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Why We Are Carnivores - MD Anthony Chaffee [Lecture]

4d 9h ago by hackertalks.com/u/jet in carnivore@discuss.online from www.youtube.com

the evidence behind why humans are carnivorous beings. I address this from a Biological, Anatomical, Evolutionary, Anthropological, and Metabolic/Biochemical point of view for an overall picture behind why our optimal way of eating is fatty meat, in absence of everything else, including salad. I hope you enjoy it!

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Thesis and definitions

  • Carnivore status is defined by the diet that gives an animal optimal nutrition, not by survival on small amounts of plants.
  • Humans need nutrients found in meat, while no plant or fungal food is necessary when meat is eaten exclusively.
  • RDAs come from mixed-diet conditions, so nutrient needs can change when the diet is exclusively meat.
  • Chronic disease comes from species-inappropriate food: too many plants, not enough animal protein and fat.

Biological and anatomical evidence

  • Zoo animals, dogs, and cats get obesity, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disease, and arthritis when fed foods unlike their wild diets.
  • Human teeth, jaws, brains, stomach acidity, fat-digestion organs, appendix, and colon all point toward animal-based adaptation.
  • Human stomach pH sits near scavenging carnivores, which fits meat with high bacterial load and meat preserved without refrigeration.
  • Five organs work together to digest and absorb fat, which makes animal fat central to human nutrition.
  • Humans cannot break down fiber like herbivores; the appendix is a vestigial cecum, not a fermentation chamber.

Fiber, bowel disease, and IBD

  • Fiber is waste material, blocks nutrient absorption, irritates the gut lining, increases mucus and inflammation, and overworks the colon.
  • Diverticulosis tracks with higher fiber intake and more bowel movements, while constipation, fat, and meat do not track with it.
  • Surgeons use low-residue diets after bowel injury because bowel rest helps recovery.
  • Red-meat-and-water diets, elemental diets, and carbohydrate restriction fit the same bowel-rest model for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
  • Salisbury, Voegtlin, elemental-diet trials, and fasting-mimicking-diet work support removal of irritating plant material from IBD patients.

Evolution, tools, and isotope evidence

  • Humans split from other primates, ate more meat, became taller, grew bigger brains, reduced teeth and jaws, and developed tools and tactics.
  • Early pound stones and later worked tools were used to open skulls, access brains, kill animals, and dismember carcasses.
  • Ice-age conditions pushed surviving ancestors toward animal nutrition because plants and plant-eating animals disappeared under ice sheets.
  • Stable isotope work places early humans, Homo sapiens, and Neanderthals high on the food chain, often above other predators.
  • The Tel Aviv work by Miki Ben-Dor puts humans as hypercarnivorous apex predators across at least 2 million years.

Agriculture, skulls, teeth, height, and brain size

  • Ancient Egyptian isotope work and mummy pathology fit a grain-heavy agricultural population with atherosclerosis and visible poor health.
  • After agriculture, skulls, jaws, teeth, height, and brain size worsened because nutrition shifted away from animal foods.
  • Crooked teeth and small jaws come from inadequate nutrition and oral development conditions, not rapid evolution.
  • Pre-agricultural people had wider jaws, straight teeth, wisdom teeth, taller bodies, and larger brains.
  • Brain size rose with meat and fat intake, then dropped when agriculture and plant foods became widespread.

Carnivorous human populations

  • Native American buffalo hunters used mass kills, drying, and pemmican to feed communities for long periods.
  • Tall Native American groups, Mongol horse cultures, Inuit groups, Maasai, and Australian Aboriginal hunters are used as human carnivore examples.
  • Mongol armies relied on horse meat, blood, and milk products, traveled without frequent meals, and built a vast land empire without grain agriculture.
  • Inuit accounts include meat eating even during seasonal thaws, with little interest in sour berries.
  • Maasai and Australian Aboriginal groups are tall, lean, muscular, and healthy before Western foods displaced animal foods.
  • Herodotus' Ethiopian account and Salisbury's Native American account are used as examples of meat-eating populations linked with long active lives.

Metabolic model

  • Fasted metabolism is the normal metabolic mode, and carbohydrate eating interrupts it through insulin.
  • Insulin blocks lipolysis, proteolysis, ketone production, and leptin signaling, so the brain receives a false starvation signal.
  • Carbohydrate-containing diets lower daily energy expenditure by about 300 kilocalories compared with the same calories without carbohydrates.
  • Glucose and fructose damage tissues through glycation, and chronic high blood sugar drives diabetic damage.
  • Ketogenic diets have long been used for diabetes by removing sugar, carbohydrate, and alcohol inputs.

Cancer and mitochondrial metabolism

  • Warburg's cancer model centers on damaged mitochondria, impaired oxidative phosphorylation, glucose dependence, fermentation, and lactate production.
  • Seyfried's metabolic cancer model builds on Warburg and links cancer control to mitochondrial function and glucose restriction.
  • Ketosis reduces glucose availability to cancer cells and improves mitochondrial respiration, abundance, and resilience in non-cancer cells.
  • Paleomedicina and Cedars-Sinai are used as examples of clinical interest in ketogenic or carnivore-style metabolic therapy for cancer and chronic disease.

Plant defenses and natural pesticides

  • Plants cannot run or fight, so they use chemical defenses against insects, animals, and humans.
  • The University of Washington cancer-biology story centers on plant carcinogens and the idea that vegetables contain many natural toxins.
  • Bruce Ames' work compares naturally occurring plant pesticides with synthetic pesticide residues and finds the natural chemicals far more abundant.
  • Edible plants are handled as less acutely poisonous than hemlock, not as harmless food.
  • Cassava, almonds, cyanogenic plants, peach pits, phytoestrogens, soy, nightshades, gluten, and lectins are used as toxin examples.

Hormones, nutrient blockers, photosensitivity, and lectins

  • Soy phytoestrogens are compared with estrogen amounts in women, birth-control pills, and growth-hormone beef.
  • Carbohydrate-driven insulin disrupts leptin and the conversion of testosterone to estrogen, which is tied to PCOS.
  • Fiber, soy, wheat, gluten, and protease inhibitors reduce digestion and absorption of protein and other nutrients.
  • Lime oils and celery compounds are used as examples of plant chemicals that create photosensitivity and sun-related skin injury.
  • Lectins can cross a damaged gut barrier, trigger antibodies, and create molecular mimicry that drives autoimmune disease.
  • Removal of lectins and other plant compounds through a red-meat-and-water carnivore diet is given as reversing Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Hashimoto's.

Final conclusion

  • Humans are obligate carnivores with one optimal diet: meat.
  • Variation by sex, pregnancy, childhood, or individual preference does not change the species-specific diet.
  • Biology, anatomy, evolution, anthropology, metabolism, plant chemistry, and disease reversal all point to meat as the optimal human food.
  • Plants use defense chemicals because survival in nature is kill or be killed, and human health improves when those chemicals are removed.

References

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