The settled judgment of science is that man is an omnivore, capable of eating both meat and vegetables, much as certain four-year-olds might like to convince their mothers otherwise.
Like the hard-core carnivores, we have fairly simple digestive systems well suited to the consumption of animal protein, which breaks down quickly. Contrary to what your magazine article says, the human small intestine, at 23 feet, is a little under eight times body length (assuming a mouth-to-anus "body length" of three feet). This is about midway between cats (three times body length), dogs (3-1/2 times), and other well-known meat eaters on the one hand and plant eaters such as cattle (20 to 1) and horses (12 to 1) on the other. This tends to support the idea that we are omnivores.
Herbivores also have a variety of specialized digestive organs capable of breaking down cellulose, the main component of plant tissue. Humans find cellulose totally indigestible, and even plant eaters have to take their time with it. If you were a ruminant (cud eater), for instance, you might have a stomach with four compartments, enabling you to cough up last night's alfalfa and chew on it all over again.
Or you might have an enlarged cecum, a sac attached to the intestines, where rabbits and such store food until their intestinal bacteria have time to do their stuff. Digestion in such cases takes place by a process of fermentation--bacteria actually "eat" the cellulose and the host animal consumes what results, namely bacteria dung.
The story is roughly the same with teeth. We're equipped with an all-purpose set of ivories equally suited to liver and onions.
Good thing, too. I won't claim meat is the ideal source of protein, but on the whole it's better than plants. Sure, soybeans and other products of modern agriculture are pretty nutritious. But in the wild, much of the plant menu consists of leaves and stems, which are low in food value. True herbivores have to spend much of the day scrounging for snacks just to keep their strength up.
So make no mistake: we were born to eat meat. That's not to say you have to. There's no question that strictly from a health standpoint we'd all be a lot better off eating less meat (red meat especially) and more fruits and vegetables. But vegetarians aren't going to advance their cause by making ridiculous claims.
I would be happy to exchange recipies with people!
