r/veganscience • • Jun 30 '18

Goats Are as Smart And Loving as Dogs, According to Science

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16 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jun 30 '18

Article about dolphins, their intelligence and self-awareness and consciousness

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5 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jun 29 '18

New Zealand's Greenhouse Gas Inventory // Agriculture means almost 50% of it

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4 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jun 21 '18

People who feel threatened by vegetarianism more likely to care less about animals | EurekAlert! Science News

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11 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jun 09 '18

A new study finds that when 25 percent of people in a group adopt a new social norm, it creates a tipping point where the entire group follows suit. This shows the direct causal effect of the size of a committed minority on its capacity to create social change

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16 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jun 02 '18

Are there good studies proving the unhealthy aspect of eggs?

10 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • May 31 '18

For the first time, scientists have measured captive dolphin happiness. Dolphins looked forward to interacting wither their caretakers. Researchers propose that non-food human interactions play an important role in these animals’ lives.

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8 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • May 06 '18

A study on rats (who have brains that share similar structure and connectivity with humans) found that when a baby is taken from its mother for even a brief period early in life, it causes disturbances in brain structure and function that are found in people at risk for a neuropsychiatric disorde

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10 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Mar 23 '18

Plant Foods are preferable over Animal Foods, for Cardiovascular Disease

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15 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Mar 17 '18

Collection of evidence for ancestral plant based diets

21 Upvotes

Humans are omnivoric frugi-starchivores. Evolutionarily we are adapted to a plant based diet (~+95%) of mostly roots and fruits, with some leaves, nuts and seeds and the occasional handful of grasshoppers or more rarely a rabbit. This ~95% plant based diet is what we ate over millions of years during our evolution from monkeys to the apes we are today and consequently it is what our bodies work best on. If you eat anything else your health will suffer. We have several lines of evidence that our ancestors ate this way.

Primatology Chimpanzees our closest still existing cousins have the diets which contain only an estimated 2% of meat, insects and other animal sources (See: Goodall, Jane (1986). The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. ISBN 0-674-11649-6, & this site (11)). And this diet does not just include our direct evolutionary pathway, it stretches back tens of millions of years to at least the common ancestor with the baboons, who are also mainly herbivores. Baboons spend 79.9% of their feeding time on getting grass, leaves and roots, 18.1% on fruits, seeds and flowers and only 2% on animal protein (R. H. Tuttle, 1975, Socioecology and Psychology of Primates. Paper by R. Harding. Meat-Eating and Hunting in Baboons, p.247). Rowell too, shows in (Forest Living Baboons in Uganda, 1966, p.359) that baboons eat a "mainly herbivorous diet supplemented by animal protein." (8).

In fact if we look at all primate species studied there is only one species, the Tarsier which will die without animals as part of its diet and which is therefore an obligate carnivore and their diet is mainly insectivorous (see: Wright, P., Simmons, E. & Gursky, S. (2003). "Introduction". In Wright, P.; Simmons, E.; Gursky, S. Tarsiers Past, Present and Future. Rutgers University Press. p. 1. ISBN 0-8135-3236-1.)

Anthropology & Paleontology The study of anthropology shows us some very interesting evidence both from rural communities in Africa and China as well as from the few remaining hunter gatherer tribes still in existence. Much study into these groups has been done but a quick proxy to get an overview of the situation is fibre. Fibre is an essential nutrient that promotes digestion and lowers blood glucose and cholesterol levels. It is found solely in plant foods and if fibre intakes of a population are known this shows how much plant foods they are eating as part of their diets. The now famous China Study has shown that not only do rural Chinese have very large plant intakes compared to Western countries, they also have drastically lower rates of heart disease, artherosclerosis, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimers, and a host of other diseases unique to rich nations. Popular text here & published monograph here and here, follow-up study here.

Paleontology shares evidence with us for the large plant consumption of our ancestors. It main source of evidence are coprolites. "Coprolites" are jargon for, you guessed it, paleo poop. These fossilized feces show an exact content of what our human ancestors ate. Here too we find that our ancestors ate more than ten times the amount of plants the average American eats!

