[QUOTE=NickBall;1247347]When you know how to live in the environment (i.e. when and where to get food sustainably) every meal isn't boiled down to if I don't eat this now I or my family will die. There is time to think about what you are doing. I don't have the book with me (Native American Wisdom) so I can't identify which Native American tribe kept the practice of leaving the bottom third of fruit bearing plants for the smaller animals, the top third for the flying animals and the middle third for the humans and other long-legged animals. Tradition, rituals, and myths of the tribe were the solution for the moral dilemma of "should I eat all the berries or would I, the local environment, and the world at large be better served if I left some berries on the bush?"[/QUOTE]
so they fatten them up before the kill by leaving a bit for them to eat? hmmm smart tribes.
[QUOTE=NickBall;1247347]I can't identify which Native American tribe kept the practice of leaving the bottom third of fruit bearing plants for the smaller animals, the top third for the flying animals and the middle third for the humans and other long-legged animals.[/QUOTE]
So there was enough to go around. Apparently so much that we were able to leave two-thirds of it behind? Didn't native Americans eat meat? What are we even talking about?
[QUOTE=PrimalFish;1246746]I'm saying that in primitive times man would have been surrounded by fruit....not now. Why wouldn't we have? We would have lived in climates that were conducive for it and fruit would have been the easiest and most delightful thing for us to eat.[/QUOTE]
We evolved in grasslands, in the Savannah. The Savannah is very dry much of the year with dry dead grass, sparse trees that may bear nuts part of the year and lots of herds of animals. Rivers and lakes would have had fish.
[quote]Along the Equator, fruit is plentiful all year long. [/quote]
The Sahara desert is near the equator. I don't think fruit is plentiful there.
Also, why does every primitive culture in the world, equatorial or not, eat meat and fish?
Also, why does every primitive culture in the world, equatorial or not, eat meat and fish?[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=PrimalFish;1246747]This is not true. Of course there are people smarter then you that follow a vegan diet. Also, there are smart people (with human sized brains) that follow both diets.[/QUOTE]
You missed my point completely. Our large brains would never have evolved on a vegan diet. Just not possible
[QUOTE=PrimalFish;1246735]I have not tried an all fruit (and vegetable) diet longer then three days, but recently switched from a primal diet (which I was following 2.5 years) to a low-fat vegan diet (been following for 6 months). The initial reason for the change was that I felt I was too reliant on coffee (not primal?), and I had the desire to not eat animals if it was possible to do so and still be healthy. Anyways I've never felt better in my life. My energy is through the roof and I can actually train again for performance without having to worry about training to long. If I train less, I eat less. I am leaner and more vascular. lWhen I was following primal I looked very soft.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Sweet Leilani;1246754]Cool, glad you found a way of eating that makes you feel awesome, more power to you. It's what we're all reaching for. Just don't condemn others to [I]justify[/I] your way of eating. You're eating the way you eat because it makes you feel good! End of story. No other justification needed. Leave the crap about higher/lower levels of consciousness out of it. No one is a better or worse person because of the way they eat!![/QUOTE]
The issue with the vegan diet, and even more so fruitarian and raw veganism, is that feeling this way is not necessarily due to well-being. As the level of malnourishment rises, people feel more and more energized and attribute this to be a sign of increasing health. It is not. This is the fasting response, your body telling you to get out and kill something now, before it is too late.
Because I disagreed with one portion of your comment doesn't mean that I agree with the original poster. I was just criticizing your claim that primal man wouldn't have moralized their eating. The berries story illustrates that food wasn't simply a matter of eat it now or die but something much more complex than that. That complexity and the many moral dilemmas it creates was solved by thinking, moral, ethical human beings then just as it is now. I never claimed Native Americans didn't eat meat; read my post again. I fully support eating meat. I eat a lot of meat and other animal products.
Not exactly my point but there was certainly an advantage to not eating everything as it left something for other animals to eat and if the opportunity presented itself, for you to eat them. Of course you are subject to being eaten as well...so it balances out well if you do it right.
The fact that paleolithic humans were mentally capable of moralizing does not mean they ever saw killing and eating animals as a moral dilemma. That is a modernist concept. The eternal circle of existence would be more likely. Things exist to eat other things, or to be eaten. We are what we are. Reinvention of ourselves as something outside what is understood to be the natural order of things (or redefining the natural order of things) is a new concept.
[QUOTE=eKatherine;1247536]The fact that paleolithic humans were mentally capable of moralizing does not mean they ever saw killing and eating animals as a moral dilemma. That is a modernist concept. The eternal circle of existence would be more likely. Things exist to eat other things, or to be eaten. We are what we are. Reinvention of ourselves as something outside what is understood to be the natural order of things (or redefining the natural order of things) is a new concept.[/QUOTE]
I know that it is impossible to prove that something didn't exist so I won't ask you to prove primal man [I][B]didn't[/B][/I] moralize their eating but the fact that a single human out there got to that point (when exactly that happened for the first time is also impossible to prove) and that contemporary hunter-gatherers clearly moralized their eating to some degree makes me think that primal humans did the same thing to varying degrees. I agree that things exist to eat other things and that those things exist to be eaten. But humans have always made much more of life than this. Rules about what to eat when to eat, what was good to eat what was evil are found in all cultures, primitive or modern.