Is dietary orientation and/or classification; e.g. vegetarian and omnivore, a nature or a choice?

[Smart_Guy]

Hello guys.

As per the title, is it or is it not? Is calling a human a vegetarian semantically/logically correct? Does it or does is not make sense? Like, accordingly can a human be omnivore and another vegetarian? Does feeding a bear, for example, plants only in isolation make it vegetarian? Wouldn't just saying "I don't eat meat" be the right thing to say instead of "I'm vegetarian"?

Am I confusing terminologies here?

Please advise.

 

[YmirGF]

Does it really matter @Smart_Guy?

 

[Smart_Guy]

Does anything else here really matter @YmirGF ?



I know some fanatic responses could bash me for it, included clever made ones, but I want to know opinions.

 

[Kemosloby]

Hello guys.

As per the title, is it or is it not? Is calling a human a vegetarian semantically/logically correct? Does it or does is not make sense? Like, accordingly can a human be omnivore and another vegetarian? Does feeding a bear, for example, plants only in isolation make it vegetarian? Wouldn't just saying "I don't eat meat" be the right thing to say instead of "I'm vegetarian"?

Am I confusing terminologies here?

Please advise.

I don't eat meat is the glass half empty, I'm a vegetarian is the glass half full. It's more special.

 

[wizanda]

Am I confusing terminologies here?

Yes you've confused the terminologies..... First off scientifically we're not omnivores, we're not designed the same....

Omnivores have sharper teeth, and can eat raw flesh and blood, we can not.

Biologically we're designed to live on fruit, nuts and berries, as they contain everything we need to survive healthily on.

We're not design to eat death, and in many religions globally God is known as the lord of the living, not dead...Eating death makes us ill.

It is like with your children about 5, as they start to eat meat, they don't like it, they struggle to chew it, it makes their poo stink (poison in the system), and yet we enforce they eat it.

So no it isn't a choice, it is bad education due to the religions setting our dietary morality, and not having a clue what they're talking about.

Now some people will get ill due to their body not accepting meat in the slightest, so they will have to not eat it, and some people due to only eating it, are so ill they don't know how to eat anything else.

Yet if we were all educated correctly, there is no reason for any of us to kill anything, and go against the way God designed nature.

 

[fantome profane]

If we did eat meat during our evolutionary past it would have been a rare event. It might have been something that happened a few times a year, or at the most once a week. And sometimes people would go years without eating meat. Nothing at all like the way some people today eat meat three times a day, seven days a week.

 

[Kirran]

You're confusing herbivore and vegetarian, I think.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

By nature we are omnivores we have the Teeth and Digestive system to survive on most foods.
However only some of us have recently acquired the ability to tolerate lactose in milk and Gluten in grains. We have always been able to eat meat. We can now also tolerate the toxins in plants of some of the potato tomato family. Only a proportion of us have the ability to tolerate the toxins in peanuts. we can not digest the cellulose in in plants. unlike ruminants.

Overall we have more problems digesting vegetable matter than meats.

This is unlike the cat family who can only survive on a meat diet.

 

[Kirran]

By nature we are omnivores we have the Teeth and Digestive system to survive on most foods.
However only some of us have recently acquired the ability to tolerate lactose in milk and Gluten in grains. We have always been able to eat meat. We can now also tolerate the toxins in plants of some of the potato tomato family. Only a proportion of us have the ability to tolerate the toxins in peanuts. we can not digest the cellulose in in plants. unlike ruminants.

Overall we have more problems digesting vegetable matter than meats.

Well certain vegetable matter. Other types we've been relying on for many millions of years, in particular fruits, many grains, tubers...

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Well certain vegetable matter. Other types we've been relying on for many millions of years, in particular fruits, many grains, tubers...

This is an interesting and concise account. Whole Health Source: Grains and Human Evolution

It seems no human could tolerate or eat grains till some 11000 years ago.Some native American groups only started to eat grains 300 years ago. On the scale of things it is a very recent development.
It is not surprising that many of us are still intolerant of toxins and gluten found in most grains.
These include

• Wheat

• Barley (malt)

• Rye

• Oats

• Sorghum*

• Millet*

• Teff*

• Triticale

• Spelt

• Durum (semolina)

• Einkorn

• Emmer

• Corn (maize)* (for a list of hidden corn ingredients, go here <<<)

• Rice (does not include wild rice varieties but does include brown rice)*

• Groat

• Graham

Read more at What Foods Contain Gluten? Use This Ultimate List to Learn More

As far as I know I am not intolerant to any of these, but it is hard to know If we would be better without the potential difficulties.
To a greater or lesser extent all vegetable matter contains toxins, However over time we have become tolerant to a majority of them. For instance Dogs can not tolerate the toxins in chocolate which to them are still a lethal poison. Cats can tolerate small quantities of many vegetables, but can not metabolise them.

 

[Iti oj]

I voted other. I think diet is a choice and that humans are opportunist . It's similar but different from omnivore .

Also I disagree that it's a personal choice . meat eating has socioeconomic and environmental impact that can't be contained to an individual this affects all. Also animal rights arguments .

 

[Jumi]

Not my choice which foods make me sick or keep me in condition. I would much rather eat pizza, but it's better I don't or the constant pain will come back. Sometimes I make choices based on my morals. Say a company uses child labor in inhumane conditions to produce their juice I will just not buy it.

