I can understand processed meat but normal steak and stuff, like why is it bad? It seems strange to me because to me it feels like that is what our bodies should be used to after being hunters for several millennia.
Perhaps this is the wrong sub but I’m not sure where else to ask.
Because that’s not all we ate.
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Early humans and our predecessors ate a large variety of foods. Berries, nuts, vegetables, plants, fish, birds, and yes red meat. The ability to eat that large of a variety of foods was a big evolutionary advantage for us over other species, so we evolved to be able to handle all of those foods. But we didn’t eat them all with the same frequency.
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Fish would mostly only be eaten in the right season, same with vegetables and berries (though you can keep nuts and dried fruits for a very long time through the winter). Red Meat would have been one of the ways that we bridged the gap in the winter. However, it’s a lot easier to catch and kill a chicken, turkey or flightless bird than it would be a bison or large terrestrial land mammals (red meat). Sure, they provided more overall food than a bird or couple birds, but they were much more difficult and time consuming to capture. So conversely, it would have been less common for early humans to eat red meat than it would be plants or some fish.
That means that we evolved to be better at processing the foods we ate more of more commonly (plants, fish, white meat etc). But of course we can still handle red meat, just not in the same quantity as the standard American’s diet normally contains.
also, the red meat nowadays is obviously different. The animals used to graze on grass and walk/run all day. Nowadays we feed cows corn (not what they’re supposed to eat) and keep them penned up so they are way fattier.
I’ve read that once you switch a cow from corn to grass they shed like 90% of the e. coli in their digestive system with a week or two.
Looks like I remembered the gist anyway:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030203736686
And yes this is a nutrition sub but we should also consider that, environmentally, raising red meat is dumb. Takes too much land, water, and grains. If all the food fed to cows was instead fed to humans it is said we could end world hunger. We grow grains to feed the cow then the cow gets eaten by the rich while the poor starve without enough plant crops for themselves because the cow got them.
Besides some of the other comments here making good points, it’s worth understanding that evolution isn’t some perfect force that makes everything better. It’s possible red meat has always had a detrimental effect in some capacity but never enough to prevent breeding and passing of genes.
Red meat tends to be much harder to hunt (killing a Buffalo is a lot more work then catching fish or a bird) so it was part of our diet but it was very minimal. Most humans ate primarily nuts, seeds, berries, fruit, and vegetables, herbs, and roots. On top of that they would eat meat when they could get it. We eat wayyy more meat (especially red meat) then ancient people did. Red meat isn’t bad for you, it just should be eaten in moderation. Humans didn’t evolve to eat a 12 oz stake for dinner every day. We evolved eating mostly easily foraged things (fruits, veg, nuts, beans, seeds, etc), often some form of fish or easy bird game, and very occasionally a piece of red meat. I would say a healthy diet inspired by ancient people’s diet would be 70-80% non-animal and non-animal byproduct foods (lean into the veggies most, add in some berries, and some nuts and seeds) and then 15-25% white meats (mostly fish, with some pheasant or bird) and finally about 5% red meats. What we know of ancient people, tells us that usually a hunter gather group only hunted and killed a couple large red meat game per year. Most people were eating less then 5 pounds of red meat per month, if any at all. Some societies, especially those on islands or near the coast, exclusively ate fish and bird and really only hunted small red meat game (like gophers) as a last resort. If you want to eat like ancient people, you should also consider getting as much of your meat as possible from grass fed, farm raised, or wild caught sources as possible. They tend to be way healthier then factory raised.
I remember doing research on this subject years ago in high school. From what I remember carnivorous animals have a shorter intestinal tract from us to easily digest the meat, whereas us humans have a longer intestinal tract and that’s why you can feel quite sluggish sometimes after meat. I have fibromyalgia and find that red meat can flare my pain up a fair bit, but if it’s quite rare it’s not as bad, which is a bit weird but is what it is.
