In a world full of animals that bite, claw, sting, envenomate and gore, it’s nice to know that there are perfectly defenseless plants for the weak at heart to hunt.  But are plants really as defenseless as they appear?  We all know that there are plenty of highly toxic plants in the world, but certainly the ones we eat aren’t poisonous.  Think again.  There have been weapons of mass destruction created from plant toxins, like ricin (used by the Soviets during the cold war), but I know of no WMD ever derived from animals.

Every single living thing on this planet has one goal in mind – to proliferate its genetics.  Nothing wants to be eaten – life has a mechanism to protect itself and its offspring.  The nice thing about animals as a food source is that their defenses typically die with them.  Whether it’s sharp teeth, powerful jaws, stingers, horns or hooves they are no longer a threat after the animal is dispatched.  Even a rattlesnake is quite edible once it is dead.  Plants have evolved a much different way to protect themselves – and especially their offspring.  Any species that does not develop a mechanism to protect its children would have certainly went extinct by now.

There is a major misconception that human beings existed mostly on plant foods with only a small amount of meat for supplement.  I guess the conventional wisdom there is based on the idea that our human ancestors were poor at hunting.  Yet, there is plenty of historical evidence of primitive hunter/gatherers hunting certain species into extinction, like the very large ruminant, Aurochs.   So our ancestors were not poor hunters – it is only because we have been shopping for our meat for so long, that we have lost many hunting and trapping skills of our ancestors.  Given the fact that better than 99.9% of all plants on this planet are poisonous to human beings, I’m not sure how this myth has stood the test of time.  I guess if something is repeated enough, people will come to believe it.

Unless the entire planet were a rainforest, it would have been impossible for humans to cover the earth as a vegetarian species.  Even many of the plants we consume today are toxic to us in their raw state, especially their offspring.  Beans, legumes and seeds of all kind are the future of the plant – they are the zygote from which more generations will spring forth.  So why would the plant leave them undefended?   They don’t.   Most seeds contain lectins, which are highly toxic to most animals.   The lectins of the castor bean are so lethal that they were used in the formation of the warfare chemical called ricin.  A dose as small as a few grains of salt is more than enough to kill an adult human.  Many weapons of mass destruction have been created using plant toxins – I know of no WMD that was ever derived from an animal.

Prior to the advent of fire and the ability to make containers to cook them in, it would have been impossible for humans to consume any quantity of beans, legumes or grains.  Heat can destroy the lectins in many plants, so humans were able to use them as a food source once cooking was available.   But heat does little to reduce the amount of phytic acid contained within the offspring of the plant.  Phytic acid binds to many minerals, such as iron, calcium, zinc and magnesium, which renders them unavailable for absorption.   These precious mineral are then carried away and excreted from the body.

Only by soaking and fermenting seeds can phytic acid be reduced.  Any predator that would gorge itself on the seeds of these plants, would soon find themselves depleted and deficient in many of these minerals, which can be quite problematic.  And few seeds are higher in phytic acid than soybeans, which is why the Asian people only consumed soy that was heavily fermented.  The massive amounts of soy inundated in all of today’s processed foods is not fermented and therefore quite counter productive to good nutrition.  Is it any wonder why osteoporosis is so prevalent in our time?   With all of the phytates within those grains, beans and legumes, the american people are crapping out their dietary calcium by the bucket, because it is bound to the phytates.  Then, their high carbohydrate diet further deplete calcium from their bones and teeth.  Because calcium is the only way the body can neutralize the high blood acidity cause by high blood sugar, if dietary calcium is not high enough, it will rob it from the bones.  Eating lots of sugar and phytic acid is a recipe for osteoporosis.  This is the standard american diet (SAD).

 Most antacid tablets for gastritis, such as Tums, contain mostly calcium because of its neutralizing properties.  Our body also uses calcium to neutralize acidic blood, which is deadly if not neutralized.  That’s why I believe that it is not the cholesterol (which is flexible) that causes hardening of the arteries, but all the calcium caught in the plaque that leads to a cardiac event.  Just like the Egyptians, the high carbohydrate blood level invites calcium into the bloodstream which gets caught in the plaque and lead to loss of arterial flexibility.  When Mann studied the Masai, who eat tons of meat and milk, he found cholesterol plaque, but they rarely suffered heart attacks, because the cholesterol was flexible (being a fat) and allowed the arteries to expand.  Mann did not find calcium deposits in their plaque, probably because of their low carbohydrate consumption, thus lower blood acidity.

The most diabolical design of these plant defenses, is that they will not kill the predator right away, especially in the absence of the lectin.  If we humans were to eat raw seed, we would become very ill or die within a short time of consuming them.  That was how our ancestor would have made the association that it was the seeds that were making them ill and avoided them as a food source.   Once we learned that heat would prevent us from getting sick right away, then the first agriculturist civilizations determined that they would be safe to eat.

But unfortunately, there are many back-up defenses evolved into the plants, which do not cause illness right away, thereby making it difficult for people to determine that it is the plant that is causing their failing health.   Now, we have such a large part of the U.S. economy structured on the proliferation of grains, making it even more difficult for anyone to make the correlation, because they are bombarded daily with advertising telling them how super-healthy these grains, beans and legumes are.   Aside from containing a butt-load of carbohydrates, grains and other seeds are a poor source of nutrition.  Human cultures that had to predominantly live on grains found ways to make them easier to digest, but the process of doing so is quite laborious and time-consuming – and in today’s times – not very profitable.

Because poor people had to exist mostly on grains, many of them, and especially their children, suffered from malnutrition.  Because of this, the U.S. government began to mandate that flour made from grains be fortified with vitamins and minerals by their manufacturers.  If grains, bean and legumes were naturally high in nutrition, then why were the poorer people, who could only afford grains, becoming sick?  And why does the government require the enrichment of cereals and flour, if they were so uber-healthy?  Grains are naturally high in only one nutrient – sugar.  Grains are not only very high in carbohydrates, but contain carbohydrates, such as amylopectin-a, which spike the blood glucose levels higher than cane or beet sugar.  Is it any wonder that diabetes has reached epidemic proportions?  The U.S. government recommends 8 to 11 servings of these blood sugar spikers per day.

During his studies, Doctor Weston A. Price found civilizations whose nutrition depended on plants and grains, because of their location and lack of good hunting.  Price found no civilization or tribe who thrived on a fully plant-based diet, absent of any animal foods, but he did find cultures that ate little animal foods and were able to thrive on a grain based diet.   But, these people went to great length to make these seeds digestible.   They were soaked, sprouted. roasted, ground and then fermented (creating sourdough) before baking them into bread or cakes.  Very few people today ferment grains or beans, because it is a time-consuming process and not very profitable to the process food manufacturers.  Even sourdough bread commercially sold are rarely fermented and have sour additives for sour flavor.  If you have ever eaten fermented sourdough bread, you would find them far more sour than any commercial bread advertised as sourdough.

