A new study has produced strong evidence that red meat consumption is a trigger for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), demonstrating how it alters gut bacteria and immune activity in ways that worsen inflammation. It furthers scientific knowledge of the many pathways involved in inflammation, taking…
What do you think happens when a mouse finds a large carcass in the wild? They just take a few nibbles and then go “that’s enough, time for some greens now. Gotta keep my diet balanced”. No, they gorge themselves on the opportunistic meal and will return each night until it’s gone or inedibly rotten.
The study is fine. The conclusions, interesting. The sudden ‘mouse diet & gut-study experts’ disagreeing because they don’t like it, reminds me of Facebook tbh.
Humans historically, also didn’t eat much meat up until very recently. More recent research suggests our ancient human ancestors were eating far more plants than meat
Isotopic testing shows that early humans primarily subsisted on herbivores and small game, including fish. Please refer to this study for Europe.
Early modern humans also appear to have regularly hunted large herbivores (55–57), but there is also evidence for the use of small game, including fish at some of these sites (15, 16).
based on stable isotopes, the mammoth seems to contribute the major part of the dietary protein of humans in a time range between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago and across wide areas spanning from SW France11 to the Crimean Peninsula53 (Fig. 6, Supplementary Fig. 5–8).
It is inaccurate to state that humans did not eat much meat prior to modern times.
My point is that it was way more rare than what people’s diets look like today. Not zero but not dominant. Wide reliance on plants is even true before modern agriculture
Here we present the isotopic evidence of pronounced plant reliance among Late Stone Age hunter-gatherers from North Africa (15,000–13,000 cal BP), predating the advent of agriculture by several millennia
I myself am a victim of the modern diet, and lack of exercise. I almost died of high cholesterol and other related factors, before I started to eat better and be physically active.
I’m a firm believer in a varied diet, and that most people should have a less meaty intake.
Just, we are designed to be hunters and eat red meat
My parents fed me red meat for almost every dinner I can recall growing up. I’m early 30s and my cholesterol is very high. I was able to drop my cholesterol significantly in one month by changing my diet to mostly vegan with chicken and fish once or twice a week. Switched my morning eggs out to egg whites. Cooked in avocado oil instead of butter.
Interesting personal assumptions but my diet was quite healthy aside from the daily eggs and meat consumption. As I mentioned in my comment, I replaced my dietary proteins from red meat often to red meat seldom and replaced it with plant proteins. When you consume high cholesterol foods, you’re likely going to have high blood LDL. That’s just physics. The study you linked even says this (as well as the fact that more and better studies are needed for more precise conclusions).
Since common modern human tapeworms began to diverge from those of other predators roughly 1.7 million years ago (specifically the pork tapeworm, beef tapeworm, and Asian tapeworm), not only was H. erectus consuming meat regularly enough for speciation to occur in these parasites, but meat was probably consumed raw more often than not.[80]
Humans and human ancestors have also been consuming large quantities of plants for far earlier than that. Here’s another paper looking 780,000 years ago finding a wide amount of plants consumed
we demonstrate that a wide variety of plants were processed by Middle Pleistocene hominins at the site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel (33° 00’ 30” N, 35° 37’ 30” E), at least 780,000 y ago. These results further indicate the advanced cognitive abilities of our early ancestors, including their ability to collect plants from varying distances and from a wide range of habitats and to mechanically process them using percussive tools.
I am not saying that hunting didn’t happen (it definitely did). I am just saying that more recent research is painting a very different picture of the level of consumption of it
If a species is straight up annihilating multiple species merely through predation, it’s not statistically possible for it to be a small amount of meat. A wide variety of plants eaten, as pointed out in that paper, doesn’t mean it was mostly a plant diet - if anything, that means it’s likely humans primarily only ate plants while traveling during a hunt.
Steppe populations from modern Ukraine easy through to the Urals lived mainly on meat and dairy 5000 years ago (even if they didn’t yet have the lactose tolerance adaptation).
Yes, mice eat red meat.
Mice are omnivores and are opportunistic eaters. They’ll eat whatever they can find.
Mice do not eat that much meat of other mammals.
Giving an over abundance of it, for a long time, will shock the mouse.
What do you think happens when a mouse finds a large carcass in the wild? They just take a few nibbles and then go “that’s enough, time for some greens now. Gotta keep my diet balanced”. No, they gorge themselves on the opportunistic meal and will return each night until it’s gone or inedibly rotten.
The study is fine. The conclusions, interesting. The sudden ‘mouse diet & gut-study experts’ disagreeing because they don’t like it, reminds me of Facebook tbh.
The study is fine as you say, the problem is the news cycle throwing around a very contrived mouse study as anti-meat news for humans.
Humans historically, also didn’t eat much meat up until very recently. More recent research suggests our ancient human ancestors were eating far more plants than meat
Isotopic testing shows that early humans primarily subsisted on herbivores and small game, including fish. Please refer to this study for Europe.
Or this study, also from Nature, again studying the first modern humans and late Neandertals in Europe:
It is inaccurate to state that humans did not eat much meat prior to modern times.
Primates in general are designed to eat red meat. Chimps, our closest cousin, go on regular hunts against other primates, and eat them
My point is that it was way more rare than what people’s diets look like today. Not zero but not dominant. Wide reliance on plants is even true before modern agriculture
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02382-z
I myself am a victim of the modern diet, and lack of exercise. I almost died of high cholesterol and other related factors, before I started to eat better and be physically active.
I’m a firm believer in a varied diet, and that most people should have a less meaty intake.
Just, we are designed to be hunters and eat red meat
My parents fed me red meat for almost every dinner I can recall growing up. I’m early 30s and my cholesterol is very high. I was able to drop my cholesterol significantly in one month by changing my diet to mostly vegan with chicken and fish once or twice a week. Switched my morning eggs out to egg whites. Cooked in avocado oil instead of butter.
I tend to eat very little red meat now, maybe once a month. I used to eat it every day
That’s very impressive. Dietary factors generally account for a very small proportion of blood LDL. Your diet must have been very poor and you likely have some known genetic mutations which greatly exacerbate the issue.
Interesting personal assumptions but my diet was quite healthy aside from the daily eggs and meat consumption. As I mentioned in my comment, I replaced my dietary proteins from red meat often to red meat seldom and replaced it with plant proteins. When you consume high cholesterol foods, you’re likely going to have high blood LDL. That’s just physics. The study you linked even says this (as well as the fact that more and better studies are needed for more precise conclusions).
This is just not true. Eating meat is a major part of what separated archaic humans from other primates; it is theorized that the calories from meat is part of what helped us grow our larger brains. Homo Erectus was hunting large game maybe up to 2 million years ago, well before Homo Sapiens even existed. They hunted to the point of wiping out many large herbivores of that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus#Subsistence
Humans and human ancestors have also been consuming large quantities of plants for far earlier than that. Here’s another paper looking 780,000 years ago finding a wide amount of plants consumed
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2418661121
I am not saying that hunting didn’t happen (it definitely did). I am just saying that more recent research is painting a very different picture of the level of consumption of it
If a species is straight up annihilating multiple species merely through predation, it’s not statistically possible for it to be a small amount of meat. A wide variety of plants eaten, as pointed out in that paper, doesn’t mean it was mostly a plant diet - if anything, that means it’s likely humans primarily only ate plants while traveling during a hunt.
Or when meat was scarce!
sure. never said they weren’t also consuming plants. but meat has absolutely been a significant part of our diets for millions of years.
It depends on the populations.
Steppe populations from modern Ukraine easy through to the Urals lived mainly on meat and dairy 5000 years ago (even if they didn’t yet have the lactose tolerance adaptation).