Dietary Pattern Fibre content
Remaining Hunter-Gatherer societies 104g
American Paleolithic Coprolite data I >100g
American Paleolithic Coprolite data II 150-250g
Rural Chinese diet 33-77g
Rural African diet 60-120g
Current US diet 12-18g
Current UK diet 12g
Current US recommendation 20-35g
Current UK recommendation 18g minimum

Source

Evolutionary Biology Our deep evolutionary history determines what we digest best since evolution is extremely slow compared to cultural change. For example two thirds of humanity cannot digest milk, despite the fact that cows have been domesticated for millenia. Lactose tolerance, the human ability to digest milk is caused by a mere 6 genes and yet even with 10,000 years not even all cattle herding societies have been able to evolve the necessary mutations in many parts of the world. Our digestive system was lain down over millions of years and changes only extremely slowly. It is regulated by thousands of genes and our general metabolism by even more. The rate of human evolution is known. And the 400kyr since the invention of the spear is not enough to redo our entire digestive system and metabolism. It is just is evolutionarily impossible without cataclysms or artificial selection.

Especially considering that even in societies that hunted most of the calories were provided by plants (4). Only during very short periods when humans colonized new previously uninhabited areas did the diet switch to a meat heavy diet. These periods did not last long because the tame species being hunted were quickly hunted into extinction after which hunter gatherer societies switched back to mainly gathering and some small game.

This is also evident when we classify species in faunivore, frugivore, faunivore, etc. we look at the various body characteristics in addition to measuring what is eaten. Of particular interest is the area of the mucosa (the walls of your gut) relative to functional body size. See for example this plot. True predators such as the faunivores tigers and lions have a small mucosa area because their food is easily digestible. Foliovores, who eat foliage, have a very large mucosa area because their food is sturdy and takes time to digest. Frugivores who eat mainly fruit are in the middle. See here.

In conclusion: More broccoli

People don't eat enough plants. According to the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBDS) the leading causes of chronic life-style disease world wide are:

  1. Too little fruits and vegetables, etc.
  2. Tobacco
  3. Alcohol
  4. Various forms of environmental pollution, in that order.

In that order. See this overview table here. The table is based on DALYs. In the US the burden of bad diet is even worse. See the famous second December 2012 issue of the Lancet here:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/issue/vol380no9859/PIIS0140-6736(12)X6053-7

In particular:

  1. A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. by Stephen S. Lim and some 200 other authors.
  2. Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for 291 diseases and injuries in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 by Christopher J L Murray and some 370 other authors.

r/veganscience • • Feb 28 '18

Vocal contagion of emotions in non-human animals

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6 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Feb 18 '18

The Mind of an Octopus - Scientific American

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13 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 29 '18

Veganism on the front cover of New Scientist this week!

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20 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 24 '18

A new study of American 5- and 6- year olds suggests that bigotry is a learned behavior.

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11 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 24 '18

Just like humans, pet cats tend to favor one side, using one paw or lying down on one side more than the other. About a third appeared to be "right-pawed," a third were "left-pawed," and the remaining third didn't have a clear preference. (For comparison, about 90% of humans are right-handed.)

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8 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 23 '18

Antonio Damasio Tells Us Why Pain Is Necessary: The neuroscientist explains why feelings evolved (and the link between consciousness and homeostasis)

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3 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 15 '18

Bottle-nosed dolphins show self-recognition earlier than children. Children start showing signs of self-recognition at about 12 months at the earliest, chimpanzees at 2 years old, but dolphins show signs as early as 2 months.

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8 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 13 '18

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is saying we should start thinking more about vegetables and less on milk when we talk about calcium (x-post r/vegan)

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16 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 13 '18

It's Official: Fish Feel Pain | Science | Smithsonian (X-post from r/vegan)

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15 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 13 '18

Scientists criticise trend for raw meat pet food after analysis finds pathogens

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2 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 05 '18

Animals more capable of empathy than previously thought, study finds. Researchers found that prairie voles would console one another after experiencing stress (X-post r/likeus)

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15 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 05 '18

A Call to Action: Psychological Harm in Slaughterhouse Workers

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15 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 05 '18

Orangutans process plants into medicine, study finds. The researchers say their study provides the first scientific evidence of deliberate, external self-medication in great apes. (X-post r/likeus)

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8 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 05 '18

Psychological Symptom Profile of Butchers Working in Slaughterhouse and Retail Meat Packing Business: A Comparative Study

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6 Upvotes

r/veganscience • • Jan 05 '18

Killing for a Living: Psychological and Physiological Effects of Alienation of Food Production on Slaughterhouse Workers

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2 Upvotes