Are Humans Frugivores?

Humans are frugivores, a fact that might not surprise you if you've experienced the great pleasure of biting into a perfectly sweet, juicy mango, or tried a healthy raw food diet.

We evolved from the same genetic line that spawned our closest relatives, the bonobos and chimpanzees, who feast on fruit and greens in the forests of equitorial Africa.

In this article we'll review what seperates us from obviously-frugiverous chimps and bonobos, what these differences imply, and what researchers have to say about the matter.

Aren't Humans Too Different To Be Frugivores?

Humans are capable of digesting hamburgers, milkshakes, and sweet potatoes, but this doesn't change the reality of our frugiverous digestive anatomy.

Chimps and bonobos are almost equally capable of eating cooked human food, and even junk food. They actually request it by preference when they've been exposed to it in zoos.

It appears that the great apes are just as suseptible to food addiction and dietary mood alteration as humans are, but no primatologist would ever suggest that cooked food is the ideal food for chimpanzees.

Why, then, do they say it's the ideal food for humans?

How We've Changed

After humanity's divergence from the genetic line that produced the extant great ape species, we underwent a number of changes.

We gained the ability to produce more of the starch-digestive enzyme amalyze, (but we still have but a fraction of the production capability of true starch eaters, like pigs). Our jaws and teeth also underwent some changes.

But the most important shifts occured in our intestines.

Our guts shrank, the small intestine became longer, and our cacum (appendix) and colon shrank. This reduced gut volume means we're no longer capable of eating the large quantities of food that a bobobo or chimp can consume with ease (1).

Sugar And Calorie-Rich Foods

The increased volume of the small intestine means that we now have the ability - and, paired with the gut volume shrinkage, the need - to digest foods that are of a more highly concentrated nature. In times of low fruit availability in Africa, chimps are capable of consuming huge quantities of low-calorie leafy vegetation to meet their energy needs, but that approach won't fly for us.

This is why the whole fruit vs vegetable debate, and the "overhybridized" fruit debate, are fairly nonsensical - calorie-rich fruit is ideal for us.

Sugar absorption occurs in the small intestine, so humans can uptake more sugar than chimps in a given time frame. It's probable that as we gained this ability, our need for lower-energy vegetation diminished, and our cecum and colon shrank.

Our cecum holds the bacteria that breaks down indigestible fibrous plant materials, so as it shrank, a dietary path closed for us, as another opened up.

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But Didn't Cooking Change Us?

Can we still be frugivores after thousands of years eating cooked food?

How many of our anatomical changes were brought about by a cooking and consuming high-energy roots and tubers, and how much was a continuation of the fruit-eating path we were already on, is debatable. But whatever the reason, we now prefer and thrive on lower-fiber, higher calorie foods.

This isn't anything new, actually. Primatologists have observed primates all prefer high-sugar fruits as well, but have less access to them in the wild.

Many have suggested that evolution has left us unable to consume a fruit-based raw food diet, such as Richard Wrangham, author of "Catching Fire". Yet his analysis is somewhat flawed, as I discuss In my book, Raw Food Weight Loss And Vitality, which suggests that we eat with the assumption we're frugivores.

The general consensus of researchers is that the thousands of years our species years spent as hunter gatherers had very little effect on our digestive anatomy (1).

Sure, we're now capable of eating a wide variety of foods due to cooking and our flexible digestive system, but it doesn't mean that they're now ideal for us.

What Do The Experts Say?

We're quite capable of consuming a frugiverous diet and thriving on it. Although experts might not throw around the word "frugivore," academics and those in the medical field regularly comment on how well equipped we are by evolution to digest fruit.

Lets take a look a quick look at what three well-versed people have to say on the topic of eating much more raw fruit and vegetables

Primatologist Katharine Milton

Katharine Milton of the University of California, Berkley, is one of the most prolific and well-respected authors on the topic of the dietary ecology of Primates, with a special focus on how primates relate to modern humans and our human ancestors. She writes:

Physicist Hans Georg Dehmelt:

Hans Georg Dehmelt won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989 for his development of the ion trap technique, but being a man of wide interests, he's also published two papers on a far different subject: the suitability of fruit-based diet for humans. He writes:

Urologist Donald S. Coffey

Urologist Donald S. Coffey, Director of the Brady Research Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, was a well-respected expert on cancer. Shortly before his death in 2004, he summed up what Americans needed to do to improve their health and ward off cancer. He wrote:

Humans Are Frugivores:

There's no need to fear fruit. A raw food diet based around it is the healthiest way to eat.

If you want to thrive like never before and eat in accordance with our digestive anatomy, check out my book, Raw Food Weight Loss And Vitality.

Frugivorous Humans: Sources

1) Milton K. 2000. Hunter-gatherer diets – a different perspective. Am J Clin Nutr 7(3):665-667.

2) Milton, K. "Nutritional characteristics of wild primate foods: Do the diets of our closest living relatives have lessons for us?" NUTRITION 15 (6): 488-498 JUN 1999

3) Dehmelt, Hans Georg. "Healthiest Diet Hypothesis." Medical Hypotheses. Volume 64, Issue 4 , 2005, Page 882

4) Dehmelt, Hans Georg. "What is the optimal anthropoid primate diet?" 2001. arXiv:physics/0112009

5) Coffey, DS "Similarities of prostate and breast cancer: Evolution, diet, and estrogens." Urology. 2001 Apr;57 (4 Suppl 1):31-8.