Little Tuesday Free-Write that my wife has wanted me to put out for a while.
I was recently reading The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. It is so good and then there are three pages that just need to be ripped out of my kindle. The Author went full bore into the benefits of eating vegetarian and how people feel better when they start eating vegetables. Thanks, buddy, no shit. If you go from shoveling in cheeseburgers and fries to eating copious amounts of fruits and vegetables – you are going to feel a lot better. Then you after a while you won’t. Because human beings need precious substances like essential fatty acids and amino acids, B-vitamins, and iron which are not available in plant products. And no spinach, is not a viable iron source. Think it is? Prove it to me with blood work. A Complete Blood Count is $4.95.
Can you supplement a vegetarian or vegan diet and not be malnourished and anemic – Yes, please do. But don’t try to convince people we are evolved to eat a raw vegetable diet. And here is where I lost it.
“They call it a sattvic, or pure diet. And as to your concern about strength, the most powerful animals on the planet, ranging from gorillas to elephants, wear the badge of proud vegetarians. Did you know that a gorilla has about thirty times the strength of a man?”
Gorillas are massive herbivores that can synthesize many essential amino acids themselves. They eat over 40 pounds of food in a single day. AKA they spend over 75% of their waking hours (12+) chomping on green mush with their highly adapted teeth. As humans we evolved bigger brains at the expense of our digestive machinery. We are omnivores that evolved to eat cooked nutrient dense whole food which is easier to digest than a handful of leaves. This allowed us more time in the day to think, create, and take over the world (unfortunately).
If you want more information on this topic read the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.
If you want to go back in time and only eat raw food you will likely need to spend over nine hours of your day gnawing on celery #science. Yea um no thanks.
“Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants.”
-Michael Pollan
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