A bit of both I would imagine. If you look at the history of humans over the past 200,000 years, it appears that to get the energy and strength to survive, reproduce and evolve, humans have had to ingest large quanities of meat. If the meat was not available, humans would migrate to find the meat source or would starve. One theory still discussed today is that humans played a large part in wiping out the mammoth elephant speciies. Or the buffalo hunting practices of the American plains indians. Both instances are solid proof that humans, by nature, are large consumers of meat. Look at the meat cases in any grocery store anywhere in the world. In the USA, Wal-Marts meat cases take up one entire side wall of thier super stores.
There was a big study in the news a couple of years ago comparing two groups of people (both groups trying to lose weight). One group was on the Atkins diet (practically all meat); the other group was on a very low-fat diet with a lot of vegetables.
I found it remarkable that both groups (if they stuck to their diet plans) seemed to be healthy after a year, even though they were on diametrically-opposed diets. That seems like evidence that we’re omnivores by nature.
Excellent! 
It’s far, far worse than that. Why, sometimes I’ve seen children chasing each other with great glee. If that doesn’t prove we’re cannibals by nature, I don’t know what would.
What on earth does chasing each other have to do with cannibalism? Or little children chasing birds? I guess I should have studied cultural anthropology in college.
I think it is a fairly sound generalization that herbivores do not chase other animals. Even those herbivores that willingly attack other animals (for territory, for status, or to protect their young) will not, as a rule, chase them further than the mission requires.
The “cannibalism” part is silly, though. Humans are not the only animals with a sense of play.
The point I made was intended to be whimsical, but with a core of truth to it. Toddlers chase birds the same way dogs chase chickens, i.e., with what looks like me to a hunter’s instinct. A game of tag is played in a very different way.
Well, the other day I was watching a nature show about cheetahs and this female warthog, rather comically, chased them all over the place (vaguely similar example). Additionally, elephants and hippos and rhinos, all herbivores, have reputations as being extremely dangerous and they will run you down and trample you if you piss them off.
Umm… warthogs are omnivorous. Just sayin’ is all.
And ‘if you piss them off’ is key. Any animal will attempt to chase or scare you if you invade its space.
Well, whatever, it was still funny.
Random point, could be interesting, might be irrelevant:
I saw a hippo on a nature show eating a wildebeast that had drowned in the stampede to get across the river. Show said hippos do that sometimes.
Well, if even the herbivores aren’t always herbivores, I don’t know why humans being omnivores is uncomfortable to some.
Hippos eat more people than lions do.
Regarding the breast milk comment much, much earlier in the thread. I was curious, so I checked out the claim that only about 1% of breast milk is protein. That’s technically true, but misleading. Human breast milk varies from 0.8–0.9% protein by volume. Per that cite, human breast milk is 3–5% fat; 6.9–7.2% carbohydrate; 0.2% ash (i.e.: minerals) meaning that only 10.9–13.3% of breast milk is nutritive. The rest of the volume is water. Protein makes up between 1.4 and 1.6 g/100 ml, virtually all of which is digested since it’s provided in a form that is obviously optimal for baby nutrition.
Breast feeding is highly recommended for at least the first three months, with weaning/supplementation usually starting between four and 6 months. WHO recommendations are for exclusive breast feeding until 6 months, but many mothers start weaning early, especially in industrial countries. This cite shows typical nutrient intake and in-depth details about the makeup of breast milk. I’ve selected out the total daily intake of protein, in grams, from birth to 3 months:
[ul]
[li]Day 1; 5 g[/li][li]Day 3; 12 g[/li][li]Day 8; 9 g[/li][li]3 mo; 7.5 g[/li][/ul]
Assuming a birth weight of around 6.5 lbs. which is roughly average, and typical weight gain over the next few days and weeks, babies are taking in more than the 0.8 g/lb. of protein recommended for an active adult (someone who does some form of significant exercise at least 3–4 days a week) for much of the first three months. The ratios are: about the same, 2.2x, 1.6x, and 0.85 RDA, respectively. The protein content of breast milk starts to taper off around the time most mothers introduce some solid food (4–6 months) which is probably not a coincidence.
Protein is not the most important element of the diet for babies, though. In fact, if you look at the typical ratios of macronutrients listed above, fat makes up the bulk of the calories. Per most of the sources I cited above, fat is one of the things that’s usually harder to obtain at the levels needed for good growth and development from sources other than breastfeeding, which is why even after introducing solid food supplementation of the diet with breast milk is recommended for up to one year of age. Much of the weight gain — especially in the first six months or so — is not in body size, but in brain growth. Brain tissue is roughly 50% fat (excluding water weight).
Extrapolating adult nutritional requirements from infant and childhood needs probably isn’t a good idea to begin with, but looking at the specific claim shows that both fat and protein are present in significant proportions in breast milk. Adult protein intake should be higher in proportion than infant diets for two reasons: 1) Protein from either plant or animal sources is assimilated less readily than the proteins in breast milk, 2) A much larger percentage of body weight is made up of muscle tissue and other protein-dependent tissue in adults than in babies or children.
Hunter gatherer diets provide the best picture of what humans ate during the majority of the history of our species. To the best of my knowledge to this point, paleolithic studies have shown that modern HG diets are pretty darn close to historic diets. There’s no one HG diet, as what people eat depends greatly on the food resources in their environment, but in general they get about half their calories from animal sources. In every single extant hunter-gatherer group animal foods are an important part of the diet. Fully vegetarian diets are an oddity that have never been a widespread pattern of eating until very recently in human history.
Is anyone else hearing the “hungry hungry hippo!” jingle in their head?
It’s not that they’re particularly bloodthirsty, I think it’s more that tourist types who know better than to approach a lion are less hesitant to walk up to a wild hippo.
And regarding your well-researched data, I’m now curious what effect the vegan diet of the mother has on the protein content of breast-milk. Should she be eating more protein during and in the months after her pregnancy so she can pass it on to her child?
Mmmm. . . plump Western tourists. . .
The original white meat.
Actually, the correct statement is that Hippos kill more people than lions do.
Hippos are aggressive, territorial, touchy beasts who will charge, pursue, and trample people who come too close. But they look like fat, overgrown versions of the placid domesticated herbivores like pigs & cattle, so silly people get too close to them, and get injured or killed for that. Most people, even the silly ones, know to keep their distance from lions.
So hippos end up killing more people than lions. But it’s extremely rare for the hippos to then eat the dead people.