Try living primitively, without technology, no stove, no refrigerator, no guns, no tractors, none of this stuff. What are you going to eat?
Are you going to eat meat? Just try to capture a wild animal with your bare hands and eat it raw, you will look ridiculous. This isn't a practical option without technology.
And even if you manage to capture it somehow or scavenge one that is already dead, there are tons of bacteria and diseases that you can get from raw meat since humans don't have the hydrochloric acid that carnivores do. Are you going to eat diary? Of course not, it is totally unnatural to eat another animals milk.
Legumes, beans, and grains although healthy, generally need to be cooked or otherwise prepared. They aren't edible raw. Similarly, many vegetables need to be cooked and they contain parts that are indigestible. Nuts often need to be cracked open.
On the other hand, fruits are just there on the tree ready for picking they don't need any special preparation - it should be completely obvious that this is the food of primitive people - our ancestors.
Are you going to eat meat? Just try to capture a wild animal with your bare hands and eat it raw, you will look ridiculous. This isn't a practical option without technology.
There is evidence that humans started eating meat about 2-2.5 million years ago. There is a theory that the addition of nutrient and calorie dense animal foods provided the opportunity to develop large brains which require significant energy to run.
There is also a theory that cooking was highly significant for human development, because otherwise about 5 kg of raw food would be required daily to survive, which pretty much does not leave any free time for anything but gathering and chewing. Fire was discovered at least 300,000 years ago.
probably by picking up small crawling animals and scavenging
Emphasis on the word scavenging. There is no question that ancient hominids scavenged when they were starving. However, this obviously couldn't be a significant part of their diet because there are so many diseases that can transfer from one animal to another.
And if meat was a significant part of our diets, cholesterol and atherosclerosis wouldn't be problems like they are now.
Fire was discovered at least 300,000 years ago.
There is no question that humans developed the technology of cooking, farming, and hunting to overcome their natural weaknesses, however, that did not significantly effect our evolution.
Evolution occurs because of small, infrequent, random mutations in the genetic material. In order for our digestive system to evolve there must be some "selective mechanism" that operates to select beneficial changes, however, there was no such selective mechanism operating at that point because the users faulty diet would not kill its user before reproductive age.
For example, people that eat the unhealthiest of diets - that have underage diabetes and obesity can still live to reproductive age. Their diet isn't healthy it is just "healthy enough."
"And if meat was a significant part of our diets, cholesterol and atherosclerosis wouldn't be problems like they are now."
You're basing your argument on the assumption that cholesterol problems are caused by intake ofsaturated fat and jumping to a conclusion based on that assumption.
The assumption you're making is being pitted against a growing amount of evidence that cholesterol problems are caused by modern over-consumption of carbohydrates. The most basic form of evidence for this argument is that 75% of our cholesterol is manufactured by our own body as opposed to being caused by dietary intake.
And if meat was a significant part of our diets, cholesterol and atherosclerosis wouldn't be problems like they are now.
And they were not ... until very recent times. If you look at the data available about the hunter-gatherer tribes, they did not have heart disease, diabetes, obesity, even cancer - despite sometimes having the higher saturated fat intake compared even to today's US.
Look up the Kitavians, Masai, the Inuit ...
Humans have been trapping animals for food for a very long time. For example, the "promontory peg" deadfall is a simple trigger based trap that can easily be made with stone tools. No guns, arrows, spears or bare hands required.
I feel like this example only reinforces the point parent is trying to make. Having watched the clip below, it seems like running for eight hours in the heat of the day with no guarantee of a meal at the end is a dangerously foolish way to live.
The wasted time, energy and risk of injury or death pale in comparison to the sheer logistical problems if you do manage to make a kill. How does one exhausted hunter transport 300-400kg of meat without refrigeration back to his family 8 hours' run away?
Looks like more of an extreme sport than a reliable method of finding food.
There are still bushmen in Africa who live by this. It's entirely possible to make this work. There was a BBC documentary on this (it's on youtube somewhere). They hunt in teams of 3-4, with one designated runner. Once they find their prey, the runner is the only one who actually does the long persistent run. The others follow at a slower pace.
"it should be completely obvious that this is the food of primitive people - our ancestors"
Citations please. There are people that claim the opposite of you saying that fruit was rarely a staple and merely a seasonal food. There's also some who assert that fruit today is grown solely to yield sweetness and not nutritional content.
Are you going to eat meat? Just try to capture a wild animal with your bare hands and eat it raw, you will look ridiculous. This isn't a practical option without technology.
I don't know about you but I think I would rather pick fruit then spend eight hours in the hot sun hunting...
I also would rather eat fruits then the dead animal. Fruits are absolutely delicious to anyone whose taste buds aren't maladapted, and dead animals stink, are hard to eat uncooked, and carry diseases/bacteria.
Carnivores have 10 times the hydrochloric acid of humans so they can eat meat without worrying about pathogens such as E. Coli, Shigella, Samonella, Campylobacter, Toxoplasmosis, and Trichina Worms.
Actually, most archeologists and paleoanthropologists are beginning to accept that most meat was SCAVENGED, not hunted, as I mentioned earlier.
It is through scavenging that humans became "omnivores" capable of eating meat in the first place, but we certainly didn't become carnivores that should eat meat as any significant part of their diet.
Trichinellosis, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Listeria, E. Coli, and Trichina worms will effect anyone, so my "preference in food" is based upon characteristics present in all humans.
As for the taste, fruits taste the best raw/uncooked for everyone with natural taste-buds. My taste-buds aren't abnormal.
I'd prefer to hunt I think, especially knowing the benefits of meat. And as for the current debate/link, modern fruits are unfortunately different then the lower fructose versions our ancestors ate. As such, I think people should tread lightly in the land of delicious fruit (excepting berries and the like). Rotten fruit stinks by the way ;) and hosts bacteria, flies, and disease! :)
I actually live in Hawaii where we have delicious, organic, locally-grown fruit all year round, and I often get to pick fruits myself. I understand some people don't have it as good =/
And at least fruits get rotten! I think there is something wrong with all these preservative-enhanced foods that you can forget about for like a decade only to find that they are still edible ;)
BTW, I am not honestly recommending that people eat all fruits or anything like that, just that they consist of at least 10% of a person's diet. A fruitless diet like the one recommended here is generally a bad idea, even if it saves you some money.
If by "technology" you are willing to overlook sharpened sticks and fire, then I'm thinking I'd be eating anything I could kill. That, and anything I could gather: nuts, roots, seeds, leaves and stems, anything that wouldn't in turn kill me.