It is far more likely that most of our ancestors prized meat and animal products far above plant foods for its higher nutrition and better safety from toxins, which is why we still call vegetables a side-dish to this day.  Plants were much easier to acquire, so they would have sought after meat as a first priority and simply settle for plants if meat was not readily available and if a hunt was successful, they would supplement or cook the vegetation with the meat.  But, grains were simply not a part of the paleolithic man’s diet until the technology was discovered to make them safe to eat, which only occurred about 10,000 years ago – just a fraction of the time that humans have been around.  Early grain eating societies, like the Egyptians, have recently been diagnosed with massive calcium deposits in their arteries at ages of 40 to 50 years old.  CT scans of ancient mummies has revealed dangerous levels of atherosclerosis. (source) (source) (source).  Remember, these were active people, who ate very little animal fat (usually geese) and got plenty of sunshine.  But the Egyptians loved wheat.  They made cakes, smothered in honey and were the inventors of beer from barley and consumed it as the hydration drink of choice.  Was it their love of wheat that was killing them?  I believe so.

The soybean had a much more diabolical defense to unleash on its predators.  The seed of the soy plant contains very high levels of phytoestrogens.  The purpose of these plant-based estrogen is to cause the insects that dine on them to ultimately become sterile, so the parents may feast on the seeds, but there will be a lot fewer offspring of the predator in the future.  The soybean has evolved its own birth control for those that would eat its young – after all, birth control pills are just estrogen.  These high doses of estrogen can be very problematic for humans, causing breast cancer and young women to enter puberty at a very young age and the boys will not enter puberty until a much older ages.

Peek into your pantry and read some of the processed food labels and you will be amazed how many products contain unfermented soy products.  Even most tuna fish cans will list soy as an ingredient.  If you are eating tuna to obtain more omega 3 fatty acids, they have tricked you by adding omega 6 soybean as filler. (you can get tuna without soy, but it’s a bit more expensive.).  You are probably consuming mass quantities of unfermented soy – why?  Because soy was a necessary plant used in crop rotation to replenish nitrogen into the soil, so they had to find a way to market it.  The government subsidizes farmers that grow it, so its cheap filler for all processed foods – and is making us sick.  It makes cattle and chickens sick, why does anyone believe that it is a health food?  A lot of heavy advertising and marketing brainwashing.

Fruits evolved a completely different mechanism.  The fruit is not a zygote, but actually the ovary of the plant.  The ovary is purposely designed to be high in nutrition and sweet and juicy, because the plant actually wants a predator to eat the fruit.  The seeds of the fruit are completely indigestible, so the plant willfully surrenders its delicious ovary so it will be replanted somewhere else when the predator takes a dump.  But only a fool would decide to grind up the seed of the fruit and make a bread or cake from the flour.  We know that the seeds of most fruits are highly toxic and many can kill a human in short order if made digestible and eaten in quantity.  If we all know this, then why are we convinced that the seeds of other plants are so defenseless, just waiting to be plucked, cooked and eaten?  They are not.

 If seeds are left so defenseless, I defy anyone to grind up some apricot and apple seeds, make a flour and bake it into a cookie and eat it.  It will be the last thing you will ever eat.  Apricots seeds and apple seeds  both contain hydrogen cyanide.  If swallowed, they are harmless, because we cannot digest then and they will safely pass though us.  One seed crushed may not kill you, but could make you feel ill.  Several seed ground up into a flour is certain death to those that dare to eat it.  Plants do and will defend their babies as ferociously as any mother bear would defend her cubs.

Many birds and insects have evolved mechanisms to deal with the toxins in grains.  Rodents seem to be one of the only mammals that can thrive on grains.  One thing that all of these animals have in common is a very fast metabolism – humans do not.  Any wonder why the problems with obesity in the modern world?  We are eating foods intended for animals with heart beats and metabolisms 8 to 10 times that of a human.  We cannot possibly burn the calories per hours that these animals have to.  A humming-bird must dine on pure sugar, but unless you can flap your arms at 80 times per second all day and maintain a heartbeat of 1,200 beats per minute (the human heart would explode) then you can share in their diet.  Problem is, humans are consuming the calories from sugar at the rate of a humming-bird, with our 74 beat per minute heart rate.  Hmmm.  wonder why so many are obese.

As far as plant toxins, many species of birds are known to first consume types of clay prior to eating some of these poisonous grains and berries.  Minerals in the clay can chelate to the toxins and safely remove them.  Humans have no such system yet continue to eat unfermented grains by the pound.  Doughnuts, begals, pasta, snack cakes, chips – all loaded with these anti-nutrients which rob minerals from your body.  The plants will win the battle in the long run, as all of humanity, eating 8 to 11 servings of these heavily defended offspring, playing a game of diabolical chemical warfare on your system, continue to make the human race fatter and sicker (think diabetes).

These little monsters are also reeking havoc on our digestive system, as the gluten protein wear away at your intestinal villi, shrinking them back and opening huge holes in the intestinal mucosa.  Once this happens, large proteins can be absorbed into the bloodstream and cause many autoimmune disease.   Celiacs, Crohn’s, Ulcerative Colitis have been on the steady rising and there is no cure known for these diseases, other than cessation from grains, but few doctors will go against the zeitgeist of the huge advertising of the giant agribusiness (who own the USDA) and will continue to recommend that these IBD patients increase their grain consumption.  Every new study has proven what IBD sufferers already knew, grain fibers make their condition worse.  Though most doctors (who tend to be behind the times) still recommend insoluble fiber from grains, new studies have shown this to be counterproductive, causing gas, bloating, obstructions and bleeding in patients.  Read the testimonies here from some IBD patients talking about the horrible results they suffered when following a doctor’s advice to include indigestible psyllium from grains) into their diet.  I had similar experience with insoluble fiber as they had.

Don’t fool yourself into believing that these people are some how different or from another planet. (basically saying, “it sucks to be them”).  I consider them and me to simply be a more sensitive meter.  Similar damages are being perpetrated on your gut at a slower degradation, but it’s there.  If you do not believe me, take a scan of the gastric medicine isle at your local pharmacy or even Walmart or Target.  Look at all the different OTC medications for GERD, constipation, diarrhea, gas, enzymes for digestion (such as beano) and indigestion.  Someone must be buying this crap, or these stores would not stock so much of it.  How many times a week do you take one of these products?

 Our ancestors did not have access to such OTCs, so they had to learn to avoid or better prepare foods that caused these problems. Now people feel free to indulge in any crap they want and then pop some protonic or other digestive aid.  Is this really healthy?  The damage is still being done and you may well develop an IBD or colorectal cancer at some point.  Grain fiber WILL NOT prevent colorectal cancer as the heavy advertising from the agribusiness has brainwashed everyone – in fact, I believe it has instigated the higher numbers of cases now than we had 100 years ago.  We would have less reason to risk people’s lives with dangerous procedures, like colonoscopies, if grain eating (especially whole gain with the indigestible husks) were not the predominant food of choice.  I believe that colorectal cancer rates would dive bomb and the fear would not be so great as to scare people into risking their lives for colorectal screening (please read my post “The Dangers Of Colonoscopies”) that kills and disables so many at much younger ages than anyone would ever develop cancer.

Ruminant animals, such as cattle, get very sick and will die on a grain based diet if not given antibiotics.  It must have been brilliant marketing to convince what is supposed to be intelligent people that the same grain used to fatten cattle, which makes them sick and in need of daily antibiotic injections, would somehow make humans slim and healthy.  As should have been predicted, these grains also made humans fat and sick – any wonder why.

