Carnivore and Herbivore Teeth
Your teeth are only one of many indicators that you are designed to eat plants and not animals. Carnivores have long sharp separated teeth while ours are short and close together. Unlike humans, they have large mouths that open wide with stronger muscles and leverage to grab prey and rip off flesh. The blade-like molars slide past each other to shear off meat while ours are flat designed for grinding plants. Our jaw hinges rotate sideways and forward for grinding plants while theirs do not.
The Gut
We more thoroughly chew and grind our food with digestive enzymes in our saliva that break down plant cells and digest carbohydrates. Carnivores lack these enzymes and bite off large pieces of meat and swallow them whole. When we do this with meat we can choke to death and over 4000 of us do annually.1 Their necessarily larger and higher hydrochloric acid stomachs than ours can process the flesh of an intermittent kill and destroy the bacteria in the rotting flesh they eat. Plants with cells and indigestible fibers take longer to break down so longer guts are needed for us plant-eaters. Carnivore short nutrient absorbing small intestines are only 5 times body length while ours are 10 times.
Gathering Food
Then there are the obvious external herbivore characteristics we have such as hands suitable for picking leaves, berries, and tubers; and a lack of claws. It is much more difficult for us to run fast enough to catch prey and if we do we cannot eat enough at one time before it rots. Plants are easier to gather and do not have to be eaten immediately. Most of our human history predates curing meat by drying or with salt. We evolved until recently without refrigerators that allow massive distribution and consumption of meat.
To Your Health
Meat is unhealthy. Plant-eating animals like us have livers that have limited capacity to remove excess cholesterol. Only animals make cholesterol and by eating more cholesterol than we produce our arteries get clogged with atherosclerosis causing heart disease and we get kidney stones that are usually comprised of cholesterol.2 Unlike plants, your immune system often sees animal proteins and bacteria you eat as foreign invaders that need to be attacked, sometimes attacking your own body as an autoimmune disease instead. Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, and Rheumatoid Arthritis are just a few of these.3
Enjoy a Whole Food Plant-Based lifestyle. You were designed to eat plants, not animals.
- Heimlich H. A Life-Saving Maneuver to Prevent Food-Choking. JAMA 234 (1975): 398-401.
- Grundy SM. Does Dietary Cholesterol Matter? Curr Atheroscler Rep. 2016 Nov;18(11):68. doi: 10.1007/s11883-016-0615-0. PMID: 27739004.
- Swank R. Effect of low saturated fat diet in early and late cases of multiple sclerosis. Lancet. 1990 Jul 7;336(8706):37-9.
