Did cooking made us humans? BBC Documentary

[Aura]

Documentary description reads: "We are the only species on earth that cooks its food - and we are also the cleverest species on the planet. The question is: do we cook because we're clever and imaginative, or are we clever and imaginative because our ancestors discovered cooking?"

Did Cooking Make Us Human? (Documentary)

[bookittyrun]

they must think pretty highly of themselves to say we (humans) are the most clever...

we are lazy as a species, and devise ways to make life more accessable from an e-z chair.  this does not make us "clever".   

looking back at some of the knowledge ancient civilizations held regarding nature, mathematics, and astronomy, i'd say humans are the only species that has grown "more stupider".  with all of our superior intellect, we can't even figure out how the pyramids (both egyptian and south american) were built, or how they correlate to astronomical dates and events.  we lack the craftsmanship to do anything by hand, we've left it to the robot machine that was built...  because we grew lazy. 

we've lost touch with nature, and the healing medicines and herbs provided for us as a species, to cure all ailments.  instead, we pour ludicrous amounts of money into drug research as we try to devise our own methods in a lab... because we grew lazy. 

and we cook our foods, because we don't want to hunt and gather fresh, nutrient rich foods on a daily basis for our sustenance...  because we grew lazy. 

people can't field dress a fresh kill, or pick ripened fruits and berries from their living room chair, while simultaneously watching fox news and family guy marathons from different handheld electronic devices...  yup, you guessed it.

because we're lazy.     

[TylerDurden]

Cooked Food Topics should always go into the Hot Topics Forum. I´ll do that now.

I´ve already debunked Wrangham´s notions re cooked food leading to bigger brains in other articles. I pointed out that the increases in human brain-size happened well before the advent of cooking, and that human brain-size had actually declined once we entered the Neolithic era and started eating a higher proportion of our diet in the form of cooked foods.

[Aura]

Cooked Food Topics should always go into the Hot Topics Forum. I´ll do that now.

thank you!

I´ve already debunked Wrangham´s notions re cooked food leading to bigger brains in other articles. I pointed out that the increases in human brain-size happened well before the advent of cooking, and that human brain-size had actually declined once we entered the Neolithic era and started eating a higher proportion of our diet in the form of cooked foods.

could you provide links? I am interested

[ys]

Cooking allows to extract more nutrients.  So in lean times those who cooked had an advantage.
For example, after I'm done with bone there is still good amount of fat and meat scraps left that I can't get anymore with my teeth.  But throw it in the pot and boil it and you'll extract all the remaining fat and meat.

[cherimoya_kid]

Cooking allows to extract more nutrients.  So in lean times those who cooked had an advantage.
For example, after I'm done with bone there is still good amount of fat and meat scraps left that I can't get anymore with my teeth.  But throw it in the pot and boil it and you'll extract all the remaining fat and meat.

Some nutrients are reduced by cooking, though, like the B and C vitamins.  Protein becomes less digestible, as well, which is a reduction in nutrient content as well.

Cooking definitely gives you more total calories to absorb...but it's at the cost of the total nutrition.

[TylerDurden]

thank you!could you provide links? I am interested

  http://www.rawpaleodiet.com/articles/dangers-of-cooked-foods-an-extensive-collection-of-on-and-offsite-articles/advent-of-cooking-article/

[Aura]

I read the interesting article, Tyler.
There is a repetition you may want to correct:

Given that cooked food .......We may be able to tolerate them to some extent, but they are not optimal choices.

Back to the thread now..
Todays indigenous people also cook some of their food and are extremely healthy and energetic.
They are fitter than any of us here, I would dare to say.
Because together with diet, they have got full lifestyle and all the fundamental advantages of living in unpolluted environment.
Environment  is key!
If you are in the right environment, everything else will be right. Lifestyle (which includes diet) will be right.

Instead if we just extrapolate the factor diet only, while doing little or nothing to change the environment in which we live,  diet alone will not affect or even benefit as much as if it would do in the right environment.
Because, it is not the food that heals the body, but the body itself.
You gotta move, be active, eat/breathe/drink clean and fresh stuff..
How many of us homo domesticus have access to those factors?

