Raw versus Cooked: Which is More Natural?

[Dr. Pink]

There's a lot of things in nature that we don't do.

 

Praying Mantis's eat there young. We don't do that( At least not all of us )

 

Some Frogs give birth through the mouth( No Human does this )

 

Humans have indeed been cooking from almost the very start of Humanity( At least our string since it was Homosapien who thrived on a cooked diet ) And drastically altering something that has been a part of Humanity for millions of years can be potentially dangerous( It would be like if Humans began to stop using refrigeration )

 

In a way I sort of believe that Humans are meant to be cooking our meals. We are not the same as animals. Plus we are the primary species on this planet. There's lots of things we do that no other animal does( Read, Watch TV, Draw, Craft Vehicles )

 

If any other animal had been the primary species to evolve further I am sure they would be similar to us in lifestyle.

[Zack]

We are not the same as animals.

 

bullshit.

 

No animal is the same as any other, but we ARE indeed animals.

[medman]

Wow, I haven't been around for a while (moving and my place doesn't have internet right now), and this thread has had a lot of posts since then!

 

It's not a valid argument to say that dinosaurs, or any other animal for that matter, thrived for millions of years on a raw diet. Tons of animals thrive on a raw all-meat diet. Try feeding that to a human...just because other animals are adapted to eat a certain way doesn't mean that we are similar. I have mentioned this in several threads now, but different animals have wildly different biochemistry. We simply don't work the same way, and to extrapolate from one species to another is a mistake (case in point: vampire bats do great things on a 100% blood diet. I don't think anyone would argue that humans would do the same, so why take an example of a herbivorous, yet equally different animal and draw a comparison?).

 

And something interesting: the digestive system can adapt extremely quickly. Europeans (which branched off from our ancestral African humans well after the start of our species) actually evolved an upregulated lactase enzyme in that relatively short (i.e. thousands of years, not tens or hundreds of thousands) period of isolation. Europeans have a low incidence of lactose intolerance (generally well under 10%) while other groups, such as the Chinese, are the opposite and are almost entirely lactose intolerant. Why? It's a bit of a chicken-egg type situation, but Europeans as a population relied on dairy as a food source and their biology actually changed to reflect that (most likely, the Europeans who could digest milk probably avoided more famine-related deaths and lived to spread there genes while those who couldn't digest it were more frequently faced with famine).

 

Without getting into the semantics of how the use of dairy as a food source co-evolved with the ability for them to digest it, the point is - this population of humans became different, digestively speaking, over the course of just a handful of years in evolutionary terms. We have been cooking for a long time, much longer than the Europeans have been using dairy, so it's certainly possible that our digestive systems have adapted in significant ways to eating cooked food.

 

I'm still not "anti-raw". I eat raw things. They're awesome. I just like jumping in to discuss things from a scientific angle when I can...so I wanted to point out that it's quite possible for us to actually have evolved to specifically handle cooked foods, since I've seen several people take the evolutionary angle in arguing for a raw diet.

[Aaron]

@Aaron: Maybe survived is the term that fits better especially when considering the low life expectancy of our ancestors... Humans are able to adapt to almost every condition and even survived (were able to reproduce) under very hostile conditions and climates.

 

Survived is pretty much in line with my understanding. Good call : )

[Aaron]

Thrived? Got a link for that?

 

Definitions:

 

1. To make steady progress; prosper.

2. To grow vigorously; to flourish.

 

Dinosuars THRIVED for 150 million years on raw food (no cookers or microwaves needed)

 

Up until the discovery of fire, we THRIVED on raw food.Our current population because of that success is now in excess of 6.7 billion.

 

What are you implying? That if the MILLIONS of species thriving on raw food would be more succesful if they grilled their bracken? Are you implying that the MILLIONS of species thriving on raw food would be more succesful if they pan fried their latest catch of buffalo? Should they sautee the next aphid they catch?