There has been a marked increase on anti-meat propaganda in the last years. It reminds me of the anti-fat propaganda of the second half of the XX century, which was revealed to be influenced by the vegetable oil industry. The debate there is strong, with a lot of people still believing animal fat is bad, while others point to data showing refined vegetable oils to be the real culprits. Maybe the same will happen here: some years from now we’ll realize whose interests were behind the anti-meat craze, and the harm ultra processed vegetable alternatives have caused.
Anyways, I would recommend you ask in the anthropology reddits for a more scientific answer. Nutrition today is a battlefield of dogmas, religions and corporate interests.
Red meat is perfectly fine and an amazing nutrient source. You can probably live off just that for a long time. The lack of logic when it comes to nutrition is amazing. Eating too much, from foreign sources and processing food are where problems begin. Simply put, what we eat now is largely unrecognisable from what our hunting ancestors ate. Further, we eat far more selectively and out of season. You will eat tuna from the pacific, steak from south america and lamb from new zealand, when locally as a hunter you ate what was available. We have so much food we have to try not to waste it, a mythical heaven to our hunting ancestors. As people, we also largely move far less and eat far more than our hunting ancestors. Red meat is fine, eat less overall, move more and eat as close to seasonal and unprocessed as possible for you. You will live a long happy life, it aint rocket surgery.
Several embedded premises in your question are not correct, and the best place to ask about them - I.e. the role of hunting in human pre-history - is to anthropologists and evolutionary biologists.
As to meat from a modern nutrition standpoint, it depends how it fits into the dietary pattern in question. Most would agree that meat is really good in an under-nutrition scenario, and about neutral when it is a very small percent I.e. <10% of calories of an adequate, diverse modern diet.
There are plenty of substances that are harmful, such as haeme iron, cholesterol, neu5gc, relatively high levels of methionine and leucine leading to over-activation of growth pathways, and other nasties that form due to high temp cooking. But there is currently no big picture consensus around whether it is some one of these or all acting synergistically that cause the harm.
Scenario: 10,000 years ago, just think, you are on the hunt for several days, till finally after 7 days you find and kill a boar. Eat the meat for 2 days, no refs then, then start the hunt again. In between kills, so as not to starve, you eat lots of plants, nuts and fruits. Point is our ancestors bodies were primed to eat red meat every now and then, with lots of veggies and fruits as main course. Come 20th century, mass processing of red meat with lots of chemicals + big macs + KFCs etc totally wrecks havoc on the human body, which for centuries evolved to feast on natural greens and fruits. Result is high blood pressure, cancer, “die”-abetes and a host of dietary related diseases.
A myth about evolution is that it optimizes us to out environment. Really it’s about what endures long enough to reproduce. I mean, pugs are a success in that there are a lot of them, but no one would argue they are high performance or optimized.
As hunters? Like when our life span used to be ~30 years? Red meat contains large amounts of heme, which is associated with GI inflammation and colon cancer, which appears around ~40 years of age and is a slow progressive disease.
Realizing that no two people react the same to anything as in weight training, diet, medicine etc maybe similar but also very different reactions responses to whatever it is. There is no one size fits all approach. You have to play Eff around and figure out what your body responds best to especially when it comes to diet and weight training. Don’t rely on peer reviews as advocates on either side of the spectrum are extremely biased in advocating their agenda. So compare and contrast everything you can. Me personally my diet consists of all meats, all types of fruit and lots of dairy. Zero veggies, zero breads pastas, nuts and zero filler foods. My labs are phenomenal but lots of trial and error before I got here!
Red meat is great for you! With some veggies and rice! I like it to mix it up with other meats and and fish. Stay away from the fake vegan meat and products, literally just chemicals and makes you ugly
Something that I haven’t seen talked about yet is that red meat tends to age people quicker as it up regulates a gene pathway called mTor. And with aging comes disease of all kinds, not just cardiovascular, which many link to red meat.
