mice were fed three types of red meat – pork, beef and mutton
I assume most mice don’t regularly eat large livestock.
Are mice evolved to eat red meat? The article doesn’t really say.
However, there were limitations to the study. As well as it being a mice model […]
Yes, mice eat red meat.
Mice are omnivores and are opportunistic eaters. They’ll eat whatever they can find.
Mice do not eat that much meat of other mammals.
Giving an over abundance of it, for a long time, will shock the mouse.
Humans historically, also didn’t eat much meat up until very recently. More recent research suggests our ancient human ancestors were eating far more plants than meat
EDIT: For example:
Here we present the isotopic evidence of pronounced plant reliance among Late Stone Age hunter-gatherers from North Africa (15,000–13,000 cal BP), predating the advent of agriculture by several millennia
This is just not true in the bigger picture of human evolution. That paper focuses on humans in North Africa 15,000–13,000 years ago which is a very tiny snapshot in time and geography.
Eating meat is a major part of what separated archaic humans from other primates; it is theorized that the calories from meat is part of what helped us grow our larger brains. Homo Habilis was eating meat 2.6 million years ago, well before Homo Sapiens even existed. Homo Erectus hunted to the point of wiping out many large herbivores over a 1.5 million year time period. They are meat regularly enough for tapeworms to speciate specifically for us as hosts.
Humans and human ancestors have also been consuming large quantities of plants for far earlier than that. Here’s another paper looking 780,000 years ago finding a wide amount of plants consumed
we demonstrate that a wide variety of plants were processed by Middle Pleistocene hominins at the site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel (33° 00’ 30” N, 35° 37’ 30” E), at least 780,000 y ago. These results further indicate the advanced cognitive abilities of our early ancestors, including their ability to collect plants from varying distances and from a wide range of habitats and to mechanically process them using percussive tools.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2418661121
I am not saying that hunting didn’t happen (it definitely did). I am just saying that more recent research is painting a very different picture of the level of consumption of it
yes, of course we ate lots of plants as well, that was never disputed. We were hunters and gatherers. The point is meat has absolutely been a significant part of our diets for millions of years (the exact ratio depending on the environment humans found themselves in). it is well documented by many direct lines of evidence as i laid out above.
I am not saying that hunting didn’t happen (it definitely did).
it didn’t just “happen” like once in a while. we are/were probably the best hunters ever seen on planet earth. we basically wiped out global megafauna over the last 1.5 million years.
I am just saying that more recent research is painting a very different picture of the level of consumption of it
what exactly do you mean by “very different picture”? that’s an extremely vague statement that could mean almost anything.
If a species is straight up annihilating multiple species merely through predation, it’s not statistically possible for it to be a small amount of meat. A wide variety of plants eaten, as pointed out in that paper, doesn’t mean it was mostly a plant diet - if anything, that means it’s likely humans primarily only ate plants while traveling during a hunt.
Primates in general are designed to eat red meat. Chimps, our closest cousin, go on regular hunts against other primates, and eat them
My point is that it was way more rare than what people’s diets look like today. Not zero but not dominant. Wide reliance on plants is even true before modern agriculture. For example:
Here we present the isotopic evidence of pronounced plant reliance among Late Stone Age hunter-gatherers from North Africa (15,000–13,000 cal BP), predating the advent of agriculture by several millennia
I myself am a victim of the modern diet, and lack of exercise. I almost died of high cholesterol and other related factors, before I started to eat better and be physically active.
I’m a firm believer in a varied diet, and that most people should have a less meaty intake.
Just, we are designed to be hunters and eat red meat
My parents fed me red meat for almost every dinner I can recall growing up. I’m early 30s and my cholesterol is very high. I was able to drop my cholesterol significantly in one month by changing my diet to mostly vegan with chicken and fish once or twice a week. Switched my morning eggs out to egg whites. Cooked in avocado oil instead of butter.
It depends on the populations.
Steppe populations from modern Ukraine easy through to the Urals lived mainly on meat and dairy 5000 years ago (even if they didn’t yet have the lactose tolerance adaptation).
What do you think happens when a mouse finds a large carcass in the wild? They just take a few nibbles and then go “that’s enough, time for some greens now. Gotta keep my diet balanced”. No, they gorge themselves on the opportunistic meal and will return each night until it’s gone or inedibly rotten.