Dogs and cats have begun to develop many of the same diseases afflicting humans when fed a grain based diet, and most modern pet foods, made for these carnivores, is made mostly from grains.  Now it is quite common to see obesity, diabetes and even cancer in our pets.  Someone felt it was a great idea to base most of our dietary studies using rodents, which is why I pay little attention to any study which based their study on rats.  They are possibly one of the only mammals that have evolved to eat grains and are therefore a very poor analog for humans, who have not developed such a mechanism to deal with the problems offered by grains.

Historically, grains were mostly reserved for the poor as a dietary base and the poor have historically always been sick – therefore why the government mandated the addition of man-made nutrients into the cereal and flour (think agribusiness, like Monsanto, and cereal companies who give huge grants to the USDA and actually have ex-employees appointed to positions in the FDA and USDA).  If a diet rich in grains were the healthiest diet, then the impoverish people would have enjoyed the better health over the rich people who ate so much more animal fat.  This was never the case.  How have people of means, in one of the richest nations in the world, been convinced that the diet historically eaten by the poor and sickly was the diet best for the human being escapes me?  A masterful brainwashing indeed.

These grasses have not been around for millions of years by waving around naked and undefended from predators, with all that sugar available for easy food.  They evolved to reduce their predators population and unfortunately we are now the predator.  Their highly bioavailable sugars promote visceral fat, which in turn drive hormones, such as leptin (messes up the brain’s ability to determine satiation) and insulin (which drives fat to be stored), rendering the predator into a perpetual hunger needing more and more and satisfaction is never achieved.  As a result, this predator suffers obesity, diabetes; which leads to heart disease and cancer and a whole host of gastric and digestive malfunctions.

This is all driven by the billions of dollars of advertising and influence of the large agribusiness, bread and cereal companies to market their highly profitable, government subsidized, genetically engineered and patented franken-plants.  They have successfully convinced people, politicians and medical personnel that these foods, that are at the heart of most of the american health problems, are the healthiest foods that humans have evolved to eat.  How could a species evolved to thrive on such a strange food they never consumed for 99% of their existence in less than 10,000 years?

The plant’s diabolical defenses, that still remain lethal far after harvest, are winning the battle for survival.  They were here before humans and will be here long after humans are gone.  Their purpose is to reduce the population of their predator and it seems that they are on their way to achieving that goal.

If you read my post entitled, “Are Humans Living Longer Than Ever Before“, it explains how poor nutrition killed the impoverish en mass.  The poverty-stricken people over 100 years ago had no choice but to attempt to live on flour and sugar for calories, which were very low in available nutrients, thus succumb to malnutrition and other diseases of deficiencies, such as beriberi, rickets and even scurvy.  This was why the U.S. government mandated that all grain flour and cereal would have to be fortified or enriched with man-made vitamins.  The health of the poor did improve as a result, so it was a success, but still did not enjoy the health that those of means, who were able to eat animal foods, did.  The enriched flour is typically inundated with mostly B vitamins, because they can stand the heat of cooking, but still lack vitamin C (which is heat sensitive) and vitamin D3, the most important for human health.  These are also man-made vitamins and there are many questions as to their bioavailability, especially after being baked in excess of  350ºF and even higher temperatures when extruded to make cereal flakes and other shapes, where proteins are denatured and vitamins are destroyed.

My next rant will concern the large agribusiness and bioengineering companies, like Monsanto and where I believe that their future goals are and how they will affect us.  I hope you will return to read it.  It should be finished in a few days.  I would like to thank all my readers and especially those who have provided links to some of my articles and help spread the word on the very important information concerning colonoscopy dangers and the fact that intestinal transplants are possible and can give back life to those stuck on TPN.  Together we can make a difference, even if small, we can certainly save some lives.

The meat most often associated with baseball is that highly processed tube filled with meat by-products and cereal, better known as hotdogs.  But, there may be a greater connection between sports and fresh meat not so often correlated.   I am speaking of the ability to project missile weapons, in an overhand motion, with deadly accuracy.  It all may have started with sticks and stones, but the weapons would become more and more lethal as new designs were implemented for distance, accuracy and the amount of damage they could inflict.

An otter will use a rock as an anvil to crack open a clam shell and a chimpanzee is capable of manipulating a twig into a termite mound and withdraw the attacking soldiers for a quick snack.  But, only one animal ever displayed the ingenuity required to conceive of lashing the rock to the stick to create a much more effective tool; and that is man.  The ability to “create” something that never before existed from raw materials is solely human and may have been driven by the need to acquire meat.  I understand that this is in no way definitive, because it could have been evolved for defensive purposes or for the need for social interaction.  Yet, the ability to project a missile weapon  required a tremendous amount physiological changes within the brain, nervous system and muscles of the human to achieve this feat.

There is a sizable part of the human brain dedicated to this deadly skill.  It also requires a tremendous amount of extra neurons and small muscles to achieve, yet even children as young as two years old begin to develop this ability.  Young children have a desire to throw objects, whether it be rocks, toys or sports equipment.  The drive to develop this inherited skill is so strong, that we have literally invented hundreds of competitions to display our superiority at it.  Whether it be a baseball, basketball, bowling ball, darts or javelins, humans spend most of their lives honing and refining this age-old technique.  Could a talent now used for recreation and entertainment be steeped in a necessary skill once paramount to our survival?

Chimpanzees are several times stronger than humans who are twice their weight.  Many scholars believe that the reason for this is because humans sacrificed the superior strength of other primates in exchange for muscular finesse.  We have much greater small muscle control than any of the great apes.  With an ape, muscle contraction is all or nothing, with very little dexterity when compared to humans.  Humans have many times the amount of nerve communication to the small muscles than apes, which results in less overall strength, but greater control.  For more details read this study “The Secret To Chimp Strength“.  The video below is a perfect exhibition of how inept a chimpanzee is at the small muscle control necessary to wield or toss even a simple weapon.

Notice how the chimp attempts to use the club with an underhand, rather than overhand, swing.  His thumb is much too underdeveloped to hold the stick with the authority necessary for multiple swings and he loses grip easily.  Even though chimpanzees are hunters, they use their bare hands and teeth as their only weapon to dispatch monkeys.  Even a group of adolescent humans could have pelted the cat with projectiles from a much further distance, giving the predator no choice but to flee or die.  For what reason would a human have the need for large canine teeth?   Claws and fangs are a greater health risk because they can be broken off during battle?

Was this simply a skill developed for defensive purposes in the manner that the chimps in the video are using it?  I don’t believe so.  Why would an organism expend so much brain, nerve and small muscles in order to turn a rudimentary skill into an art form, when simply climbing a tree or retreating would accomplish the same safety without so many complex cybernetics created?  Nature is always much more efficient than that.  It is more reasonable to assume that this ability was acquired so our ancestors could stand their ground, rather than flee.  Children could be lifted and carried to safety, so it is more reasonable to assume that this skill set was used either to defend a kill or chase a predator away from its victim.

