Carnivore diet VS veganism

To mark cows for identification, ranchers may restrain them and press hot fire irons into their flesh, which can cause third-degree burns, as they bellow in pain and attempt to escape. Often without providing any pain relief, workers typically cut male calves’ testicles from their scrotums or tightly clamp them so that they atrophy, and the horns of cows raised for beef are often cut or burned off.

While “on the range,” most cows receive inadequate veterinary care, and as a result, many become sick or die from infection and injury. In the winter, cattle freeze to death in states such as Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. And during the summer, they die from the heat in states such as Kansas and Texas.

After about a year of enduring harsh weather extremes, cows are shipped to an auction lot and then may be sent hundreds of miles away to massive feedlots—feces- and mud-filled holding pens where they’re crammed together by the thousands. Many are sick on arrival, and some die shortly afterward.

Cattle on feedlots are fed a highly unnatural diet of grain and corn, which is designed to fatten them up quickly. This food can cause their stomachs to become so full of gas—a condition called bloat—that breathing may become impaired because of compression of the lungs. Some may suffer from a severe increase in stomach acid, causing ulcers to form and resulting in a condition called “acute acidosis.”

The feedlot air is saturated with ammonia, methane, and other noxious chemicals that build up from the huge amounts of manure, and the cows are forced to inhale these gases constantly. These fumes can give them chronic respiratory problems, making breathing painful.

Cattle raised for food are also regularly dosed with drugs such as antibiotics to make them grow faster and keep them alive in these miserable conditions. Some of the antibiotics, including penicillin and tetracycline, are also used to treat humans but don’t always work when prescribed, because the patients have been exposed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and low doses of antibiotics as a result of consuming meat, milk, or eggs from animals who were fed the same drugs. Researchers at Texas Tech University suspect that drug-resistant bacteria found in cattle feedlots can become airborne and cause hard-to-treat infections in humans.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2 million people contract antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections each year, and approximately 23,000 of them die. Eating antibiotic-free meat is not a solution. It’s still high in cholesterol and saturated fat and contributes to a person’s risk of suffering from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.

Going through the reader feedback on some of my recent articles, I noticed the frequently stated notion that eating meat was an essential step in human evolution. While this notion may comfort the meat industry, it’s simply not true, scientifically.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell University and author of The China Study (please check out the link), explains that in fact, we only recently (historically speaking) began eating meat, and that the inclusion of meat in our diet came well after we became who we are today. He explains that “the birth of agriculture only started about 10,000 years ago at a time when it became considerably more convenient to herd animals. This is not nearly as long as the time [that] fashioned our basic biochemical functionality (at least tens of millions of years) and which functionality depends on the nutrient composition of plant-based foods.”

That jibes with what Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine President Dr. Neal Barnard says in his book, The Power of Your Plate, in which he explains that “early humans had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet, drawing on foods we can pick with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging -- eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”

There is no more authoritative source on anthropological issues than paleontologist Dr. Richard Leakey, who explains what anyone who has taken an introductory physiology course might have discerned intuitively -- that humans are herbivores. Leakey notes that “[y]ou can’t tear flesh by hand, you can’t tear hide by hand ... We wouldn’t have been able to deal with food source that required those large canines” (although we have teeth that are called “canines,” they bear little resemblance to the canines of carnivores).

In fact, our hands are perfect for grabbing and picking fruits and vegetables. Similarly, like the intestines of other herbivores, ours are very long (carnivores have short intestines so they can quickly get rid of all that rotting flesh they eat).  We don’t have sharp claws to seize and hold down prey.  And most of us (hopefully) lack the instinct that would drive us to chase and then kill animals and devour their raw carcasses. Dr. Milton Mills builds on these points and offers dozens more in his essay, “A Comparative Anatomy of Eating.”

The point is this: Thousands of years ago when we were hunter-gatherers, we may have needed a bit of meat in our diets in times of scarcity, but we don’t need it now.  Says Dr. William C. Roberts, editor of the American Journal of Cardiology, “Although we think we are, and we act as if we are, human beings are not natural carnivores.  When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us, because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”

Sure, most of us are “behavioral omnivores” -- that is, we eat meat, so that defines us as omnivorous. But our evolution and physiology are herbivorous, and ample science proves that when we choose to eat meat, that causes problems, from decreased energy and a need for more sleep up to increased risk for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Old habits die hard, and it’s convenient for people who like to eat meat to think that there is evidence to support their belief that eating meat is “natural” or the cause of our evolution. For many years, I too, clung to the idea that meat and dairy were good for me; I realize now that I was probably comforted to have justification for my continued attachment to the traditions I grew up with.

