The plate fell down with a loud clatter. The wife merely looked up with a controlled calmness – a look every married man probably experiences from time to time. The husband was even more furious with her lack of expression. “I am not a goat to graze on grass and croutons! I need my meat!!” Years rolled by… The dramatics had stopped – to a certain degree. But the arguments remained. She was a strict vegetarian. He loved his animal foods. The daughter was growing up into a beautiful lady. Probably a man needs a mother, wife and daughter to complete his learning. She sat down with her dad to explain –

Daughter: Dad! How would you like it if someone hurt me?

Dad: He will be dead before you finish the sentence! What happened kanna?

Daughter: That lamb is also a living thing! How can you kill it?

Dad: Survival of the fittest, my dear! We were meant to be meat eaters. Ten thousand years ago men were hunters and food gatherers. It is in our very nature. It is the food chain – animals eat plants, stronger animals eat other animals, human beings eat animals. Imagine what would happen to the ecology if animals were never hunted.

Daughter: What a rubbish argument! You are not hunting and you most certainly are not eating wild animals! You are specially raising livestock for the purpose of eating!

Dad: So are the farmers today! They are specially growing crops for cultivation! We do not go gathering berries and roots. With changing times, just as how we developed agriculture, we have also developed methods to grow animals so that we don’t starve.

Daughter: But the animals are raised in the most atrocious environment. They have no movement, restricted to a cage. Chicken have their beaks cut off so that they don’t harm each other. These animals are force fed to fatten them before the kill, sometimes even with cardboard and inedible items so that they weigh those extra pounds. They are full of toxins, eating their own excreta and are not treated like a living things at all! (“And people like you are the cause for it” was her unsaid expression!) 

Dad: That is becoming a problem with commercial farming! (Thoughtfully) We could look for an organic alternative!

Daughter: Dad!! Don’t you just get it!! What about the pain of killing? Does that not account for anything?

Dad: Let me ask you this, my dear! You are such an intelligent girl, you must have read about ‘in-vitro’ meat or cultured meat. Experiments are on to produce meat by tissue culture. The process of developing in vitro meat involves taking muscle cells and applying a protein that helps the cells to grow into large portions of meat. Once the initial cells have been obtained, additional animals would not be needed. It is like the production of yogurt cultures. Would that be more acceptable to you as no animal will be killed?

The girl was quiet. She had never thought on those line. Would she really be able to accept a piece of meat just because it actually isn’t a part of an animal? Does that make it any more agreeable?

God looked at Science. “Is there anything you can aid her with?” Science smiled and replied –

Science: Lots Lord! For instance, anthropological research shows that early humans were not omnivores as they were believed to be. They were actually Frugivores or Fruit eaters. The great taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish naturalist and botanist who established the modern scientific method of classifying plants and animals, classified humans not as carnivores, not as omnivores, nor even as herbivores, but as frugivores. Humans belong to the order of Primates and their closest animal relatives are the anthropoid apes (gorillas, monkeys, chimps) all of whom are frugivores. Dr. Alan Walker, an anthropologist of John Hopkins University in Maryland, has done research showing that early humans were once exclusively fruit eaters.

God: And how did they come to this conclusion?

Science: For most of history men were not mighty hunters but sophisticated baboons. Comparing his anatomy, his teeth and nails are not really structured for carnivorous pursuits.

God: Hmm… In contrast to a carnivores’ sharp claws and large canine, man has thin fingernails and pathetically small canine teeth.

Science: Yes Father! Also, the jaws of carnivores move only up and down to tear chunks of flesh. Humans, like other herbivores, move his jaws up and down and side to side to help grind fibrous plant food.

God: You could also talk about human digestive tract…

Science: Carnivores swallow their food whole, relying on their extremely acidic stomach juices to do most of the digestive work and to kill the pathogens that would otherwise sicken or kill them. Humans and other herbivores have digestive enzymes in their saliva—unlike carnivores—so their stomach acids are much weaker.

God: Carnivores were meant to eat their food whole! They have short intestinal tracts and colons that allow meat to pass through it relatively quickly, before it has a chance to rot and cause illness. But humans, like other herbivores, have intestinal tracts that are much longer than comparably-sized carnivores, allowing the body more time to break down fiber and absorb the nutrients from a plant-based diet.

