Powered By Plants

Powered by Plants Best Cover

Powered By Plants counters the claim that meat-eating uniquely drove human evolution by reviewing a large amount of evidence that a plant-based diet powered human evolution.

Challenging all carnists – including  anthropologists and advocates of low-carbohydrate, 'paleo,' and 'carnivore' diets who claim that meat-eating made us human, and is both essential and beneficial to human health – Powered By Plants lays out the abundant evidence that we have numerous heritable anatomical, 

physiological, and biochemical features primarily adapted to acquisition, digestion, or metabolism of whole plant foods, and lack the heritable features expected as evidence of evolution dependent upon and primarily driven by meat consumption.  

In Powered By Plants I perform a thorough survey of human biology from head-to-toe, and, citing hundreds of scientific references that provide evidence that our sensory, locomotive, manual, digestive, and reproductive systems, and our nutrient metabolism, all have features primarily adapted to a whole foods plant-based diet.

When printed double-sided on 8.5" x 11" paper, Powered By Plants has 326 pages.  The text is 12 point Times font.  It includes 900 footnotes.  The Bibliography is 21 pages long printed in single-spaced 10 point Times font and includes more than 300 sources.

Here is the Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements x

Note To The Reader xi

Introduction xii

Part I: Natural Selection & Nutrition 1

1: Human Evolution & Nutrition 3

The Stone Age Red Herring 3

Reproductive Fitness vs. Health 4

Fossil Diet Records? 4

Meat Made Us Human? 5

Going Underground 11

Control of Fire 12

Hunting a Learned Behavior 14

Accelerated Evolution 15

Summary 15

2: The Nature of Nutritional Adaptations 17

The Carnivore Ideology 18

Plants vs Animals and Plant-eaters vs Carnivores 19

Omnivore Or Not? 20

Two Kinds of Omnivores 20

Natural Selection of Nutritional Adaptations 22

Biological Versus Behavioral Adaptations 25

Primates 27

Frugivores 29

Summary 30

Part II: Human Nutritional Physiology 32

3: Sensation and Nutrition 33

Vision 34

Hearing 36

Olfaction 37

Taste 38

Fat Taste 43

The Taste For Liver 45

Behavioral Adaptations 46

Summary 46

4: Locomotion 48

Stance 48

Human Stance 49

Bipedalism Not Optimal for Hunting 50

Bipedalism Originated In Forest-Dwelling Frugivores 50

Locomotion, Speed, and Endurance 52

Energy Cost of Locomotion 53

Persistence Hunting 53

Behavioral and Technological Circumvention of Our Locomotive Limits 61

Summary 62

5: Manual Endowments 64

Manual Dexterity and Tactile Sense 64

Hand and Brain 65

Manual Dexterity and Manufacture of Hunting Tools 66

Claws Versus Nails 68

6: Face, Mouth, and Throat 70

Facial Musculature, Jaws, and Throat 70

Teeth 71

Human Dentition In Comparison To Other Extant Apes 72

Canine Teeth 73

Dental Shearing Quotient 75

Dental Carbon Isotope Studies 79

Tropical Grasses, Tools, and Teeth 81

Megadontia Quotient 82

Another Kluge? 83

Comparative Oral Anatomy 84

A Mastication Experiment 84

Saliva 85

Salivary Proline-Rich Proteins 87

Summary 88

7: Stomach 90

Stomach Volume 90

Stomach Acidity 92

Scavenging 94

Summary 95

8: Small Intestine 96

Comparative Intestinal Length 97

Intestinal Immunity 99

The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis 100

A Plant Food Ceiling? Pandas, and Fiber in Wild Versus Cultivated Plants 102

Plant Food Ceiling Part 2: Modern Raw Dieters 110

Plant-Food Ceiling Part 3: Simian Diet Trials 116

Small Intestine Length and Obesity 118

9: Cecum and Appendix 121

The Cecum 121

The Appendix 122

Summary 123

10: Colon 124

Comparing Colons 124

Intestinal Ecology 125

Flora, Fiber, and Fats 127

Colon Health 129

Summary 130

11: Reproductive System 132

Seminal Vesicles 132

Placenta 132

Morning Sickness 132

Fertility 134

Animal Flesh and Female Infertility 135

High Protein Diets Potentially Toxic To Fetus 137

Meat and Male Infertility 138

Summary 142

12: Protein Requirements 143

Natural Selection of Protein Requirements 143

Human Protein Requirements 144

Plant-Based Protein 146

Plant-Based Protein For Athletes 148

Wild Plants Could Satisfy Human Protein Needs 153

Methionine and Cystine 154

Summary 157

13: Vitamin C, Uricase, and Uric Acid 158

Gout In Traditional Meat-Based Cultures 160

Contemporary Diet-Gout Research 162

Summary 168

14: Complexion Preference 169

Complexion, Vascularization, Oxygenation, and Diet in Humans 169

Summary 171

15: Vitamins A & B-12 172

Comparing Human Carotenoid Metabolism To Flesh-Eating Animals 172

Comparing Human Retinol Metabolism To Flesh-Eating Animals 174

Human Vitamin B12 Metabolism Compared to Flesh-Eating Animals 176

Humans Absorption of Animal-Based B12 Appears Limited 177

Non-animal B12 Sources 178

Is a B12 Supplement ‘Artificial’? 181

Summary 181

16: Carbohydrate & Lipid Metabolism 182

Carbohydrate and Fat Oxidation 182

Metabolism of Saturated and Unsaturated Fats 184

Obesity and Meat-Rich Diets 188

Obesity Among Mongols and Inuit 189

Cholesterol 191

Hyperlipidemia 192

Spontaneous Atherosclerosis 194

Simian Diet Effect On Human Blood Lipids 197

Summary 198

17: Brain Size & Metabolism 199

Encephalization Quotient 199

Is Seafood Superior Brain Food? 200

Cerebral Neuron Count 201

The Favored Frugivores 202

The Capuchin Catch 204

Flesh Does Not Provide Ready Brain Fuel 205

Neural Fatty Acids 205

Dietary DHA Potentially Harmful to Embryos 211

Plants Provide The Only Required Omega-3 Fat 211

Brain-Specific Minerals 212

Factors Correlating With Primate Encephalization 219

Plant-based Intelligence 220

Meat-eating Mentality 224

Animal Cruelty and Social Violence 225

Animal-Based Diets and Brain Damage 226

Does Meat-Eating Make People Warlike? 230

18: Meat-Adaptive Genes? 232

ApoE3: Meat-Adaptive, or Agriculture-Adaptive? 233

CMAH and Neu5Gc Sialic Acid 239

Summary 240

19: Science or Science Fiction? 242

Moving Beyond Carnism 243

Part III:  Appendices & Bibliography 245

Appendix A: Essential Nutrients 246

Appendix B: A Whole Foods Plant-Based Diet 247

Supplements 249

Appendix C: Proposed Human Ancestors 254

Was The Alleged Last Common Ancestor Chimpanzee-like? 254

Orrorin tugenensis 258

Australopithecus 260

Homo habilis and rudolfensis 264

Erectus species 267

Homo heidelbergensis 270

Neanderthals 271

Homo sapiens 272

The Limits of Archaeology 274

Appendix D: Chimpanzees 275

Quantity 275

Measuring Wild Chimpanzee Diets 276

Chimpanzee Insectivory 276

Do Chimpanzees Scavenge? 278

Chimpanzee Hunting 279

Remarkable Variations In Chimpanzee Hunting 281

Chimps Probably Do Not Hunt To Obtain Macronutrients 284

How Well Do Chimpanzees Digest Animal Flesh? 285

Bibliography 288

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