The Infinite Argument: Is Man Vegetarian Or Carnivorous?

I've come up with 15 reasons why man is not a vegetarian, never was one, and never will be. We weren't programmed by nature to be vegetarians.

I've always been an in-depth, analytical person and when I research something, I take it to the nth degree, as far as I can take it, weighing each side, hearing each side's opinion and then I formulate my own opinion. I talk to as many authoritative and knowledgeable people as I can, and then I even do experiments myself.

Please remember that anyone can write a book, anyone can speak with "authority" on television or radio, so when you want to formulate your own opinion on any matter, pay attention to where the information has originated from. Dig for the truth in everything. (Don't just say, "I heard it on TV, therefore it must be true.")

I've come up with 15 reasons why man is not a vegetarian, he never was one, and he'll never be one. We weren't programmed by nature to be vegetarians. I'm going to give you reasons, because I'm sure that you've only heard the other side of the story, which is the story that the medical profession of today has advocated.

Vegans do not eat meat in any way, shape or form. They do not use any skin or hide of an animal. Perhaps they don't realize that animals kill animals to eat. It seems to me that the food chain is the way that nature planned it. The little fish are eaten by the bigger fish, which are eaten by the even bigger fish, and there you have the food chain.

But, of course, there are as many reasons that I can give you that man isn't a vegetarian as the vegetarians can give you that man is a vegetarian. I will debate a vegetarian any time, any where, and any place, and I've done so in the past.

1 / PH Balance

Man has a PH balance, which means Acid/Alkaline. If man were a vegetarian, as the vegetarians say he is, then he wouldn't produce any acid at all. He'd be totally alkaline. All foods that are of the protein variety, meat, fish, eggs, chicken, turkey, cheese and cottage cheese are digested in an acid base.

All foods that are not of a protein nature, such as fruits, vegetables, and grains, are digested in an alkaline base. Nature seems to have given us this balance. Why does Mother Nature intend you to have stomach acid? Hydrochloric acid is the main component of your stomach.

If you were to take your finger and stick it down your throat, and your finger touched your stomach, it would burn your finger right off. That's how strong your stomach acid is, or should be. People say that's not possible, because if your acid is going to burn your finger, it's going to burn your stomach. No, because nature has prepared us with a lining on the inside of our stomach that's impervious to hydrochloric acid.

Hydrochloric acid can not eat through your stomach like it can eat through metal, cloth, or wood. Hydrochloric acid is there to digest protein food. As a matter of fact, it's there to digest all food, including vegetables. Did you ever wonder why the acid is there, other than to digest your food?

Why can a dog, for instance, which is strictly a carnivore, go out and drink sewer water? Why can an alligator or a rat live in filth and not get sick if they eat food that nature intended them to eat? The answer is hydrochloric acid. We are bombarded daily with viruses and bacteria in our environment.

If your stomach acid is high enough, and you ingest any bacteria or virus, the hydrochloric acid kills it. This is part of your immune system, just like your diet, your good bacteria, your Thymus, vitamin C, and the colostrum that you secrete when you're born. Note: No pathogen can live in an acid base. Read my article on Ph Balance.

I did a test on myself many years ago because my teacher, Vince Gironda, who one of the most gifted men that I have ever met, taught me the value of hydrochloric acid. One Sunday afternoon, I took a piece of ground turkey and lightly cooked it. I left on the counter for one week. The bacteria started to set in because of the moisture in the meat.

By the next Sunday, the turkey smelled pretty bad. I had the phone sitting there ready to dial 911. I swallowed a spoonful of apple cider vinegar. I put a little mustard on the meat, held my nose, and ate the turkey burger. I took four or five hydrochloric tablets and waited.

By all rights, I should have gotten sick, but I didn't. The hydrochloric acid is there to destroy viruses, bacteria and all pathogens. The reason why the people of today are so sick is because we've eaten a diet of refined and processed carbohydrates for the last one hundred years.

We've become carbohydrate eaters, consuming cookies, cakes, pies, candies, pretzels, doughnuts, pizza, slurpies, pop tarts, sugar frosted flakes, coney islands, bagels, pasta and spaghetti. We're starting to become alkaline. When you become alkaline, you lose your hydrochloric acid.

The body says 'why should I manufacture it, when I have no need for it?' You become alkaline, and that's when you become a victim. This is the number one, most important reason why I feel man is not meant to be a vegetarian.

2 / Cellulace

If man is truly a vegetarian, like the vegetarians say we are, he should manufacture a hormone called cellulace. Cellulace is an enzyme that a vegetarian animal's body produces when he ingests vegetables which contain cellulose (My grandmother called it fiber).

