Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - Forks Over Knives (Or, the Western diet vs. a plant-based diet)

Autumn · 12-27-2011, 01:04 PM

I like to look at diet through a fairly simple evolutionary lens. Clearly our bodies were designed for the diet that our ancestors long ago ate. The main difference between then and now is scarcity.

Those of us in modern America do not deal with scarcity. We have the appetite for sweet foods, fatty foods and meats that our ancestors developed, yet do not have the scarcity of those items to balance it. We do not have to find a fruit tree in season, or hunt an animal to satisfy those needs. +

So it seems natural to me that we are going to desire more fat, more sweets and more meat than we should eat. We live in an "unnatural" setting, and so are going to have to get used to the idea that we have to resist our natural urges and find ways to eat that replicate somewhat what our bodies were built for. It's difficult because our ancestors could want sweets all they want, it didn't mean they had them, but we have to build up mental skills to control our appetites. I think one thing a vegetarian diet has going for it is that it's much simpler to just decide you won't meat, for example, than to attempt to stick to artificial limits. I was a vegetarian for 14 years and had no problem with it, but now that I eat meat it's much harder to resist the urges and eat a reasonable amount.

12-27-2011, 01:04 PM	#56
Autumn Head Coach Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Bath, ME	I like to look at diet through a fairly simple evolutionary lens. Clearly our bodies were designed for the diet that our ancestors long ago ate. The main difference between then and now is scarcity. Those of us in modern America do not deal with scarcity. We have the appetite for sweet foods, fatty foods and meats that our ancestors developed, yet do not have the scarcity of those items to balance it. We do not have to find a fruit tree in season, or hunt an animal to satisfy those needs. + So it seems natural to me that we are going to desire more fat, more sweets and more meat than we should eat. We live in an "unnatural" setting, and so are going to have to get used to the idea that we have to resist our natural urges and find ways to eat that replicate somewhat what our bodies were built for. It's difficult because our ancestors could want sweets all they want, it didn't mean they had them, but we have to build up mental skills to control our appetites. I think one thing a vegetarian diet has going for it is that it's much simpler to just decide you won't meat, for example, than to attempt to stick to artificial limits. I was a vegetarian for 14 years and had no problem with it, but now that I eat meat it's much harder to resist the urges and eat a reasonable amount.