You were great on the JRE Rich! I’m automatically a fan of someone who decides it’s more important to be happy in life doing what the love than to stay stuck in the machine… really enjoyed it.. hope you are back on again soon.

I just finished and enjoyed reading Finding Ultra. I read Christopher Mcdougall’s Born to Run recently as well. I like and agree with virtually everything you’re saying Rich, but there’s one caveat: we were born to run to procure meat. In his book Born to Run, which I’m sure you read, Mcdougall promotes the idea that we developed the ability to run in order to persistent game hunt. That is, run six or more miles to tire out an animal until it collapses from exhaustion–then eat it!

He cites differences in physiology between humans and four-legged running animals such as dogs and horses versus walking mammals like chimps and pigs (which do not have Achilles tendons and nuchal ligaments necessary for running). He also says that we lost our fur/hair, developed a 2:1 in lieu of a 1:1 breathing ratio (which four legged animals have), and developed the ability to sweat unlike other animals in order to keep from overheating when we endeavor to outdistance game.

If the scientists McDougall reference are right, why would we anatomically evolve
these features only to give meat up now? We also have a long history of eating meat even if we don’t have protruding canines. In fact, hominids developed the ability to cook meat with fire before humans evolved 200 thousand years ago (as campfires have been unearthed from over a million years ago).

Personally, I think we are omnivores to the core, but we’re also a hodgepodge of different human ancestors; some eating more meat than others. For example, scientists now believe that roughly 1-4% of our DNA comes from Neanderthals which were almost exclusively meat eaters. There is also evidence of cultures that almost exclusively ate a vegetarian diet. Just like our wisdom teeth often don’t fit in our mouths anymore because small-jawed people mated with large-toothed partners as migration brought different cultures together; I think the meat-to-veggie ratio is likely different from person to person.

With that said, the ability to run far must have evolved because we were eating
plenty of meat. It obviously wasn’t to outpace four-legged carnivores to save our own skins (we obviously can’t). Rich, I think you have benefited from a vegan diet because your body needed to heal itself after eating too large of a meat-to-veggie ratio all your life which, like you explained in your book, causes a lot of problems anatomically.

Once a person has purged the negative affects of eating cheeseburgers with very little
plant matter all their lives, I believe it’s healthy to engage in meat at least
on occasion. It’s like smoking, however. You can’t smoke all your life, quit, and expect your lungs to be fully recovered after six months. Sometimes it takes years or decades to reverse the damage. The same may be true after eating a crappy diet most of your life.

What I wish everyone would do is get back to nature. Resources permitting, our diets would vastly consist of plant matter; however, we would also hunt game ourselves to procure healthy meat. Meat coming from animals that haven’t been penned or drugged up all their lives; animals that are lean and happy doing what animals do in the wild (which includes being killed periodically by animals further up the food chain).

Rich, now that you have likely detoxified your system thoroughly, maybe you should try, AS AN EXPERIMENT, eating some venison and see how your body reacts. Thomas Jefferson’s daughter said the sage of Monticello used to “garnish” his vegetables with meat; meaning, he had a very high plant-to-meat ratio in his diet. Maybe just have venison once every week or ten days and see how it feels while otherwise eating a strictly vegan diet the rest of the time. Maybe that would give us a major breakthrough in our understanding of diet.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I especially respect your battle with alcoholism. I was born into a family of alcoholics who are now in recovery. You’re an incredible inspiration, and I particularly like the fact that you don’t appear to be shamelessly promoting products despite what one poster said.