Are we humans built to be carnivores, omnivores, or herbivores?

Should we eat like a tiger or eat like a raging bull?  Well this could be a long post, but I'll keep it as short as possible.

A carnivore exists by eating only meat, and that means raw meat of animals it catches and eats, chews apart or swallows whole.  My friends, we are not carnivores.  Herbivores graze grasses and plants and can digest vegetable products. Omnivores can do both, and so we are omnivores.

Now if you are asking this question, you are probably interested in what diet we are biologically best suited for, and what animals we are most similar to when it comes to food consumption.  So here's a quick comparison.

1.  A tiger or wolf's teeth are sharp and pointed.  They are used to bring down and rip apart prey.  An herbivore's teeth (like a horse's or bull's) are flat, and used for smashing and grinding up food (not ripping it off the carcass of a freshly caught pre)y. Despite vestigial (left over) canine teeth, our teeth are flat and suited for crushing and grinding just like a horse.

2.  A tiger or wolf's jaw cannot move left and right for grinding up food, and can only move up and down.  An herbivore's jaw (like a horse's or cow's) easily moves left and right, and so does ours.

3.  Carnivores drink water by lapping it up with their long tongue.  Herbivores drink water by sucking it in with their lips and cheeks.  If we drink water without our manufactured cups or cupping our hands, we too drink by sucking it in using our lips and cheeks.

4.  Carnivores have relatively short intestinal tracts, usually around three times the length of their body.  This moves meat through fast, as meat goes rancid at high temperatures.  Herbivores like horses have intestinal tracts about 10-12 times the length of their body, taking sometimes days to digest food.  The human intestinal tract is 10-12 times the length of our body.

5.  For what it's worth, carnivores don't have sweat glands on their skin and cool themselves off by sweating though their foot pads and by panting.  Herbivores like horses sweat through their skin.  Humans sweat through our skin.

6.  The most telling comparison though is instinct.  Carnivores are dawn to small animals, and want to chase them down and eat them.  They would find a carcass in the road worth sniffing and possibly eating.  Humans find fruits and other foods in the natural state appealing.  But we only salivate when meat has been prepared for us, cooked and seasoned.  We do not look at a cow or chicken in the road and naturally think how hungry we are.

7.  The animals we are actually closest to in physiology are great apes.  Great apes consumer almost entirely plant products and only rarely hunt and eat any kind of meat.  And like every other species on the planet other than humans, they only consumee dairy from their mothers when they are babies, and never consumer dairy as babies or as adults from a different species of animal altogether.

In the end, it is your decision of course how you eat, but if you are looking to biology for guidance, you'll probably decide to seriously cut down or eliminate meat (and dairy) products.