Meat made us smarter
- Thread starter masta247
- Start date
I love how the article provides absolutely no evidence to back up any of those claims, and is actually completely full of conjecture, and "we think this" and "we think that".
I love how it didn't seem to cross their minds that this entire point is rendered moot by the fact that the average monkey (vegetarian) is smarter than your average cat/dog/wolf/lizard (carnivorous).
Listen, if you want to believe that eating meat is what caused human intelligence, you would be wrong, but that's your prerogative. Personally I find it more telling that the following people were/are all vegetarian/vegan:
Charles Darwin
Thomas Edison
Isaac Newton
Benjamin Franklin
HG Wells
Leonardo Da Vinci
Plato
Socrates
Tolstoy
Albert Einstein
Gustav Mahler
Confucius
Pythagoras
Gandhi
George Bernard Shaw
George Harrison
Paul McCartney
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Prince
Andre 3000
Erykah Badu
Caesar Chavez
Coretta Scott King
Russell Simmons
Biz Stone
But clearly you and these random-ass people from National Public Radio know better than all those, great, accomplished, minds.....right?
I love how it didn't seem to cross their minds that this entire point is rendered moot by the fact that the average monkey (vegetarian) is smarter than your average cat/dog/wolf/lizard (carnivorous).
Listen, if you want to believe that eating meat is what caused human intelligence, you would be wrong, but that's your prerogative. Personally I find it more telling that the following people were/are all vegetarian/vegan:
Charles Darwin
Thomas Edison
Isaac Newton
Benjamin Franklin
HG Wells
Leonardo Da Vinci
Plato
Socrates
Tolstoy
Albert Einstein
Gustav Mahler
Confucius
Pythagoras
Gandhi
George Bernard Shaw
George Harrison
Paul McCartney
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Prince
Andre 3000
Erykah Badu
Caesar Chavez
Coretta Scott King
Russell Simmons
Biz Stone
But clearly you and these random-ass people from National Public Radio know better than all those, great, accomplished, minds.....right?
I never said that I believe this to be 100% true. I just posted this because I found that interesting.
Maybe this article isn't clear enough and its author wants to clearly bash fellow vegetarians.
The source clearly states that meat doesn't make us smarter now, it did at some point in the past and actually it seems highly possible.
The source here, I also added it to the original post:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128849908
It in no way says that if you are a vegetarian you aren't as smart.
If we had an omnivorous human race and another vegetarian one only then we could make a comparison.
It doesn't work that way for other species because they don't evolve the way we did. You know, developing tools, communicating etc. Definitely it wasn't the only factor that caused our evolution. However species that eat meat are statistically smarter and develop larger brains than those that don't. Most of the smartest species actually eat meat: Dolphins, rats, dogs, cats, pigs, smartest monkeys.
There's something in that article that makes sense. You don't have to outsmart a plant to eat it. However if a species is too stupid to outsmart a plant-eating animal it will die out. It often requires more and more complex strategies which require a better developed brain.
And the smartest monkey (chimpanzee) is actually an omnivore.
Maybe this article isn't clear enough and its author wants to clearly bash fellow vegetarians.
The source clearly states that meat doesn't make us smarter now, it did at some point in the past and actually it seems highly possible.
The source here, I also added it to the original post:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128849908
It in no way says that if you are a vegetarian you aren't as smart.
If we had an omnivorous human race and another vegetarian one only then we could make a comparison.
It doesn't work that way for other species because they don't evolve the way we did. You know, developing tools, communicating etc. Definitely it wasn't the only factor that caused our evolution. However species that eat meat are statistically smarter and develop larger brains than those that don't. Most of the smartest species actually eat meat: Dolphins, rats, dogs, cats, pigs, smartest monkeys.
There's something in that article that makes sense. You don't have to outsmart a plant to eat it. However if a species is too stupid to outsmart a plant-eating animal it will die out. It often requires more and more complex strategies which require a better developed brain.
And the smartest monkey (chimpanzee) is actually an omnivore.
This is a complete fabrication.
I could, easily. So could anyone, with a simple search of the internet. There's a handful of people on that list that are contentious, but there is solid proof that 95% of that list are completely vegetarian or vegan.
Go ahead and make your list - I want to see if it can stack up against the likes of Da Vinci, Plato, Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Confucius, Socrates. Because somehow..... I doubt it.
