Why do humans cook meat?

[TylerDurden]

Again, I have  come across instances where animals avoid the processed foods but go after any raw animal foods offered. A classic example are the flies and wasps in my home in Italy, which go absolutely berserk at the smell of raw meats when I bring them out on the terrace, but who generally avoid us when there is only cooked animal foods on the table at the time. A lot of it has to do with supply and demand. Animals that need to bulk up prior to hubernation, and those routinely facing starvation and the like, will be less likely to avoid eating cooked foods.


As for cooked meat, it has no advantages, other than the effect it has on chemicals in the brain re dopamine levels and resulting addiction.

As for the Eskimoes, I doubt they ate raw or cooked meat for health reasons. A far more likely explanation is that they did it purely for convenience. Cooking in an ice-bound landscape is a problem re finding enough wood for cooking, plus eating a raw fish carcass on the spot is easier than bringing it home to eat etc. Cooking foods could , similiarly, have been used also due to addiction to opioids in them, just not as much as elsewhere given lack of wood etc.

[laterade]

As for cooked meat, it has no advantages, other than the effect it has on chemicals in the brain re dopamine levels and resulting addiction.

Tyler I'd appreciate your source and/or a link for the "cooked meat opioids".

[goodsamaritan]

The soft shell turtles we get have a tough green film that coats its entire body.
You have to boil the turtle to easily remove the tough green film.
And by boiling the turtle, the soft shell becomes edible.
It's also easier to kill the turtle by boiling it because it's instinct is to hide in its shell.

I'm convinced with Tyler's opinion on taste adjusts to what you are used to.
After almost 3 years on raw I have no desire for condiments whatsoever.
I don't even ever think about searing beef.  Sounds like too much work and pointless.
And uncondimented meats raw vs uncondimented meats cooked, I like raw much better.

Depends on the raw meat too.  

If I get high quality raw beef, handled hygienically, it would be idiotic to cook it because it's just so mouth watering delicious.  

I don't know about you guys, but there are raw meats that I just dream about so delicious without condiments:

- beef
- clams
- oysters
- blue marlin swordfish
- duck eggs
- marrow

The intensively farmed meats taste terrible raw:
- tilapia (gross)
- pork (bland)
- chicken (slimy)
- grain fed beef (pointless)

[TylerDurden]

Tyler I'd appreciate your source and/or a link for the "cooked meat opioids".

http://www.13.waisays.com/ADHD.htm

Waisays has some interesting info on the addictiveness of Heterocyclic amines which are produced when muscle-meat is cooked:-

http://www.13.waisays.com/cooking.htm

Scientific studies are referenced at the bottom of both pages.

If you search around, you will find that not only are heterocyclic amines(and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) formed by cooking but they are also present in cigarette-smoke. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are also present in car-exhaust fumes.

There are further studies linking junk food consumption to messing about with the dopamine levels in the brain, thus causing addiction. Those are easily searched for in the general media.

[TylerDurden]

Here is a link covering some of the general damage done by cooking:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Potential_harmful_effects_of_cooked_foods

[sabertooth]

I am wondering if that at a crucial human apex  between the neolithic and Paleolithic ages were the tribes of big game hunters who were low carbers and lived of of fat and meat began to lose the availability of their megafauna, and were far less adapted to plant foods than were the more omnivorous breeds of man who had just begun to experiment with cooked foods. The fact that cooking took off may have More to to do with the ability of those hungry people to survive off of cooked foods, while the pure bred paleo people couldn't adapt to the low fat plant carb diets of the neolithic dawning. Cooking isn't healthy but neither is starving so people learned to adapt to cooked foods, those who didn't adapt, like the Neanderthals and other human subspecies simply starved out throughout the ICE famines. Also the carb adapted Neolithic people could live off of fewer calories and had smaller bodies so they didn't have to rely on the big game that their larger, smarter carnivorous cousins were absolutely dependant on for survival..

[TylerDurden]

Nanderthals had cooking for a very long time, so were unlikely to have been less resistant to the negative effects of  cooking.

There is good reason to trust in your big game hypothesis. Big game was largely wiped out by c.30,000-40,000 years ago, which would explain the gradual turning to grains and other plants after that point in time. Cooking would have had to become more widespread in order to deal with some of the extra plant foods in the new diet lsuch as cassava etc, which needed to be processed/cooked.