We Are Eating Less Meat ...

[pwa]

Eating large quantities of red meat in particular is something that our ancestors did not do, so our guts have not evolved to handle that. Up to fairly recent times red meat was too expensive relative to incomes for most people to eat a lot of it.

Humans have been eating meat for more than 2M years, and before H sapiens existed. This might have played a major rôle in the development of the modern human brain.

Our guts look appropriate for the task.

Excluding meat from the diet carries some nutritional risks, although we know how to manage them.

And although it's interesting the evolutionary history isn't particularly relevant to current effects on health. And the arguments from ethics and environmental impact stand on their own merits.

Jonathan

We don't have guts developed to cope with lots of meat. We have guts developed to cope with some meat. Our ancestors found meat harder to get than nutritious roots, nuts, berries and the like, so meat was not the be all and end all of their diet. It was just a part of it. If you look at the diet of English agricultural workers around 1900, they ate small portions of meat accompanied by huge quantities of cereals and vegetables. Even for people who worked in the production of food, meat was a luxury item occupying a corner of the plate. Having meat dominating a plate is a thing that has only really happened since World War Two, and it isn't healthy if done day after day.

I'm not making a case for being vegetarian or vegan, but for people having a good healthy balance to their diet. And it helps if people recognise that the total dominance of meat on the plate is a relatively modern thing.

[Jdsk]

Eating large quantities of red meat in particular is something that our ancestors did not do, so our guts have not evolved to handle that. Up to fairly recent times red meat was too expensive relative to incomes for most people to eat a lot of it.

Humans have been eating meat for more than 2M years, and before H sapiens existed. This might have played a major rôle in the development of the modern human brain.

Our guts look appropriate for the task.

Excluding meat from the diet carries some nutritional risks, although we know how to manage them.

And although it's interesting the evolutionary history isn't particularly relevant to current effects on health. And the arguments from ethics and environmental impact stand on their own merits.

We don't have guts developed to cope with lots of meat. We have guts developed to cope with some meat. Our ancestors found meat harder to get than nutritious roots, nuts, berries and the like, so meat was not the be all and end all of their diet.

"Om-Nom-Nom-Nivores: Are Human Beings Supposed to Eat Meat?"
https://greatist.com/eat/are-humans-sup ... o-eat-meat

"Evolutionary Adaptations to Meat-Eating in Humans"
https://ysjournal.com/evolutionary-adap ... in-humans/

Jonathan

[Jdsk]

We don't have guts developed to cope with lots of meat. We have guts developed to cope with some meat. Our ancestors found meat harder to get than nutritious roots, nuts, berries and the like, so meat was not the be all and end all of their diet. It was just a part of it. If you look at the diet of English agricultural workers around 1900, they ate small portions of meat accompanied by huge quantities of cereals and vegetables. Even for people who worked in the production of food, meat was a luxury item occupying a corner of the plate. Having meat dominating a plate is a thing that has only really happened since World War Two, and it isn't healthy if done day after day.

These are very different timescales. Specialised development of the human gut runs over a few million years. What's happened over the last hundred years is completely different.

Jonathan

PS: Over the last few hundred years foreign visitors repeatedly commented on the high consumption of meat in England. Are there any reliable figures?

[gbnz]

wedded to the brown food diet, n

Describes my mothers cooking . Now aged, she still hasn't learnt that food can have taste and structure.. The use of onion, garlic, celery, beans, oils, high temperatures, is blocked. Meat dishes are eked out with porridge oats, bread refers to white sliced, there's only one form of cake, which has an airless, solid mass.

At least the dried herbs were replaced in the 90's (Nb. Except the Bay leaves, as apparently the one's from the 70's can be pulled out of the dish, saved and reused for four decades or more )

Why did all her children become morbidly obese on leaving home? (Nb. With the exception of a cyclist - can remember my first year in a Hall of Residence, the food was incredible; apples which were red, carrot which had taste, milk which wasn't diluted with water )

[simonineaston]

Our ancestors found meat harder to get than nutritious roots, nuts, berries and the like, so meat was not the be all and end all of their diet.