It isn't propaganda at all. The fact remains that I've never met an unintelligent vegetarian. This stands to simple reason and logic, because being a vegetarian means one has thought carefully about their diet, and likely examined both the health issues and the moral implications of their decision.
You can NOT say the same about 99.9% of meat-eaters, and you know damn well that's true.
In my line of work - I meet a lot of very successful people, from musicians, to actors/actresses, to authors, to CEOs of major companies, and generally people who are of THE highest standard in whatever their chosen profession might be.
Vegetarianism and veganism is a dominant trait amongst these people. Coincidence? No. These are exclusively not only talented, but compassionate, level-headed, logical, intelligent, rational people.
If you live your life on the basis of compassion - then vegetarianism is the only rational, logical choice.
If you eat meat, you fall into one of the following categories:
Category A) You've never stopped to consider changing the diet you were raised with, because you are too busy living your life to take a moment to stop and reflect on compassion, empathy for animals, the unnecessary suffering, the health risks of eating meat. The dictionary definition of ignorance is
"Lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated."
and this describes, I would say, 95% of the people in the world who eat meat. They are simply ignorant. It's no secret that the world is full of ignorant people.
Category B) You have considered all the things mentioned in A) and simply do not care. After all, the cruelty and suffering of animals isn't affecting you, is it? You're out for number 1 - although you clearly don't intend for "number 1" to live very long, since you have also heard about the numerous health risks involved with eating meat but don't care very much about that, either. This makes you selfish. I'd say this describes 4% of the population.
Category C) You literally have no other choice but to eat meat, or have complete lack of access to any sort of knowledge on the subject matter. You are probably some part of a remote cult living somewhere where there are no other people. If you are in a civilized country this category does not apply to you.
So.... meat eaters - are you ignorant, or selfish? Perhaps you are even both!
I could, easily. So could anyone, with a simple search of the internet. There's a handful of people on that list that are contentious, but there is solid proof that 95% of that list are completely vegetarian or vegan.
Go ahead and make your list - I want to see if it can stack up against the likes of Da Vinci, Plato, Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Confucius, Socrates. Because somehow..... I doubt it.
It isn't propaganda at all. The fact remains that I've never met an unintelligent vegetarian. This stands to simple reason and logic, because being a vegetarian means one has thought carefully about their diet, and likely examined both the health issues and the moral implications of their decision.
You can NOT say the same about 99.9% of meat-eaters, and you know damn well that's true.
In my line of work - I meet a lot of very successful people, from musicians, to actors/actresses, to authors, to CEOs of major companies, and generally people who are of THE highest standard in whatever their chosen profession might be.
Vegetarianism and veganism is a dominant trait amongst these people. Coincidence? No. These are exclusively not only talented, but compassionate, level-headed, logical, intelligent, rational people.
If you live your life on the basis of compassion - then vegetarianism is the only rational, logical choice.
If you eat meat, you fall into one of the following categories:
Category A) You've never stopped to consider changing the diet you were raised with, because you are too busy living your life to take a moment to stop and reflect on compassion, empathy for animals, the unnecessary suffering, the health risks of eating meat. The dictionary definition of ignorance is
"Lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated."
and this describes, I would say, 95% of the people in the world who eat meat. They are simply ignorant. It's no secret that the world is full of ignorant people.
Category B) You have considered all the things mentioned in A) and simply do not care. After all, the cruelty and suffering of animals isn't affecting you, is it? You're out for number 1 - although you clearly don't intend for "number 1" to live very long, since you have also heard about the numerous health risks involved with eating meat but don't care very much about that, either. This makes you selfish. I'd say this describes 4% of the population.
Category C) You literally have no other choice but to eat meat, or have complete lack of access to any sort of knowledge on the subject matter. You are probably some part of a remote cult living somewhere where there are no other people. If you are in a civilized country this category does not apply to you.
So.... meat eaters - are you ignorant, or selfish? Perhaps you are even both!
I guess some of us had ancestors that ate more meat than others, since some of us are now smart enough to know that we shouldn’t be eating meat.
But I agree with this article. Eating meat allowed a more intelligent form of proto-human to evolve: Neanderthals. And these meat-eating Neanderthals are still making important contributions to society today.
But I'll write something serious on this tomorrow.
But I agree with this article. Eating meat allowed a more intelligent form of proto-human to evolve: Neanderthals. And these meat-eating Neanderthals are still making important contributions to society today.
