[Insanity]

Our species started out predominantly eating fruits, vegetables, nuts,.. As hunter gatherers, meat eating came later and initially was still not a dominant source of nutrition.

So yes, you eventually evolved for this, but it wasn’t the dominant food source for a loooooong time.

[amanaplanacanal]

Homo sapiens? I don't think that's necessarily true. Older ancestors maybe. Home sapiens was probably mostly getting calories from fruit, tubers, and other animals, depending on season and what they could find.

[Insanity]

Yeah I left a response about that in another comment. Sapiens (sapiens) perhaps, but not true for the entire homo line.

[konart]

Our species started out predominantly eating whatever was available.

During different points of time the ration was very different. From "mostly nuts" to "mostly fish".

[wizzwizz4]

And different populations evolutionarily "fine-tuned" in environments with different availabilities of various foodstuffs. While many dietary requirements are common to all humans (e.g. we lost the ability to synthesise vitamin C, making us all susceptible to scurvy), some are specific to individuals and (genetically-related) families.

Diet is one of the very few places where your genetic ancestry actually matters – although your gut microbiome, which evolves faster (https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2014.00587), may not share quite the same ancestry as your human cell tissue.

[throwaway198846]

> Diet is one of the very few places where your genetic ancestry actually matters

Aside from lactose intolerance what else is different between humans?

[adrian_b]

There are many other intolerances, e.g. coeliac disease and the many different kinds of food allergies.

Besides these cases, which are obvious due to immediate harm, and which are the reason for laws about food labeling that mentions lactose, gluten and various allergens, there is a lot of variability between humans in the efficiency of digesting various foods and in the capacity of absorption for various nutrients.

Some people are able to eat pretty much anything, while others are aware that they do not feel well after eating certain things, so they avoid them.

[Insanity]

Yes, but more likely insects as first small “animals”. Hunting animals takes more effort than eating fruits etc.

I know it’s all vague delineation of where our species really started, and at which point you would no longer consider it the homo line, but for a significant part of history we were a small predator that would eat whatever was _easily_ available. Hunting animals is not easy and it’s a risky endeavour.

I’m not saying meat wasn’t part of our diet obviously, but it logically wouldn’t have been as dominant a part of our diet as it is today.

[adrian_b]

The most likely hypothesis about how humans have become the most efficient hunters of the planet does not pass through catching insects and very small animals, but through eating the remains of the big prey killed by carnivores.

There are various bits of evidence for this, like the higher stomach acidity of humans, which resembles that of carrion eaters, like hyenas.

It is plausible that the ability to throw sticks and stones was used initially for scaring other predators and make them abandon their prey, and only later, after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, it became accurate enough to be usable for hunting living animals.

The ability to use stones to break the bones and eat the parts inaccessible for the carnivores who had killed the prey, i.e. marrow and brain, which are rich in hard to get nutrients, e.g. omega-3 fatty acids, is also presumed to have played an important role in the development of a bigger and bigger brain.

It is likely that the gangs of humans acted in a very similar way with the packs of hyenas, which acquire much of their food by scaring away from their prey the other predators, e.g. cheetahs, wild dogs, leopards and even lions. Moreover, similarly to humans, the most important ability of hyenas is not speed, but endurance when pursuing a possible prey that is tired or weakened, e.g. by wounds. While hyenas rely on their big teeth to chase the other predators, humans have relied on their ability to throw things at a distance, for the same purpose. While humans are quite bad at running, jumping, climbing or swimming, in comparison with most mammals, their throwing ability is unmatched by any other animal.

[throw_away_928]

They have found spears that are at least 400,000 years old, so we have hunted for food at least that long.

And if you look at our closest relatives chimpanzees, they also hunt without using tools. Humans and their ancestors probably ate whatever they had available, including meat.

[blacksmith_tb]

Not much meat, however[1] (unless we're counting insects, I suppose, but even then, still mostly fruit).

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee#Diet

[Antipode]

Also likely insects.