That being said, the idea that it’s unhealthy for you is only relative to how health is perceived in the modern world. For example red meat is great for protein synthesis and muscle building, and in the environment in which our ancestors lived in that would be super important. Currently we live in a time where technology accomplishes all our physical feats and so now physical strength isn’t necessary for survival. There is a much stronger emphasis on longevity. Our ancestors were unaware that they would be making a trade off between strength and longevity by eating red meat, but I am sure if they did that it was a trade off they would be willing to make.
Anyways, that’s one way to think about it.
News flash: Its NOT bad for you. That’s ludicrous. Humans have eaten meat every since we were modern humans and before. Sure, we are omnivores, can survive without meat (unlike cats), but meat is an important protein/amino acid source for us.
What’s bad about it is the current industrial farming and shooting animals full of hormones and too many antibiotics. Luckily, I’m able (sources plus the income) to primarily eat pasture-raised meats, so much better. But I know many aren’t able to for various reasons (mainly, the cost), and that makes me sad.
But sadly many think if they eat a vegan diet that it avoids this issue but it doesn’t if the veggies also come from industrial farming practices (petroleum fertilizers, pesticides, etc.).
Our ancestors probably only ate red meat once every few months, a cow or two for the whole village? Not much to go around. Red meat is a cause of colon cancer and we’re finding it younger and younger. Best to reduce intake to the least you can.
I stopped eating red meat years ago and I feel so much better. It helped with weight loss too. But that’s just me, follow whatever diet works for you and your body!
It’s not bad technically. There’s zero bad food.
In reality it’s poor understanding of energy balance.
The only argument you could really make that it’s bad is that the entire system is rigged so we simultaneously don’t understand energy balance and are living in an obesogenic environment.
The natural argument for eating meat is a little lack Lustre.
We ate natural game. Game is always leaner. It’s also incredibly unlikely we’d have enough red meat in our lives to consume the amount we do now daily. It’s far content would be significantly lower.
So is red meat killing you specifically. Unlikely. Are we eating too many calories daily and exacerbating the issue with red meat. Likely if you eat it.
Nutrition and it’s affects are always multifactoral.
It is incredibly shit to house, feed and murder cows thou. So personally I consider the use of red meat to be bad. But that’s just me and the rest of the Vegans.
Also the grass fed argument is kinda mute. The only benefits are increased omega 3. Which is amazing for humans. Hows you’d need to eat 8kg of beef per day to reach the same level as 4 Oz of salmon.
That would be a terrible idea for your health.
I don’t imagine hunters lived to age 60+. Red meat increases the risk of colon cancer but you can’t get colon cancer if the average life span is like 30.
Edit: don’t understand the downvotes. Can someone explain?
Unfortunately our lifestyle has completely changed compared to the lifestyle of the hunters of yester years. And thus we have to change too. Many cultures lived on starch without getting diabetes. So it’s the same thing but with a sedentary junk food lifestyle we can’t do what they did.
Carnitine and choline are two factors, which are existent in plant based diets but at a much lower level and impact the body in a different way:
“The reason for concern regarding carnitine and choline (and, consequently, red meat) is due to the oxidation of these two nutrients.
During digestion gut bacteria metabolize carnitine to trimethylamine. Trimethylamine is further oxidized in the liver to trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO). TMAO is then released into the bloodstream.
The body also can convert choline into TMAO.
Trimethylamine-N-oxide is a substance that appears to increase cholesterol buildup and plaque formation in arteries, which leads to increased risk for heart attacks and strokes.”
Sources:https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2792495
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2792495
Scientists have found evidence of heart disease and artery plaque build up in hunter-gatherer age humans. Early humans aren’t necessarily the pinnacle of healthy balanced diets like fad diets like Paleo want to convince you. Early humans had a lot of dangers to face, and the gradual blockage of arteries was certainly not a priority. The consequences of a bad diet wouldn’t be so prominent when more imminent dangers were taking lives before heart disease could manifest.
Moderation really is key. Have some red meat, just not all the time. Maybe consider meatless meals every now and then. Humans thrive most on a richly varied diet. Red meat can certainly be a part of that, it just maybe doesn’t need to always be the star of your meals.