1. Eating fat makes you fat:

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     It is widely accepted that “a healthy diet should be low in fat.” However, there are many scientific facts that combat this idea. It is true that too much fat in a diet will lead to high cholesterol, but most people, especially the generation of my parents and before that, often assume that eating large amounts of fat will make you fat.

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     This is incorrect for many reasons. The first being this fallacy: Fat consumption = fat absorption. Eating fat doesn’t make you fat. That’s like saying that eating an apple will make you turn into an apple.

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     What actually causes fast growth in humans is the consumption of carbohydrates and sugars. The human body’s digestive process is a process of transformation. One thing is converted to another, which means that fat cannot be converted into new fat. Thus, animal fat cannot be converted into human fat. Carbohydrates from pieces of bread and sugars from sweets and fruits, however, can be.

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     This is not to say that all fat is good for you (fat, after all, is necessary to a healthy diet) but should be moderated just as any other food group.

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2. GMOs are bad for you:

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     Another common health misconception is the idea that GMOs are some danger to your health simply because they are genetically modified and not “natural”. It is a common marketing tool to use words and phrases like “All Natural!” and “Non-GMO” as a ploy for consumers who only want the best for themselves and their families.

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     That being said, it’s no wonder that there is a general feeling of doubt towards what exactly is produced for mass consumption. “GMO’s” stand for genetically modified organisms. This means that scientists do meddle with the DNA within produce, but it’s not necessarily dangerous or bad for your health. One such product of genetic modification is the gene-splicing of tomatoes and a certain type of fish.

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     These fish are known for having a gene that makes them particularly resistant to the cold during winter and makes them more likely to survive the winter. Scientists made the ingenious discovery that if they take those fish genes and combine them with the tomatoes, they produce cold-resistant tomatoes.

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     Unfortunately, this has also led to the negative public opinion of GMO’s. However, if we look once more at the idea of the digestive process as one of conversion, you can recognize that consuming DNA does not equate somehow absorbing that same DNA. In reality, your stomach acid will just break it down like anything else you consume that is composed of DNA.

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3. Humans are not meant to consume meat:

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     Another misconception or more rather, controversial idea, is whether it’s healthy for humans to eat meat. For proponents of veganism and other non-meat diets, some like to push the fact that humans really shouldn’t eat meat because of the most commonly known drawbacks of excess meat consumption: high cholesterol or overall negative impacts of meat consumption, and other arguments concerning the moral and environmental aspect of meat consumption.

Probably the best argument for meat is that humans are meant to eat meat...sometimes. There should never be an excess of one key food group in your diet, since there are more likely than not negative consequences involved. And the same goes for meat!

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     However, a little meat isn't the most harmful thing to your body. The reason why I bring up the topic of meat consumption is that as I was driving home one day I happened to be listening to a radio show where a guest speaker was trying to convince the host that humans are not meant to eat meat whatsoever.

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     This came as a shock to me since I was always taught that humans were omnivores and could consume both meat and plant-based food. The development of an omnivorous diet amongst humans is the result of evolution, and our species' resilient ability to adapt to most environments.

There are certain parts of the world, such as the Arctic where there are few sources of plant-based food. There are however the plentiful resources of fish swimming around the coast in the Arctic that survive on underwater greenery that humans are not likely to consume. They are more likely to hunt and consume the fish that provide a lot of nutrients within a nutrient scarce environment.

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     Are there still plenty of valid arguments for humans to cease meat consumption? Absolutely. But it would be foolish for us to completely abandon the idea that humans are not meant to eat meat, when our adaptive diet is one of the ways we have been able to survive as long as we have as the dominant species.

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Article by Marie Perez

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Sources:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-truth-about-fats-bad-and-goodhttps://www.h ealth.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-truth-about-fats-bad-and-good

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https://ag.purdue.edu/GMOs/Pages/GMOsandHealth.aspx https://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/