But in fact top nutritional and anthropological scientists from the most reputable institutions imaginable say categorically that humans are natural herbivores, and that we will be healthier today if we stick with our herbivorous roots. It may be inconvenient, but it alas, it is the truth.  

Often, nearly always, when you start a Carnivore Diet, you will experience adverse symptoms and side effects. It is what I affectionately call the “Trough of Despair” or the “Trough” for short.

This is the adaptation period.

The symptoms you experience is your body’s natural response to carbohydrate restriction and the elimination of addictive agents and chemicals.

Symptoms

Common Symptoms Include:

Brain fog, headache, chills, sore throat, digestive issues, dizziness, irritability, bad breath/smells, bad taste in mouth (metallic), dry mouth, cravings (sugar!), muscle soreness, jaw soreness, nausea, diarrhea, poor focus, and decreased performance, energy, and drive, cramping, rapid heart rate, insomnia, night sweats, and nocturia (peeing a lot at night), hot or cold,

> I sat on a toilet for a week, threw up in the middle of the night, AND I had been on a low carb diet for 20 years.

If you are coming from a ketogenic (keto) or high fat/low carb diet (HFLC), the transition is generally easier than someone coming from a Standard American Diet (SAD – yes it’s sad for a reason) that is high in carbohydrates.

These symptoms are a result of your body undergoing major metabolic and hormonal changes.

Constipation

Eating a protein-only diet puts you at risk for digestive upsets, including constipation. Carbohydrates provide dietary fiber for the body, aiding in the softening of stools and elimination of waste products. Most high protein foods, such as meat and eggs, have no dietary fiber, and eating a diet of protein only eliminates carbs from the diet. High-protein foods also take longer to digest in the body, which slows the transit time of waste moving through the digestive system and prevents smooth bowel movements.

Lethargy

A diet that contains only protein has no energy-producing carbs to fuel your body and brain. Carbs provide glucose, your body's primary fuel for movement, digestion and thinking. A protein-only diet eliminates this primary source of energy causing you to feel fatigued and lethargic. Eventually, the body will start to use protein as a source of fuel to replace the carbs, which takes it away from its own functions in the body. Inadequate stores of protein needed to build and repair muscles can cause the breakdown and wasting of muscle tissue and lead to increased fatigue.

Decreased Calcium Stores

Eating too much protein might lead to decreased calcium in the bones long-term. Your body releases acids during protein digestion, which in effect increases blood acidity. To neutralize acidity in the blood, your body removes calcium from your bones to absorb the released acids. This reduces the amount of calcium in the bones and, without adequate dietary replenishment, loss of calcium leads to decreased bone mineral density, according to the United States Department of Agricultural Research Service. However, based on a review of recent research evaluating protein's effect on bone health published in the February 2010 issue of "Current Opinion in Lipidology," the authors to determined dietary protein could not increase pH levels -- blood acidity -- high enough to decrease bone mineral density. The effect of high protein intake on bone health remains a controversial issue.

Lack of Essential Nutrients

Eating a protein-only diet eliminates essential nutrients in the body, including complex carbs, healthy fats, vitamins and minerals. Carbs in the form of vegetables, fruits and whole grains provide your body's primary fuel source along with essential nutrients such as the B vitamins and magnesium, which increase energy and aid in muscle contraction. Healthy fats, such as nuts, fatty fish and olive oil help your body to perform necessary functions, such as maintaining hormonal balance, keeping skin healthy and absorbing vitamins. Fruits and vegetables provide a myriad of vitamins and minerals that help protect your heart and might prevent certain cancers, heart disease and stroke. Thus, a protein-only diet might put the body at risk of malnutrition and increase disease risk.

The world desperately needs joined-up action on industrial farming if it is to avoid catastrophic impacts on life on earth, according to the head of one of the world’s most highly regarded animal campaign groups.

Philip Lymbery, chief executive of Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) and the author of Farmageddon and more recently Deadzone, said: “Every day there is a new confirmation of how destructive, inefficient, wasteful, cruel and unhealthy the industrial agriculture machine is. We need a total rethink of our food and farming systems before it’s too late.”

His comments came on the eve of Compassion’s Livestock and Extinction conference in London which will bring together scientists, campaigners, UN representatives and multinational food corporations including Compass, Tesco and McDonalds. The conference aims to bring together a wide ranges of voices and connect up the many impacts that factory farming has on our planet.