 

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_species_of_organisms_are_estimated_to_inhabit_the_earth

 

How many of that 2 - 100 million cook their food?

 

I didn't imply, or certainly didn't mean to imply, any of that. I asked if you had a link to support your suggestion about humans thriving on raw diets. The population graphs I'm familiar with (example) would indicate to me that our 'thriving' is a very recent phenomenon and probably isn't linked to a raw food diet. I'd be curious to see information you had otherwise. Or maybe we're just approaching the word differently...

[Dr. Pink]

We are not the same as animals.

 

bullshit.

 

No animal is the same as any other, but we ARE indeed animals.

 

Well of course.

 

I didn't mean on a biological level. But even though we are indeed Animals we of course have many unique qualities that put us on a very different level.

[Richard]

Something being considered to be natural doesn't intrinsically make something good, useful or superior. Even if someone were to some how prove that a cooked/raw diet is natural for humans, it wouldn't be a convincing reason to eat cooked/raw food. There may be many other great reasons to eat cooked/raw food. But whether or not it is natural is not among them (for me anyway).

 

Earthquakes, famine, disease, rape, racism are probably all natural things, but I wouldn't promote them on the grounds that they are natural. Similarly, I would classify medicine, the internet, bicycles etc as being unnatural, yet I can see many benefits to them. Something being unnatural does not intrisically make it bad.

 

So ultimately, this discussion about raw/cooked food being natural will have a fairly anticlimactic conclusion, since it's only really a matter of interest or curiosity whether or not it is natural to eat cooked/raw foods, it won't impact your decision one way or the other, unless you are driven solely by what you consider to be natural - which is unlikely.

 

So basically, I think people should relax and treat this discussion in terms of looking at history and thinking about what our ancestors may or may not have done. But whatever they might have done it doesn't mean we should do the same, just because they did. I don't think this is the place to discuss the value of a cooked/raw food diet one way or the other, and there's no need to be upset with one another due to differences of opinion.

[Im Your Man]

I just read a big article in the National Geographic about food, GMO, etc... I can see one good thing about cooking: it's the most secure way to prepare and eat food, to avoid e.coli (infects 73 000 persons/year, 60 die) and other bacterias and viruses. Only in the U.S, there's 76 million Americans getting food poisoning every year (325 000 go to hospital -- means millions of dollars -- and 5000 dies -- most of them kids (source: CDC). Of course, when it's food prepared in restaurants, you can get infected even if it's been cooked, because the food can be in contact with someone after it's been cooked. But cooking at home is the most efficient way to avoid all food poisoning... But there's been cases of infected mangos, spinach, lettuce, those are things we usually want to eat raw. I don't see any other benefits about cooking. It kill and destroys the taste of the food, the good bacterias in it, the bad bacterias or viruses if there's any, vitamins, etc.

[Dr. Pink]

There is one other benefit besides what you mentioned.

 

Some people don't do well with raw varieties of foods.

 

Cooking also has other negatives which probably hasn't been brought up yet.

 

1. There is the chance that you will burn yourself cooking( And sometimes eating )

 

2. Wasted Time when eating raw is faster.

 

3. More money spent on gas and tools used to cook.

 

 

 

With all joking aside. I know that there is one thing we can all agree on. Choosing either Raw Vegan or Cooked Vegan does not affect that one most important thing that is common with Veganism( Animal suffering ) Wether you are Cooked or Raw you are still doing a good deed for Animals. And that is what really counts.

 

The switch to Raw Vegan is purely a health choice. Not a moral choice. That is assuming of course you're cooking with pots and pans that don't disrupt the environment.

 

So speaking in the aspect of health. I'd say Raw Vegan is the next step past Cooked Vegan( In regards to personal Health )

 

 

I could obviously use a revised healthy diet. I'm Vegan. But I can guarantee you that there are Cooked Vegans who are 90 percent healthier then me.

