Before the Ice Age humans didn't eat meat, and we ate mostly a vegetarian diet, afterwards we ate meat, when vegetation wasn't readily available.

The mainstream view among anthropologists is that the increases in human brain-size occurred well before the advent of cooking (common around 250,000 years ago), due to a shift away from the consumption of nuts and berries to the consumption of meat.

Human nutrition

Humans are omnivorous, capable of consuming plant, animal, and inorganic material.[84][85] Varying with available food sources in regions of habitation, and also varying with cultural and religious norms, human groups have adopted a range of diets, from purely vegetarian to primarily carnivorous. In some cases, dietary restrictions in humans can lead to deficiency diseases; however, stable human groups have adapted to many dietary patterns through both genetic specialization and cultural conventions to use nutritionally balanced food sources.[86] The human diet is prominently reflected in human culture, and has led to the development of food science.

Until the development of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago, Homo sapiens employed a hunter-gatherer method as their sole means of food collection. This involved combining stationary food sources (such as fruits, grains, tubers, and mushrooms, insect larvae and aquatic molluscs) with wild game, which must be hunted and killed in order to be consumed.[87] It has been proposed that members of H. sapiens have used fire to prepare and cook food since the time of their divergence from Homo rhodesiensis (which itself had previously speciated from Homo erectus).[88] Around ten thousand years ago, humans developed agriculture,[89] which substantially altered their diet. This change in diet may also have altered human biology; with the spread of dairy farming providing a new and rich source of food, leading to the evolution of the ability to digest lactose in some adults.[90][91] Agriculture led to increased populations, the development of cities, and because of increased population density, the wider spread of infectious diseases. The types of food consumed, and the way in which they are prepared, has varied widely by time, location, and culture.

In general, humans can survive for two to eight weeks without food, depending on stored body fat. Survival without water is usually limited to three or four days. About 36 million humans starve to death every year, due to lack of edible materials in their habitats.[92] Childhood malnutrition is also common and contributes to the global burden of disease.[93] However global food distribution is not even, and obesity among some human populations has increased rapidly, leading to health complications and increased mortality in some developed, and a few developing countries. Worldwide over one billion people are obese,[94] while in the United States 35% of people are obese, leading to this being described as an "obesity epidemic".[95] Obesity is caused by consuming more calories than are expended, so excessive weight gain is usually caused by a combination of an energy-dense high fat diet and insufficient exercise.[94]

I've been nearly vegan for over a month now. I say 'nearly' because I am allowing myself to have the eggs from our local farm share. I am doing my best to not participate in industrial agriculture. It's not sustainable & it makes us sick.

Here are changes that I've noticed so far:

I need to drink more water.
I have more energy.
I feel more awake in general.
I am happier.
I can't drink as much beer.
My stomach aches are gone.

That being said, it wasn't a hard jump for me because the only animal based food that I had been eating before had been dairy.

So Climbers who eat meat vs vegetarian who has more endurance and climbs better? Or it doesn't matter?

Maybe you are just dairy-sensitive then?

If God had of meant us to be vegetarians, he wouldn't have made cows out of meat.

Meatatarians unite.

So Climbers who eat meat vs vegetarian who has more endurance and climbs better? Or it doesn't matter?

and he wouldn't have made them so damn tasty

I've been nearly vegan for over a month now. I say 'nearly' because I am allowing myself to have the eggs from our local farm share....
Here are changes that I've noticed so far:

I need to drink more water.
I have more energy.
I feel more awake in general.
I am happier.
I can't drink as much beer.
My stomach aches are gone.

That being said, it wasn't a hard jump for me because the only animal based food that I had been eating before had been dairy.

First, there is no such thing as "nearly vegan", just as there isn't the condition of being nearly pregnant. As long as you're eating eggs, you're an ovo-vegetarian.

Being a strict vegan is probably harder than you think. You would also have to avoid:

many wines and beers - isinglass (a very pure form of gelatin from sturgeon fish bladders), gelatin (extract from boiled cow's or pig's hooves and sinews), egg whites (or albumin) and casein (mile protein) are all used in the production of wines and beers and are not vegan

Actually, since wine and beer must be made with yeast, you wouldn't drink them on that basis alone (if you're psychotic about being vegan).

Foods containing gelatin.

Vegetables (even organic) that are produced by using animal blood and bone meal as fertilizers.

Honey.

And if you're really strict...

you don't use anything made of fur, leather, or wool

soaps containing lanolin (made from wool) or made from animal fat

rennet (an enzyme found in the stomach of calves, young goats, and lambs that's used in cheese-making)

silk (made by silkworms)

shellac (the resinous secretion of the tiny lac insect)

cochineal (a red dye derived from the cochineal insect)

toothpaste containing calcium extracted from animal bones

for the most part, i follow the michael pollan rule, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." i don't do dairy, other than a small bit of cheese because it makes me feel like crap. i try to shop locally, and never eat fast food, and keep the crap junk food out of the house.


i could never give up my murphy's stout

And without seeing a shred of evidence that the foods I eat are bad for me, I enjoy eating a variety of good foods too much to give up anything in particular.

No one food is particularly bad. There are no junk foods - only junk diets.

I eat sugar, drink coffee, eat meat... And I am pretty sure that giving up on all those won't get me climbing harder.

To choose a diet ONLY to climb harder seems to go against any traditionalist views, I think. Gotta be a sport climber thang!

That is a typical example of something that is technically vegetarian, but probably just as bad for you, if not worse, than the real bacon would be.