I don't know how long ago we started cooking our food but do you think someone can live a good 40 years eating everything raw?
How long can modern man live only eating raw, uncooked food?
- Thread starter Dari
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Tsavo
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- Sep 29, 2009
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0roo0roo
No Lifer
- Sep 21, 2002
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http://harvardmagazine.com/2009/11/cooking-and-human-evolution
....Wrangham observes that chimpanzees, from whom humans diverged millions of years ago, eat many things raw that humans can’t, suggesting that Homo sapiens evolved away from this ability. In fact, he notes that people who choose to consume only raw food generally don’t get enough calories unless they do something that essentially pre-digests it, such as running it through a blender. Women on such a diet typically stop menstruating.
That is because cooking—thanks to chemical processes that differ for starches, meats, and connective tissue—increases the number of calories in the food available to the human digestive system. Cooking also reduces the energy cost of digestion: gorillas, for example, must chew all day to absorb enough nutrition. Cooking makes more metabolic energy available for other things: the development of a large brain relative to gut size, or later, in prehistoric societies, more time available for hunting.....
....Wrangham observes that chimpanzees, from whom humans diverged millions of years ago, eat many things raw that humans can’t, suggesting that Homo sapiens evolved away from this ability. In fact, he notes that people who choose to consume only raw food generally don’t get enough calories unless they do something that essentially pre-digests it, such as running it through a blender. Women on such a diet typically stop menstruating.
That is because cooking—thanks to chemical processes that differ for starches, meats, and connective tissue—increases the number of calories in the food available to the human digestive system. Cooking also reduces the energy cost of digestion: gorillas, for example, must chew all day to absorb enough nutrition. Cooking makes more metabolic energy available for other things: the development of a large brain relative to gut size, or later, in prehistoric societies, more time available for hunting.....
0roo0roo
No Lifer
- Sep 21, 2002
- 64,795
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"The standard argument is that meat-eating is what allowed for Homo erectus," he said recently from his office in Harvard's Peabody Museum. While that, he says, may have been true for the first stage of human development - the shift from Australopithecines to Homo habilis about 2.5 million years ago, which produced a species about the size of a chimp with a bigger brain - it was not true for the second.
That second stage came about roughly a million years later, as Homo erectus evolved with a much larger body and brain - but smaller teeth. "How they were meant to be eating raw meat with smaller teeth doesn't make sense to me," Wrangham said.
He was, he said, stuck. He had been taught that fire was a cultural innovation of beings that were already human, yet he could find no way they could have become human without the nutritional advantage of cooking. Cooking, he argued, was the "human" in the human diet, the only explanation for the evolutionary jump in brain and body size.
It is a reasonable argument, but with one major problem, and you need only walk down the hallway from Wrangham's office to find it................
"I've gotten to know chimps well enough to know that I couldn't survive on their diet. It's certainly possible to live on a raw food diet. There are many humans who do, but they eat incredibly choice foods," he notes, "and they use a blender."
"Otherwise, we'd have to be like the chimps and spend about half of our day chewing," he added..http://www.boston.com/news/science/...e_cooked_up_a_new_theory_on_evolution/?page=2
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cooking-up-bigger-brains
That second stage came about roughly a million years later, as Homo erectus evolved with a much larger body and brain - but smaller teeth. "How they were meant to be eating raw meat with smaller teeth doesn't make sense to me," Wrangham said.
He was, he said, stuck. He had been taught that fire was a cultural innovation of beings that were already human, yet he could find no way they could have become human without the nutritional advantage of cooking. Cooking, he argued, was the "human" in the human diet, the only explanation for the evolutionary jump in brain and body size.
It is a reasonable argument, but with one major problem, and you need only walk down the hallway from Wrangham's office to find it................
"I've gotten to know chimps well enough to know that I couldn't survive on their diet. It's certainly possible to live on a raw food diet. There are many humans who do, but they eat incredibly choice foods," he notes, "and they use a blender."
"Otherwise, we'd have to be like the chimps and spend about half of our day chewing," he added..http://www.boston.com/news/science/...e_cooked_up_a_new_theory_on_evolution/?page=2
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cooking-up-bigger-brains
I had a vegan nut the other day espouse to me and another guy that vegans actually get more protein than meat eaters because "vegetables and grains contain more protein than meat." Yet, he looked like he just stepped out of a concentration camp. Huh....
- Oct 28, 1999
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Yeh. We didn't invent fire to keep warm. We did it because grilled meat is freaking awesome.
JulesMaximus
No Lifer
- Jul 3, 2003
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Raw and uncooked? Man, I don't know...I mean raw is one thing but when you add uncooked to the equation all bets are off.
Food (i.e. meat) is inherently cooked to some degree whether it is thermally, biologically, or chemically.
So if you are talking about a diet fixated on solely raw vegetables and fruits, I would not survive very long.
So if you are talking about a diet fixated on solely raw vegetables and fruits, I would not survive very long.
BurnItDwn
Lifer
- Oct 10, 1999
- 26,365
- 1,875
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You can live just fine on all raw foods. But as previously mentioned, it will take far more food intake to maintain the same caloric balance as with a cooked diet. And with meats you will have to worry about bacterias and parasites.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
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JulesMaximus
No Lifer
- Jul 3, 2003
- 74,597
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Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
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Blackjack200
Lifer
- May 28, 2007
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Also from the article:
"Wrangham believes cooking, by providing quick calories, allowed human males to focus on hunting, leaving gathering and cooking to the females."
So there's an anthropological basis for women in the kitchen :awe:
Reminds me of a great joke I heard. It's old, everyone's probably heard it by now, but for anyone that hasn't:
Intercontinental flight over the Altantic has both engines go out and starts plummeting toward the ocean. As people panick, a woman in the first row turns to the man next to her, rips her shirt off and says "Before I die, make me feel like a woman one last time!" The man, obliging, rips his own shirt off, hands it to her and says "IRON THIS!" :biggrin:
rudder
Lifer
- Nov 9, 2000
- 19,441
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As long as the people who picked the raw stuff washed their hands after taking a dump.
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