It may well have started as a means of frightening a predator from its prize, but once the hominids realized that they could defeat the largest predators and steal their groceries, it wouldn’t be long before they would decide to just make the kill themselves and get the freshest meat.  When humans had mastered the fine art of missile weaponry, we became the apex predator and nothing could stand against us.  Sprinting speed is not necessary when you can deliver a terminal wound outside of the striking distance of the quarry.  This is why humans have never needed speed, power or large teeth and claws to be the most effective hunter this globe has ever seen.  Our nutritional intake is thereby directed to the feeding of our massive brain, rather than the maintenance of large muscles, teeth and jaws.

In the series “I Caveman”, televised on The Discovery Channel, Robb Wolf was able to inflict a mortal wound on an adult elk from a distance of over thirty yards with only the use of an atlatl (one of the most primitive weapons used by paleolithic man).  Video here.

The elk is an animal much larger, faster and more powerful than a human.    Even the largest lion would take great risk attempting to dispatch a full-grown elk alone, and would probably decide to look for a smaller calf.  Humans are the only hunter that consistently seek out the largest and strongest prey, rather than the small, weak and sickly.  If another predator breaks a tooth, fang, claw or bone, their survival is in severe jeopardy.  Whereas a human can simply replace our weapon with a new one and perhaps improve on its design.

Being able to hit your opponent from a great distance is far more frightening than any muscle, claws, fangs, horns or stingers.  This may also be why nearly every animal on earth seems imprinted with a natural fear of humans.  Distance and accuracy are far more terrifying than speed and power.  The U.S. has the most feared military because we are capable of striking the most damage from the farthest distance with frightening accuracy.  This technology will always usurp large numbers and infantry prowess.

It really irritates me when I see these rash of survivalist programs on television, where the host proclaims that they are in an area where they are no longer the “top of the food change” or the “apex predator”.  This can only be done for drama.  Yes, there are times when an animal can ambush an unprepared human, but this never makes the human less than a top predator, because even lions are killed or injured by zebras on occasion and crocodiles are trampled to death by wildebeest.  With some simple rocks, sticks and vines, any human will devise the deadliest of weapons and traps, capable of killing the most ferocious predator or prey anywhere.  Stone age humans hunted much larger and more powerful game than anything alive today, and were so efficient, they hunted many of them into extinction.  They were able to out-compete cats twice as large as any feline living today, all strictly by the ability to strike with lethal force from a safe distance.

We can take this theory even further.  Creating an accurate projectile tossing mechanism to hit a stationary object would be far less complex than evolving one that is capable of hitting a moving object.  Humans have the incredible ability to judge speed, distance, wind and gravity, then almost instantaneously make the precise calculations to lead their target to collide with precision.  Then that information is relayed to a multitude of opposing muscles, even to the point of adding a spin on the missile object to give it better accuracy and distance.  Many baseball pitchers have mastered the art of making the projectile hook, arch, twist or curve.  Is that just an expression of the smelly ape sticking a twig in a hole?

It likely started with sticks and stones, but it was this rudimentary skill set, coupled with the creative ability to combine elements for more effectiveness, that led from spears to slings to arrows.  The same skill is necessary to operate even a firearm with accuracy.  With their lack of dexterity, a chimpanzee could not operate a firearm and would most likely shoot themselves in the foot.   The inbred need to hone this skill is so overwhelming that we have created many recreational outlets for it.  On any given Sunday, an NFL quarterback echoes the evolution of our ancestors when he eyes a speeding receiver forty yards downfield and in an instant considers the wind direction and velocity, the amount of force and spin to put on the ball.  He then heaves it in an overhand motion, allowing gravity to create the perfect arc to meet the racing player at a precise point on the field.  Nature certainly didn’t create a mind capable of so many calculations and fine muscle control just to win a football game.  This complex machine was created for the original purpose of acquiring our dinner.

Humans are not only good hunters, we are the most efficient and frightening hunter earth has ever produced.  If T-Rex was still around when humans came into being, he would have certainly been hunted to extinction by now.  Never let anyone convince you that humans are anything less than the most efficient  hunter based on the fact that we lack large canines, claws, power or great speed.  Think of the story of David in Goliath.  The heavily armored giant had the superior strength and longer reach than the diminutive Shepard, but, it was his skill at missile weaponry (a sling) that more than leveled the playing field.

Just because some vegan’s ancestor was too much of a pussy to hunt anything more dangerous than an apple, does not mean the rest of us are not descended from brave hunters who passed on their missile projecting genetics to the rest of us.

 “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” – Romans 1:22

 When hyper-education overrides instinctual drives and common sense, I can’t help but think of this passage. Humans have wasted the last fifty years attempting to make a science of the benefits of a low-fat diet. Though it is counterintuitive to all dietary traditions, by using enough smoke and mirrors, accompanied by plenty of “soundbite recital”, it was packaged and sold to an otherwise intelligent people. Sometimes we can over-think ourselves into stupidity.

The influence of the low-fat theory has even found its way into many diets that claim to be of paleolithic design.  Loren Cordain and Arthur DeVany promote meat-eating, but still stay within the arena of political correctness by advocating the trimming of fat and using only the leanest cuts of meat.  Lipophobia has become a religion of its own. The fear of fat has been so indoctrinated into our culture that even in the face of millenniums of safe consumption and tons of scientific evidence to the contrary, we still cling to it, even when advocating meat-eating.  It has to be the largest brain-washing ever perpetrated on the human race.

But what if I were to tell you that human beings are the only mammal on earth that have adopted low-fat nutrition?  All other animals enjoy nutrition that is rich in fat — and not just any fat, but saturated fat.  I learned the hard way how saturated fat production in the colon is very important in maintaining the health of the colonic walls. This saturated fat is created from plant fiber and not from ingested animal products.

Though all but around ten inches of my small intestines were removed, about two feet of colon had been spared.  I was left with the rectum, sigmoid and a few inches of descending colon.  The illustration below displays all of the intestines I had left before my transplant.

 Because of the nervous complexities of the rectum, doctors are unable to transplant that section of the colon.  Individuals that lose their rectum due to Crohn’s, UC or cancer cannot have a colon transplanted and must live out the remainder of their lives with an ileostomy or “J” pouch”.  So it was important that the doctors save my native rectum, so I could receive a colon with the rest of the transplanted intestines. This was no small task.  The existing colon parts were no longer connected, so there was no material passing through them anymore.  Everything I ate passed out through a stoma made from the jejunum.  Because the colon was not being used, it became inflamed and started to bleed.  I was suffering from an affliction called “Diversion Colitis” and was losing so much blood as a result, that I required a transfusion every two weeks.  It was very painful.

Indigestible fiber within the stool is devoured by the bacteria of the colon, who then produce a short chain fatty acid (SCFA) called “butyrate” (butyric acid) as a by-product.  In the human colon, the butyrate is absorbed by the cells of the colon lining and used for food.   Butyrate is very important for colon health, and without it, the colon becomes inflamed and ultimately ulcerated.

