The Ape Way

Six million years ago there were no humans. There were only apes. Our ape digestive system evolved to eat in a certain way. 

The Healthy Ape Way

Apes are still similar to six million years ago. So if you want to know what we evolved to eat, look at modern apes.

A few key aspects of their diets are:

• They only eat about 2% meat
• Fruits and nuts are their main staple, with some roots and shoots thrown in
• Like all animals in the wild, they go hungry at times – there is not always food readily available
• They are constantly moving, in search of their next meal.

But we’ve change a bit in six million years. Once we split off from the apes and hit the savannas, we had to learn new survival techniques, and with that came new killing techniques. Probably a million years ago or so we were totally adept at throwing rocks and deadly projectiles in well organised hunting parties. So we started eating more meat.

Then about twelve thousand years ago, we became farmers, growing crops of maize, wheat, rice and potatoes.

With these changes in our diet, our digestive systems changed. But a million years is nothing on the scale of life’s multi-billion year journey to us arriving at our last ape parent. Our digestive systems haven’t changed much from the basic essentials we had as apes. We were fundamentally designed to eat like apes. So that’s how we should eat for optimal health.

But to be honest, the ‘healthy eating’ debate is a mine field of diverse opinions. It’s the least effective of my arguments to eat the Ape Way.

There are at least another two more convincing reasons.

The Ape Environment

First there’s the environment and our impact on it.

A recent study by the European Commission found that European meat consumption contributed more to deforestation than any other consumption in Europe. In fact, land for cattle grazing, and for growing crops to feed livestock, accounted for 57% of Europe’s global destruction of forests.

There are a host of other negative environmental effects associated with animal agriculture related to water consumption, disposal of animal waste, use of antibiotics and hormones, and even the one no one truly knows whether to believe or not – the problem of cattle flatulence causing global warming.

There’s one unavoidable conclusion: If we all ate the Ape Way, our species’ collective impact on this Earth would be a lot lighter – figuratively and literally.

This doesn’t just mean less meat. Yes, less meat is vital.

But almost equally important is to stop being addicted to food excess in general. The only hope for our abiding personal fulfillment, and for the conservation of our environment, is for us to have minds less greedy – to go hungry sometimes, like we were designed to.

The topic of our state of mind links to the most compelling reason to eat the Ape Way. This reason has nothing to do with apes. Instead it has to do with our most human potential: our potential for compassion.

The Compassionate Ape

Some estimates are that fifty six (56) billion farm animals are killed every year to feed humans. That excludes fish and sea creatures. The land of the free, and its friends across the Atlantic, lead the way in this slaughter, but the rest of the world is not far behind.

The average city-dwelling meat eater doesn’t see the destruction of 56 billion sentient beings behind the neatly packed, red, juicy products displayed under florescent lights, next to the manager’s special offers on an array of flesh.

One hundred thousand times every minute, the diabolical business of meat obliterates the basic desire of an animal to live .

Shocking if you’re a farm animal! The human meat addiction, nurtured by big business, kills 100,000 land creatures per minute.

But shocking too if you’re a so-called enlightened human being. We should be outraged at ourselves – outraged that the prevailing lie on our need for meat has reduced a vast section of the human species to unconsciousness at best, and psychopathic violence at worst.

We buy that meat off the shelf, by the kilogram, and we go to our suburban homes to cook it, and eat it, and laugh with friends and wine. And after… we scoop the left-overs into the bin. Not a second thought.

We’ve lost our most human, and most wondrous, capacity – the capacity to be conscious, and connected and compassionate. No, we haven’t lost it – it has been stolen by the forces of consumerism. 

The main reason to eat the Ape Way is that eating meat should be an expression of gratitude. It should be a mindful celebration of the cycle of life, and our short time in it. We must eat vastly less meat so that we can appreciate every ounce of the life it came from.

2% amounts to 10 or 15 meat meals per year.

These should be special times. Times when we celebrate in a different way to the common way.  Instead of our typical celebrations of excess – excess food, excess noise and excess groping for fleeting illusions of happiness – let us take a moment of celebratory silence over our food gift, and relate to creation and our humble place in it. Let us be thankful for the small portions on our plate, and experience the joy of less.

And maybe, let us be moved to tears of compassion. Then even 2% meat might not be palatable.