For instance, a rabbit or a cow will secrete the enzyme cellulace to absorb cellulose. Man does not manufacture that enzyme hormone. He never did, he doesn't today and he probably never will.

3 / Man Is An Omnivore

Man was prepared by nature to survive on almost anything. He can eat between 200-250 different foods. Man is not truly an herbivore; he's not truly a carnivore. He can live on anything. If he has meat as his only source of food, he can live on that. If he has only vegetables, he can live on that.

I'm not saying he is going to be that healthy living on a total vegetarian diet, but he can survive. Man is an omnivore. "Omni" meaning he can live on anything. History seems to teach us that man has only been a farmer or eater of vegetables and grains seven or eight thousand years. (Some say more, some say less, this is just an average).

As man got tired of hunting animals, he started eating vegetation. It was easier for him, because of his environment, to grow things instead of hunt things. Hunting is very tedious and tiresome. It is very, very difficult, so man started eating vegetables and grains. He still ate meat (with vegetables) whenever he could.

Nature prepared us to be omnivores. That is why we have survived all this time. As man progressed, he started to dump everything into his stomach. Almost one hundred years ago, the great scientist, Ivan Pavlov, told us how dangerous it was to combine certain foods.

Americans do this daily with their "meat and potato syndrome". Did you know that this is very dangerous for humans? (It is also dangerous for pigs. I have seen pigs on the farm get ulcers from eating this way.) If you don't know which foods not to eat in combination, please call me and I will mail you a list.

In Nazi, Germany, there was a man named Joseph Goebbels who was the Minister of Propaganda. He knew that if you control what the people see (TV and movies), if you control what they hear (radio), if you control what they read (newspapers and magazines), you can literally control what they think.

This used to be called "mind-control" or "brainwashing". Today we call it "marketing". If you tell people only what you want them to know, and suppress the rest, the population will believe any half-truth or theory that you tell them. The medical profession and drug companies have suppressed most nutritional information. This way they can sell us more drugs.

There is an interesting book, Not by Bread Alone, written by Vilhjalmur Stefansson. He was a scientific researcher who lived with the Primitive Eskimos (not modern day Eskimos) in the Arctic for many years. He ate everything that they did: fish, blubber, walrus, heart, liver, kidneys, and spleen. There were no fruits or vegetables in Arctic.

The Eskimos were strictly meat-eaters. In the mid 1900's he returned to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York where the medical doctors could find nothing wrong with him. His book debunks the vegetarian position. The body will adapt to anything good or even anything bad.

There is a book on the market today by Dr. Peter D'Adamo, called Eat Right for Your Type: Diet Solutions to Staying Healthy, Living Longer and Achieving Your Ideal Weight: 4 Blood Types; 4 Diets. Dr. D'Adamo tells us that we must pick a diet according to our ancestry and our blood type. I strongly disagree with this premise and will give you an example.

When I was bodybuilding in California, I met a young man named Pete who was nineteen years old. He came from New York and was of Italian decent. He had a nice shape for a bodybuilder, but was fat and fleshy. His diet was mostly pasta and carbohydrates.

Pete wanted to become "Mr. Something" and set out to work with my teacher, Vince Gironda. Vince told him that it would take approximately three years to strip his body of all the fat that was created from the carbohydrate content in his diet. Pete was determined and he stuck to a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet.

The first year, he looked 20% better. The second year he looked 55-60% better. The third year, Pete won the "Mr. California" title. He transformed himself from fat and fleshy to slim and muscular. According to Dr. D'Adamo, Pete should have continued with a diet high in carbohydrates and low in protein. The key word here is Adaptation. Evaluate for yourself exactly what happened here. Dr. D'Adamo is wrong. Read on!

4 / Animal Testing

Only omnivores are used in medical testing when scientific data is collected pertaining to human beings. The animals that are used are rats, monkeys and pigs. They are used because they closely resemble the human metabolism and anatomy. If a man was meant to be a vegetarian, why don't these scientists use rabbits?

5 / Gorillas

A lot of people will ask, 'What about the gorilla?' He's a vegetarian and is related to the monkey and the baboon; therefore, we must be vegetarians. My answers to those people are that hunters are fast and cunning, able to catch their food.

Gorillas are slow and can't catch anything. It's been documented that if gorillas living in captivity are given meat, they like meat and they want meat. This process is called adaptation. Your body will adapt to what you give it. Some people say that food adapts to your body. That's not true.

