More Raw Vegan Truth

One of the most common "arguments" for veganism goes like this:  People don't have well-developed canine teeth like those of dogs or cats, therefore our teeth prove that we aren't adapted to a meat-based diet.

Although they are fond of using chimpanzees as models for human behavior, apparently vegans missed or ignore a prominent feature of chimpanzee dentition:

Source: www.wallpaperweb.org

The chimp eats a 95% vegan, 70% fruit diet, so if you think large canines are evidence for carnivory, how do you explain the fact that chimps have canines several times the size of any human canine?

Simple.  Canines have functions other than tearing into meat.  Chimps display canines as a part of self-defense and social ranking.  You might even say that he who has the largest canines wins.  Canines are weapons useful even to a frugivore.

By the erroneous vegan reasoning, since chimps are frugivores and chimps have huge canines, huge canines must be a sign of frugivory.  Since humans don't have huge canines like frugivorous chimps, we must not be frugivores!

In contrast to chimps, we use our minds as our primary weapons.  Large canines are unnecessary when you can make knives, arrows, and spears.

In most animals, bearing the teeth serves primarily as a threat; in humans, it serves as an invitation we call a smile.  Canines like that certainly spoil a smile.

Finally,  focusing on canines distracts us from the other teeth.  Unlike more vegetarian primates, human teeth have sharp ridges that form shearing surfaces, so they cut like scissors:

Source:  New Scientist

Whenever someone tells me we don't have teeth designed for eating meat, I simply ask, "Have you ever sliced open your tongue or cheek with your own teeth?"  If so, you have proven to yourself that human teeth can easily slice raw meat. 

We don't need canines to eat meat, we only need shearing teeth.  All of human teeth have a more carnivore form than other primates,  and this change in human teeth first appears about 2.5 million years ago.  From the New Scientist article entitled "Meat Eating Is an Old Human Habit:"

In 1999, researchers found cut marks on animal bones dated at around 2.5 million years old. But no one could be sure that they were made by meat-eating hominids, because none appeared to have suitable teeth.

Now an analysis by Peter Ungar of the University of Arkansas has revealed that the first members of Homo had much sharper teeth than their most likely immediate ancestor, Australopithecus afarensis, the species that produced the famous fossil Lucy.

Eating meat requires teeth adapted more to cutting than to grinding. The ability to cut is determined by the slope of the cusps, or crests. "Steeper crests mean the ability to consume tougher foods," Ungar says. He has found that the crests of teeth from early Homo skeletons are steeper than those of gorillas, which consume foods as tough as leaves and stems, but not meat.

"Ungar shows that early Homo had teeth adapted to tougher food than A. afarensis or [chimpanzees]. The obvious candidate is meat," says anthropologist [and vegetarian] Richard Wrangham of Harvard University.

A recent study of the evolution of horses determined that evolutionary changes in tooth form such as this would require about one million years of dietary evolution.  This means that in order for early humans to have sharper teeth by 2.5 million years ago, their ancestors must have been eating meat for at least one million years prior.  No surprise then, that our earliest evidence for meat-eating, stone-tool wielding hominins dates to about 3.5 million years ago.

Meat--its been what's for dinner for at least 3.5 million years, and we have the teeth to prove it. 

For more on this topic:

The Raw Truth About Raw Vegan Diets

More Raw Truth About Raw Vegan Diets 1

More Raw Truth About Raw Vegan Diets 2

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