The conference comes against a backdrop of alarming exposés of industrial farming. A week ago a Guardian/ITV investigation showed chicken factory staff in the UK changing crucial food safety information on chickens, while a month ago the European commission admitted that eggs containing a harmful pesticide may have been on sale in as many as 16 countries.

In the US in August, meanwhile, campaigners identified the world’s largest ever “deadzone” – an area in the sea where pollutants from farms create algal blooms that kill off or disperse marine life – and singled out the US’s heavily industrialised factory farm system as a major cause.

In an interview with the Guardian, Lymbery said that when he began campaigning on farm animals in 1990, it was still largely seen as a cruelty issue rather than something that went far beyond that.

Since taking over as chief executive of CIWF in 2005, Lymbery has focused on “moving the issue out of being a technical niche to get people to understand industrial farming as a big, global problem”.

“We need to go beyond an isolated approach,” Lymbery says. “Not just looking at the technical problems around welfare, not just looking at the technical issues around the environment, not just looking at food security in isolation, but putting all of these issues together, then we can see the real problem that lies at the heart of our food system – industrial agriculture.”

Lymbery argues that factory farming is not – as some contend – an efficient, space-saving way to produce the world’s food but rather a method in which the invisible costs are actually far higher than the savings.

“Factory farming is shrouded in mythology,” he said. “One of the myths is that it’s an efficient way of producing food when actually it is highly inefficient and wasteful.

“Another [myth] is that the protagonists will say that it can be good for the welfare of the animals. After all, if hens weren’t happy they wouldn’t lay eggs.“

The third myth is that factory farming saves space. On the surface it looks plausible, because, by taking farm animals off the land and cramming them into cages and confinement you are putting an awful lot of animals into a small space. But what is overlooked in that equation is you are then having to dedicate vast acreages of relatively scarce arable land to growing the feed.

“The crops fed to industrially reared animals worldwide could feed an extra four billion [people] on the planet.”

As the global demand for cheap meat grows, the expansion of agricultural land is putting more and pressure on our forests, rivers and oceans, contributing to deforestation, soil erosion, marine pollution zones and the global biodiversity crisis, he said.“

The UN has warned that if we continue as we are, the world’s soils will have effectively gone within 60 years. And then what? We shouldn’t look to the sea to bail us out because commercial fisheries are expected to be finished by 2048…

“The rainforest homes of the likes of jaguars and the critically endangered sumatran elephants are being razed to make way for intensive crop production and plantations that are feeding factory farm animals ... the mixed farm habitats of once common farmland birds such as barn owls, turtle doves and skylarks are being stripped away, and ... vast quantities of wild fish are being scooped up to feed industrially reared farmed fish and chickens and pigs, leaving the likes of penguins, puffins and other species starving.”

Antibiotic use is another red flag area. “There is now overwhelming evidence that the routine prophylactic use of antibiotics is leading to the rise of antibiotic resistant superbugs, and the World Health Organisation has issued warnings that if we don’t do something to curb antibiotic use in both human and animal medicine we will face a post-antibiotic era where currently treatable diseases will once again kill.”

1. A Vegan Diet Is Richer in Certain Nutrients

If you switch to a vegan diet from a typical Western diet, you'll eliminate meat and animal products.This will inevitably lead you to rely more heavily on other foods. In the case of a whole-foods vegan diet, replacements take the form of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, beans, peas, nuts and seeds.

Since these foods make up a larger proportion of a vegan diet than a typical Western diet, they can contribute to a higher daily intake of certain beneficial nutrients.

For instance, several studies have reported that vegan diets tend to provide more fiber, antioxidants and beneficial plant compounds. They also appear to be richer in potassium, magnesium, folate and vitamins A, C and E.(1, 2, 3, 4).

However, not all vegan diets are created equal.

For instance, poorly planned vegan diets may provide insufficient amounts of essential fatty acids, vitamin B12, iron, calcium, iodine or zinc (5).

That's why it's important to stay away from nutrient-poor, fast-food vegan options. Instead, base your diet around nutrient-rich whole plants and fortified foods. You may also want to consider supplements like vitamin B12.

BOTTOM LINE: Whole-food vegan diets are generally higher in certain nutrients. However, make sure you get all the nutrients your body needs.

2. It Can Help You Lose Excess Weight

An increasing number of people are turning to plant-based diets in the hope of shedding excess weight.

This is perhaps for good reason.

Many observational studies show that vegans tend to be thinner and have lower body mass indexes (BMIs) than non-vegans (6, 7).

In addition, several randomized controlled studies — the gold standard in scientific research — report that vegan diets are more effective for weight loss than the diets they are compared to (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16).