So, how is all of this relevant to the fact that all mammals maintain health via a high fat diet?  First, let us take a look at a non-ruminant vegetarian mammal like the western lowland gorilla.  Their diet is made up mostly of leafy green vegetables, some fruit and small amount of insects.  Their food is low in fat and available carbohydrates with varied protein, but very high in indigestible fiber.  The gorilla’s macro nutrient per 100 grams of dry matter intake would look something like this:

This puts the caloric intake of available macronutrients at about:

From this we would conclude that the gorilla enjoys a high protein, moderate carbohydrate, and low fat diet.  But remember what we learned from the diversion colitis and how the colonic bacteria convert dietary fiber to butyrate; a saturated fat.  Because the gorilla has a much larger ratio of colon than does the human, fiber is converted to SCFA, changing the macronutrient absorption to an energy ratio of:

Giving the gorilla a total intake of:

The gorilla has six times the absorption available from the colon than does the human, which also means they have many times the amount of bacteria available for digestion of plant cellulose.  The high fiber in the gorilla diet is fermented by the colonic bacteria, yielding short chained fatty acids (SCFA).  In other words, the indigestible carbohydrates are converted to saturated fat and absorbed into the blood.  A human eating a similar diet would just end up crapping most of it out, receiving little benefit.

The gorilla can obtain about 65% of their energy from their hind-gut, whereas the human only receives about 10% from the colon.  The butyrate created in the human colon is mostly used locally by the cells of the intestinal lining and only a very insignificant amount is absorbed.  This is why a human can live without a colon and an ape can’t. (see my post “The Planet That Went Ape!” for more on ape vs. human gut ratio)

Much like carnivorous and other omnivorous animals, humans must receive fatty acids through diet.  When we eat a low-fat diet, we are not simulating the gorilla or chimpanzee diet, we are receiving a diet low in fat and very high in available carbohydrates.  The chimp and gorilla are receiving many times the dietary fat from their gut bacteria than we do on the same diet.  This is most likely the reason why gorillas fed meat in captivity suffer from hypercholesterolemia and die.  Because they can convert fiber to high amounts of saturated fat, any extra fat in their diet creates an overload of serum lipids.  (Chimpanzees are more omnivorous than gorillas and do better than gorillas when fed meat in captivity).

But what about the other herbivores?  Besides having multiple chambered stomachs, ruminants have one very large stomach chamber reserved for plant fermentation.  This stomach is called the rumen, hence the name ruminant.

Ruminant’s stomachs house bacteria only found in the colon of a human.   These bacteria readily convert indigestible carbohydrates into short chained fatty acids, which are absorbed into the bloodstream of the ruminant animal (goats, sheep, cattle, deer, etc.).  At the blood serum level, these animals are receiving a butt-load of saturated fat.  If ruminant animals did not require high amounts of saturated fat, we would not find so much of it in their milk.  Their offspring does not have the bacteria necessary for the fiber conversion to SCFA when born, so like us, they need it from their diet.  Once they have eaten grass for a period, they plant and begin to culture the bacteria necessary to make their own fat from fiber.  (The human stomach remain sterile because of the high acidity.  Ruminant animals have little to no acid in their stomachs)

Once the young ruminant animal has established a healthy bacterial culture, they no longer need dietary fat, but are still receiving the same high level of fat as they were when nursing.  Where do you think all that saturated fat found in their milk and meat comes from?  Because they can manufacture such a large portion of fat from the fiber in their diet, any dietary fat would create a fat overload.  This is probably why a ruminant animal shows no interest in meat or other fatty foods even when available.

Ever notice the way people tend to begin to salivate with one whiff of a pot roast or the smell of steaks on the grill?  You don’t see the same Pavlov’s dog  reaction to broccoli boiling from a human and cabbage cooking smells like the bathroom at a Taco Bell.  Though they are completely healthy foods they are hardly as appetite stimulating.  No herbivore would react in such a manner to the smell of meat cooking, but do show the same level of excitement towards fresh grass.

We are constantly being told that the food that doesn’t excite us is what’s best for us.  Anything that tastes good must be bad for us.  If we were an herbivorous species, we wouldn’t have to threaten children to eat their vegetables.  I raise cattle and have yet to see a mother cow threaten to withhold her calf’s dessert until he finishes that acre of grass.  Their offspring immediately have a strong urge to eat grass on their own.  Telling us that our vegetables are the healthiest thing on our plate begins as a mental reinforcement to get children to eat the one thing on their plate they desire least.  The conditioning becomes so strong, many cannot let go of it  even into adulthood.  This has even created a major bias in nutritional research.

Everyone wants to debate the issue based on questionable studies and theories of  biochemical reactions of macronurients and human hormones and it all becomes complicated and sounds very impressive.  History has taught us that if you want to sell a bogus idea, make it sound real complex.  It would seem logical that our ancestors knew nothing of biochemistry.  Just like the ruminant calf, they sought after whatever tasted good and was available.  We evolved to get the most out of the foods our ancestors ate.

Our fore-bearers began eating meat, maybe because they noticed that carnivores had more free time on their hands, whereas herbivores spent their entire existence eating and taking a dump.  Maybe they were just drawn more to the smell and taste of meat.  Maybe herbivores just pissed them off, (as vegans usually do)  so they wanted to kill and eat them.  Either way, this adaptation allowed their brains to grow, their colons to shorten and made them less dependent on digestive bacterium.

Humans began making this trade-off over a million years ago.  We surrendered the herbivore’s energy gobbling hind gut that house the bacteria which manufacture the much-needed SCFA from plant fiber, so we could have a larger brain and be adaptable to different environments.  The only drawback was, we were forever committed to receive our fat from external sources.  Now that our brains have grown to an intellect that can jump to erroneous conclusions based on complex, confusing and contradictory scientific observations, our health as a species has deteriorated ever since.

We are the only species trying to live healthy on a low-fat diet.  Our ancestors taught us how to eat healthy.  Our instincts tell us what to eat.  Your grandmother knew what to eat.  But we have become so much smarter than them that our intellect overrides our sense of smell and taste, and we scoff at our predecessor’s lean, robust bodies and healthy hearts.  We brag at how much healthier our low-fat diets are than the high fat affair of our idiot grandparents and ignore the fact that we have become morbidly obese as a result of the much higher intake of carbohydrates.  In other words, “Professing ourselves to be wise, we became fools”.

At the turn of the last century (1900), the average american consumed around 20 to 30 pounds of sugar per year.  By the year 2008, the average american would be consuming 150 to 250 pounds of sugar annually.  Is it safe to assume that 108 years is sufficient time for the human anatomy to evolve to this adaptation?  With the advent of fat phobia, which began in the 1970s and reached a peak around 1990, fat consumption decreased in the U.S., while sugar consumption skyrocketed; and so too did diabetes and heart disease.  Yet, somehow we are still blaming those diseases on fat.

Heart disease is not a disease of the heart, as the name would imply, but an affliction on the arteries which eventually affect the heart.  Without arterial wall damage, cholesterol cannot begin to form a “plaque”, no matter how high your blood lipids may be.  There are many toxins that we ingest that can be problematic and inflammatory.  I would like to take a look at just one, but it’s the one that americans consume in the largest quantity.

During the six months I lived without intestines, I was fed by intravenous infusions of TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition).  TPN consists of amino acids, vitamins, minerals, but mostly dextrose (sugar) and water.  Because I had virtually no intestines, my requirement for parental nutrition was very high.  I needed a 15 hour per day infusion, by a pump, delivering 225 ml per hour.   The sheer volume of fluids was too large for infusion via a peripheral artery in the arm, so a port catheter was surgically implanted in my chest.  The catheter entered my skin just below the collar-bone, where it was inserted in the superior vena cava and tunneled to within an inch of my heart.

