I Hate to Say I Told You So But…
Remember back when you were in school, people questioned whether human beings were really a part of evolution. The big problem was that there was a “missing link.” No one had discovered the skeletal remains yet of that critical pre-human that linked us to the animal world.
Then you may have remembered that for most people in the field, the missing link was discovered in 1974 by American anthropologist Dr. Donald Johanson in the Dikika region (Great Rift Valley) of Ethiopia, now famous for that find. I can remember reading about it in Scientific American. She was named “Lucy” – the famous missing link that connected human beings to more primitive ancestors.
At first, scientists thought she was in the genus Homo but then they reclassified her as Australopithecus afarensis, (hominins that are now extinct). Now here’s the reason I’m bringing this up.
We now know that Lucy was a meat-eater. Everybody had presumed that Lucy and her kind (and even human beings of the genus Homo) were vegetarians up until and after the development of modern humans.
We now know that’s not true and it’s a huge revelation. Vegetarians aren’t going to like it. But the evidence is now complete. We were meat-eaters for the entire 100 percent course of human evolution going back millions of years. In fact, we ate meat even before we became human.
Ancient Stone Tools Reveal Meat-Eating Evidence
Bones showing evidence that hominins were eating meat and marrow were discovered in the Dikika region of Ethiopia.
Now there’s new evidence that our early human ancestors were using stone tools to cleave meat off animal bones as far back as 3.2-3.5 million years ago.1
A report in the journal Nature revealed the bones found in the
Dikika region of Ethiopia show cuts from stone tools and indications they were forcibly broken to remove marrow.Through testing, they determined that the tool marks were made before the bones were fossilized and they even found bits of the stone tools lodged in the cuts.
This overturns much of what scientists believed to be true about our early ancestors. In fact, the famous “Lucy” fossil was the only other hominin species known in that area. And this new evidence casts Lucy and her contemporaries in a different light.
Lucy and others in her species were originally thought to be vegetarian. And many had assumed that the use of stone tools happened in later Homo species, our closest human ancestor.
Breaks show where hominins like Lucy cracked the bone to get to the marrow.
Co-author of the study, Zeresenay Alemseged, a paleoanthropologist from the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, said the evidence shows Lucy acting like the humans that followed her.
“We are showing for the first time, that stone tool use is not unique to Homo or Homo-related species. We have A. afarensis now behaving like Homo in a way both by using tools and eating meat.”2
Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London concludes, “It suggests that meat-eating and butchery behavior is pre-human – it’s an ancestral behavior and as such it gives an interesting perspective on the Australopithecines that we didn’t have before.”3
This discovery makes it clear: Even Lucy was a meat eater.
The fact that you can read these words is part of our meat-eating heritage. It’s what anthropologists L. Aiello and P. Wheeler named, “The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis.”
Cuts from stone tools show where meat was cleaved from the bone.
Australopithecines like Lucy grew brains to our current size because meat let our digestive systems shrink, freeing up energy for a bigger brain. In fact, our brains are twice as large as they should be for a primate our size … and our digestive system is 60 percent smaller.
Consider gorillas. They are vegetarians and have the smallest brains and largest digestive systems of any primate. The exact opposite of humans. It’s our large brains that need the energy that only meat and a small digestive system can provide.
If humans resemble apes at all, it would be chimpanzees, with their smaller digestive system and meat-eating diet. But in spite of die-hard vegetarians comparing us to plant-eating apes, humans more closely resemble dogs, which thrive almost solely on fresh meat.
Published in the journal Nature, and reported by the BBC, this new study not only confirms our meat-eating past, but shows that even our earliest ancestors – the ones that came before our own human species – were meat-eaters, too.
And still we have vegetarians clamoring that humans were “never meant to eat meat.”
Well, that is not only factually untrue but dangerous to your health.
Humans adapted to thrive on meat as a healthy source of protein and fat. And early man never suffered from diabetes, heart disease or obesity.
Truth is, we’ve been eating meat for millions of years, without interruption. At no time have we ever stopped. And so has EVERY culture known to man. Research shows that of over 150 native cultures studied, not one of them was vegetarian.4
And here’s the thing. If you want to violate the laws of nature, you better be careful. If you eat a vegetarian diet, you deprive yourself of eight essential amino acids, (the building blocks of protein), as well as four critical nutrients like vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin B12 and CoQ10.
When you don’t get enough of these nutrients, you could suffer a body-wide crisis that can lead to loss of muscle, energy, immune function … even heart disease and cancer.