In one study, a vegan diet helped participants lose 9.3 lbs (4.2 kg) more than a control diet over an 18-week study period (9).

Interestingly, participants on the vegan diet lost more weight than those who followed calorie-restricted diets, even when the vegan groups were allowed to eat until they felt full (10, 11).

What's more, a recent small study comparing the weight loss effects of five different diets concluded that vegetarian and vegan diets were just as well-accepted as semi-vegetarian and standard Western diets (17).Even when they weren't following their diets perfectly, the vegetarian and vegan groups still lost slightly more weight than those on a standard Western diet.

BOTTOM LINE: Vegan diets have a natural tendency to reduce your calorie intake. This makes them effective at promoting weight loss without the need to actively focus on cutting calories.

3. It Appears to Lower Blood Sugar Levels and Improve Kidney Function

Going vegan may also have benefits for type 2 diabetes and declining kidney function.Indeed, vegans tend to have lower blood sugar levels, higher insulin sensitivity and up to a 50–78% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes (7, 18, 19, 20, 21).

Studies even report that vegan diets lower blood sugar levels in diabetics more than the diets from the American Diabetes Association (ADA), American Heart Association (AHA) and National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) (10, 12, 13, 22).

In one study, 43% of participants following a vegan diet were able to reduce their dosage of blood-sugar-lowering medication, compared to only 26% in the group that followed an ADA-recommended diet (22).

Other studies report that diabetics who substitute meat for plant protein may reduce their risk of poor kidney function (23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28).

What's more, several studies report that a vegan diet may be able to provide complete relief of systemic distal polyneuropathy symptoms — a condition in diabetics that causes sharp, burning pain (29, 30).

BOTTOM LINE: Vegan diets may reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. They are also particularly effective at reducing blood sugar levels and may help prevent further medical issues from developing.

4. A Vegan Diet May Protect Against Certain Cancers

According to the World Health Organization, about one-third of all cancers can be prevented by factors within your control, including diet.

For instance, eating legumes regularly may reduce your risk of colorectal cancer by about 9–18% (31).

Research also suggests that eating at least seven portions of fresh fruits and vegetables per day may lower your risk of dying from cancer by up to 15% (32).

Vegans generally eat considerably more legumes, fruit and vegetables than non-vegans. This may explain why a recent review of 96 studies found that vegans may benefit from a 15% lower risk of developing or dying from cancer (7).

What's more, vegan diets generally contain more soy products, which may offer some protection against breast cancer (33, 34, 35).

Avoiding certain animal products may also help reduce the risk of prostate, breast and colon cancers.That may be because vegan diets are devoid of smoked or processed meats and meats cooked at high temperatures, which are thought to promote certain types of cancers (36, 37, 38, 39). Vegans also avoid dairy products, which some studies show may slightly increase the risk of prostate cancer (40).

On the other hand, there is also evidence that dairy may help reduce the risk of other cancers, such as colorectal cancer. Therefore, it's likely that avoiding dairy is not the factor that lowers vegans' overall risk of cancer (41).

It's important to note that these studies are observational in nature. They make it impossible to pinpoint the exact reason why vegans have a lower risk of cancer.

However, until researchers know more, it seems wise to focus on increasing the amount of fresh fruits, vegetables and legumes you eat each day while limiting your consumption of processed, smoked and overcooked meat.

BOTTOM LINE: Certain aspects of the vegan diet may offer protection against prostate, breast and colon cancers.

5. It's Linked to a Lower Risk of Heart Disease

Eating fresh fruits, vegetables, legumes and fiber is linked to a lower risk of heart disease (32, 42, 43, 44, 45).

All of these are generally eaten in large amounts in well-planned vegan diets.Observational studies comparing vegans to vegetarians and the general population report that vegans may benefit from up to a 75% lower risk of developing high blood pressure (20).

Vegans may also have up to a 42% lower risk of dying from heart disease (20).

What's more, several randomized controlled studies report that vegan diets are much more effective at reducing blood sugar, LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol levels than the diets they are compared to (7, 9, 10, 12, 46).

This may be particularly beneficial to heart health since reducing high blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels may reduce the risk of heart disease by as much as 46% (47).

Compared to the general population, vegans also tend to consume more whole grains and nuts, both of which are good for your heart (48, 49).

BOTTOM LINE: Vegan diets may benefit heart health by significantly reducing the risk factors that contribute to heart disease.

6. A Vegan Diet Can Reduce Pain from Arthritis

A few studies have reported that a vegan diet has positive effects in people with different types of arthritis.