It sounds a bit "funny" to me to hear health concerned people worrying about fire destroying nutrients while constantly breathing toxic particles everyday, sitting in chair/wearing clothes most of the day.. I mean..
I was like that too but I broadned my view and I m now doing the best I can to work on parallel factors.

Perhaps we do not even fully realize (or better, underestimate) how poisonous and health detrimental are the above example..
I guess also because since after birth we rarely were left naked and always breathe toxic fumes that we grew up taking them for "normal human conditions"..

[Aura]

While freshly picked/killed is to be favored, cooking, freezing, fermenting, salting, drying are all compromises (IMO) we need to take at some point in our life.
Indigenous people as well did it and do it nowadays.
The key is to minimize, minimize, minimize..

I wish nobody to ever undertake eating 100% cooked food diet experiment. It won´t work, we already know that.

[TylerDurden]

The Trouble is that all those tribes were None too healthy precisely because the ate cooked Foods partially.

[Iguana]

Good, well documented and interesting article. I just read it too because I hadn’t done it before.

Just 4 hints:

- I would suppress the word “article” in the title as it’s obviously an article.

- Both paragraphs below are there twice:

It is certainly a more resonable assumption than millions of years prior.adaptation to cooked foodsAnother issue to consider with the history of cooking is the length of time needed for the body to adapt to it. Some geneticists think that it takes circa 1 million years for a particular species to fully adapt, on an evolutionary level, to an entirely new diet (eg: from a Fruitarian to a largely meat-based one) and this view is reflected in our own ancestral, pre-human dietary past where extreme dietary-changes were pretty slow, taking many millions of years in some cases.[5]

Given that cooked food involves a much more drastic change to one’s diet than simply switching from one type of raw food to another – such as fruit to meat – it’s obviously going to take a much longer time to adjust to it, by comparison. Chemical alterations caused by cooking are many, and many of them are known to be harmful (view the many cooked food articles on this site for details). Plus, given that no other animal has ever gone in for cooking its own food, we don’t really know whether any species can ever fully adjust in all ways to such a food. We may be able to tolerate them to some extent, but they are not optimal choices.

And here:

It is impossible to accurately estimate what proportion of raw to cooked animal foods and plant foods were in the diet of our more recent ancestors during the Palaeolithic Era. It surely would be most interesting to see a long-term scientific study performed of people following a 100% cooked food diet, which may include cooked fruit and cooked vegetables. It would be fascinating to see what the effects would be over a decade or more.

As mentioned by Aura, such experiment had been done involuntarily aboard ships some centuries ago. Seaman died of scorbutic disease by lack of C vitamin. Introduction of raw lemons sufficed to get rid of the disease.

- Why don’t you sign your articles? I don't like to read an article which is not signed.

[Aura]

The Trouble is that all those tribes were None too healthy precisely because the ate cooked Foods partially.

Again IMO, I think it is too reductive to address the cause solely to cooked food. Life is made up of many variants....

I d like to see a documentation for this. Do you have access to it? Because I read tribes started suffering of certain "modern" diseases after the introduction of processed (cooked) food and change in their lifestyle introduced by civilized white people..

Thank You
 

[Iguana]

 

They are fitter than any of us here, I would dare to say.

No doubt they are. But are there no diseases at all amongst Amazonian Indians?

They have been very sensitive to infectious diseases brought by Europeans: a large proportion of Amerindians died because of this. As nobody on a 100% instinctive raw paleo nutrition ever died nor has been dangerously affected by any infectious disease transmitted by bacteria or viruses (except from malaria which is more of parasitic a disease; if I’m not mistaken), we can infer that all these Amerindians wouldn’t have died  if they had a  diet of totally raw, unprocessed foods.

Of course we can’t prove it, but it’s an strong indication.

If you are in the right environment, everything else will be right. Lifestyle (which includes diet) will be right.

Instead if we just extrapolate the factor diet only, while doing little or nothing to change the environment in which we live,  diet alone will not affect or even benefit as much as if it would do in the right environment.

Of course: diet is only about diet… Having the best diet possible doesn’t prevent us either to seek the best environmental conditions or to have as much physical exercise as possible.

