What is the Missing Human Manual All About?
Do you want to age well? Most of us do. If you are my age, 60, this is more important a question that if you are 30. But most of us would not wish to have heart disease, cancer, dementia when we get old.
Most of us think it is normal that we will get ill like this.
But science today tells us that this is not "Normal". Our evolutionary past designed us to be active and fit until we drop dead. Why? Because raising human children takes so long. Mature adults had to do most of the hard work enable us to invest up to 25 years in our kids.
We are designed by our evolution to reach a plateau of fitness in mid life. So why do most of us not live like this?
We don't because, we have strayed away from the best way of living that fits our evolution best. Our culture has got too far ahead of our biology. We eat foods that make us ill. We have lost our social identity and power and that makes us ill. And we have lost touch with the circadian rhythms of the Natural World, and that has made us ill too.
We have lost our fit with our true nature.
This site will be a Manual. It will show you what the best fit is. It will show you the science behind this. It will share with you some methods for getting your fit back with your true human nature.
So welcome to the "Missing Human Manual" . I hope that we can help you and I hope that you can help others as a result.
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Humans are not “carnivores”. Humans are “omnivore scavenger”. Allan Savory explains why in his lecture called Keeping Cattle: cause or cure for climate crisis? He also explains why species extinctions have always followed humanity. Very complying stuff.
http://eatkamloops.org/brittle-grassland-pasture-update-photo-essay/
Have you had a chance to look at Dr Jack Kruse’s website?
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I tried the whole vegetarian thing once. my friend insisted we were herbivores. i read all this stuff. it made sense.
so im hanging out with my friend and he asks “hows the vegetarian gig going” i said “good man miss the taste but its cool”. he asks me “are you taking a vitamin b12 supplement?” i said “no” and he says “you need to man, you are really going to dammage your body that way”.
he goes on to say that your body needs it and it cannot be found in plants enough to keep you healthy. only meat.
what kind of “humans natural diet” requires you to take pills? the vegetarian thing is hogwash.
so i did some research. apparently from what is being learned, humans evolved early on in coastal areas rather than grasslands. we lived off of fruits (high calories) and fish (protein, vitamins). we do naturally eat meat, but that meat is fish. not cows.
as we moved inland we needed to find a replacement for the fish and so started eating herbivorous animals. does the job but can cause digestive problems.
i personally enjoy a steak from time to time. roast beef sandwiches. bacon. mmmmmm. but i dont overdo it. i got friends that get burgers “meat and cheese only”. to me thats disgusting.
i try to constrain my meat intake with lots more vegetables than meat. and i eat a ton of fish. i really only eat meat at all because i work out and am building some muscle. its good but i could live without it. i cant go without fish though.
people that eat meat, its cool. do it. people that dont, you have that luxury thanks to pills. do it.
but dont run around acting like our history doesnt matter today. our history made us. and just so happens that while we are largely herbivorous, there are certain nutrients that we have to have meat for. or you can take your pills.
I have read many article written by ignorant, uninformed, propagandists about this issue of humans carnivorous lifestyles being outside what nature intended for us. One of the biggest misconceptions that they try to lead people astray with is “the digestive tracks of herbivores is 10 to 12 times the length of their bodies, and 3 to 6 times for carnivores. Humans digestive track is 10 to 12 times the length of the average human body. FACT! We are herbivores!” Ok people, simple math review for everyone. From mouth to anus, the human digestive track is 30 feet. the average human is 5.5 feet tall. 30/5.5=5.45….. Right in the pocket of carnivore…. Hmmmm. That is just simple math. But if you want more “facts” of humans and their place in the food chain, here it is. when prey, I mean herbivores, are born, they are born to walking and able to run for their lives. Carnivores, when born, are in need of care and protection by their fierce parents and community. Last I checked, Human babies were born pretty helpless. I never have seen a baby off and running right out of the womb. I am not on either side, but please don’t be mislead by writers of misleading and down-right wrong information!!!
Humans are most definitely not carnivores. Humans cannot live solely on meat.
Regardless of what we’re “designed” to be, many people are vegans/vegetarians on moral principals. At this point, I don’t believe humans are “supposed” to do anything. We have adapted to do many things we could not have done before (e.g. digest lactase after infancy) so our nutrition history is mostly irrelevant.
One could make the case that we should reject factory farmed foods and completely hunt for our food, since that’s what ancient humans did.
Humans can comfortably live on nothing but meat. Where did you get the idea that we can’t?
Humans cannot live comfortably on only meat. that is the most ignorant/ uninformed/ ridiculous thing i have ever heard in my life.
Not what was said
We’re not carnivores, we’re not omnivores, we are herbivores. The basic compelling case of anatomy aside, just take a look at every single major focus / group study ever done comparing populations eating animal-based foods vs. purely plant-based.