Western Lowland Gorilla

Western Lowland Gorilla

Your body will adapt to whatever you give it. For example, people who smoke. When a person first begins to smoke, the body rebels with the action of coughing and you might even get a headache. However, after the body adapts to the smoke, it becomes addicted, and that same person will now cough and get a headache if he doesn't supply the body with that cigarette.

6 / Vegetarianism For Bodybuilders

As you all know, I'm a bodybuilder. I use to compete in the early days of bodybuilding. The reason that I quit was because it turned into a drug and steroid culture (Medical clinics today that call themselves "sports medicine clinics" are usually "steroid medicine clinics").

I asked my teacher, Vince Gironda, about vegetarianism for bodybuilders. He told me that there had never been a Mr. America, Mr. Universe, or Mr. "Anything" that was a vegetarian, because, as a bodybuilder, you want to get bigger and have your muscles grow. You won't get the "pump".

You won't grow, and if you continue being a total vegetarian, you will become lethargic. You won't even want to work out. I decided to run a test on myself. I would become a vegetarian for six months and see how I felt. I quit after three months. Everything I had been told was true. In addition, my muscles had started to atrophy. Animal protein is so superior to vegetable protein, it's almost a joke.

7 / Nutrients

Vegetarians will tell you that you have to be a vegetarian to be able to get all of the nutrients and all of the minerals and the phyto-chemicals from the earth. BUT!, I say, let's look at history. The American Plains Indian was a hunter and a meat-eater. His whole life was the buffalo.

The white man killed the buffalo to starve the Indians to death. The Indian used the buffalo for food, clothing, housing, (tee-pees), and weapons. When the buffalo roamed the plains, it ate everything; roots, grass, leaves, and all kinds of vegetation. The Indian ate the buffalo.

I say to the vegetarians,"Don't you get it? Whatever the buffalo ate is in the meat. The Indians consumed all of the buffalo; therefore they got all of the nutrients that the buffalo did." The Indians lived very long lives and were very healthy, if they didn't they starve to death.

8 / Milk

If man is truly a vegetarian, like the vegetarians say he is, why - when a human mother nurses her baby - doesn't V8 juice come out? Vegetarians will counter this statement with, 'you only need milk until you are six years old' (I ask you where in the world is that written in stone? Maybe on Mt. Vesuvius!). Milk is an animal protein.

Man is primarily a protein-eater. Vegetarians say that it is harmful to the body to eat too much protein. This is ridiculous; it's like saying that you can drink too much water. Some "reasonable" people will say 'everything in moderation'. Does that work with arsenic?

Vegetarians also use the argument that a person will become violent if he eats the flesh of an animal. This is simply not true. Roger Williams did an experiment in the 1950's on inmates at a Texas penal intuition which disproves the vegetarian belief. The inmates were fed only processed and refined foods.

The B complex vitamins were also completely removed from their diet. Within a very short time, the inmates were hypoglycemic. They exhibited mental problems, confusion, depression, aggressiveness and violent behavior.

9 / Religion

I have always researched to a degree the great religions of the world: Christian, Judaism, Hindu, Buddhism, Muslim. I, myself, do not have a religion per se, but I do believe in an innate Spirit and a Creator. I do know that all the great religions of the world have their own "ten commandments" and a "golden rule". I try to abide by them.

The reason that I quote Jesus is because Christianity is part of this culture. Buddhists eat meat. I have Arabic friends, they eat meat. Jewish people eat meat. In Acts 10:12-16 Peter receives a vision from God that included all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild things, creeping things and birds of the air, in which he is told, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat".

Deuteronomy 8:3 states, "Man does not live by bread alone". Any true believer will accept this statement both at face value and at a higher spiritual level. Some vegetarians will take this verse to mean that man is a vegetarian. They must, however, read more than one verse. If, at any time in the Bible God had intended man to be a vegetarian, it might have been in the Garden of Eden, before the fall.

We know that God told Adam and Eve that they could eat the fruit from any tree in the Garden, except the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. However, God also gave Adam dominion over all the beasts of the earth, fish of the sea and fowls of the air (He doesn't specifically say that we can eat them, but he doesn't say that we can't).

In Genesis, chapter four, Adam's son, Abel, is tending flocks. This would have not happened if man was not meant to eat meat. God instructed Noah to take seven of every "clean" animal into the ark. Why? Clean animals were food. We may have the impression that Hindus and Indians are vegetarians, however there are many different sects, some are vegetarians, and some are not.

Many of us think that the people in China eat rice as the mainstay of their diet. In truth, it is only the poor people of China who consume mostly rice. The Chinese that can afford to, buy and eat meat and fish.