Today, you’ll discover why we were born to eat meat and how getting the right blend of these 12 essential nutrients helps you:
- Boost your potency, sex drive and ambition
- Crank up the pumping power of your heart
- Get fuller, glossier hair and stronger nails
- Build stronger muscles, with more power and stamina
- Get better sleep at night and more energy during the day
- Fight depression and stay more optimistic
- Improve your mental focus, with more clarity and better memory
- Fight heart disease while preventing cancer, diabetes and obesity
FACT: We are designed to consume meat for the protein and fat it provides. And I’m not the only doctor who thinks so.
Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades write, “In anthropological scientific circles, there’s absolutely no debate about it – every respected authority will confirm that we were hunters … Our meat-eating heritage … is an inescapable fact.”5
All of our hunter-gatherer ancestors were meat eaters, without exception. In fact, no native cultures known to man have ever been vegetarians.
Men and Dogs Have All the Right “Equipment” for Meat Eating
On the surface, it may not appear we share anything with dogs other than companionship. But look under the hood and we have the same “equipment” needed for meat eating.
Have a look at this table. You’ll see we have all the essential attributes dogs use for eating meat. The only real difference is the size of our canines, which many believe shrank after we started using fire and tools.
| Anatomy and Physiology | Humans | Dogs |
|---|---|---|
|
Teeth
|
Both jaws, ridged molars
|
Both jaws, ridged molars
|
|
Jaws
|
Tearing-crushing
|
Tearing-crushing
|
|
Rumination
|
Never
|
Never
|
|
Stomach capacity, emptying time
|
2 quarts, 3 hours
|
2 quarts, 3 hours
|
|
Cellulose (plant) digestion
|
None
|
None
|
|
Size of colon, cecum
|
Short-small, tiny
|
Short-small, tiny
|
|
Bacterial flora
|
Putrefactive
|
Putrefactive
|
|
Feeding Frequency
|
Intermittent
|
Intermittent
|
Table adapted from Walter L. Voegtlin’s “The Stone Age Diet”
Compare these stats with grass-eating sheep. Unlike dogs and men, sheep have flat molars with teeth only on their lower jaws. They have grinding jaws instead of tearing-crushing jaws.
The stomach of a sheep is an enormous 8.5 gallons and it never empties. Seventy percent of a sheep’s digestion is cellulose- (plant) based and is vital to their survival. Their colons are long and can hold tremendous amounts of material. A sheep’s bacterial flora ferments and it feeds continuously.
All the traits and qualities of vegetarian sheep are the opposite of meat-eating dogs and humans.
And vegetarians still think we weren’t designed to eat meat?
Why You Need These 12 Essential Nutrients Every 24 Hours
When you eat a vegetarian diet, it’s impossible to get 12 essential nutrients you need every day. I’m talking about the eight essential amino acids that are the building blocks of protein and the four nutrients you can ONLY get from meat: vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin B12 and Coenzyme Q10.
These nutrients are responsible for hundreds of vital functions including powering up your muscles, heart, brain, memory, immune system, sex drive … just to name a few. That’s why our ancient ancestors were blessed with disease-free living. They had an abundance of powerful vitamins, nutrients and protein.
Vegetarians claim you can get these nutrients from non-animal sources, but it just isn’t possible. Here’s what I mean:
Vitamin D: Getting enough vitamin D from walking in the sun, or by consuming foods “fortified” with vitamin D just isn’t possible. Real dietary sources of vitamin D come from animal fats. And if you’re drinking milk fortified with vitamin D, you may be surprised to find out that the vitamin D in milk is a synthetic, chemical form of the vitamin. And it’s not even the right form. Your body needs vitamin D3 to fuel your body. What you find in milk is vitamin D2.
While your body makes vitamin D when exposed to the sun, it’s difficult if not impossible to get enough vitamin D every day simply by going outside. Here’s why: There are three ultraviolet bands of radiation that come from sunlight: UV-A, UV-B and UV-C.
It’s only the “B” form that’s capable of catalyzing the conversion of cholesterol to vitamin D in our bodies. And UV-B rays are only present at certain times of the day, at certain latitudes, and at certain times of the year.6
Vitamin B12: This vitamin, so vital to humans, is only found in meat. While some vegetarians claim that B12 can be found in algae, tempeh (a soy product sometimes used as a meat substitute) or even Brewer’s yeast, all these assumptions are false.
Brewer’s and nutritional yeast does not have B12 naturally, it’s always added from an outside source. And to think you can get it from algae or a soy product is wishful thinking.
Vitamin A: Real vitamin A, or retinol is only available from animal fats or organ meat like liver. You can get beta-carotene from plants but that’s not a substitute for real vitamin A.
Sure, your body converts some beta-carotene to vitamin A, but there are problems with the conversion. First, beta-carotene needs the presence of bile salts in your intestine before a conversion can take place. To get bile salts, you need the presence of animal fat. For a vegetarian this is another impossibility.
