Vegetarianism is unnatural.
This is not a modern finding. The Bible gives us evidence of this, and clues that vegetarianism was not regarded with favor. In Genesis , Chapter Four, Eve bears Cain and Abel. ‘And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.’
That ‘but’ in the middle of the sentence is the first clue to disapproval. This disapproval is confirmed by verses three to five. Abel and Cain bring offerings to God: Abel of his sheep and Cain, the fruits of the ground. God, we are told, had respect for Abel’s carnivorous offering, but He had no respect for Cain’s vegetarian one.
The Bible, however, can only give an indication of the feeling of the time in which it was written. It does not provide a convincing answer to the question of what we really should eat. Are we a carnivorous, omnivorous or vegetarian species?
The answer to that question lies in our past, but not the immediate past.
The way we live now is based on advanced agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals. This is a very recent invention: we cannot have adapted to it yet. To determine what foods are likely to make up an ideal diet for us as a species, we must look further back, at our evolutionary history.
For the food we have adapted to and should eat now is not a matter for current dietary fads, it is determined by what we have adapted to over millions of years and is coded in our genes.
We can trace Man’s evolution from remains found in Africa and other parts of the world of early hominids dated as long ago as five and a half million years (5) . We have fossilized bone records of both man and animals. We have found stone tools and implements that must have been used for killing and cutting flesh or for grinding plants. We even have found hominid feces.
These findings have led to a great deal of speculation. Are we a carnivorous, omnivorous or a herbivorous species?
We call our ancestors and the various modern primitive tribes, ‘hunter-gatherers’. In the world today, some tribes live exclusively on meat and fish. Others live largely on fruit, nuts and roots, although meat is also highly prized. It is obvious, therefore, that we can survive on a wide variety of foods.