Science: Actually Father, the long human intestinal tract actually makes it dangerous for them to eat meat, since bacteria has extra time to multiply during the long trip through the digestive system as the meat begins to rot. Their kidneys are smaller and become diseased from the extra work. Carnivores are adapted to process huge amounts of food at a time – up to 25 percent of their body weight or more. Then they eat nothing for days at a time. This doesn’t sound very much like the human way of eating! But I have a question Father.

God: Of course my child. What is it?

Science: If the human body was not designed to actually assimilate meat, how come he has been doing it for so long? I mean how has he survived on something that is not truly his food? (With a disturbed frown) Would you call that evolution?

God: (Smiling)  Even though humans have adopted omnivorous and carnivorous eating practices, their anatomy and physiology have not changed. They remain biologically a species of fruit eaters. The human digestive system has been adapted to a diet of fruits and vegetables for more than 60 million years of development. A few thousand years of aberrant eating will not change their dietary requirements for optimum health. My dear tell me which is more complex – the digestive system of a carnivore or that of a herbivore?

Science: Carnivores have the shortest and simplest digestive system. Omnivores’ digestive tracts are more complex and that of herbivores the most complex.

God: And in your opinion does evolution make things simpler or more complicated?

Science: As the basic role of evolution is for survival, very often it creates more complex structures to counter becoming extinct. In that sense the digestive tract of a herbivore which is more close to humans and frugivores is far more complex ready to survive on mere fruits and nuts.

God: (Thoughtfully) I wonder if man has the urge to kill with his bare hands and eat? Does he salivate at the sight of a dead animal by his car?

Science: No Father!! It is not his natural instinct to kill! Perhaps in geographical areas that didn’t have land produce, for sheer survival he had to support himself on animal meat. But today, many of them continue to be driven by this urge.

God: Hm… What do you know about the Triune brain, my dear?

Science: Paul MacLean, the former director of the Laboratory of the Brain and Behaviour at the United States National Institute of Mental Health, developed a model of the brain based on its evolutionary development. It is referred to as the “triune brain theory”. MacLean suggests that the human brain is actually three brains in one. Each of the layers or “brains” were established successively in response to evolutionary need. The three layers are the reptilian system, or R-complex, the paleomammalian complex or the limbic system, and the neomammalian complex or the neocortex. Each layer is geared toward separate functions of the brain, but all three layers interact substantially.

God: Do you know what each of their roles in humans today is?

Science: Yes Father! The reptilian system consists of the brain stem and the cerebellum. Its purpose is closely related to actual physical survival and maintenance of the body. It orchestrates movement, digestion, reproduction, circulation, breathing, and the execution of the “fight or flight” response during stress. Because the reptilian brain is primarily concerned with physical survival, the behaviours it governs have much in common with the survival behaviours of animals. The limbic system, the second brain to evolve, houses the primary centres of emotion. It includes the amygdala, which is important in the association of events with emotion, and the hippocampus, which is active in converting information into long term memory and in memory recall. Repeated use of specialised nerve networks in the hippocampus enhances memory storage, so this structure is involved in learning from both commonplace experiences and deliberate study. The third the neocortex is also called the cerebral cortex. It constitutes five-sixths of the human brain. The neocortex makes language, including speech and writing possible. It renders logical and formal operational thinking possible and allows man to see ahead and plan for the future. The neocortex also contains two specialised regions, one dedicated to voluntary movement and one to processing sensory information.

God: Yet man has just one brain!! My dear, evolution is not a ‘dead’ process where one process needs to die for the other to rise! The triune brain keeps alive the reptilian need for security, the animal need for affection and the intellectual need of a human. But as much as the reptilian brain is part of the human brain, remember without the higher neocortex, it would be just a reptilian brain – not a human one! The food needs of human beings perhaps hold the psyche of starvation and need for survival. This continues to drive him for meat and killing animals! Blessed are those who are able to overcome this urge and learn to rely on the vegetarian sources of energy. Indeed in man a millennia coexist!

Written by Gita Krishna Raj  |  Published in infinithoughts in October 2011

When Science met God… |  Segment Three: The making of me…  |  Chapter Four: Where Millennia coexist…