A friend of mine, Al Kelly, who is an attorney for Ford Motor Company, was in Africa last year on business. He told me that when he went to the more economically stable areas of Africa where they ate more meat and protein, the people were slim and muscular. In the poorer areas of the country, where the people's main diet consisted of grains, rice, and potatoes, the people were fat and fleshy.

Wherever you go in the world, you can't disprove the fact that protein and fat eaters are slim and muscular. Carbohydrate eaters are fat, fleshy people, because carbohydrates are sugar. The more sugar you eat, the more body fat you are going to have.

There are five different groups of people on the earth that primarily, if not exclusively, lived on meat. They are the primitive Eskimo (not the modern Eskimo), the Rocky Mountain Men, the American Plains Indian, the Massai in Africa, and the Balari in South America. They were all warriors. They were all slim and muscular people.

10 / Hippocrates, Father of Nutrition

The Father of Nutrition, Hippocrates, laid down ten rules 2,500 years ago. Number ten states "Protein means most important. Carbohydrates are secondary". Animal protein has practically no carbohydrates. Vegetable protein is loaded with starch and carbohydrates.

The Hippocratic Oath States:

  1. The natural way is the only way.
  2. Treat the cause of an illness, not the symptom.
  3. Look to the spine for illnesses.
  4. Throw away your drugs and heal the people with food.
  5. Most illnesses can be prevented by eating natural foods.
  6. A healthy colon is essential.
  7. Do not administer dangerous and harmful drugs.
  8. Do no harm to your patients.
  9. Do not perform surgery for money.
  10. The word "protein" means most important.

Because medical doctors receive no nutritional training, he didn't understand that when a meat-eater ingests protein, and, as the protein is digested, it goes into the liver, and the liver converts it into amino acid. The body takes those amino acids and converts them into natural glucose to feed the brain; the body has a wonderful system of checks and balances.

It is constantly converting one thing into another. That's why you don't have to eat carbohydrates for your brain to function. There are several low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets on the market today. (For instance, Dr Atkins, etc.) This is not a new, revolutionary idea; it was stolen from history and marketed as new. This is the way The American Plains Indian, The Rocky Mountain Men, The Primitive Eskimo, and the Massai ate.

Being a Nutritional Consultant, I believe that the protein and fat, low-carbohydrate diet is perfect for man, and I highly recommend this way of eating. If a person has eaten primarily carbohydrates for a long tome, his body completely adapts to that situation and goes into a state of Alkalosis (alkaline) rather than a state of acidosis (acid).

When this person first decides to change his diet, he may very well have a "fight" with his body. The body will rebel against these dietary changes, much like when a person tries to give up tobacco, caffeine, or sugar. This is why I recommend that you should count how many carbohydrates you eat daily and then reduce that intake gradually over eight to ten weeks.

As you decrease your carbohydrates, increase your protein. This will give your body a chance to adapt to your new eating regimen. Make sure to eat many small meals, don't combine foods. (If you don't know which foods are dangerous to you when eaten in combination, again, please call me.)

11 / Amino Acid

When protein foods are taken into the body, they are broken down and converted into amino acids by the liver. Amino acids are the basis for all human and animal life in the universe, the DNA, the RNA factor, the nucleus of all the cells.

The amino acid comparison between meat and vegetables, states that the best proteins are eggs, intestines, liver, glands, and raw milk. These have a biological value of 3.9 or greater. This comes from government regulations and is called "P E R Rating". Vegetables are rated, depending on variety, between 2.0 and 2.9. Animal protein is so superior to vegetable protein that there is no other contest.

12 / Health Convention

A few years ago, I went to a convention that I thought was supposed to be a "health convention". I didn't know that I had actually gone to a "vegetarian convention". It was unbelievable; the people looked ten to fifteen years older than their actual age and they had white, grayish skin. This is a telltale sign of anemia, resulting in the body lacking vitamin B12 and iron, which can only be derived from animal protein.

I spoke with one man who said that he became a vegetarian because of his study of the Hunza Mountain people of Pakistan, who were vegetarians and lived to be 100 plus years old. This poor man didn't realize that even though there was not much meat to eat because of high altitude, these people drank milk, ate eggs, yogurt, cheese and cottage cheese.

These are all animal proteins and all natural - no growth hormones or antibiotics. He went on to tell me that because vegetables are "live food", they are much healthier for us. I agree that vegetables are "live" until you pick them! A head of lettuce, once picked, will lose 50% of its Vitamin C content in eight hours, as once it has been picked from the cord and has been cut, it begins to die.

This man went on to say that he would never eat eggs because of their high cholesterol content. He didn't want to have a heart attack. While I was growing up on the farm, everybody ate four to five eggs a day. I have done that for over 30 years and my cholesterol is fine.