Moreover, blows my mind that most people today think factory-farmed meat is the same thing as ‘normal’ meat. It’s not. And to those blind/indifferent to that fact, it is that apathy that is helping keep your blinders on.
It’s no coincidence that, beyond taste, the food that is best for you is also what is best for the environment and our fellow animals.
If you want to fundamentally question if we’re truly omnivorous/carnivorous (designed to eat meat), follow Gary Y’s advice and try some challenges with someone still in touch with natural human instincts – children. For example, put an apple and a bunny rabbit with a young kid. If the kid eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, it’s a carnivore.
Doing things like eating factory farmed meat in moderation will never truly hurt you, but to pretend that we’re designed to do so or, worse, that it’s optimal for us to do so, is sheer ignorance. Wait a few more years til you see the explosion among athletes following purely plant-based diets. They narrow gaps and outperform their peers more quickly when they eat the way we were truly meant to: as herbivores.
There’s no fault or right/wrong in any of this, some people were raised to believe we are carnivorous the same that some of us were raised from the opposite perspective.
To believe either out of sheer behaviour and comfort is doing one’s brain a disservice.
To all the skeptics: start looking at net-gain nutrition, read up more on medical science (startlingly clear and severe links between animal based diets and massive disease) and, finally, watch Gary Yourofsky’s youtube sometime. Informed arguments are better.
“Wait a few more years til you see the explosion among athletes following purely plant-based diets. They narrow gaps and outperform their peers more quickly when they eat the way we were truly meant to: as herbivores.”
They supplement. All of them. Without exception. There is no such thing as a fully vegan athlete, and definitely none that will perform at the same level for more than a year or so without falling off that diet wagon. If you believe that they’ve operated in any other way, you’ve believed lies.
How you were raised to believe is irrelevant. Belief has nothing to do with reality.
I also challenge you to find a contributor to this site with fewer letters after his or her name than that Gary guy you refer to:
Dr Charles Czeisler
Dr Christopher Alexander
Dr David Dinges
Dr Doug Willms
Dr J Fraser Mustard
Dr Jonathan Shay
Dr Mary Gordon
Dr Megan Gunnar
Dr Michael Rose
Dr Norman Doidge
Dr Richard Wrangham
Dr Robert Lustig
Dr Robert Putnam
Dr Robert Sapolsky
Dr Sarah B Hrdy
Dr Staffan Lindeberg
Dr’s Andrew Clarke and David Brown
Gary Taubes
Lierre Keith
Michael Rose’s 55 Theses
Prof Geert Hofstede
Prof Robin Dunbar
Sir Michael Marmot
The Early Years for Children – Summary of Key Research
Vitamin D Council
The above list is pasted from the list to the right of this page.
And your point abut Gary Taubes? Whose work has been to investigate the literature? If it is “No credential” it might worth recalling that that was the critique of Pasteur who was only a chemist and not a doctore
GC,
There are absolutely many vegan athletes. (See http://www.greatveganathletes.com/ sometime, for example). And every single one who does it right has seen an improvement in their performance. To just blurt out that ‘they all supplement’ is so ignorant it almost led me to just ignore the comment.
It’s nice that you’re so certain without actually a) being accurate and b) relying on a list of random names instead of making your own basic argument – very persuasive.
If you’re so convinced that there are no vegan athletes, go talk to Brendan Brazier and every olympic / high-performance athlete he’s helped coach in the past seven years.
nj
I am not claiming that there are no vegan athletes – My site here is about the broader issues of health
That’s why that was a response to GC’s comments, robpatrob. I’ll address your comments soon and in a more diplomatic way, since you took a polite approach yourself. nj
You say that we are herbivores. Our anatomy shows that we are not. If you look at a gorilla who is, their stomach is quite different from ours. It is many times larger and has a major part designed to ferment plants. Our vestige of this is the appendix. Humans lost this and gained a brain. The only way that this could happen is for us to have eaten food that was more dense in nutrition – meat. And the only way we could do this without looking like a wolf was to use fire to cook it.
Please have a look at this link on how this happened.
I do agree about “Factory” meat. Again cows are not designed to eat grain either. By so doing they become ill and their fat becomes high in Omega 6′s rather than 3′s. And of course there are all the ethical issues too.
But I am seeing a return to pastured meat and with that a natural approach.
Truly mind-blowing..thank you so much for posting. What I find incredible is that everything you speak of is something my body has instinctively known all it’s life, as opposed to the idiotic new fads perpetuated by the western world today. Luckily I have followed my body’s instincts but never had the arguments to counter contemporary dietary theory with – now I do. A million thanks!