What are our teeth designed for?

Hmm..don't we have both? I thought our front teeth were used for meat and the back ones used for vegetables. Meat and vegetables is probably a poor word choice...

Well, considering our systems don't handle raw meat well, I would suspect we weren't "programmed" to eat meat. Most of our teeth share similarities with herbivores.

I just read a thread on another site that cited about a gazillion references making the point that humans are "designed" to eat fruit, nuts and "succulent" vegetables. Yeah, we have "canine" teeth, but they're the same length as our other teeth so they're not particularly effective at tearing flesh. Also, our teeth are not strong enough to allow us to crack open bones (which true carnivores do to get at the nutrient-rich marrow). We do eat meat, but only when cooked, so that's like cheating. Frugivores is the term for it. Most primates are frugivores, and we are, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frugivore

our teeth are designed for crushing(molars) and tearing(inscisors). Our acient diet would have been vegetables. If you are a Bible person - prior to Adam and Eve's sin there was no death and that included animals. They ate from the garden of Edan. If your an eveolutionist - the answer is still the same. Acient man gathered nuts and fruits. Later he began to hunt.

This is a stretch but I think I read somewhere that it was during the ice age we began to hunt animals since all plant matter had died. It was at that time we developed larger jaws and third molars to grind the meat. Now it is opposite and our jaws are small again, too small to accomodate the third back molars.

some say our jaw structure is ideal for breaking open large insects.

But aside from the mouth, if you examine the human gastro-intestinal system you’ll find that it doesn’t handle the breakdown of heavy nitrogenous food material very efficiently. Compare our digestion to that of a dog or other true omnivore. We’re definitely not herbivores either.

What do chimps and gorillas eat? I think that might be the way we had been eating for millions of years.