But I'll write something serious on this tomorrow.
Now most people have a choice and means to supply their bodies with most needed resources with different diets which was very hard a million or two years ago. Meat offered a more complete meal. It still does if you don't carefully plan your vegetarian diet.
Combined with fire and the fact that it sparked people to develop needed tools and required cooperation it makes sense that eating meat and cooking considerably contributed to our evolution at some point.
Still there are no beans that taste like fried chicken breasts though
Yet most of those species that are considered to be smart actually eat meat.
Combined with fire and the fact that it sparked people to develop needed tools and required cooperation it makes sense that eating meat and cooking considerably contributed to our evolution at some point.
Still there are no beans that taste like fried chicken breasts though
Yet most of those species that are considered to be smart actually eat meat.
Many of the greatest people from that vegetarian list weren't really true vegetarians or were just for some part of their lives. For example Einstein is often mentioned as the greatest vegetarian yet he wasn't really a true vegetarian:
WikiAnswers - Was Albert Einstein a vegetarian
There are similar stories about many others. Some Greek philosophers were said to be vegetarians yet in ancient Greece that's how their diet looked. It was very natural, full of herbs, fruits and vegetables. Same would go for many Asian civilizations.
I tried to google for sources to find anything that leads to some other of these people being vegetarian but I couldn't find any info apart from those lists that circulate the net.
True vegetarianism is mostly relevant while talking about people living in modern times. Yet the smartest people that come to my mind, scientists are not vegetarian. To be fair though most of them are atheists
Also 2pac loved chicken. And Obama tends to enjoy a burger or two too
WikiAnswers - Was Albert Einstein a vegetarian
There are similar stories about many others. Some Greek philosophers were said to be vegetarians yet in ancient Greece that's how their diet looked. It was very natural, full of herbs, fruits and vegetables. Same would go for many Asian civilizations.
I tried to google for sources to find anything that leads to some other of these people being vegetarian but I couldn't find any info apart from those lists that circulate the net.
True vegetarianism is mostly relevant while talking about people living in modern times. Yet the smartest people that come to my mind, scientists are not vegetarian. To be fair though most of them are atheists
Also 2pac loved chicken. And Obama tends to enjoy a burger or two too
You’re all (except Duke) missing the point with these lists of people. The article is not saying that individuals who eat meat are or become smarter or more creative than those who don’t. Neither does a list of highly intelligent or gifted vegetarians make a causal connection between vegetarianism and intelligence. What it does is make a correlation between highly intelligent people and vegetarianism. And all that correlation seems to show is that highly intelligent people are more likely to make informed decisions about their diets. Hence, a vegetarian diet does not necessarily affect intelligence but rather intelligence affects choice of a vegetarian diet. We can see that in this 2006 study:
BBC NEWS | Health | High IQ link to being vegetarian
Now what the original article of this thread is saying is that meat helped early humans evolve greater intelligence over hundreds of thousands of years. Not individuals. But, really, this is old news to anthropologists. At least 15 years old. NPR took this from a recent article in New Scientist (Sign in to read: Chew on this: thank cooking for your big brain - life - 16 July 2010 - New Scientist) and wrote it up in their usual lazy, annoying way.
What the actual hypothesis is talking about is cooked foods. NPR ran with the meat angle. But it’s all about cooked food, including vegetables, changing the way early humans chewed, hence changing the size of the jaw and gut. By eliminating the need for a large gut more calories could be devoted to brain development, instead of being primarily used for digestion. By decreasing time spent mechanically processing food, cooking improved the ability to get useful nutrition from the same amount of food. Hence, our brains had the energy it needed to grow. But, keep in mind, we’re not talking about the great spurt in intelligence that happened about 50,000 years ago. That had other causes. We’re talking about changes that started about 2 million years ago and were in place about half a million years ago. We still weren’t human. All this is saying is that those changes allowed the size of our brains to increase when other factors called for it. But that would be like saying leaving the water or coming down from the trees made us smarter because of the changes that brought on. Yeah, but…not exactly. Everything that came before can be connected to everything that came after at some level. It’s not really saying much.
And this is just one hypothesis. There’s also a good hypothesis that says intelligence evolved from attempts to out-smart predators: Did Intelligence & Cooperation Evolve from Attempts of Early Man to Out-Smart Predators?
