YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT 2

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT 2

I decided to post a comment on The Dilbert Blog after all. Over there at least I get read. I posted the last portion of my essay with a slight change:

First of all, to challenge on the basis of studies is ludicrous. I am in the Woody Allen school on that one. He once went into the future (in one of his movies) and discovered that junk food had been found to be the most healthy. New studies come out every day. Once when I made dentist visits only months apart, they had changed the recommended stroke in brushing teeth. This at the latter part of the twentieth century when people, I suppose, had been brushing for centuries.

My opinion on things like this is to stick with what got us here. I call it the cave man test. Man has been on earth for a couple of hundred thousand years. Would we have survived if we had been vegans? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Would an individual vegan have survived? A scene in the cave comes to mind.

“Sorry Bruce, we couldn’t find any fruits or berries. All we got was this 200 pound deer.”

“But I wanted nuts. You couldn’t find any nuts?”

“Sorry buddy, I guess you’ll just have to go hungry.”

“I guess so.”

No, I don’t think so. Vegetarians didn’t get us here so why should that suddenly be the best thing for us

Wonder of wonders, there came a response:

just wanted to post a fact recalled from Anthro classes in college...so-called "cave men" types subsisted largely (more than 80%) on gathered foods--nuts, fruits, berries--i.e. things that didn't bite back. Meat was dangerous to catch, dangerous to eat (without refrigeration or if not properly cooked) and rarely caught. Cartoon images of carnivorous cave men brought to us by Gary Larson or images of the Flintstones are purely entertainment, not science on which to base an argument against vegetarianism. So, if cave folks surviving long enough to breed and thus eventually lead to our existence is an argument posted in favor of meat-eating (at least it's an argument posted by several folks here) noting it was actually an 80% vegetarian diet--seems relevant.

Posted by: Dana January 12, 2007 at 08:24 AM

So here is my response to that:

This is for Dana. Here we go with another study called a “fact.” You can cherry pick and find all kinds of “facts” about life 200,000 years ago.

On the other hand, what’s wrong with a 20% meat diet? A beef stew might have more that that but a hero sandwich or a pizza or spaghetti and meat balls would have less than 20%. My favorite Thai-made pasta sauce contains 20% beef, and then you plop it on the pasta.

20% meat sounds pretty healthy to me.