There are only six branch arteries available for access to the vena cava and I was told by doctors that the high sugar content of the TPN would eventually cause the arteries to fail.  Sugar is quite caustic to the cells lining the arterial walls, causing inflammation and ultimately failure.  I was warned that at some point, all six access arteries would no longer be viable and I would die of starvation.  They said that it would take 3 to 4 years for all of the access arteries to fail and that was my fate.  The doctors at that hospital did not believe that intestinal transplants had been successfully achieved yet, so I was only given a couple of years left to live.

So, we can see that many doctors know the destructive effects of high blood sugar on the arteries, yet continue to recommend a low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet to avoid atherosclerosis.  There is a common myth today that high levels of fat in the blood causes cholesterol to begin to “stick” to the walls of the arteries. This is not the mechanism of atherosclerosis at all and is complete bullshit advertising created by the makers of cholesterol lowering drugs.

As this image accurately illustrates, it is when very small low density lipoproteins (LDLs) find their way behind the arterial wall, and become oxidized, is when plaque begins to form.  As we learned with the TPN, sugar is notorious for causing the endothelium layer to become ulcerated and breached.

Once LDL particles get trapped behind the endothelium, they oxidize, becoming a free radical.  White blood cells soon show up to “clean up” the damage and they too become trapped and oxidized.  This process causes more inflammation and damage to the endothelium, attracting more LDL and WBCs (White Blood Cells).  This is the beginning of atherosclerosis.   The plaque will continue to build until it ultimately ruptures through the endothelium, forming a clot which blocks the circulation.

If the erroneous myth of “sticky” cholesterol were true, we would expect to find plaque evenly distributed throughout the circulatory system, similar to the way minerals build in ALL of the pipes of a plumbing system.  We never find this to be the case or bypass surgery would not be possible.  Therefore, grafts from the leg arteries can be used to bypass the clots in the arteries of the neck and chest.  So cholesterol does not haphazardly cling to arterial walls willy-nilly.   Lipoproteins arrive at the site of  broken walls in an attempt to patch the damage until they can heal and inadvertently get caught inside.  If there were never inflammation and damage to the endothelium, plaque could not form, no matter how much fat was circulating in the bloodstream.

The high sugar content of the TPN also has a bad tendency to feed fungus and bacteria, so systemic infections are quite common in TPN recipients.  I personally had two bouts of sepsis during the months I was on TPN.  The first one was bacteremia caused by enterobacter cloacae growing in the medi-port.  The bacteria were being flushed throughout my system with the TPN and sent me into septic shock (a life-threatening condition).  The second time it was a systemic fungal infection caused by candida, which really thrives on sugar.

During the time I was in the hospital with sepsis, the infusion ports had to be surgically removed because they housed the infections.  A new catheter couldn’t be implanted until the infection was cleared up or it would just get colonized by the pathogens in my bloodstream.  They placed peripheral lines in my arms for infusion of the antibiotic medications.  But, there was still the problem of how to feed me.  To solve this, multiple peripheral lines were used in my arms and hands and PPN (Partial Parental Nutrition) was infused instead.  This contained less sugar and was not really enough nutrition to sustain me, but was better than total starvation.  These peripherals would only last a day or two before the veins would fail.  As time went on, it got much worse.  The damage to the veins was compounding and often times, the veins would infiltrate within two or three minutes of starting the PPN infusion.  It was very painful.

Once, a nurse made the mistake of hooking the TPN to a peripheral, rather than the port catheter.  When she started the pump, it immediately felt as though acid was pumped into the vein in my arm and then it failed and infiltrated within seconds.  So when I see some stooge chowing down on piles of rice and bread, followed by dessert and maybe a Snickers bar on top, I know they have no idea what that elevated blood sugar is doing to their arteries.  Even if their pancreas is fully healthy and able to eventually stabilize the sugar load, there is massive damage being perpetrated on their arteries by the elevated sugar levels, even within seconds.  This is damage that the body now must repair.  If small dense LDL particles (caused from high carbohydrate consumption) happen to find their way into that damaged area, you could possibly have the start of atherosclerosis.

I did gain some weight while on the TPN, which the doctors thought was a good sign.  I wasn’t so sure.  It was mostly visceral fat around my waist, but my arms, legs, shoulders and neck were still extremely thin, so the fat distribution was not a healthy one.  Doctors seem to only look at weight as a number and never how it’s distributed or whether it’s muscle or fat.  My muscles were withering away while my gut grew larger and they were happy with that.  It wasn’t until after I again had intestines and returned to eating real food, with plenty of fat and protein, that I was able to gain weight in my arms, legs, shoulders and flatten my stomach.  I actually weigh less now (less than the doctors want me to weigh), but I am much stronger.

Intestinal transplants are not available to everyone who loses their intestines.     There are only three criteria that qualify someone to undertake a transplant.   The first one is loss of access due to the dextrose (sugar) destroying the only six arteries available for infusion.  At this point, you have new intestines, but don’t have any arteries worth a shit going to or coming from your heart.  Great deal!

The second condition is liver failure due to the infused soy derived lipids.  I will not go into further detail, because I cover that in my post “The Truth About Soy”.  Find out the mythical health benefit of soy there.

The third condition is the one that made me eligible for a transplant.  This is due to multiple life-threatening infections via the infusion ports.  I suffered back-to-back systemic infections which nearly killed me.  Only about 45% of those who contract a systemic candida infection survive, so I consider myself lucky.  After my transplant, I suffered one really bad sepsis from pseudomonas (a gram negative rod), which has over a 90% mortality rate and put me into a coma.  I have had no infections since being on a low carbohydrate diet.

The one thing I did learn from all this is how caustic and toxic sugar is to the arteries and how sugar promotes and feeds infection.  Unless you plan to start running and exercising like a humming-bird on crack immediately after eating that cake or cookies, a lot of damage will be sustained by your arteries while you lounge and sleep — even though you have full intentions of working it off in the gym tomorrow.  The damage and infiltration in my arm didn’t wait until tomorrow, it happened right away.  You may burn off the fat later, but the sugar damage was already done.

The saddest part of all, was the fact that the doctors knew how much damage the sugar would cause to the arteries of TPN recipients, yet still continue to recommend a low-fat/ high-carbohydrate diet as a “Heart Healthy” one.  The doctors are either fucking morons or they want us to become sick.  I’m not sure which.  You take your pick.

A common myth told by PETA and is ignorantly repeated today is the claim that humans are unable to digest meat and it therefore putrefies in the colon, causing disease.  I believe I may have a special insight on this one based on my unique experiences.  We have probably all read the science of human digestion and understand why this statement is erroneous.  But I would like to cover this one as living proof, not only that humans digest meat, but we digest it better than any other whole food we eat.

After I lost my intestines, I was left with only about ten inches of small bowel which was formed into a jejunostomy stoma as seen in the image.  What you see in that graphic is all of the small intestine I had left.  So in essence, I was able to see what passed directly out of the human stomach.  It really doesn’t matter even if some doctor backs this erroneous claim, because doctors never deal with ostomies.  Emptying of the ostomy bag is a job that even nurses do not perform regularly, but is the job of a “Tech” in a hospital.  For those who don’t know, the Tech is person who goes room to room checking and recording blood pressure, temperature and blood sugar.

