How did our family traditions become centered around eating meat? Think about it. When we think of Thanksgiving, we think of turkey. If we eat pork, then New Year’s celebrations often revolve around pork and sauerkraut. At Christian Easter, the traditional meal is ham. And in the summer, we wait for that first hamburger or steak on the grill.

How did that happen to a species that was designed to eat vegetables and fruits, nuts, berries and legumes?

We can imagine that eating meat was initially an opportunistic event, born of the need to survive. The taste of cooked meat, plus the sustained energy that came from eating high-fat meat products made primitive sense even to earliest man.

Initially, finding cooked animal meat, from a forest fire, would have been cause for celebration. It’s something everyone in a clan would have participated in eating together. When man learned to hunt and moved to a hunting orientation, rather than a hunter-gatherer orientation, he would have done this in groups. They would have had to hunt in teams, and killing an animal for food would have been a group effort. Hunting and killing an animal meant food not just for the individual, but for the clan, and would have been cause for celebration when the hunters brought the food home.

If they brought the animal back to the clan, it would have taken a group effort to skin the animal and tear or cut the meat from the carcass. Everyone would have participated in this, and subsequently, shared in the rewards of their work.

It’s easy to see how, once we didn’t have to hunt for meat, but could buy it, the need for gathering and celebration was deeply ingrained in our natures. We celebrate the seasons and life’s events with family and friends, and because those early celebrations involved eating meat, that tradition has continued to modern times.

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Looking and feeling good is what everyone wants. Exercising and eating right are the only ways to achieve this. People need food in order to have energy to do certain things. One way to lose weight and still maintain a healthy lifestyle is by only eating foods that are low in saturated fats and high in monounsaturated ones that is being done by the Mediterranean diet.

This is called the Mediterranean diet because the eating plan comes from those who live along the Mediterranean Sea. This was first discovered after the end of the Second World War by an American doctor but never became popular until the 1990s.

The reason why many people in these countries are healthy and are able to live for more than a hundred years is because of the large amounts of olive oil consumed in each meal. Another contributing factor is also in the red wine, which also has antioxidants properties.

The difference of the Mediterranean Diet compared to others out there is that the person does not have to give up anything but simply make some wise food choices. This means avoiding eating processed foods or those form tinned cans and getting those that are fresh.

The Mediterranean Diet involves eating food in large, moderate and small quantities. The person should eat a lot of food such as beans, bread, cereals, fruits, grains and nuts since these contain minerals, nutrients and vitamins that are good for the body.

On a moderate level, the individual can have cheese, milk and yogurt since this will prevent the consumption of other things that are high in saturated fats.

The type of products that should be consumed lightly is animal meat such as fish, pork, chicken and eggs, which can be done a few times in a month.

The Mediterranean diet teaches the individual to eat right. In order to live healthy like these people who live by the sea, it is best to engage in some form of physical activity to be able to burn those extra calories.

A few simple examples could be brisk walking, jogging and running. Those who want to exercise in a group could try a team sport such as basketball or by joining a class at the local gym.

Who wants to live forever? Perhaps that will be a question to ask those who have reached a hundred. This may not have been the plan but it has happened especially to those who are living along the Mediterranean Sea.

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