Oddbean new post about | logout
 You’re an exception if you’re being honest (not insinuating dishonesty). I know a half dozen failed vegetarians who all quit bc their health was failing at various points in their lives. I know two other vegetarians who suffer chronic mental and physical illnesses and it’s quite apparent to me this due to grave deficiencies caused by lack of animal foods / fats in their diet. 

I’m glad you’re well but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re physiologically adapted to be a carnivore and would be better off utilizing the caloric inputs your body is adapted to most effectively use. 

Humans are objectively carnivores. Our ancestors had the highest carnivore ratings of any skeletal remains ever tested. Our physiology supports this reality as well. Denying your status in the food chain and subsequent species appropriate diet (apex predator and hyper-carnivorous) is a very weird thing that literally no other animal on this plant does. Just some food for thought. 
 I'd say the idea that humans are naturally carnivores is debatable, to put it mildly. Like our close relatives the chimps, our bodies evolved for hundreds of millions of years without eating meat, and perhaps for a few millions after our big brains figured out we could indeed eat other animals -- something that the 90+%-vegetarian chimps have now also figured out. Aren't carnivores naturally and almost irresistibly attracted to eating rotting corpses? That doesn't seem to apply to most humans.

But, regardless of our dietary differences, I find your writing and ideas interesting and have followed you. 
 Chimpanzees are omnivores and as a species have only been around for ≈5 million years. 

Humans likely evolved completely separately and during our own evolution we became adapted to being hyper-efficient / intelligent predators that subsist off meat. Here is a good presentation that outlines some objective evidence that indicates we are very likely adapted to subsist from meat: https://youtu.be/C-WUb3mJEso?si=MM1D428eNqRps-Ld

There are different classes of carnivores - scavengers and predators. The latter eats dead things after they’re dead. The former kills and eats immediately. That distinction  would explain why vultures show up to feed on carrion but why humans and many apex predators are repulsed by rotting flesh.