What contributed, evolutionarily, to our intellectual development, occurred in tandem with a myriad of other environmental factors over hundreds of thousands of years.
No doubt meat helped early humans survive and thrive in times of scarcity and during ice ages. There were times and places when foraging for food could go just so far, so naturally those who hunted became better survivors. But positing that there was benefit to early humans eating meat in no way posits that we should be eating meat today and might get similar benefit. At the present stage, man has become managing director of evolution. He now has the intelligence to take charge of his own evolution. He’s now in a position to recognize what changes are needed—to the environment, to the human species—and is prepared to engineer these changes. Vegetarianism is one of those self-directed evolutionary changes. Plus anal sex. (Oh, sorry, wrong thread. I'm typing this with my toes.)
BBC NEWS | Health | High IQ link to being vegetarian
Now what the original article of this thread is saying is that meat helped early humans evolve greater intelligence over hundreds of thousands of years. Not individuals. But, really, this is old news to anthropologists. At least 15 years old. NPR took this from a recent article in New Scientist (Sign in to read: Chew on this: thank cooking for your big brain - life - 16 July 2010 - New Scientist) and wrote it up in their usual lazy, annoying way.
What the actual hypothesis is talking about is cooked foods. NPR ran with the meat angle. But it’s all about cooked food, including vegetables, changing the way early humans chewed, hence changing the size of the jaw and gut. By eliminating the need for a large gut more calories could be devoted to brain development, instead of being primarily used for digestion. By decreasing time spent mechanically processing food, cooking improved the ability to get useful nutrition from the same amount of food. Hence, our brains had the energy it needed to grow. But, keep in mind, we’re not talking about the great spurt in intelligence that happened about 50,000 years ago. That had other causes. We’re talking about changes that started about 2 million years ago and were in place about half a million years ago. We still weren’t human. All this is saying is that those changes allowed the size of our brains to increase when other factors called for it. But that would be like saying leaving the water or coming down from the trees made us smarter because of the changes that brought on. Yeah, but…not exactly. Everything that came before can be connected to everything that came after at some level. It’s not really saying much.
And this is just one hypothesis. There’s also a good hypothesis that says intelligence evolved from attempts to out-smart predators: Did Intelligence & Cooperation Evolve from Attempts of Early Man to Out-Smart Predators?
What contributed, evolutionarily, to our intellectual development, occurred in tandem with a myriad of other environmental factors over hundreds of thousands of years.
No doubt meat helped early humans survive and thrive in times of scarcity and during ice ages. There were times and places when foraging for food could go just so far, so naturally those who hunted became better survivors. But positing that there was benefit to early humans eating meat in no way posits that we should be eating meat today and might get similar benefit. At the present stage, man has become managing director of evolution. He now has the intelligence to take charge of his own evolution. He’s now in a position to recognize what changes are needed—to the environment, to the human species—and is prepared to engineer these changes. Vegetarianism is one of those self-directed evolutionary changes. Plus anal sex. (Oh, sorry, wrong thread. I'm typing this with my toes.)
lol @ ending of post.
When it comes to the veggy - meat debate i'm usually in the other camp, but i have always said and will say that "we" as a western civilization eat too much meat. On that I agree, wholeheartedly. For a plethora of reasons. I'm not advocating to scrap meat out of our diets completely, but meat should never have become a staple food, as it has now.
More on-topic, I dont have much to add to Joker's reply. The original point isnt about meat per se, its about getting more food. That's what helped us along in that stage. Not the fact that it was meat.
Anyway, as I said theres not much to add to this topic and i'm not very clearminded at the moment but i'll leave with this:
I think, as a convinced meat-lover, that meat (and fish) should, to a certain degree, return to being a luxury food.
When it comes to the veggy - meat debate i'm usually in the other camp, but i have always said and will say that "we" as a western civilization eat too much meat. On that I agree, wholeheartedly. For a plethora of reasons. I'm not advocating to scrap meat out of our diets completely, but meat should never have become a staple food, as it has now.
More on-topic, I dont have much to add to Joker's reply. The original point isnt about meat per se, its about getting more food. That's what helped us along in that stage. Not the fact that it was meat.
Anyway, as I said theres not much to add to this topic and i'm not very clearminded at the moment but i'll leave with this:
I think, as a convinced meat-lover, that meat (and fish) should, to a certain degree, return to being a luxury food.
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