So a couple of weeks ago I was reading the paper here in london, and in the magazine section there is always a restaurant review (i only read 'em cuz they're very entertaining - A.A gill is hilarious - not because I ever actually eat in restaurants...)
And part of the beginning just made me smile, and so i thought I'd share it here..
"The thing about eating oysters is that there wasn’t a first man who did it. We evolved into doing it. Kissing, on the other hand — or on the other cheek — was first done by some old roué who said: “Come here behind the arras, my dear; let me show you my new discovery. Now, close your eyes...”
It’s not oysters that were the big foolish mouth-adventure for mankind; the real idiot was the first man to eat a well-done steak. We are so familiar and comfortable with cooked food, we can barely comprehend how strange it must have tasted. Nobody has the faintest idea when the first steak was grilled; actually, a lot of people have faint ideas, and they range from 10,000 to 2.5m years ago. But imagine, all you’ve ever eaten is raw meat. Burnt meat must have been truly disgusting. Everything about it is alien. The temperature, the texture and the taste. Our palates are a combination of acquired instinct (poisons taste bitter, mother’s milk is sweet) and learnt cultural and aesthetic prejudice (the Chinese don’t drink milk, Jews won’t eat pork, everyone in peep-toe heels likes champagne). "
it just made me smile lol, that a regular food critic who eats all types of food in restaurants and probably hasn't a clue that people like us exist , says this.... And he's kinda right. People only really love cooked meat through social conditioning and the fact they've been eating it their whole lives
The full article is here :
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/eating_out/a_a_gill/article6561082.ece He does go on to talk a bit about the "benefits" of cooked meat, but hey, at least he understands humans evolved eating uncooked meat!