Why All Humans Need to Eat Meat for Health

The Myths About Eating Meat

One of the greatest and most harmful nutrition myths is that meat doesn’t belong in a healthy diet. Meat consumption is blamed for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, and obesity. But if you want to point fingers at the culprit behind these health issues, point at sugar. Blame the overconsumption of carbohydrates like grains and potatoes that break down into sugar in the body.¹



For more than two million years we were primarily meat eaters. Only in the last 10,000 years did the human diet shift, with the cultivation of grains and legumes. But are we more suited to this diet lower in meat? In the last 10,000 years we’ve gotten smaller in stature and brain size. With a heavily grain- and sugar-based diet, we are suffering increased rates of obesity, cancer, diabetes, and osteoporosis. We’re also experiencing alarming incidence of skin problems, heart disease, and inflammation of all kinds.²

I have to politely disagree with the anti-meat argument. Our genes were developed before the agricultural revolution, when we were not only meat eaters, but enthusiastic ones at that. On top of that, the human genome has changed less than 0.02% in the last 40,000 years. Our bodies were genetically programed for optimal functioning on a diet including meat, and that programming has not changed.

There’s plenty of information circulating about why we shouldn’t eat meat. Here are some reasons why we should:

We Were Created That Way

By nature, humans are meat eaters, and our bodies are designed for it. We have incisors for tearing meat, and molars for grinding it. If we were meant to subsist on vegetables alone, our digestive system would be similar to that of the cow, with four stomachs and the ability to ferment cellulose in order to break down plant material.

The degenerative health conditions that are prevalent now weren’t around when the cavemen were living off meat, vegetables, fish, nuts, seeds, and fruits. In hunter/gatherer societies, 45-65% of energy requirements were derived from animal sources, and heart disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes - the diseases that plague society today - were not a problem.³ With the introduction of grains and processed foods, these diseases reared their ugly heads at alarming rates.⁴