[flanders77]

@I'mYourMAn, Dr.Pink, Richard and others:

Thank you for bringing this discussion to another level. For me, especially Richards post really hit the nail on the head.

 

@Medman: Concerning the possibility of Europeans to digest milk the epidemiology suggests that they can digest lactose but still suffer from drinking milk. I refer i.e. to the diabetis and osteoporosis rates that are highest in those (european) countries with the highest milk consumption. IMO we have to keep in mind that a population may keep on existing (e.g. adults live long enough to become parents and raise kids) but especially the low life expectancy just a few thousand years ago suggests that we who live about two times longer really have to focus on foods that minimize the risk of the so called diseases of affluence. Just because european ancestors were able to survive on milk does not mean milk is a health food. And IMO the same argumentation is valid for cooked food.

 

@Dr.Pink: Concerning what kind of choice raw food diet is: The energy argument concerning cooking really is a valid one concerning e.g. the problem of africans cutting the last trees in their country to get firewood. There still is (of course) the dilemma of the long distances raw fruit travel from tropical zones to e.g. european consumers.

Any way we have to keep in mind that gardening and the production of fruit is able to produce a very high number of calories per acre (higher than most crops) and at the same time does not exhaust the soil but preserves it.

Apart from the fact that raw veganism in many cases improved not only physical but also mental health, if you to think it through to the end raw veganism can play a key role in saving our planet.

[DaN]

Firstly I am not claiming that raw is definately more healthy than cooked (although I think maybe it is)

 

I am simply pointing out that 2 - 100 million species on this planet eat raw - that is a FACT.When a ratio this huge is so clearly undeniable, it should make you think.

 

We may be biologically different to all of these but we are not that different, no matter how many obscure examples are given like blood drinking bats (which by the way drink the blood raw) Because of this, Medman, the analogy between us & dinosaurs is not invalid, in my opinion, because we are all linked in many ways.

 

You say we can evolve very quickly to eat dairy as an example, in a matter of tens of thousands of years.Does your point not reverse itself in admitting that we could adapt that quickly back to a raw diet, which we did eat before the invention of fire?

 

Flanders & Dr Pink:

 

The point about the fuel needed to cook food is indeed VERY relevant also.Fire always needs some kind of fuel, & because we are still incompetent at effectively sourcing a renewable source of energy, it is still reliant on fossil fuels in the vast majority.

 

Energy consumption is a huge factor in the negative state of things on this planet at the moment.

 

For the record, the use of fire in our 'cave man' days was more useful as a detterant against predators, a detterant against insects, & as a source of heat in colder climates, with the cooking of food things coming lower down the ladder of importance.Another huge factor in the use of fire was its function as a social focus point.It became a huge part of social life for all the tribes that used it.

 

Im your man wrote:

 

I can see one good thing about cooking: it's the most secure way to prepare and eat food, to avoid e.coli

 

Agreed.That is totally true, although of course most food poisoning is from meat, which in our opinions shouldnt be eaten raw or cooked.Also in the case of ecoli, it is picked up from faeces, commonly, so washing hands after the toilet is a good way to avoid it.

 

But cooking at home is the most efficient way to avoid all food poisoning... But there's been cases of infected mangos, spinach, lettuce, those are things we usually want to eat raw. I don't see any other benefits about cooking. It kill and destroys the taste of the food, the good bacterias in it, the bad bacterias or viruses if there's any, vitamins, etc.

 

Pre-packaged salads are dodgy, yes, which I think may be where people get food poisoning, from spinach & lettuce.But I think if its fresh, ie not pre-packaged, it should be ok.

 

Edited August 15, 2008 by DaN

[DaN]

Zack wrote:

 

How many of them have the brain power of the only species that does cook food?

 

I wrote:

 

I am not sure what your point is.. Are you saying that cooking the food was what gave us the 'brain power' as you put it?

