Dr. Milton Mills travels around the country presenting surprising information about what humans should eat, and why
He’ll Even Give You $10,000 To Prove He’s Wrong
The astonishing information never stopped as I watched Dr. Milton Mills give three talks on whether humans were made to eat meat. Here’s a handful of examples. Only herbivores – animals who live solely on plants – have an appendix. Only herbivores can suck up liquids. Carnivores, who have much larger mouths and an entirely different facial structure, have to lap up water. A three hundred pound lion can eat over 57,000 calories in one meal and then not eat for seven to ten days. On the other hand, herbivores foraging for whole plant foods can’t consume enough calories at a time to make it through a measly 24 hours, and so must eat multiple times a day.
The amazing contrasts between carnivores and herbivores filled hours of presentations, with the facts demonstrated with pictures of skeletons, teeth, jaws, digestive systems, muscles, legs, feet, and much
Would anyone dispute that this wolf is a carnivore?
more. Omnivores, it turns out, are way more similar to carnivores than to herbivores, for the simple reason they have to be able to consume rotting flesh, laden with pathogens, and thrive.
I was fortunate to have a chance to talk with Dr. Mills, and find out more about how he came to pursue his unique method of proving humans are 100% herbivores. I asked him about the evolution of his own food choices. “I grew up in a family that ate the usual stuff – beef, pork, chicken, fish. When I was 14, I joined the Seventh Day Adventist church, which strongly encourages all its members to be vegetarian. I still ate meat my first year in the church, but at age 16 became vegetarian. Since I was always lactose-intolerant, I was near vegan at that point, but became completely vegan after I started attending and presenting at Vegetarian Summerfest in 1998. ”
I expected that since Dr. Mills became vegetarian as such a young age, he would not have noticed many health benefits, but he quickly let me know this was wrong. “I tend to be a skeptical person, but
Deer are herbivores, but Dr. Mills makes the important point that not all herbivores are designed to eat an identical diet. While deer live on grass, humans eat a much wider variety of plants that are more calorie-dense
I saw a definite change. My acne cleared up. I needed less sleep. My energy level soared.”
Wanting to share his success, Dr. Mills went to medical school “to get a more sophisticated understanding of human health and physiology in order to educate people in why animal food based diets are harmful. I realized to be persuasive I needed to provide a lot of information and appeal to people’s intellects, so I began my study of the detailed comparison of herbivores vs. carnivores. ” He is still a practicing physician, working in an intensive care unit with critically ill patients.
Dr. Mills let me know that, while his insights into the herbivore/carnivore comparison have become much deeper and more detailed, he is still always researching and learning more. When I asked him what’s the most persuasive information he has uncovered to prove humans are herbivores, he hesitated to point to just one or two facts. “The evidence is staggering
Bears, who are true omnivores, resemble carnivores much more closely than they resemble herbivores. What herbivore would chomp into a whole raw fish and swallow it bones, scales, organs, and more?
and overwhelming. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about energy in vs. energy out. If any animal uses more energy in getting its food than it gets from the food itself, that animal will starve. Hunting is energy inefficient because prey fight back against predators. Even for the most successful natural carnivores, 8 or 9 out of every 10 hunts are not successful. So when the rare kill is achieved, the carnivore can eat 30% of its own body weight at a sitting. That is 90 pounds for a 300 pound lion, and would be 45 pounds of meat for a 150 pound human, if we were truly designed to eat meat.”
The psychological aspect of food also fascinates Dr. Mills. He laughs. “I started thinking about this one day when I was taking my dog for a walk and she peed on some flowers. They didn’t mean anything to
Humans have learned to love flowers, because edible fruits and/or seeds often appear where flowers were growing. We have learned over time to appreciate all flowers, even those that are not from plants we eat.
her. Humans love flowers and perfume themselves with their scents. Why? Because flowers are a prelude to food – fruit and seeds – that foraging humans needed to survive. We had to be attentive to flowers, so we could come back later and get the food they produced.”
Dr. Mills especially enjoys showing how ridiculous Paleo diet theories are, and backs up his scathing critique of Paleo with his own cash. “I will give $10,000 to anyone who survives on the savannah of
Dr. Mills has an easy time demolishing the ridiculous Paleo diet theories
Africa for two weeks eating meat they scavenge from the kills of predators. There is a catch – you can’t take antibiotics or call a doctor or hospital after you have been eating rotting meat and sucking on bone marrow that’s been decaying in the African sun – assuming you can even find any and wrestle it away from lions. You also don’t get a gun to keep the carnivores from making a meal of you – you have to survive the way you think your Paleo ancestors did. It’s impossible, because humans never did and never could survive that way.”
Check out Dr. Mills’ videos by searching youtube for his name. Look for him to present at an event near you. This will have to do until he comes out with the book he is working on, which cannot be soon enough for the lifesaving information that is so compelling.
If you enjoyed this post, you may want to check out some whole foods, plant-based recipe ideas so you can enjoy the foods your body is designed for.
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Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet: How to Lose Weight and Get Healthy Now With Six Kinds of Whole Foods, a book that shows you how to thrive as the herbivore you were meant to be on a whole foods, plant-based diet. Janice is glad to be an herbivore so she can enjoy delicious plant foods many times a day.