 

[Willamena]

Hello guys.

As per the title, is it or is it not? Is calling a human a vegetarian semantically/logically correct? Does it or does is not make sense? Like, accordingly can a human be omnivore and another vegetarian? Does feeding a bear, for example, plants only in isolation make it vegetarian? Wouldn't just saying "I don't eat meat" be the right thing to say instead of "I'm vegetarian"?

Am I confusing terminologies here?

Please advise.

You pose good, well thought-out questions.

For humans, whom are the developers of the categories so applied, being 'vegetarian' is a statement of life-style rather than a proper description.

Life-style = "choice"
Description = "nature"

 

[Quintessence]

Well, let's put some misconceptions I'm seeing floating around in this thread to rest:

"Eating meat and cooking food made us human, the studies suggest, enabling the brains of our prehuman ancestors to grow dramatically over a period of a few million years.

Although this isn't the first such assertion from archaeologists and evolutionary biologists, the new studies demonstrate, respectively, that it would have been biologically implausible for humans to evolve such a large brain on a raw, vegan diet and that meat-eating was a crucial element of human evolution at least 1 million years before the dawn of humankind."
*source*​

And some other references about this particular issue:

• Meat-eating was essential for human evolution, says UC Berkeley anthropologist specializing in diet
• Cooking up Bigger Brains
• Eating Meat Made us Human

Not hard to find some other references accessible to the general public.

 

[LuisDantas]

Hello guys.

As per the title, is it or is it not? Is calling a human a vegetarian semantically/logically correct?

Sure, if he chose to keep a vegetarian diet.

Does it or does is not make sense? Like, accordingly can a human be omnivore and another vegetarian?

If you define omnivore by habit, then most certainly.

Even if you understand omnivore to be a biological fitness regardless of actual habits, then it is still at least arguably true that individual people can be either vegetarians or omnivores.

Does feeding a bear, for example, plants only in isolation make it vegetarian?

I suppose it does... but he is not likely to survive the experience. Bears IIRC are true carnivores and can't live on a vegetarian diet at all.

Wouldn't just saying "I don't eat meat" be the right thing to say instead of "I'm vegetarian"?

Depending on how strict you are, it is either much the same thing or it would be more proper to say you are lacto-egg-vegetarian (or vegan, as the case may be).

Am I confusing terminologies here?

Apparently. Humans can be vegetarians or even vegans even if we are not inherently herbivores.

A herbivore can't digest meat. A vegetarian could, but chooses or promises not to.

There is some controversy on how well adapted to digest meat humans are. We were never in our evolutionary history all that well suited to eating meat, but it is a plain fact that we are not pure herbivores either. In essence, we are hastily and imperfectly adapted to eating meat despite being best suited to eating plants.

 

[Iti oj]

Well, let's put some misconceptions I'm seeing floating around in this thread to rest:

"Eating meat and cooking food made us human, the studies suggest, enabling the brains of our prehuman ancestors to grow dramatically over a period of a few million years.

Although this isn't the first such assertion from archaeologists and evolutionary biologists, the new studies demonstrate, respectively, that it would have been biologically implausible for humans to evolve such a large brain on a raw, vegan diet and that meat-eating was a crucial element of human evolution at least 1 million years before the dawn of humankind."
*source*​

And some other references about this particular issue:

• Meat-eating was essential for human evolution, says UC Berkeley anthropologist specializing in diet
• Cooking up Bigger Brains
• Eating Meat Made us Human

Not hard to find some other references accessible to the general public.

And? that has nothing to do with what we can and should do now. It's a non point and a distraction from the topic

 

[Quintessence]

And? that has nothing to do with what we can and should do now. It's a non point and a distraction from the topic

Um... what? Are you feeling okay?

 

[wizanda]

Well, let's put some misconceptions I'm seeing floating around in this thread to rest:

Tooo many flaws in logic; first that is suggesting we evolved, we'd need to prove that first....

Next if we did evolve, why haven't we gotten faster, sharper teeth, claws, anything to have the ability to now catch, and eat these animals raw, like we've evolved to?....

Or even cooked like we've evolved to?.... Yet instead what is modern nutrition realizing?

We're not physically capable of digesting meat properly, it causes numerous illnesses, and has the same risk of causing cancer, as smoking does.

So we've evolved to do something, that biologically doesn't work with us in the slightest, that sounds a good basis for using science in the argument.

 

[LuisDantas]

Tooo many flaws in logic; first that is suggesting we evolved, we'd need to prove that first....

That has not been an issue for about a century now...

Next if we did evolve, why haven't we gotten faster, sharper teeth, claws, anything to have the ability to now catch, and eat these animals raw, like we've evolved to?....

We just didn't. There was no particular selective pressure directing us to.

 

[Jainarayan]

This is unlike the cat family who can only survive on a meat diet.

That.

In addition to being obligate carnivores (a cat will die on a wholly vegetarian diet), they need taurine. Taurine is added to cat food because most house cats don't hunt. Without taurine they will go blind. My cat eats the food the dogs leave if I don't grab the dishes. The vet said it's fine for him to eat some of the dog's food, as long as he gets his own cat food.