One study randomly assigned 40 arthritic participants to either continue eating their omnivorous diet or switch to a whole-food, plant-based vegan diet for 6 weeks.

Those on the vegan diet reported higher energy levels and better general functioning than those who didn't change their diet (50).

Two other studies investigated the effects of a probiotic-rich, raw food vegan diet on symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis.

Both reported that participants in the vegan group experienced a greater improvement in symptoms such as pain, joint swelling and morning stiffness than those who continued their omnivorous diet (51, 52).

BOTTOM LINE: Vegan diets based on probiotic-rich whole foods can significantly decrease symptoms of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.Take Home MessageVegan diets may provide an array of health benefits.For the most part, the exact reasons why these benefits occur are not fully known.That said, until further research emerges, it can only benefit you to increase the amount of nutrient-rich, whole plant foods in your diet.

This is a debate about which diet; an entirely carnivorous one or a vegan one, is better for the one eating it as well as the world in which the person lives overall. Whether or not the means by which we make one better than the other is natural or involves genetic engineering and/or selective breeding is not relevant to the debate unless my opponent wishes to make a single point regarding why being artificial or altering what is purely natural is wrong. It should be noted that the entire study of medicine and science in general is solely profitable and a career at all because we are fighting against what would naturally result in many deaths and ailments so if one can't prove them to be immoral, one cannot then say being unnatural or fighting nature is in any way an inherently negative/evil/suboptimal thing to do.

What makes this relevant is not so much that it is bad because it's "unnatural" but rather that all of the plant foods we consume in modern society are man made and before selective breeding our options would have been considerably less in the ways of plant foods. 

For the majority of the human species' existence, we have consumed low carb, high animal diets. This suggests that we are not physiologically adapted to eating grains (which our ancestors ate pretty much never) or a lot of fruits and vegetables.

Think you’re a paleo caveman or -woman? Well …

Although many humans choose to eat both plants and meat, earning us the dubious title of “omnivore,” we’re anatomically herbivorous. The good news is that if you want to eat like our ancestors, you still can: Nuts, vegetables, fruit, and legumes are the basis of a healthy vegan lifestyle.

Our Teeth, Jaws, and Nails

Humans have short, soft fingernails and small “canine” teeth. In contrast, carnivores all have sharp claws and large canine teeth that are capable of tearing flesh.

Carnivores’ jaws move only up and down, requiring them to tear chunks of flesh from their prey and swallow them whole. Humans and other herbivores can move their jaws up and down and from side to side, allowing them to grind up fruit and vegetables with their back teeth. Like other herbivores’ teeth, humans’ back molars are flat for grinding fibrous plant foods.

Dr. Richard Leakey, a renowned anthropologist, summarizes, “You can’t tear flesh by hand, you can’t tear hide by hand. Our anterior teeth are not suited for tearing flesh or hide. We don’t have large canine teeth, and we wouldn’t have been able to deal with food sources that require those large canines.”

Stomach Acidity

Carnivorous animals swallow their food whole, relying on extremely acidic stomach juices to break down flesh and kill the dangerous bacteria in it, which would otherwise sicken or kill them. Our stomach acids are much weaker in comparison, because strong acids aren’t needed to digest prechewed fruits and vegetables.

Intestinal Length

Animals who hunt have short intestinal tracts and colons that allow meat to pass through their bodies relatively quickly, before it can rot and cause illness. Humans’ intestinal tracts are much longer than those of carnivores of comparable size. Longer intestines allow the body more time to break down fiber and absorb the nutrients from plant-based foods, but they make it dangerous for humans to eat meat. The bacteria in meat have extra time to multiply during the long trip through the digestive system, increasing the risk of food poisoning. Meat actually begins to rot while it makes its way through human intestines, which increases the risk of developing colon cancer.

Read Dr. Milton Mills‘ entire article on the topic to learn more.

Human Evolution and the Rise of Meat-Heavy Diets

If it’s so unhealthy and unnatural for humans to eat meat, why did our ancestors sometimes turn to flesh for sustenance? Author of the book The Power of Your Plate, Dr. Neal Barnard, talks about humans’ early diet, explaining that we “had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet …. [M]eat-eating probably began by scavenging—eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”

Briana Pobiner, paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, adds, “[F]ruit and different plants and other things that we may have eaten maybe became less available. . . . The meat-eating that we do, or that our ancestors did even back to the earliest time we were eating meat, is culturally mediated. You need some kind of processing technology in order to eat meat .… So I don’t necessarily think we are hardwired to eat meat.”