This is a good example of one of those propaganda statement made by the medical profession. Did any medical doctors ever explain to you, or anybody that you know, just how important cholesterol is to maintaining healthy bodily functions? Without cholesterol, if you got a simple cut, you would bleed to death in fifteen minutes.

Cholesterol is the vehicle that manufacturers every hormone in the body, and without hormones you can't even have sex! The liver manufacturers more cholesterol in one day than you could ever eat.

40% of the dry weight of the brain is cholesterol. This is all normal, yet the medical profession tells us to take all fats out of our diets. Nothing could be further from the truth. You need fats. Women need even more fat in their diets than men do. Natural fats never killed anyone and, on the contrary, they only make us healthier. The real killers are the processed and refined foods that we eat.

13 / Papillion

The movie, Papillion, with Steve McQueen, is the story of a French political prisoner who was incarcerated at Devil's Island. He tried to escape, but was captured and thrown into a 'hot house', which was a metal shack in the middle of the jungle. His captors left him there for thirty days.

He was told not to sap his strength or his energy because when they opened the gates in thirty days, he would probably be dead. Papillon was a very brilliant man; he knew that man was not a vegetarian. He knew the value of animal protein.

Every time they would give some bread and water, he would drink the water and throw the bread away. He knew that there was no nutritional value in white bread. He survived by doing just as the Green Berets in Vietnam did, by eating bugs, worms and rats.

Even though our culture frowns upon eating this type of diet, it is animal protein, and those creepy, crawling things that we turn our noses up at, have a greater nutritional value than those sugar-sweetened goodies that we feed our children and ourselves. The number one addiction in America is sugar.

14 / Childhood Experience

I was fortunate when I was a child, from the time that I was seven until the time I was ten, I lived with my grandparents on a farm in Illinois. My grandparents were very, very poor, but they always made it clear that there was plenty to eat. My grandparents, of course, ate bread and corn, and they had rice and beans once in a while.

There were always eggs (a superior protein), sausage and raw milk. There was an abundance of chicken, turkey, and fish and glands. We did eat some fruits and vegetables and grains, but the majority of our diet was non-vegetarian. My grandfather lived to 98 (no arteriosclerosis or heart attacks) and my grandmother lived to be 101.

The very first day that I went to the farm, I saw an Indian. He worked for my grandfather, and we called him "Indian Joe". He was an American Plains Indian who originally lived off the buffalo, but of course, he was civilized. His eating habits remained that of a primitive Indian. He ate meat.

He never ate fruits, vegetables, grains or breads. When my grandparents would butcher a hog or steer, they would put it down on the cellar (it was like a refrigerator). Indian Joe would go down and eat the meat. When I first met Joe, he was eighty years old. He was out bailing hay. He had muscles, and looked forty-five or fifty years old. The medical profession will tell you that if you don't eat fruits, vegetables, and grains, you can't have a bowel movement.

I can tell you that there were many times during my young years that I was next in line after Indian Joe for the outhouse, and he never had any problems with bowel movements. The medical profession is wrong. It's a myth that you have to eat fruits and vegetables to have a bowel movement, because if you digest your food and your colon is clean, you've got no problems.

How did this man live to be 115 years old, eating nothing but meats, glands, and intestines? Please don't misunderstand me; I'm not saying that you shouldn't eat fruits, grains, and vegetables. They are excellent foods. Everyday, I eat a salad, one fruit, one slice of whole grain bread, and a vegetable. However, the majority of my diet is protein and fat.

Don't forget that your hair, eyes, skin, liver, kidneys, spleen, thyroid, heart, and even blood are made from protein. They're not made from sugar or carbohydrates. Next to water, the second most abundant substance in the human body is protein, not sugar.

15 / Vitamin B12

Pernicious anemia is caused by lack of vitamin B12. There is no fruit, vegetables, or grain in the world that contains B12. Vitamin B12 is only found in animal protein. Vegans will tell you to take a B12 supplement. This is very feeble reasoning. The first vitamin was discovered in 1920.

If you lived in 1820, how could you have taken this vitamin supplement, as it didn't yet exist? I personally take fifteen to twenty Liver capsules per day, as it is the best blood builder known to man!

Conclusion

A friend of mine in Illinois is a 7th Day Adventist and a vegetarian, or so he thought. He lives on a farm and never ate meat, but he ate eggs and cheese and drank raw milk. "Sorry", I told him, "you are no longer a vegetarian, but a lacto-vegetarian because these foods are of animal source". He never reads the bible and is no longer a vegan.