Aside from checking and recording vitals, the Tech must empty the ostomy bags of intestinal patients.  They really don’t check the contents, just the overall volume of output.  The output must be matched with the infused fluids to prevent dehydration.  Of course, the Techs are terrible at this job and often spill the contents on the patient.  Stomach acid burns like hell when it sits on your skin for more than a minute or two (strongly suggesting that it has the ability to break down protein).  So more often than not, family members take over the job of ostomy care and recording.  In my case, my beloved wife took on the dirty chore.  For those that are curious; no, a jejunum or ileum output doesn’t smell like feces (that is a colonostomy), because the jejunum and ileum are before the colon, which houses the bacteria that create the offensive gasses.  A jejunostomy or ileostomy output have the smell of vomit, because in reality that’s what it is.

Because I had such an extremely short bowel, my output was very high because no water absorption had taken place.  I was fed and hydrated by infusion and could literally live without eating or drinking at all.   Because of my excessive output, we had to make a rig that had a hose extending from the ostomy bag that drained into a one gallon jug.  Often the hose would get clogged and my wife or sister would have to use a coat hanger wire to unplug it.  Now if this vegan pseudoscience is right, we would suspect that the hose was being plugged by pieces of meat.

Never once did we see any solid chunks of meat.  I became so curious about this that I once swallowed the largest chunk of meat I could possibly get down without choking.  Because of the shortness of my bowel, it only took about twenty minutes for my stomach to empty into the ostomy.  Better than two hours later, there were no signs of any meat chunks.  What was always clogging the ostomy tube were pieces of vegetables that were not fully chewed.

Entire pieces of olive, lettuce, broccoli florets, grains and seeds were found.  Yet, large pieces of fat were never witnessed.   As a matter of fact, all the fat from the meat was already emulsified by the bile into solution within the duodenum.  Over time, fat would coagulate on the side walls of the ostomy bag, but never were there any solid pieces observed.  Certainly we are getting a lot more nutrition from our meat than from our vegetables – unless you can chew your cud several times like a ruminant.

No mammal on earth have enzymes that can break down the cellulose from plant cells.  Cellulose membranes can only be ruptured through the mechanics of repetitive grinding and the fermentation of bacteria.  Human molars are not flat enough to grind plants very effectively and we don’t have the bacteria necessary for fermentation within our stomachs.  Who here has never observed whole corn kernels or nuts in their poop?  I raise cattle and even in spite of their large flat molars, the ability to chew their food multiple times, and a host of protozoa in their stomachs, I have seen whole corn kernels in their manure.  So, how much can a human really get out of whole grains with ridged molars and a nearly sterile stomach?

Humans have bacterial colonies only within the large intestines, but there is little nutrient absorption within the human colon.  Long before meat reaches the colon it has been completely broken down and absorbed.  All of the enzymes for breaking down meat protein and fat – pepsin, trypsin, chymotrypsin, lipase and bile are all manufactured by our stomach, liver and pancreas.  Most of these enzymes are secreted into the duodenum (the first section of small bowel directly after the stomach).  In other words, we have no need for any ingested bacteria or enzymes for meat digestion, but we need plenty of outside help for plant digestion.  If this cocktail of gastric juices ever hits your skin, you will know damn well how effectively they begin to break down protein – trust me on that one!    The fact that the human digestive system maunufactures every enzyme needed to reduce animal flesh to solution would strongly suggest that we have evolved as an omnivore with a much stronger lean towards meat consumption.

We also have to consider that the doctors were infusing PPIs (Proton Pump inhibitors) mixed in with my TPN in order to suppress my appetite.  This is important, because I was completely reducing animal fat and protein to solution with my stomach acid production severely crippled.  Lowered acidity also reduces enzyme activity within the stomach.  Imagine how much more efficient my stomach is at digesting meat now that I am no longer receiving PPIs.  So I am not sure on what science the vegans bases their claim that humans can’t digest meat.  As is typical with most vegan propaganda, it’s based on no science at all and was something they literally “pulled out of their ass”.   Why people continue to repeat this nonsense without checking its validity is a mystery to me.

There is a condition that late-stage diabetics can suffer called, “Gastroparesis”, where the nerves to their stomach become damaged.  As a result, all of the food consumed (not just meat, but everything they eat), does not digest and begins to ferment and putrefy.  A man who I met at Jackson Memorial Hospital, who was there to receive a pancreas and liver transplant, and was also a diabetic began to suffer this illness.  As a result, he required that a stomach tube be inserted to into his duodenum to infuse a predigested paste for the remainder of his life.  Unfortunately, his liver was perforated during the procedure and he ultimately died as a result.

Perhaps some vegan diabetic mistook this symptom of the advanced stages of their disease as proof that the human could not digest meat and that it would putrefy in their intestines, but somehow I doubt that.  It would appear to be just more desperate pseudoscience someone at PETA simply pulled out of their ass because they understand that those that want to believe in veganism will accept anything PETA says without further investigation.

It’s quite sad, because vegetarians and vegans can have some valid points about human health (certainly a vegetarian diet is a healthier option than the standard american diet (SAD) of processed crap and junk food), but when they toss out some completely falsifiable and totally fabricated nonsense, like the myth that humans cannot digest meat, no rational thinking person can take them serious and they destroy any credibility they may have had for any of their arguments.  PETA does more of a disservice to the vegetarian and vegan agenda, yet vegetarians continue to support them.

This is why I like PETA.  As long as they’re the voice for the vegetarian movement, it will never be taken seriously or proliferate.  Sometimes I wonder if PETA is not actually funded by the meat industry to sabotage the vegan agenda through the exploitation of women in advertising, funding of eco-terrorism and manufacturing of complete and total pseudoscience.  No special interest group would ruin their own credibility in that manner.

(If you want to read more scientific facts about how the human alimentary tract digests meat, J.Stanton has published a detailed breakdown in his post “Does Meat Rot In Your Colon”.   Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, PhD wrote an excellent description entitled “The Long Hollow Tube”.)

There are several other erroneous claims that I can expose, based upon my medical experiences.   I have these subjects in these other rants:

“The Effect Of Sugar On Arteries”

“The Truth About Soy” 

Now, every time I hear a vegan proclaim that humans can’t digest meat because our stomach acid is too weak, I’ll wish I had some of my gastric juices to pour on them and see how long their epidermal protein can resist being digested.

PETA propaganda will never affect me, because I have seen what actually empties from the human stomach.  Here are some other posts I have written concerning more falsifiable and ridiculous pseudoscience created by the likes of PETA:

“Can We Feed The World”

“Is Meat Eating Causing Global Warming?” 

This is really not a movie review. I just wanted to use the idea in this film as a springboard to discuss why the vegetarian ape cannot support a human sized brain, as this ill-conceived movie suggests, and why humans evolved to eat meat.  Unfortunately, this newest fiasco in the science fiction film series, “The Planet Of The Apes” attempts to create a scenario where scientists increase the capacity of the simian brain to human proportions virtually overnight.  The writer makes the same erroneous assumption that many vegans and vegetarians do – that humans and apes are exactly the same physiologically.  But could a chimpanzee’s or gorilla’s body support the energy-hog that is the human brain?  Could the human brain have evolved on the raw vegetarian diet of the apes?  Is it simply just a matter of giving an ape a larger brain to create our worst adversary?  Let’s take a look at the internal differences of an ape to a human.

