meat = intelligence

[kmik]

OK, stop me if you saw this one... I'm watching the Science channel last night and they're saying we evolved to see colors so we can find ripe fruit, so I'm with them on that...

Then they said once we (primates) started eating meat it made our brains grow and become oh-so intelligent. It said we would steal carcasses from lions (yummy, and SO worth pissing off a lion for!). I can see it now...

"Gergh, you distract lion. Me grab carcass and go to cave."

1 hour later...

"Hmmm, where Gergh? He missing good rotting meat!"

OK, here's my other problem... if meat makes brains so intelligent, why do we not find groups of lions and tigers sitting around the fire contemplating the meaning of life?

Just wondering if I missed something :confused:

[Denise Nicole]

It sounds to me that the program creator made their own conclusions.

There were many famous vegetarians including Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, who inarguably were very intelligent people:
http://www.famousveggie.com/peoplenew.cfm?&VEG=1&ORD=L

[sweetgoddess]

Perhaps it was more swelling than actual growth! Had to make room for all that mucous storage! :D

[sport]

I think that when man started to eat meat it freed up a lot of his time because he did not have to eat as often and he then could spend that time doing things that made him appear more intellegent such as art. This has lead the program makers to confuse the issue. I think that the program makers are meat eaters so do not see very clearly. We will have to excuse them.

[twinyoga]

I've also read that when humans started to eat meat, it freed up a lot of their time to focus less on the need to keep eating and more time to build, contemplate, etc. This isn't the exact quote, of course, but I got it from Digestion and Health by R. Ballentine. It's a very good book.

[NoGMO!]

hi kmik,

"if meat makes brains so intelligent, why..."
nice!

Can Meat Dull The Intellect?

(*sorry, I'm unsure of the author on this one.)

It is impossible for those who make free use of flesh meats to have an unclouded brain and an active intellect.

Eating much flesh will diminish intellectual activity.

When the animal part of the human nature is strengthened by meat eating, the intellectual powers diminish proportionately.

Meat eating deranges the system, beclouds the intellect, and blunts the moral sensibilities.

Such a diet contaminates the blood and stimulates the lower passions.

Disease of every type is afflicting the human family, and it is largely the result of subsisting on the diseased flesh of dead animals.

Those who subsist largely upon flesh cannot avoid eating the meat of animals which are to a greater or less degree diseased.

The process of fitting the animals for market produces in them disease; and fitted in as healthful a manner as they can be, they become heated and diseased by driving before they reach the market.

The fluids and flesh of these diseased animals are received directly into the blood, and pass into the circulation of the human body, becoming fluids and flesh of the same. Thus humors are introduced into the system.

And if the person already has impure blood, it is greatly aggravated by eating of the flesh of these animals.

The very animals whose flesh you eat are frequently so diseased that, if left alone, they would die of themselves; but while the breath of life is in them, they are killed and brought to market.

You take directly into your system humors and poisons of the worst kind, and yet you realize it not.
(oops! sorry, I got off on a tanget there...) :p

~~~
back to the subject at hand... meat and intelligence!
Socrates brain, too small from lack of meat?
~~~~~~~
Socrates taught that virtue was based on knowledge.

"The unexamined life is not worth living." ( Apology 38a) ~ Socrates ~

Why is it so hard, seemingly impossible, for our "responsible" press to convey the kinds of concerns that Socrates raised as portrayed in Plato's Republic
~~~

Socrates: Would this habit of eating animals not require that we slaughter animals that we knew as individuals, and in whose eyes we could gaze and see ourselves reflected, only a few hours before our meal?

Glaucon: This habit would require that of us.

Socrates: Wouldn't this [knowledge of our role in turning a being into a thing] hinder us in achieving happiness?

Glaucon: It could so hinder us in our quest for happiness.

Socrates: And, if we pursue this way of living, will we not have need to visit the doctor more often?

Glaucon: We would have such need.

Socrates: If we pursue our habit of eating animals, and if our neighbor follows a similar path, will we not have need to go to war against our neighbor to secure greater pasturage, because ours will not be enough to sustain us, and our neighbor will have a similar need to wage war on us for the same reason?

Glaucon: We would be so compelled.

Socrates: Would not these facts prevent us from achieving happiness, and therefore the conditions necessary to the building of a just society, if we pursue a desire to eat animals?

Glaucon: Yes, they would so prevent us.

Today, the resources that are required to sustain this wasteful way of living ("diet" is Greek for "way of living") include large amounts of energy (read "oil") for fertilizer, pesticides, antibiotics, refrigeration, water pumping, etc. So today we go to war to maintain our access to oil supplies, but the point Socrates made 2500 years ago is still relevant today. We do not hear about these concerns he raised so many years ago. Why not?
~~~~~~

Einstein's Brain Thought - "Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921

[swiss_miss]

Pretty sad that there is still so much mainstream ignorance in the world. When are these goofs going to realize that it is totally biologically incorrect for humans to eat meat? they way I see it we lost a lot of brain mass when we started eating meat.

[Goldenrod]

I'm no expert on this but I've seen some of this stuff in the past and I don't believe it has a direct correlation to home sapiens as a species. At the point, where our evoluationary ancestors began eating meat and correlates to when their brains began to change and become more like ours, however, a lot of time past after that, in which, evolution continued before our species became what it is today. So while along our evolutionary path, meat may have assisted various species, it doesn't mean that homo sapiens need meat.