There’s Something About Dairy

Humans started domesticating cattle only 10,000 years ago. Until then, children who stopped breastfeeding also stopped making the enzyme lactase and became lactose intolerant. After the domestication of cattle, however, the human digestive tract began to process dairy “products.” Groups who do not rely on cattle—like the Pima tribe, the Chinese and Thai, and the Bantu of West Africa—continue to be lactose intolerant today.

The Unfortunate Modern Diet

Until recently, only the wealthiest people could afford to feed, raise, and slaughter animals for meat, while everyone else ate mostly plant foods. Consequently, prior to the 20th century, only the rich were plagued routinely with diseases such as heart disease and obesity.Now that animal flesh has become relatively cheap and is easily available (thanks to the cruel, cost-cutting practices of farming), deadly ailments such as heart disease, strokes, cancer, diabetes, and obesity have spread to people across the socio-economic spectrum. And as the Western lifestyle spills over into less-developed areas of Asia and Africa, people there, too, have begun to suffer and die from diseases associated with meat-based diets.

When humans consume animal protein, research shows a link to cancer of the colon, breast, prostate, and pancreas. According to nutrition expert T. Colin Campbell, the director of the Cornell-China-Oxford Project on Nutrition, Health, and the Environment, “In the next ten years, one of the things you’re bound to hear is that animal protein . . . is one of the most toxic nutrients of all that can be considered.”

1) The human body loves meat.

2) The carnivore diet is not a detox diet, it's based on giving your body adequate nutrition such as is appropriate for carnivores.

3) All of these toxins from meat are from factory farm meat. No animal's meat is naturally toxic unless they are exposed to toxins or they are a rare species of poisonous animal.

The source you cited is talking specifically about factory farming and thus has nothing inherently to do with consuming meat in general. Once again the real problem behind everything in that article is capitalism. Also the source is PETA, which means that everything they say is about protecting animals. They religiously support veganism and are highly biased in their defense[sic] of it since human health is not their incentive.

Animal farms require you to farm plants in order to feed the animals with the plants, the reverse is untrue. This alone means that by pure space taken due to deforestation there's undeniably going to be horrendous harm if the entire human population switched to a carnivorous diet than if they cut out the middle-man and had a vegan diet instead.

Everything you have presented is pure and unadulterated bollocks juice from concentrate.

In these modern times, we are told that our diets should consist largely of grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, and that meat and dairy is something to be consumed in moderation if at all. If you consider our ancestors however, you should note that for the vast majority of human history this type of diet would have been impossible and thus one can hardly conclude that we are adapted to such a diet physiologically. Nearly all of the plant-based food sources we consume daily are actually man made through selective breeding, and before the age of agriculture there was very little for us to regularly eat in the ways of plant matter, especially when it comes to grains. 

There are many more examples as almost every single one of the fruits, veg and grains humans eat are man-made. Also keep in mind that most of these (especially nightshades like tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers) used to be extremely toxic to humans and still contain traces of the toxins. Plants naturally defend themselves by producing toxic chemicals and antinutrients which inhibit the absorption of nutrients. Kale for example produces an antinutrient which binds to calcium (one of the minerals that it is considered healthy for containing) and makes it impossible for you to absorb it.

This is a debate about which diet; an entirely carnivorous one or a vegan one, is better for the one eating it as well as the world in which the person lives overall. Whether or not the means by which we make one better than the other is natural or involves genetic engineering and/or selective breeding is not relevant to the debate unless my opponent wishes to make a single point regarding why being artificial or altering what is purely natural is wrong. It should be noted that the entire study of medicine and science in general is solely profitable and a career at all because we are fighting against what would naturally result in many deaths and ailments so if one can't prove them to be immoral, one cannot then say being unnatural or fighting nature is in any way an inherently negative/evil/suboptimal thing to do.

It should also be noted that the meat industry has fought nature in many, many ways. Because some nations care for animals and their rights, genetic engineering and the extremes of that have been outlawed by and large but selective breeding is entirely unnatural and the meat industry is based on it. So, if nature is 'good' and fighting it is 'bad' it is actually the meat industry itself that has to answer a lot as unlike with plants these are breathing, sentient beings that are being brutally harmed (I will prove animals are very blatantly more sentient and deserving of more respect than plants in Round 2 if need be).

To mark cows for identification, ranchers may restrain them and press hot fire irons into their flesh, which can cause third-degree burns, as they bellow in pain and attempt to escape. Often without providing any pain relief, workers typically cut male calves’ testicles from their scrotums or tightly clamp them so that they atrophy, and the horns of cows raised for beef are often cut or burned off.