First, we have to look at the digestive system of the great apes, which include gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutangs and bonobos.  Though vegans and vegetarians insist that humans are herbivores because we externally resemble apes, internally we are significantly different.  They continue to argue that humans and apes have a similar overall length to their intestines.  This is true, but there is a huge difference in the way the gut is distributed.  The following graph illustrates the wide variation in the amount of foregut and hindgut in man and other primates:

Humans have a much longer small intestine for nutrient absorption and a shorter hindgut (cecum and colon) for the fermentation of vegetable fibers than do other primates.  The distribution of intestines are completely opposite of one another.  This fact disproves the idea that apes and humans have the same gut length and therefore share similar dietary needs.  There is obviously a huge difference in the ancestral diet between man and ape to explain this dramatic difference.

Apes have a much larger hind gut for the fermentation of plant foods.  No mammal on earth can digest plant cellulose, so herbivores depend on gut bacteria to break down the plant cells and then absorb the fatty acid by-products via the colon (read my post “Only One Mammal Survives On Low Fat Nutrition” for more on this).  The human colon is capable of very little nutrient absorption.  It is predominantly used for water absorption to help recycle fluids lost in digestion.  The human hind gut can only supply about 10% of the energy requirements for our body, whereas the ape’s hind gut provides about 65% of their energy needs.  It is possible for a human to live without a colon as many cancer and Ulcerative Colitis patients have proven after colectomies.  Apes on the other hand, will die if their colon is removed.  I personally have only about ¼ of a normal colon (11 inches transplanted, 10 inches native) and I am living just fine.  An ape couldn’t survive on the small amount of hind gut I am left with.

Apes do not live in the rainforests just to avoid colder climates.  Many tribes of mountain gorillas endure extreme cold temperatures.  They never migrated out of the tropical forests because it is the only place where there is enough fruit and vegetation available year round to support their massive bodies. Chimpanzees are primarily frugivores and gorillas are more vegetarian.  The apes in the movie take up residence in the California Redwood Forest – an idea that is completely ridiculous.  There would not be enough wild fruit and non-toxic vegetation year round to maintain their body’s nutritional requirements, much less their newly acquired, virus induced larger brain.  Humans began migrating out of the forests and populating the globe only after we had adapted to the food that is available virtually everywhere – meat.  The Inuit people thrived in icy areas where little vegetation grew, but meat and fish were abundant.  An ape (or vegan) wouldn’t last a couple of days there (sorry Yeti believers).  In order for an ape to support a human sized brain, there would have to be some serious physiological changes made to their digestive system.

According to Kleiber’s law, it would be impossible for an animal to meet the energy demand of a human size brain and an ape size gut.  The colon is an extreme energy hog.  It generates a tremendous amount of heat when fermenting vegetation.  Hominids had to sacrifice the large colon of their predecessor, who probably more closely resembled the vegetarian Australopithecus, in order to spare the energy required to support a larger brain.  You can’t have your cake and eat it too, yet the writer of this drivel thought that apes could have both.  Even if the ape could intake enough dietary calories to support a human size brain and an ape size colon, their body temperature would become dangerously high from the calorie expenditure.  The human brain gobbles up over 25% of the calories ingested, whereas the ape (and probably vegan) brain only uses about 8% of their energy intake.

The ape must maintain a smaller brain in order to feed the massive colon necessary to survive on a low nutrient diet of vegetation.  The image below illustrates the differences in skeletal structure between a man and chimpanzee.

If we follow the angle of the ribs, we can see that the chimpanzee’s abdomen flares out into a more pear-shaped figure.  We also notice that the pelvis is a taller bowl to hold the massive amount of hind gut.  The human rib cage angles inward towards the hips, creating a more wedge-shaped torso and flat stomach.  The large pear-shaped abdomen seen on some people is an accumulation of fat around their waist and not intestines.  The gorilla’s pot belly is not fat, but a huge, gas-filled colon.  The fermentation of cellulose creates a lot of flatulence in the ape and vegan colon.

As unlikely as it is that a virus could enlarge the brain of an ape, it is even a further stretch to assume that the virus could also restructure their entire digestive tract, shortening the colon and cecum, and increasing the size of their small bowels.  It took a couple of million years for humans to make this adaptation.  The option of eating nutrient dense meat is quite suicidal for apes, especially gorillas.  According Finch and Stanford in their quarterly “Meat-adaptive Genes And The Evolution Of Slower Aging In Humans”, it is proposed that the evolution of the apolipoprotein E 3 gene, may provide humans protection from diseases suffered by apes when consuming meat. [PDF]   The following is a quote from the abstract:

…Chimpanzees eat more meat than other great apes, but in captivity are sensitive to hypercholesterolemia and vascular disease. We argue that this dietary shift to increased regular consumption of fatty animal tissues in the course of hominid evolution was mediated by selection for “meat-adaptive” genes. This selection conferred resistance to disease risks associated with meat-eating also increased life expectancy. One candidate gene is apolipoprotein E (apoE), with the E3 allele evolved in the genus Homo that reduces the risks for Alzheimer’s and vascular disease, as well as influencing inflammation, infection, and neuronal growth. Other evolved genes mediate lipid metabolism and host defense…”

– Finch and Stanford, 2004

So switching to a meat based diet is not in the cards for the apes anytime soon because Alzheimer’s and heart disease would overcome them quickly.  An ape army would have a real logistics nightmare having to carry tons of vegetation from battlefield to battlefield.  Instead of spending time planning their strategies for the overthrow of man, they would continue to eat and poop every waking hour of the day to obtain their nutrition from their low nutrient diet.   Not a very formidable foe.

I know folks will tell me to lighten up and enjoy the movie because it’s only science fiction.  My purpose of this rant was not to disprove a ridiculous movie storyline, but to use it to disprove a popular piece of vegan propaganda.  Hominid brain growth was the result of a shrinking gut, based on a diet of nutrient dense meat, and the larger brain would later lead us to better food preparation.  Grinding, cooking and even the fermentation of food made digestion and the extraction of nutrients much easier and therefore required less intestines for internal processing.  More of our absorbed food energy could then be routed to the brain, rather than the gut.  Humans had to first grow their brains from meat consumption before we could have the intellect to discover fire, agriculture and food processing to make nutrients more accessible from plant foods.  The modern vegan would not be possible had humans not first thrived on meat.

Hollywood, being the Mecca of vegetarianism and other pseudoscience, found this movie to be quite plausible.  The film’s director Rupert Wyatt was quoted as saying;

I think we’re ending with certain questions, which is quite exciting.  To me, I can think of all sorts of sequels to this film, but this is just the beginning.”

Most likely the apes will take over the world at some point.  I don’t even want to imagine what silly writing will be applied to explain how endangered species of primates, that number in the thousands, can overtake a human population of over six billion humans!   Sometimes I think the apes have already taken over Hollywood and are writing the scripts for new movies.