Uploaded June 2021 | Updated September 2026, 23 hours ago

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Did eating meat allow our bigger brains to evolve? Does this mean we have to eat meat today if we want to have big brains? This is a common rebuttal to vegans and veganism so here I highlight three reasons why this doesn't hold up.

I touch on meat, tubers, cooking, ecology, culture, the expensive tissue hypothesis, Larmarkian and Darwinian evolution, and even briefly talk about transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in mice models. And I wrap up with some quotes from Leslie Aiello, the originator of the ETH and meat caused bigger brains hypothesis.

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----------------------HOW TO GO VEGAN-----------------------
Challenge 22
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Vegan Bootcamp
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-------------------------TIMESTAMPS---------------------------
0:00 It Would Have Had to Been Meat?
0:18 Intro
0:29 Not the Only Or Dominant Hypothesis
0:53 Expensive Tissue Hypothesis
1:20 Vegan Calories are Abundant Today
1:42 Meat Caused Bigger Brains is Misunderstood
2:21 Lamarckian Evolution
2:51 How Evolution Actually Works
4:45 Leslie Aiello, Originator of the Hypothesis
5:10 Summary

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