HAVE WE EVOLVED BY EATING MEAT?

DID WE EVOLVE BY EATING MEAT?

When we were primates we ate vegetables, but it seems that what allowed us to grow our brains was meat. The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis (EHT) (7) argues that if the brain grows, the gut must decrease because both tissues are energetically expensive and it is not sustainable to have a large brain and a large gut. Since meat is a food rich in energy and macronutrients, a smaller gut is sufficient to digest it. When we started eating meat, our intestines shrank and this allowed the brain to grow.

Today some speculate that the process began 3.4 million years ago when early hominids began eating the marrow and brains of the carcasses of animals killed by predators. (8) Marrow and brain are highly nutritious and provide the fatty acid precursors needed for brain development.

As for the genus Homo, we have certainty that it consumed a great deal of meat as early as 120,000 years ago thanks to analyses of the nitrogen content in its bones.

Let me explain how it works: plants absorb nitrogen from the soil and the atmosphere, this nitrogen then “concentrates” in herbivores that consume plants and later “concentrates” in carnivores that consume herbivores. Basically, the percentage of nitrogen in a living thing allows us to understand where it is placed in the food chain, thus what it feeds on.

Roughly the nitrogen values are:
plants: between 0 and 2‰ (per thousand)
Herbivores: between 3 and 7‰
carnivores: between 6 and 12‰
Carnivorous fish and aquatic mammals (seals, dolphins, etc.): between 18 and 20%
omnivores: between herbivores and carnivores, it depends on their diet: more plants or more meat?

Homo Sapiens fossils what levels of nitrogen did they have?(9)
It depends, where they lived and what they ate, here a list of Homo Sapiens fossils and related
nitrogen levels:
Oase 1: 13.3‰
Candid Arenas: 18‰
La Rochette: 18‰
Eel Point 1: 11.4%
Paviland: 10.4‰
Muierii 1: 12.3‰
Muierii 2: 12.4‰
Cioclovine 1: 12.7‰
Dolní Vestonice 35: 12.3‰
Brno-Francouzska 12.3‰

As you can see in most cases the nitrogen levels are those of carnivores. In the two fossils in green, however, they are much higher, why is that? They lived on the coast and ate a lot of fish (which has higher nitrogen levels than animals living on land).

Elena but Paleolithic men died early so they must have been more fragile and weak than we are.

On the fact that their lives were shorter is not really so--in the table on the following page you can see for yourself. Please note: life expectancy is simply a statistical calculation that is heavily influenced by infant mortality. It has nothing to do with the age at which people actually died. Let's take an example: during the Roman Empire the life expectancy for a man was 38.8 years. This does not mean most of the population died between the ages of 36 and 40. Emperor Augustus died at age 75, and he was not the only one to die at that age. But then why was life expectancy in the Roman Empire 38.8 years? In the past, infant mortality was very high; this had a huge impact on life expectancy. Let's take an example: imagine a population of 2 people, one dies at 1 year old and the other dies at 79 years old. The sum of years lived is 80, the number of people alive 2, so 80:2 = life expectancy 40 years. Do you realize how misleading this number can be??!

On the next page you will see that since the 1980s life expectancy has doubled. How is this possible? Simple: infant mortality has been virtually reduced to zero thanks to hygiene and antibiotics.

What we are really interested in is the potential lifespan of a human being, which has to do with genetics and epigenetics. Until recently it was thought to be around 120 years, but today there are researchers speculating that there is no real limit (11). Could we live forever? I don't know and maybe I wouldn't even want to, because new generations bring new needs and therefore innovation.

But back to our Paleolithic predecessors. Their living conditions were very difficult: they were nomads, so they had no real houses that could protect them from the weather; they had no medicines, so infections could easily lead to death; they did not know what hygiene was, so for example, childbirth-related deaths were very high. Yet-they were physically much healthier than we are. In fact AFTER the introduction of agriculture these facts occurred (10:12):

- We have become shorter. If you look at the table, we have not reached the Paleolithic height even in the modern age. Maybe only in the last few generations have we been able to reach them, but the table does not show the figure that recently.
- Dental caries have increased 4-fold
- Skull base height decreased de 15%, a sign of malnutrition
- Pelvic opening index decreased by 7%, an indicator of malnutrition in late childhood
- Life expectancy during the Neolithic period worsened but improved around 2,000 BCE.
- Increased iron deficiency anemia
- Bone density has decreased

Why has our health deteriorated so much since we invented agriculture? Because our diet had dramatically changed: we ate mainly grains and very little meat. Grains are rich in phytates that bind to mineral salts, preventing their absorption (this explains the problems seen above related to bones) also less meat means less highly bioavailable micronutrients (like iron for example) which then result in a weakening of the whole body.

