The Carnivore Diet

by Shawn Baker

Given the structure of our digestive systems, humans do have some small capacity to extract a minimal amount of calories from fibrous plants. However, relying on only plants to supply our nutritional needs would be a pretty poor strategy, particularly because our brains are such energy hogs. A chimp spends ten more times chewing vegetation than a human does chewing meat to extract the calories and other nutrients from its food, and a gorilla spends even more time chewing. If we look at predictions about early humans based on jaw structure, we can estimate that they spent only about 4 percent of their time chewing, so we can feel pretty safe saying that they weren’t munching on leaves and stems all day.