Posted on 12/15/2009 6:44:02 PM PST by Mount Athos
Genetic changes that apparently allow humans to live longer than any other primate may be rooted in a more carnivorous diet.
These changes may also promote brain development and make us less vulnerable to diseases of aging, such as cancer, heart disease and dementia.
These key differences in lifespan may be due to genes that humans evolved to adjust better to meat-rich diets, biologist Caleb Finch at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles suggested.
The oldest known stone tools manufactured by the ancestors of modern humans, which date back some 2.6 million years, apparently helped butcher animal bones. As our forerunners evolved, they became better at capturing and digesting meat, a valuable, high-energy food, by increasing brain and body size and reducing gut size.
Over time, eating red meat, particularly raw flesh infected with parasites in the era before cooking, stimulates chronic inflammation, Finch explained. In response, humans apparently evolved unique variants in a cholesterol-transporting gene, apolipoprotein E, which regulates chronic inflammation as well as many aspects of aging in the brain and arteries.
One variant found in all modern human populations, known as ApoE3, emerged roughly 250,000 years ago, "just before the final stage of evolution of Homo sapiens in Africa," Finch explained.
ApoE3 lowers the risk of most aging diseases, specifically heart disease and Alzheimer's, and is linked with an increased lifespan.
"I suggest that it arose to lower the risk of degenerative disease from the high-fat meat diet they consumed," Finch told LiveScience. "Another benefit is that it promoted brain development."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Nope, we are all dieing together because Algore says so and it won't be pleasant unless we free our wallets up.
meat makes us live longer??
Oh dear, but what about all those reams and reams of books and articles over a century-and-a-half promoting veganism and swearing it’s good for what ails us?
I can believe it. My brother was a veggie and kicked off quite young.
Face it, our medical profession is essentially guessing when they talk about how external factors influence humans.
That picture makes me hungry, for meat!!!
I find it unbelievable that man developed stone tools 2.6 million years ago. With such tools, he would have dominated the earth. His population would have soared as there would be few predators against men armed with tools. He would have built structures and there would be far more record of his existence than we find.
I believe it is much more likely that the few traces of man we find at that age are actually far more recent and have simply been wrongly dated.
PETA and other libtard organizations and groups will counter otherwise.
There are studies that show that vegans die younger. I think we've been eating meat every since we got kicked out of the garden and probably before then.
But the stone tools they are talking about that far back are mostly just rocks chiseled to have cutting edges.
It is fairly obvious that humans have evolved/are designed to be meat eaters (actually omnivores.) First, we have binocular vision (two eyes in front of our head instead on the sides) which signifies that we are predators. Also, we have a set of k-9 teeth which designed for tearing flesh. We are also able to digest meat.
Clearly, eating meat is in our genes and a natural part of what we are.
I have never once met a 100 year old vegetarian.
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