While “on the range,” most cows receive inadequate veterinary care, and as a result, many become sick or die from infection and injury. In the winter, cattle freeze to death in states such as Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. And during the summer, they die from the heat in states such as Kansas and Texas.

After about a year of enduring harsh weather extremes, cows are shipped to an auction lot and then may be sent hundreds of miles away to massive feedlots—feces- and mud-filled holding pens where they’re crammed together by the thousands. Many are sick on arrival, and some die shortly afterward.

Cattle on feedlots are fed a highly unnatural diet of grain and corn, which is designed to fatten them up quickly. This food can cause their stomachs to become so full of gas—a condition called bloat—that breathing may become impaired because of compression of the lungs. Some may suffer from a severe increase in stomach acid, causing ulcers to form and resulting in a condition called “acute acidosis.”

The feedlot air is saturated with ammonia, methane, and other noxious chemicals that build up from the huge amounts of manure, and the cows are forced to inhale these gases constantly. These fumes can give them chronic respiratory problems, making breathing painful.

Cattle raised for food are also regularly dosed with drugs such as antibiotics to make them grow faster and keep them alive in these miserable conditions. Some of the antibiotics, including penicillin and tetracycline, are also used to treat humans but don’t always work when prescribed, because the patients have been exposed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and low doses of antibiotics as a result of consuming meat, milk, or eggs from animals who were fed the same drugs. Researchers at Texas Tech University suspect that drug-resistant bacteria found in cattle feedlots can become airborne and cause hard-to-treat infections in humans.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2 million people contract antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections each year, and approximately 23,000 of them die. Eating antibiotic-free meat is not a solution. It’s still high in cholesterol and saturated fat and contributes to a person’s risk of suffering from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.

Aside from the 'turn it back against Prop' angle of the meat industry as we know it being unnatural in its means and the angle that we are not natural carnivores (which is why we need to cook meat to eat it among many other things that strongly imply we are built to be much plant-heavier than meat-heavy in our consumption) is the very blatant concept that you can survive entirely healthy on a purely vegan diet (yes even without supplements if you're perfect enough with your nutrition distribution) but the only purpose of the carnivorous diet is to force the body to hate your diet so much it starts to forcibly excrete toxins from you (yes, it's that irrational because the toxins are from meat in the first place).

Going through the reader feedback on some of my recent articles, I noticed the frequently stated notion that eating meat was an essential step in human evolution. While this notion may comfort the meat industry, it’s simply not true, scientifically.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell University and author of The China Study (please check out the link), explains that in fact, we only recently (historically speaking) began eating meat, and that the inclusion of meat in our diet came well after we became who we are today. He explains that “the birth of agriculture only started about 10,000 years ago at a time when it became considerably more convenient to herd animals. This is not nearly as long as the time [that] fashioned our basic biochemical functionality (at least tens of millions of years) and which functionality depends on the nutrient composition of plant-based foods.”

That jibes with what Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine President Dr. Neal Barnard says in his book, The Power of Your Plate, in which he explains that “early humans had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet, drawing on foods we can pick with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging -- eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”

There is no more authoritative source on anthropological issues than paleontologist Dr. Richard Leakey, who explains what anyone who has taken an introductory physiology course might have discerned intuitively -- that humans are herbivores. Leakey notes that “[y]ou can’t tear flesh by hand, you can’t tear hide by hand ... We wouldn’t have been able to deal with food source that required those large canines” (although we have teeth that are called “canines,” they bear little resemblance to the canines of carnivores).

In fact, our hands are perfect for grabbing and picking fruits and vegetables. Similarly, like the intestines of other herbivores, ours are very long (carnivores have short intestines so they can quickly get rid of all that rotting flesh they eat).  We don’t have sharp claws to seize and hold down prey.  And most of us (hopefully) lack the instinct that would drive us to chase and then kill animals and devour their raw carcasses. Dr. Milton Mills builds on these points and offers dozens more in his essay, “A Comparative Anatomy of Eating.”

The point is this: Thousands of years ago when we were hunter-gatherers, we may have needed a bit of meat in our diets in times of scarcity, but we don’t need it now.  Says Dr. William C. Roberts, editor of the American Journal of Cardiology, “Although we think we are, and we act as if we are, human beings are not natural carnivores.  When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us, because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”

Sure, most of us are “behavioral omnivores” -- that is, we eat meat, so that defines us as omnivorous. But our evolution and physiology are herbivorous, and ample science proves that when we choose to eat meat, that causes problems, from decreased energy and a need for more sleep up to increased risk for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Old habits die hard, and it’s convenient for people who like to eat meat to think that there is evidence to support their belief that eating meat is “natural” or the cause of our evolution. For many years, I too, clung to the idea that meat and dairy were good for me; I realize now that I was probably comforted to have justification for my continued attachment to the traditions I grew up with.