I suppose it depends on their environment. Those chosing to live in say an arctic environment would have one diet, tropics, another, coastal/island environments would mean a diet higher in fish, Americas, one set of plants, Asia another - it's hard to generalise and say, "We've always been meat eaters." or "We've always eaten this or that".
In some ways, I'm imagining that the success of homo sapiens might have been largely due to being such a good generalist - fish this, hunt that, grow the other etc. etc.

[Jdsk]

I suppose it depends on their environment. Those chosing to live in say an arctic environment would have one diet, tropics, another, coastal/island environments would mean a diet higher in fish, Americas, one set of plants, Asia another - it's hard to generalise and say, "We've always been meat eaters." or "We've always eaten this or that".

It's not only deduction from survival in those environments. We also have direct archaeological evidence and the ability to study the current version.

Jonathan

[simonineaston]

I'm half way through Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal - a great read, with the early chapters a riotous gallop through the history of what we ate and how our eating habits affected all sorts of elements of our early development. It's tempting to imagine we got on with the dirty job of survival & the directions that survival took us, pausing only to scoff meals simply to replenish energy, but it sounds like it was way more complex than that...

[Oldjohnw]

What has happened in modern more affluent times is that portion sizes (of food generally) have grown.

https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/pu ... ct2013.pdf

And:

Which countries eat the most meat? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47057341

[Mick F]

According to that link, we in UK eat 50 - 100Kg of meat per year.

That's one heck of an amount per person. I'm going to consider this, and see if I can add up what I eat in "meat" per week and multiply that by 50.

I would be amazed if it came out anywhere near 50kg ............ I'm willing to bet that it's more like 15kg.

Give me time, and I'll get back to this with my findings.
I'm a meat eater. Rarely does a day go by without me eating some sort of meat product.

[PDQ Mobile]

I'm half way through Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal - a great read, with the early chapters a riotous gallop through the history of what we ate and how our eating habits affected all sorts of elements of our early development. It's tempting to imagine we got on with the dirty job of survival & the directions that survival took us, pausing only to scoff meals simply to replenish energy, but it sounds like it was way more complex than that...

Yes.

I also think the effect may be even more local than is often assumed.
For example great areas of the western hills of Wales do not lend themselves easily to the cultivation of many vegetables.
Earlier generations in those areas were almost totally dependant upon animals and their produce for simple survival.

The Vale of Evesham is completely different.

[Oldjohnw]

According to that link, we in UK eat 50 - 100Kg of meat per year.

That's one heck of an amount per person. I'm going to consider this, and see if I can add up what I eat in "meat" per week and multiply that by 50.

I would be amazed if it came out anywhere near 50kg ............ I'm willing to bet that it's more like 15kg.

Give me time, and I'll get back to this with my findings.
I'm a meat eater. Rarely does a day go by without me eating some sort of meat product.

Sounds about right. A pound max or approximately 500gm *per week in my case. Times 52 is 26 kg. I have less that 500gm per week but it made the calculation easier. I probably eat half of what many, if not most, eat.

* Edited as I realise we are talking red meat. I probably eat more chicken than red meat

[Psamathe]

(Thinking aloud)
I think there must be complex evolutionary considerations to development of some characteristics. If eating a lot red meat is something that takes many years to have a health impact then a variation reducing that health impact is not always strongly selected if the advantage may come after genes are passed on and offspring fully independent.

Genetic adaptions reducing the impact of a lot of red meat might increase longevity but will provide minimal selective benefit (as genes already passed on to next generation and offspring raised, independent, etc.). e.g. If I have a beneficial genetic mutation that allows me to not suffer from dementia it is unlikely to be selected through natural selection as, by the time I would suffer I'll have raised family ...

So I guess a lot depends on how long the negative impacts of a lot of red meat take to have effects.

