consider it a cruel act. Many have also stopped eating meat due health risks and environmental concern. Whether
Eating meat has been an essential component of human diets and throughout the history of humanity. Since our ancestors discovered meat, we have been eating it ever since. It has benefited they human body in many ways beyond just satisfying hunger. It has inspired evolutionary enhancements to our teeth, jaws, mouth, insides, brain and even the tools that we use on a day-to-day basis. These changes are interconnected, thus have made our body more efficient as a whole. It started with the change to our gut. Now that humans had meat to eat, it made our stomach and intestines smaller because we didn’t need a huge vegetable processor anymore. With this change it gave our body more energy so we can exert more energy building a bigger and strong brain. This made our ancestors smarter, and lead to the inventions of the numerous tools we use on a day-to-day basis. An example of one of those tools is the grinder. Your t...
They used every part of the animal they hunted for survival. However, now we have all kinds of clothing, housing, and are not constantly being hunted by other animals, so eating their meat is simply a luxury. Before man figured out how to hunt larger animals, plants and grains were consumed. This was not a drawback and man lived on fine. Going back to this lifestyle would transform the world into a cleaner place, and could help the world eventually obtain an organic lifestyle, which would be beneficial for the
Meat itself is not a very sustainable food source. It is not guaranteed that we would always have the same meat forever. The reason to that is the reduction of forests and plants. Every year there are more forests burnt down to make room for more pastures, and more animals. There are plants that humans consider as a part of their own diet, but not to forget these resources are used by all animals that produce meat for humans. From the first day humans were born they stored food in two way huntting and agriculture. They are using almost the same method and ideas they used thousands of years ago. Back then they used smaller areas for their animals and also their population was much more less than today. From the humans first hunt for food to this day, they have