Secondly, the conversion is not efficient. For every 6 units of beta-carotene you consume, you only get 1 unit of vitamin A. So even if you consumed 25,000 units of beta-carotene, you would not even get enough vitamin A to supply you for the day. And that’s dependent on having the animal fats to produce the bile salts required to make the conversion in the first place.
CoQ10: It’s sad, but most vegetarians don’t even fight me on this one because they don’t realize how important CoQ10 is or that it’s only found in animal products.
You’ll find high concentrations of this heart and brain-critical nutrient in organ meats like the heart and liver. But you’ll also get it from the meat itself. CoQ10 supplies your cells with ATP, the energy required by every cell in your body for metabolism, energy production and life itself. And you won’t find it in plants. Period.
The 8 Essential Amino Acids: These building blocks of protein are called “essential” because your body cannot make them on its own. You need them from your diet every 24 hours. And you can’t get this specific blend of amino acids in the right ratio you need them from plants.
Choose Grass-Fed Beef and Reclaim Your Native Diet
The meat you get from your local restaurant or grocery store comes from sick cows. It’s not the vital, nutrient-packed meat our ancestors enjoyed.
Grass-fed beef comes from cattle that had the freedom to graze in open fields eating grass, the food cattle are supposed to eat. And that makes their meat pure and full of the protein, vitamins and nutrients you need to thrive.
Whenever possible, try and avoid commercial beef. Every time you take a bite of commercial beef you’re getting the hormones, antibiotics and disease the cattle was living with prior to slaughter.
Cattle live their lives standing in cement sheds, never seeing the light of day. Their diet is so unnatural it makes them sick and diseased. And they’re kept alive by antibiotics until they’re slaughtered at an early age.
It might look good on the plate, but commercial beef in the U.S. contains dangerous, synthetic hormones that are ending up in you and your children.
Grass-Fed Beef Is What Nature Intended And What Humans Have Thrived On For Millions of Years
Grass-fed beef is our ancestors’ legacy. It’s what kept the human race going for the last 3.5 million years. And it’s grass-fed beef that will carry us forward as a species.
Just look at how it stacks up with commercial beef:
Less overall fat and calories: A six-ounce grass-fed loin has 92 fewer calories than grain-fed. This saves an average American 16,642 calories each year.7
More Omega-3: Grass-fed beef has two to 10 times more omega-3s than grain-fed beef with a healthy ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s at 1:1. Grain-fed beef is as much as 14:1 – causing runaway inflammation.
More CLA: Grass-fed beef has two to five times more CLA than grain-fed.8 CLA supports immune and cardiovascular function and lean muscle mass. Studies show women with highest levels of CLA have 60-74% lower risk of breast cancer.9
More Vitamin E: Grass-fed beef contains three to six times more vitamin E than grain-fed beef.10
More Carotenoids: Grass-fed beef has up to four times more beta-carotene than grain-fed beef.11 Carotenoids promote eye and macular health.
More B Vitamins, CoQ10, and Zinc: Grass-fed beef has more B vitamins, CoQ10 and zinc than grain-fed beef.
You can find grass-fed beef at many local health food or grocery stores. Whole Foods is a good example. If you’re unsure, just ask your butcher.
You can also purchase grass-fed beef online. I’ve been buying from US Wellness Meats for years. For more information, go to www.alsearsmd.com, check Health Resources and click on US Wellness Meats.
1Palmer, J. “Tool-making and meat-eating began 3.5 million years ago,” BBC News Aug 11, 2010
2Palmer, J. “Tool-making and meat-eating began 3.5 million years ago,” BBC News Aug 11, 2010
3Ibid.
4Cordain, L., The Paleo Diet, Wiley 2002
5Eades, Michael and Mary Dan, Protein Power Life Plan, Grand Central Publishing 2001; p. 3
6Sullivan, K., “The Miracle of Vitamin D,” Wise Traditions 2000;3:11-20
7Robinson, J., “Pasture Perfect: The Far Reaching Benefits of Choosing Meat, Eggs, and Dairy Products Grass-Fed Animals,” Vashon Island Press 2004
8Dhiman, T.R., “Role of diet on conjugated linoleic acid content of milk and meat,” Journal of Animal Science 2001;79
9Bougnoux, P., et al, “Inverse relation between CLA in adipose breast tissue and risk of breast cancer,” Inform 1999; 10:5:S43
10Smith, G.C., “Dietary Supplementation of Vitamin E to Cattle to Improve Shelf-Life and Case-Life for Domestic and International Markets,” Colorado State University
11Prache, S., et al, “Persistence of carotenoid pigments in the blood of concentrate-finished grazing sheep: its significance for the traceability of grass-feeding,” J. Anim. Sci. 2003; 81 (2):360-7