Ian

[Jdsk]

(Thinking aloud)
I think there must be complex evolutionary considerations to development of some characteristics. If eating a lot red meat is something that takes many years to have a health impact then a variation reducing that health impact is not always strongly selected if the advantage may come after genes are passed on and offspring fully independent.

Genetic adaptions reducing the impact of a lot of red meat might increase longevity but will provide minimal selective benefit (as genes already passed on to next generation and offspring raised, independent, etc.). e.g. If I have a beneficial genetic mutation that allows me to not suffer from dementia it is unlikely to be selected through natural selection as, by the time I would suffer I'll have raised family ...

So I guess a lot depends on how long the negative impacts of a lot of red meat take to have effects.

Selective advantage should be expected to change with environmental change. And most of human evolution was in non-modern environments.

And genetic effects can be beneficial after birth of offspring. Grandmothering being the canonical example. And now... in giraffes:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ful ... /mam.12268
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... scientists

Jonathan

[Stevek76]

If you look at the diet of English agricultural workers around 1900, they ate small portions of meat accompanied by huge quantities of cereals and vegetables. Even for people who worked in the production of food, meat was a luxury item occupying a corner of the plate. Having meat dominating a plate is a thing that has only really happened since World War Two, and it isn't healthy if done day after day.

I'm not making a case for being vegetarian or vegan, but for people having a good healthy balance to their diet. And it helps if people recognise that the total dominance of meat on the plate is a relatively modern thing.

They were also generally malnourished, as indicated by their below potential heights, though better than those who moved into cities of course. A 1900 ag lab diet is hardly any more representative of what humans have eaten since ~20,000BC than a modern diet. They've varied hugely based on type of society and available resources and many throughout history, 1900 included, were definitely not good balanced diets. There's plenty of debate over medieval diets as well, studies that look at historical records of livestock taxation indicate that even the poor must have been eating fairly meat rich diets in some places. I'd figure this probably varied hugely based on kingdoms or even local lords wealth and resources. For the most part though, good balanced diets likely required a decent amount of meat (and/or dairy) as the knowledge to make vegan diets work didn't exist and nor did the local produce in many places and dairy diets were limited to relatively few locations in the world.

Obviously a different matter now as modern commerce and knowledge make it far easier to make a veggie and even vegan diets nutritionally complete.

So I guess a lot depends on how long the negative impacts of a lot of red meat take to have effects.

Unfortunately this is all complicated by a boatload of confounding factors. Modern diets high in red meat will be correlated with (relative) wealth and resultant unhealthy lifestyles in a number of other ways. It's not easy to just look at vegetarians or vegans in the same society either as people who are choosing a diet at all will very likely be leading healthier lifestyles than the person who stuffs any old rubbish in (and that probably applies to faddy ones like 'keto' as well that have little scientific basis)

[Mick F]

Here we go!
Week multiplied by 50 = annual meat consumption as an approximation.

I consider fish isn't "meat" and we have one fish or another once a week.
I like bacon and egg for breakfast, but it's not every day. Toast and marmalade, boiled eggs, cheese on toast .............. etc etc.

Tried to find a typical week, and as I keep a sort of diary, I am able to look at a typical week.
Without going into menus, I eat meat for the evening meal five days a week and bacon maybe four days a week.

We cook 8oz of meat for the evening meal the pair of us - so that's 4oz each, but it's only(?) five evenings a week = 20oz.
Add that to my 10 rashers of bacon per week (from checking the the number of rashers per weight on the packet) I eat 300g per week.

Add that to the 20oz, and it comes out as 800g per week = 40Kg per year.
If I could wean myself off the bacon for breakfasts, the figure would be 500g per week = 25Kg per year.

More than I thought, but nowhere near the 50 to 100Kgs per year of the UK.

Question:
Is this 50 - 100Kg cooked weight or raw?
Considering my bacon habit, a rasher when cooked is less than half its size and weight when cooked.
We had a gammon joint for our Sunday meal, but some of it was skin and fat ............. which we didn't eat.