But in fact top nutritional and anthropological scientists from the most reputable institutions imaginable say categorically that humans are natural herbivores, and that we will be healthier today if we stick with our herbivorous roots. It may be inconvenient, but it alas, it is the truth.  

Often, nearly always, when you start a Carnivore Diet, you will experience adverse symptoms and side effects. It is what I affectionately call the “Trough of Despair” or the “Trough” for short.

This is the adaptation period.

The symptoms you experience is your body’s natural response to carbohydrate restriction and the elimination of addictive agents and chemicals.

Symptoms

Common Symptoms Include:

Brain fog, headache, chills, sore throat, digestive issues, dizziness, irritability, bad breath/smells, bad taste in mouth (metallic), dry mouth, cravings (sugar!), muscle soreness, jaw soreness, nausea, diarrhea, poor focus, and decreased performance, energy, and drive, cramping, rapid heart rate, insomnia, night sweats, and nocturia (peeing a lot at night), hot or cold,

> I sat on a toilet for a week, threw up in the middle of the night, AND I had been on a low carb diet for 20 years.

If you are coming from a ketogenic (keto) or high fat/low carb diet (HFLC), the transition is generally easier than someone coming from a Standard American Diet (SAD – yes it’s sad for a reason) that is high in carbohydrates.

These symptoms are a result of your body undergoing major metabolic and hormonal changes.

Constipation

Eating a protein-only diet puts you at risk for digestive upsets, including constipation. Carbohydrates provide dietary fiber for the body, aiding in the softening of stools and elimination of waste products. Most high protein foods, such as meat and eggs, have no dietary fiber, and eating a diet of protein only eliminates carbs from the diet. High-protein foods also take longer to digest in the body, which slows the transit time of waste moving through the digestive system and prevents smooth bowel movements.

Lethargy

A diet that contains only protein has no energy-producing carbs to fuel your body and brain. Carbs provide glucose, your body's primary fuel for movement, digestion and thinking. A protein-only diet eliminates this primary source of energy causing you to feel fatigued and lethargic. Eventually, the body will start to use protein as a source of fuel to replace the carbs, which takes it away from its own functions in the body. Inadequate stores of protein needed to build and repair muscles can cause the breakdown and wasting of muscle tissue and lead to increased fatigue.

Decreased Calcium Stores

Eating too much protein might lead to decreased calcium in the bones long-term. Your body releases acids during protein digestion, which in effect increases blood acidity. To neutralize acidity in the blood, your body removes calcium from your bones to absorb the released acids. This reduces the amount of calcium in the bones and, without adequate dietary replenishment, loss of calcium leads to decreased bone mineral density, according to the United States Department of Agricultural Research Service. However, based on a review of recent research evaluating protein's effect on bone health published in the February 2010 issue of "Current Opinion in Lipidology," the authors to determined dietary protein could not increase pH levels -- blood acidity -- high enough to decrease bone mineral density. The effect of high protein intake on bone health remains a controversial issue.

Lack of Essential Nutrients

Eating a protein-only diet eliminates essential nutrients in the body, including complex carbs, healthy fats, vitamins and minerals. Carbs in the form of vegetables, fruits and whole grains provide your body's primary fuel source along with essential nutrients such as the B vitamins and magnesium, which increase energy and aid in muscle contraction. Healthy fats, such as nuts, fatty fish and olive oil help your body to perform necessary functions, such as maintaining hormonal balance, keeping skin healthy and absorbing vitamins. Fruits and vegetables provide a myriad of vitamins and minerals that help protect your heart and might prevent certain cancers, heart disease and stroke. Thus, a protein-only diet might put the body at risk of malnutrition and increase disease risk.

• https://www.peta.org/living/food/really-natural-truth-humans-eating-meat/
  
• Alina Petre, MS, RD (CA) https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/vegan-diet-benefits
  

Animal farms require you to farm plants in order to feed the animals with the plants, the reverse is untrue. This alone means that by pure space taken due to deforestation there's undeniably going to be horrendous harm if the entire human population switched to a carnivorous diet than if they cut out the middle-man and had a vegan diet instead.

Everything you have presented is pure and unadulterated bollocks juice from concentrate.

This is a bizarre and baseless statement. 

(alter must refer to "alternative facts")

At this point you are either being stupid or a deliberate liar.