I was thinking about that some days ago after reading a discussion on this forum about how important diet is for health, in percentile. 10% according to a certain Dr. Jack Kruse, rather perhaps 50% according to GS. Well... how important for the lifespan of a car, in %, is the quality of the fuel we fill in this car tank? Is it 10% or 90%? What about air filter changes, oil quality and grade, span between oil changes, kind of roads driven, competence, skill and habits of the driver?

No way to tell any percentile: it depends. All the factors are important, like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Because, it is not the food that heals the body, but the body itself.

Exactly, that’s what I’ve repeated often here. Suppress the nuisances and the body will tend to self heal — a kind of homeostasis. Cooked food is a nuisance, as atmospheric pollution, sedentary life, bad social conditions, etc. are.

Thanks for this interesting discussion. BTW, thank you also for the link to “Sex at dawn”. It’s amongst the 3 or 4 best books I’ve read in my whole life, even perhaps the best of them all. I finished reading it 2 days ago.

[Iguana]

I d like to see a documentation for this.

I wrote this yesterday:

They were not free of diseases: for example a study published about 20 years ago in a French medical magazine established that 6 previously unknown diseases appeared simultaneously to the first uses of fire for cooking food.

Unfortunately this article was published before Internet was in common use and I couldn’t’ find it on line. 

[Aura]

But are there no diseases at all amongst Amazonian Indians?

Oh surely there are!
I think homeostasis is such a zen condition very few creatures on Earth learnt how to master..
There is no perfect diet as the ultimate panacea according to me.

They have been very sensitive to infectious diseases brought by Europeans: a large proportion of Amerindians died because of this. As nobody on a 100% instinctive raw paleo nutrition ever died nor has been dangerously affected by any infectious disease transmitted by bacteria or viruses (except from malaria which is more of parasitic a disease; if I’m not mistaken), we can infer that all these Amerindians wouldn’t have died  if they had a  diet of totally raw, unprocessed foods.
Of course we can’t prove it, but it’s an strong indication.

I think that we white people are so deadly sick we must have been for them like pure venom... With our wrong neolithic lifestyle we were able to breed the most resistant strains of viruses due to overpopulating small areas. We literally carried hundreds of crappy viruses with us, all together, which is not natural. Nobody on earth would ever survive such a massive health threat. Not even on a 100 raw paleo diet.
I do not have any papers to prove it but sounds reasonable to me.
I mean, it is like saying: ok, I am 100% raw paleo eater therefore I can get vaccines because I m not going to suffer any consequence..

Certain things, especially when they are born out of an unnatural environment are just deadly. Anti-life.

Another interesting quote from an article I read today:

Connected to the evolution of domesticated plants was an increase in disease, especially of the epidemic variety, for which there were several reasons.  First, prior to sedentism, human waste was disposed outside the living area. As increasing numbers of people began to live near each other in relatively permanent settlements, the disposal of human waste became increasingly problematic:  Large quantities of fecal material had the potential to transmit disease, and animal and plant wastes nourished pests, some of which served as disease vectors.

Second, a larger number of people living very near each other served as a disease reservoir.  Once a population is large enough, the likelihood of disease transmission increases.  By the time one person recovers from the disease, someone else reaches the infectious stage and can reinfect the first.  Consequently, the disease never leaves the population. The speed with which school children catch and spread colds, influenza, or chicken pox illustrates how a closely packed population and germs interact.

Third, settled people cannot just walk away from diseases; by contrast, if someone in a foraging band falls ill, the others can walk away, reducing the likelihood that the disease will spread.  Fourth, the agricultural diet may have reduced people's resistance to disease. Finally, the rise in human population provided a greater opportunity for germs to evolve in human hosts. In fact, as we discussed in Chapter 3, there is good evidence that the clearing of land for farming in sub-Saharan Africa created an excellent environment for malaria-carrying mosquitos, leading both to a dramatic rise in human malaria and the selection for the HbAHbS genotype.
From http://www.primitivism.com/sedentism.htm

I was thinking about that some days ago after reading a discussion on this forum about how important diet is for health, in percentile. 10% according to a certain Dr. Jack Kruse, rather perhaps 50% according to GS. Well... how important for the lifespan of a car, in %, is the quality of the fuel we fill in this car tank? Is it 10% or 90%? What about air filter changes, oil quality and grade, span between oil changes, kind of roads driven, competence, skill and habits of the driver?
No way to tell any percentile: it depends. All the factors are important, like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

We also have to consider the "mysterious" variables Life creates, the so called "miracles". 