HEALTH AND LONGEVITY IN HISTORY	Pelvic opening index % (higher is better)	Average height		Life expectancy (years)
Historical Time Period	Pelvic opening index % (higher is better)	M cm	F cm	M	F
30,000 to 9,000 B.C. Late Paleolithic, 50% meat - 50% plants*.	97.7	177.1	166.5	35.4	30.0
9,000-7,000 B.C. Mesolithic, transitional period between the Paleolithic and the earliest products of agriculture	86.3	172.5	159.7	33.5	31.3
7,000 - 5,000 B.C. Early Neolithic: agriculture expands and diet changes: meat accounts for only 10%, the rest vegetables and mostly grains.	76.6	169.6	155.5	33.6	29.8
5,000 to 3,000 B.C. Late Neolithic	75.6	161.3	154.3	33.1	29.2
3,000 - 2,000 B.C. Bronze Age	85	166.3	152.9	33.6	29.4
2,000 BC. - 1,450 BC.	78.8	166.1 1	153.5	36.5	31.4
1,450 BC.	82.6	172.5	160.1	35.9	36.1
1,450 - 1,150 B.C.	79.5	166.8	154.5	39.6	32.6
1,150 to 650 B.C.	80.6	166.7	155.1	39.0	30.9
650 to 300 BC.	83.5	170.5	156.2	44.1	36.8
300 BC - 120 AD. ancient Greece	86.6	171.9	156.4	41.9	38.0
120 - 600 AD. Roman Empire	84.6	169.2	158.0	38.8	34.2
Greece medieva	85.9	169.3	157.0	37.7	31.1
Byzantine Constantinople	87.9	169.8	154.9	46.2	37.3
1400 - 1800 AD.	84.0	172.2	158.0	33.9	28.5
1800 - 1920 AD.	82.9	170.1	157.6	40.0	38.4
Modern West approximately since 1980	92.1	170.1	163.4	71.0	78.5

*does not report a source for this data

Elena but red meat gives you cancer!!!

We were told so many lies that you can't even imagine-no, meat doesn't give you cancer. The press made you believe that red meat gives you cancer because they loudly reported the results of an IARC monograph that had very little scientific value. I wrote a long in-depth paper on the subject, you can find it here.

Just a few words: in this recent and very rigorous study (13), published in 2022, they call the correlation between meat and cancer “weak and insufficient.”.

In this other very interesting study (14) life expectancy and meat consumption are compared in 175 populations, which at the time of the study were equivalent to 90% of the existing population on planet Earth. Result: populations that eat more meat have longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality.

Researchers say that meat has several advantages over vegetables:
- Is a complete protein because it contains all amino acids
- Is rich in vitamins, particularly B12
- contains all the mineral salts

I quote an excerpt from the study:

Meat plays a significant role not only in maintaining health, development and appropriate growth, but has played an important role in ancestral hominids for 2.6 million years.

Listen to this! Another finding of this study is that grains negatively correlate with life expectancy (Elena's note: this means that the higher the grain consumption, the lower the life expectancy). This finding is supported by many ethnological and archaeological studies that have shown that in the Neolithic period, the shift to a grain-based diet reduced life expectancy because grains have lower nutritional value.

We evolved by eating meat, so how would it be possible for it to be the cause of cancer???

There are very interesting experiments showing that meat improves our health, physique and intelligence. Here is an example (15): 900 children between the ages of 6 and 14 divided into 4 groups who received these mid-morning snacks for two years:
Group A) Nothing (this group is called “control”)
Group B) Porridge made from corn, legumes and vegetables
Group C) Porridge made from corn, legumes and vegetables + 1 glass of milk
Group D) Porridge made from corn, legumes and vegetables + beef

At the end of the study, children in group D, the meat group, had:
more muscle mass
fewer health problems
improved cognitive performance
more leadership in games

Objection: in some nations red meat is a luxury. “Meat can also be worms, caterpillars or termites. It doesn't have to be butchered meat.” Replies the researcher who conducted the study.

I also want to tell you about another experiment with children and eggs conducted in Ecuador (16). 163 children between 6 and 9 months, divided into two groups: group A received 1 egg per day for 6 months, group B no eggs.
Group A children who consumed 7 eggs per week for 6 months:
They grew more in height
They gained weight (they were all underweight at the beginning of the study)
Have not developed any allergies

The researcher closes the study by stating that “eggs are an effective, cost-effective and sustainable tool to combat malnutrition and developmental arrest, as they provide more of the 50% of nutrients crucial to children's development.”

Excuse me, but for more than 40 years haven't we been told that eggs are bad for you and you shouldn't eat more than two a week??! These 7-month-old babies were eating 7 eggs a week!!! See? We have been told a lot of lies....

It is necessary to inform oneself, to go deeper and to study. Thanks to the Internet, this is possible today.

The other day one of you sent me a video, recommending that I read the comments. In the video a nutritionist said that if you take carbs out of your diet then you are sick, without energy, depressed, etc. In the comments so many people wrote that when they took carbs out they felt exactly the opposite of what the nutritionist said. It was great to read them because it means that things are changing! People are experiencing it on their own skin and so it is no longer possible to tell them lies!

And despite the fact that so many people say that social media is the evil of the world, the truth is that the Internet allows information to be democratized! Anyone, if they WANT to, can find useful and quality information, often shared by real people who had problem X and solved it on their own, because the doctors they met had simply prescribed drugs, without solving the problem. In this regard, I recommend that you listen to the story Of Ornella who in just 6 months lost 40 kg but more importantly solved ALL her illnesses! Just by changing her diet...

As Dr. Tomasi: become protagonists of your own health!

At this point I ask you: do you think children can take collagen? If there is anyone still in doubt, the answer is yes. Collagen intake simply replaces the consumption of collagen-rich foods that always occurred in the past but is absent nowadays.

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