The study is fine. The conclusions, interesting. The sudden ‘mouse diet & gut-study experts’ disagreeing because they don’t like it, reminds me of Facebook tbh.
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In the animal study, mice were fed three types of red meat – pork, beef and mutton – every day for two weeks. Then, the researchers triggered colitis (a model for IBD) using a chemical called dextran sulfate sodium (DSS).
They definitely aren’t evolved to eat dextran sulfate sodium.
Are mice evolved to eat red meat?
They haven’t. So haven’t we. 😄
You mean a few million years of evolution couldn’t completely redesign our digestive system? Weak bruh.
We haven’t been eating like this for a few million years, humans mostly subsisted off of whatever they could get. Eating red meat every day, or even every week, is very modern.
Fair, but our guts have already evolved to not being able to eat rotten meat. They’re apples and oranges, but still a relevant point.
Dietary evolution happens really fast, comparatively speaking.
Homo primates (archaic humans like Homo Erectus) have been hunting prolifically for about 2 million years. That’s part of what makes us Homo; the large calorie surplus from big game hunting allowed our brains to grow larger.
afaik it’s inconclusive, and just as likely that big game was rare and supplemented by many other forms of hunting and gathering. It’s a lot easier to spear a fish or steal some eggs than to spend a whole day tracking down an elk until it collapsed from exhaustion.
More modern research does not suggest this made up most of the consumption for humans even before agriculture. For instance,
Our results unequivocally demonstrate a substantial plant-based component in the diets of these hunter-gatherers. This distinct dietary pattern challenges the prevailing notion of high reliance on animal proteins among pre-agricultural human groups
Look I’m all for the idea that we eat too much meat currently and all, but are mice really good analogs for humans in this instance? I’m not a scientist of any sort, so I really don’t know, but it seems to me like a creature that doesn’t naturally eat, like, any red meat would be a bad analog here.
Humans also don’t generally eat poison. But the mice in this study were poisoned with DSS after eating meat. Maybe meat is not the real culprit here…
Honey I don’t know bout you but it’s Friday night this human is absolutely gonna be enjoying some poison!
I mean alcohol is poison, we have consumed that substance for longer than we(globally) have been eating tomatoes, potatoes, coffee and refined sugar.
Multiple cultures around the world have independently invented some form of alcohol
And other species also routinely ingests poison for pleasure.
Dolphins getting high on pufferfish toxins, Elephants getting absolutely shit faced on fermented fruits such as amarula
Well… I guess we’re just not going to bother taking into account that red meat isn’t part of a mouse’s diet? And that maybe they’re going to react poorly when force fed things they generally don’t eat? This type of bullshit science needs to be called out for what it is.
Next, maybe we should see how well whales react if we feed them 3,000lbs of french fries.
At the same time, a lot of places aren’t going to let scientists test on something closer to humans without something clearly showing a reason for it. The ethics board would wonder why they didn’t try it on mice first, and wouldn’t approve anything else.
That they found an effect in mice would be good justification to move up a step. If there was no effect, then that would be the end of that.
That’s it! Uninviting all the mice from the next BBQ.
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They intentionally chemically triggered IBD in the mice, how the fuck is this conclusive of anything?
Going by the article, it was more that it made it worse when it happened, rather than starting it.
Eating food that is known to irritate IBD after inducing IBD will irritate IBD. Revelatory.
For me this is a case of picking the lesser poison. I have IBD and FODMAPs give me major issues. This means most fruit and vegetables, plus dairy and wheat, cause major issues. Meat, including red meat, is one of the few foods which don’t cause me intestinal pain, bloating, and diarrhea. Studies indicate a not insignificant proportion of the population have issues with FODMAPs, and they also tend to fare much better with meat.
That’s fine, we already know how to cure any disease in mice.
Where’s that old Twitter bot that would append in mice to reports of these bullshit studies?
Does the Lemmy post title not have “in mice” in it for you? I added it to the title of the post to clarify this. It should show as
Red meat wreaks havoc on gut and drives inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in study on mice
Whereas the original title of the article was:
Red meat wreaks havoc on gut and drives inflammatory bowel disease
Oh yeah absolutely, I wasn’t criticising you at all, was just noting the ‘in mice’ thing that’s all!
Personally know multiple carnivores who can’t stop shitting themselves and still swear by the diet.
Were mice?
Weremice?
Anecdotally, I’ve had way less stomach issues since shifting largely to white meat and a mostly plant based diet.
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