 

Zack wrote:

 

Yes.among other things that don't involve raw veganism

 

Zack it is interesting to propose that cooking food was a factor in our evolution that helped us to the level we are now, but I am not sure what evolutionary scientists would have to say about this.My view is that you may be right, but its likely that of all the things that were factors in our development, that cooking is not a huge player in that, if at all.

 

Aaron wrote:

 

I didn't imply, or certainly didn't mean to imply, any of that. I asked if you had a link to support your suggestion about humans thriving on raw diets. The population graphs I'm familiar with (example) would indicate to me that our 'thriving' is a very recent phenomenon and probably isn't linked to a raw food diet. I'd be curious to see information you had otherwise. Or maybe we're just approaching the word differently...

 

Sorry Aaron, I misunderstood you

 

Thriving for me means pretty much the same as surviving if you take its first entry in the dictionary:

 

Improving, growing, or succeeding steadily

[Im Your Man]

Im your man wrote:

 

I can see one good thing about cooking: it's the most secure way to prepare and eat food, to avoid e.coli

 

Agreed.That is totally true, although of course most food poisoning is from meat, which in our opinions shouldnt be eaten raw or cooked.Also in the case of ecoli, it is picked up from faeces, commonly, so washing hands after the toilet is a good way to avoid it.

 

But cooking at home is the most efficient way to avoid all food poisoning... But there's been cases of infected mangos, spinach, lettuce, those are things we usually want to eat raw. I don't see any other benefits about cooking. It kill and destroys the taste of the food, the good bacterias in it, the bad bacterias or viruses if there's any, vitamins, etc.

 

Pre-packaged salads are dodgy, yes, which I think may be where people get food poisoning, from spinach & lettuce.But I think if its fresh, ie not pre-packaged, it should be ok.

 

No, it doesn't matter if it's packed or not. Both are manipulated by hands and machines, in trucks, etc. The most important factor are the conditions of the place where it's harvested and picked: do the workers have easy access to toilets and can wash their hands often, etc. In early 2000, 79 people got infected in 13 different states by the exact same virus: they all ate mangos, were picked in a swamp with mud full of bacterias, the workers put every mango in hot water to prevent from the small vinager flies, then in cold water to refresh the fruit -- that water was in a open area where there was birds and toads, there was fecal matters in that water, and salmonella.

 

Yes meat and animal products are the category with the higher risks, especially ground beef, the meat must be cooked enough, otherwise e.coli can survive. "Yeah there's shit in the meat, Just cook it", like Bruce Willis says in Fast Food Nation.

 

But we can be infected from anything, not just meat. If veggies touched a surface or knives that touched meat. Or there's a bacteria that can even multiplies in your fridge and contaminate many foods.

[DaN]

No, it doesn't matter if it's packed or not. Both are manipulated by hands and machines, in trucks, etc. The most important factor are the conditions of the place where it's harvested and picked: do the workers have easy access to toilets and can wash their hands often, etc. In early 2000, 79 people got infected in 13 different states by the exact same virus: they all ate mangos, were picked in a swamp with mud full of bacterias, the workers put every mango in hot water to prevent from the small vinager flies, then in cold water to refresh the fruit -- that water was in a open area where there was birds and toads, there was fecal matters in that water, and salmonella.

 

Mate that is ing!

 

You are right though.Not sure I like your implication that toads are somehow dirty though, as my totemic animal (joke)

 

So the moral of the story is, grow your own fruit & veg & be free from turd covered food!

[Dr. Pink]

Maybe we should just all become Breatharians and avoid shit altogether

[medman]

flanders,

 

I don't think anyone here would argue that milk is a health food. I was just pointing out that digestive adaptations can and have occurred in recent human history - so people should keep that in mind if they talk about what we evolved to eat (i.e. that you can't ignore the potential impact that cooking has had on the course of our evolution since we started doing it).