Thanks for this interesting discussion. BTW, thank you also for the link to “Sex at dawn”. It’s amongst the 3 or 4 best books I’ve read in my whole life, even perhaps the best of them all. I finished reading it 2 days ago.

My pleasure Iguana, I am glad you found it interesting!

[TylerDurden]

The whole Noble Savage theory is bunk since it has been proven that many tribes died quickly once they were exposed to the colonists´diseases. Iguana is quite right. The only benefit they had was that they did not suffer from more modern diseases like diabetes etc.

[Aura]

So Tyler or anyone one of you who follow a 100 raw paleo diet, do you think you could survive  massive poisonous vaccines injection all together?
What happened IMO to those tribes was something completely unnatural.
Viruses evolved 100 time faster than normal (because of civilization) plus were introduced suddenly to a natural living tribe and environment that had no possible way and time to develop antibodies to fight them..
It is like travelling in time within a day!

[Iguana]

Aura, I think the current accepted theory seeing viruses and bacteria as aggressors is completely erroneous. GCB had devised another one, which fits well with what we experiment in practice under instinctive raw paleo diet. In short, viruses are not aggressors, but on the contrary carry a complement of genetic info (a piece of DNA or RNA) which contains a usefull "cleaning program" triggering a detox  of a certain class of new, abnormal and potentially harmful molecules.

It’s described here: A NEW THEORETICAL MODEL OF VIRAL PHENOMENA http://www.reocities.com/HotSprings/7627/ggvirus.html (select the text to see what’s behind the black on the page top and you may also copy and paste it on Word or whatever to get rid of the mess on the  webpage).

A few days ago, someone posted this nice confirmation of GCB’s almost 40 years old theory: 

Did You Know That Viruses Are Saving Your Life Right Now?
For some time, researchers have known that mucus is loaded with viruses. Not a pleasant thought, if you assume these viruses are pathogenic invaders that your body had trapped and marked for kill.

But this new study found many of these viruses to actually serve as immune helpers—not enemies—and an important part of your body’s defense system.2 The study’s findings appear in the May 20, 2013 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/08/26/mucus-phages.aspx

We don't see bacteria and viruses as a health hazard. The become dangerous only for the persons on  a cooked diet. The danger is rather the new chemical species generated by heat. These are found as well in the human excrements and those of animals fed with cooked food. Thus their bad smell.  Excrement of wild animals eating their normal raw foods are generally odorless.

[cherimoya_kid]

Iguana, there are plenty of recorded cases of populations of wild animals, eating their ideal diet, that succumb to disease epidemics.  In a general sense, I would agree that unhealthy diets produce more dangerous bacteria and viruses, and that ideal diets make you more resistant to infections and disease in general.  However, even a perfect diet is not going to protect everyone against every infectious disease. 

[Iguana]

I think we already talked about that, didn't we?

GCB doesn't state that all viruses are necessarily beneficial: there are some decimating a population when it becomes too dense and thus food resources scarce and /or unbalancing. Such a situation can happen naturally, but very often because the environmental conditions have been disturbed by human activity. An example I remember to have given you is the chamois in the Alps who become blind "from" some virus. But their habitat has been drastically reduced by men and they fled to higher altitude regions were they no longer find all the specific  nutrients they need.

To more precisely answer to your point, other causes can be suppression of the predators, undetected water and food pollution (even in the Arctic), etc.

That said,  all the human viruses encountered up to now proved to be benign and have been assumed useful under instinctive 100% raw paleo nutrition. Eat cooked food during the “cleaning process” activated by the virus and it tends to run away out of control.   

