Читать книгу The Natural Food of Man. Being an attempt to prove from comparative anatomy, physiology, chemistry and hygiene, that the original, best and natural diet of man is fruit and nuts онлайн

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The answer to this is very simple. The gorilla—a typical example of the frugivorous animal—has these teeth much more strongly and markedly developed than man; and yet he does not feed upon flesh to any appreciable extent; and in fact lives almost entirely upon fruits, nuts, roots, etc. If we were to argue that man must eat meat, because of the carnivorous teeth in his head, much more must we insist that the orang and the gorilla should live upon flesh-food—and yet we know that these animals in their natural state do not eat flesh-foods at all, or only when they cannot obtain their own food in abundance! They are clearly frugivorous by nature; and, inasmuch as their eye-teeth are far more developed than are the same teeth in man’s head, we must come to the conclusion that man is certainly not adapted to a flesh diet, on account of his teeth or because of them. He is more certainly frugivorous than the gorilla—were we to judge by the teeth alone! They are mere rudiments—atrophied relics of bygone ages. Their use has ceased to be. Orangs and gorillas have some need of their teeth for purposes of cracking nuts, for digging up roots, for attack and defence, and perhaps other purposes in extreme necessity. But we have no need of teeth for any of these reasons, and hence the teeth are not developed in us, to any such great extent. All reason and analogy, therefore, clearly indicate that our teeth are far more indicative of a frugivorous diet than any animal living.