[cubby2112]

 

Zack it is interesting to propose that cooking food was a factor in our evolution that helped us to the level we are now, but I am not sure what evolutionary scientists would have to say about this.My view is that you may be right, but its likely that of all the things that were factors in our development, that cooking is not a huge player in that, if at all.

 

 

The view that is beginning to prevail more all the time about the evolution of our brains is that the discovery of fire allowed us to cook many tubers we couldn't before and that many other animals couldn't benefit from either. This allowed us a vast source of available calories and also allowed us to develop a larger brain and migrate to other climates, since roots grow pretty much anywhere.

[Dr. Pink]

Eating meat probably helped humans evolve too. But that is also something that we should continue

 

Not saying or comparing eating meat to Raw Veganism since it really is two different things. But just because something is well established doesn't mean it should be continued.

[offense74]

It's a little strange to me, the theory of calorie abundance for brain development. As I understand jumps in evolution happens when there are famine and the "weak" genes can be weaned out in favor of the "strong" ones.

If calorie abundance where the key to evolutionary jumps then we would have taken many such jumps today since there are all kinds of reproduction in all kinds of combinations.

 

I think our brain probably developed during a period of drought and famine since that would be more on par with what we know about evolution. Still even a lot of scientists cling on to the meat/bone marrow in abundance theory.

[DV]

Wow, this has been an active thread while I've been away!

 

As for our brain development, I read an interesting theory about that one recently. We may have such highly developed brains because of menopause. Raising a neurologically complex human to adulthood takes many years and a lot of resources. During the time that we started to evolve such complex brains, most of our food appears to have come from foraging (and a bit of meat that men occasionally brought back from a hunt). A woman who is breast-feeding for a few years does not have the time to forage for her other children without the help of women without children of their own. So, there is the evolutionary reasoning behind menopause for women - to help raise us through our very long childhood. Thank your grandmothers for your big brains. Not meat, not grains, not cooked foods, not raw foods. Menopausal women. I like that theory.

[Zack]

I hate that.

[DV]

Awwww, now come over here and give Grandma a big hug!

[Dr. Pink]

Personally I think we evolved our brains over time due to a need to survive. We as humans started out rather stupid and dumb. Even our earliest Homo-Sapien stages we were rather dumb. We were not properly social nor could we talk like we do now.

 

Then fire was discovered. And from it something amazing happened. Something that would prolong the human species for many more years to come.

 

Before fire was discovered Humans had to eat everything right then and there. There was no "Save for later in the fridge" for mankind back then. We either ate it or it got wasted.

 

And also back then Humans had no knowledge of disease. So I am sure E.Coli and other possible diseases that you could get from eating raw meat or veggies were not unknown to our beginning sapien ancestors.

 

The discovery of Fire and the then recently learned concept of cooking probably contributed a lot to the development of the human brain from the simple younger days of our "Sapien" branch of the evolutionary link to who we are now.

 

But that's also not to say that this should in anyway be continued. We have also made lots of new discoveries since Fire. Refrigeration, Organic Farm Growing, Veganic Farming and washing our produce. With these new discoveries we probably won't need to use fire as a means to cook our food anymore.

 

We have grown as a species. And perhaps a raw diet could actually be what mankind needs to make that next essential leap in our evolutionary growth.

[medman]

Wow, this has been an active thread while I've been away!

 

As for our brain development, I read an interesting theory about that one recently. We may have such highly developed brains because of menopause...

 

I find that theory unlikely. If you're talking about brain development, you pointed out that we're talking about man long before cities, widespread agriculture, etc. I'd love to hear from a paleontological anthropologist on this, but how many people survived to the age when menopause typically occurs? Even in agrarian societies, where famine is generally less likely, from the great ancient civilizations like the Babylonians through to just a few hundred years ago, a large portion of women died of disease or in childbirth at a much younger age. I won't pretend to be an expert on the subject, but my general impression is that, especially hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago, our ancestors weren't living to be of menopausal age.

[DV]

Hey, I'm not saying it's the best theory.............