[cherimoya_kid]

I just don't buy that all bacteria and viruses are survivable by anyone who eats a perfect diet. Sure, many disease epidemics among animals are partially a result of being forced, by overpopulation or competition, to eat something other than their ideal diet.  However, I don't think you've proven that they ALL are partially a result of that.

[Iguana]

 

I just don't buy that all bacteria and viruses are survivable by anyone who eats a perfect diet.
… I don't think you've proven that they ALL are partially a result of that.

Nothing is perfect in this world. Moreover, I didn’t mean to prove anything.

GCB doesn't state that all viruses are necessarily beneficial ….
That said,  all the human viruses encountered up to now proved to be benign and have been assumed useful under instinctive 100% raw paleo nutrition.

I only mentioned GCB theoretical model, which as such is nothing more than provisional and approximate. Neither GCB nor I ever pretended it is the ultimate and complete truth.

We currently have the choice between 3 theoretical models of viruses and bacterial phenomena:

1.) The standard one, initially due to Louis Pasteur and implying that bacteria and viruses are our aggressive enemies aiming to kill us by propagation of contagious diseases. Isn't  strange that non-really-alive microbes such as virus would have a will to achieve something? This concept leads to intricate complications in trying to explain why we are not all already dead in face of such omnipresent, innumerable, various  and so determined enemies.
2.) The opposite model (due to Bechamp and Tissot, I think) still adhered to by the hygienist movement and stating that contagion is an illusion. Hmmm… would you buy that one?
3.) GCB’s one stating that, yes, there is contagion (of course), but under normal circumstances the transmitted disease is meant to expel some toxins and is thus beneficial.

IMHO, the last one explains best the facts observed up to now, in the simplest way. Do you really stick to the first one — which could also be workable as long as we introduce a great deal of complexity? Thus Occam's razor is doubtlessly in favor of the 3th one. Of course, it is not perfect and you’re welcome to suggest improvements, or even a 4th model.   

[cherimoya_kid]

The 3rd model appears to be the closest to the truth.  However, I'm not fully committed to any of the three, yet. 

[LePatron7]

We currently have the choice between 3 theoretical models of viruses and bacterial phenomena:

1.) The standard one, initially due to Louis Pasteur and implying that bacteria and viruses are our aggressive enemies aiming to kill us by propagation of contagious diseases. Isn't  strange that non-really-alive microbes such as virus would have a will to achieve something? This concept leads to intricate complications in trying to explain why we are not all already dead in face of such omnipresent, innumerable, various  and so determined enemies.
2.) The opposite model (due to Bechamp and Tissot, I think) still adhered to by the hygienist movement and stating that contagion is an illusion. Hmmm… would you buy that one?
3.) GCB’s one stating that, yes, there is contagion (of course), but under normal circumstances the transmitted disease is meant to expel some toxins and is thus beneficial.

IMHO, the last one explains best the facts observed up to now, in the simplest way. Do you really stick to the first one — which could also be workable as long as we introduce a great deal of complexity? Thus Occam's razor is doubtlessly in favor of the 3th one. Of course, it is not perfect and you’re welcome to suggest improvements, or even a 4th model. 

I think it might be a combination of all 3. Some microorganisms might be for detox of some sort, where they fill a particular need. For example the more I look into it the more I see lysine is easily damaged and converted into toxic byproducts by cooking and freezing. And when I've looked into natural cures I always see upping lysine consumption as a "natural cure" to prevent outbreaks. Maybe the herpes virus is eating the toxic lysine.

Then there's the case with animals, ie. cows, being fed grains. They develop acid resistant e.coli because grains make their digestive tract overly acidic. Then to survive the e.coli become acid resistant. I'm sure no one thinks E.coli 0157 is beneficial in any way for detox.

So I think it might be a combination of all 3.

[Iguana]

I'm sure no one thinks E.coli 0157 is beneficial in any way for detox.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli_O157:H7
Usually little or no fever is present, and the illness resolves in five to 10 days. It can also be asymptomatic

So, the above means that even for most people on a standard cooked diet, the Escherichia coli O157:H7 is usually not dangerous at all.

So I think it might be a combination of all 3.

Not sure that the 3 are compatible. Being rather antagonistic, how would you combine them?