Primate Carnivory and Its Significance to Human Diets

Abstract
Most primates are omnivorous. Omnivores increase the proportion of dietary animal matter when this increases the rate of energy acquisition. Humans, being omnivores, share this dietary predisposition, increasing animal-matter consumption beyond levels available to humans when dietary predispositions were limited by resource availability. These relations probably are the evolutionary and economic bases for the tendency of contemporary humans with access to luxury diets to consume health-hazardous quantities of meat.