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genewitchlast Thursday at 8:11 AM5 repliesview on HN

why is meat inflammatory? is it they way it's farmed/raised?

because we have teeth specifically designed to get meat off bones and animals that don't eat meat and weren't "designed to" don't have teeth designed to clean meat off bones. and that's just one i came up with, off the cuff.

if it's current farming practices that make the meat/dairy bad for us, then fix that. But i don't currently believe there's a greater health benefit to taking a ton of supplements to replace the missing nutrients that meat and dairy give us that you absolutely cannot get from vegan diets without it becoming a monotonous pain in the neck.


Replies

didibuslast Thursday at 6:11 PM

> why is meat inflammatory? is it they way it's farmed/raised?

Not all meats are inflammatory. Processed and high temp cooked meats especially red are.

And I don't think we have the answer fully to why, but we know the lesser processed it is the better, and I believe I've seen some things about grass fed and all these more organically/traditional made meats seem to not be as inflammatory.

Also, we evolved during a period where we hunted, so even the idea of farmed meet maybe isn't really part of our evolution. But also, during our hunting evolution, we likely didn't have meat at every meals. Plus if you ever had game meat, it tastes really different and often isn't as good as what we farmed. So we kind of came to farm what tasted the best and was easy to farm, so it might be those meats aren't as good for us.

Also, you can't always assume that the environment we evolved in and the "natural" state is good for us. It wasn't bad enough for us to dwindle in numbers, but our population count was kept much lower than now and our life expectancies were shorter. As long as we made it to a healthy reproduction state evolution doesn't care. So all these inflammatory issues appear starting in your 30s and really become a problem much later in life. It's possible this didn't matter in evolutionary terms.

Lastly, you also have to take into context what else we'd do/eat. If our diets were more balanced than other things we would eat could neutralize some of that inflammation and meat has other vitamins and nutrients that are benefitial, but if someone cuts those other things out of their diet now the inflammation could become a problem.

So it's all more nuanced and complex.

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GenBiotlast Thursday at 8:47 AM

I think they mean in the sense of pro-inflammatory. Which it very much is (especially red meat).

aziaziazilast Thursday at 2:01 PM

Some herbivores too have huge canines[0] for territorial fights. I used to use mine to fight my brother but now I'm settled they only help tearing appart coconut, cowliflower and seitan.

0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_deer

donbraelast Thursday at 9:10 AM

You can get all the nutrients you need, easily, from a vegan diet, with the exception of B12 (a cheap supplement will cover that).

Also, human ‘canines’ are pretty pathetic. They’ll do the job in getting meat off bones, sure, but are nothing compared with my dog’s teeth – he has proper canines. (He also doesn’t have to prepare and cook meat before tucking in. Humans are actually pretty lame meat eaters even in comparison to other omnivores like dogs, let alone carnivores like lions.)

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hallolelast Friday at 2:11 AM

Can you name which EXACT nutrients you "absolutely cannot get from vegan diets without it becoming a monotonous pain in the neck"? A daily multivitamin isn't hard.