Cooking Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

[Toddy]

A new book by Richard Wrangham, a Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard.

He postulates that it wasn't speech, or shoulders that could throw a weapon, or using tools or fire, that made us Human, but learning to cook food.
Homo habilis became Homo erectus around 1.9m years ago. Basically they stood like us, walked like us and they had small guts and mouths and larger brains.

Cooking changes food in very useful ways. It turns grains into edible starch saving hours of chewing and digesting, it softens meat, increases it's taste, it allows tough inedible food to become valuable protein and it widens the range of high calorie foods enormously.
He believes that we, "became evolutionarily wedded to fire".

As opposed to chimps who spend six hours a day just chewing their food, our small mouths are made for quickly eating food softened by fire, and that we are, " as adapted to eating cooked food as cows are to eating grass".

Interestingly he comments that none of us thrives on a raw food diet for very long; indeed, " half of all females on such diets are so thin they stop menstruating".


long article here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/books/27garn.html?pagewanted=all

So, does that give us an evolutionary 'right' to fire ?

cheers,
Toddy

 

[British Red]

I hope so - I just ordered the worlds nicest wood fired stove

 

[bushwacker bob]

My Brother survived, through choice on a non cooked diet for several years,I should add that he carries no body fat and had a BMI of less than 20, but he was supremely healthy.
Wrangham is as probably correct as anyone else who tries to decypher human evolution.

Its not 1.9 million years ago until next tuesday.

 

[Toddy]

My Brother survived, through choice on a non cooked diet for several years,I should add that he carries no body fat and had a BMI of less than 20, but he was supremely healthy.

But humanity needs breeding females. That thin, they don't ovulate let alone bear healthy infants, and if the do produce a child the chances of them having enough milk to rear it are incredibly slim.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[BOD]

Seems a clear case of overstating a basically sound hypothesis to sell books.

Not sure what a "raw food diet' is - vegetetables, grains, meats, fats but some people seem to do well.

Recently went on a trip with a woman who has eaten wholly raw food for a long time and she did fine staying alert and fit through out.

No doubt a forced reversion to raw food by modern humans might cause some systems to go into 'shock' for a while.

Reduced fertility is probably an environmental benefit to foragers in marginal areas

 

[bushwacker bob]

Certainly. A lady with a BMI as low as that would have bones sticking out all over and as you say wouldn't be good breeders but until relatively recently large numbers of the female populace would have been nearer size 8 as opposed to todays average of size 16.

 

[Toddy]

It's often a surprise to look at Victorian gowns and suits and realise that fully grown adults wore them

I suspect your comment about decyphering humanity is very true
It is an interesting hypothesis though.

Bod, did the lady say whether the foods she was eating raw were the coarse ones of the past or the highly bred modern varieties though?
Wild oats still pop up here, lots of gristle and damned little grain, while modern varieties are plump and nutty; that kind of thing. They both cook though, and the wild one is edible then.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Nyayo]

Interesting idea - I've seen it suggested that early hominids tended to get their meat supply from scavenging Lion kills - they needed ripe meat because they couldn't properly process it otherwise. The scavenging process selected for communication and organisational skills (an individual could't drive off a Lion). Fire started as a tool for driving off the lions, and accidentally cooked the kills, allowing more nutrients to be gained from those groups that used fire, thus causing those groups to be healthier, stronger and more successful... Love to go visit (with suitable innoculations and chamaeleon suits!).

N

 

[locum76]

Maybe its one of a few things that make us human. Are there any tribes in the world that don't cook?

 

[lub0]

I've tried the raw diet for nearly two months. Well nearly raw.
80% of calories drawn from fruit smoothie - bananna, orange, apple, pineapple primarily.
the other 20% of calories were from boiled brown rice, boiled quinoa (yummy) all flavoured with natural herbs and himalayan salt.
NO junk food, NO meat, NO dairy.

Never felt so alert, clear-minded and energetic in all my life!


Now I eat a 50/50 cooked/raw diet, and eat meat, but not dairy becuase I am intolerant (mucus buildup).

Another suprising thing about the 80/20 diet I did for 2 months was that I actually built muscle on it - quite a lot if I may say so.

 

[BOD]

....

Bod, did the lady say whether the foods she was eating raw were the coarse ones of the past or the highly bred modern varieties though?
..
Toddy

Good point Toddy. She ate modern grains but some of the vegetables were wild. If she was able to gather and process raw wild grains while travelling I would be in total awe.

 

[andybysea]

lub0 did you really build muscle on the 80/20 diet or was it just that your existing muscle became more prominent and defined by fat loss, im not saying you did'nt build muscle, i just find it interesting if you did,by eating what you did, can you give more details of your diet? im quite interested in this sort of thing, never been on a raw diet but years ago i lived off just steamed veg and grilled meat no junk food and i looked and felt great, now 14yrs later my will power lacks but would love to give a nutritionaly sound diet/eating system a go and lose the excess 2 stone i carry.

 

[lub0]

yes mate. i did build new muscle as well as loose fat. I actually built muscle quicker on the 80/20 than I did with a cooked diet. Amazing.

Obviously calories are a problem on the raw diet hence the 20% cooked carbohydrates. I also supplemented with plenty of organic extra olive oil and nuts and raw honey.

My lifting routine was 3 times a week 30-40 minutes a session doing mainly heavy back squats, deadlifts, overhead presses and pullups.

Had about 5 pints of smoothie a day. Bannana featured heavily due to the high calories. Apples were plentiful. Frozen bannana with raw oats and honey and raw organic eggs and water to thin it down was my workout shake.

I'm not against meat, but I am against the plastic wrapped **** that passes for meat. Grass fed organic meat is the only stuff I'll eat thank you very much!



Diet is a massive subject and requires self research to properly understand things. Good sources for knowledge are precision nutrition company and "underground wellness" youtube channel. oh and paul chek is the ULTIMATE diet/muscle guy. Google him and look for his interview on youtube.



but as to the topic. i once heard that the ash studied from ancient fire rarely contained food traces and that fire was mostly used for tool building and warmth rather than heating food.

 

[Toddy]

The theory I heard was that nuts were cooked in shell, grains were boiled in animal skin pouches and that since meat is removed from the fire for eating, no ash would be there anyway. In the sheer volume of woodash present, differentiating other organic ash is literally an archaeobotanists nightmare.

Actually, it would be interesting to compare prehistoric fireash, poorly preserved though it is, and the ash from traditional Australian Aborigine, or San, cooking fires

cheers,
Toddy

 

[lub0]

there's an interesting theory about grains making themselves inedible as a " **** you" sort of thing for harvesting them at such a young age.
Cultures that eat flat breads tend to have mineral/growth deficiencies whereas socieities that avoid wheat or sprouted the wheat berries in water to deactivate the toxins were helthier and generally taller people.

 

[Toddy]

What toxins ?

Quinoa and those kinds of grains have a saponin coating that is actually the water absorbant jelly stuff that moistens the seed enough to start it swelling.

It occurs to me that a modern raw food diet, with it's heavily mechanically processed food, isn't really comparable to the labour intensive raw food of the past. To paraphrase Mrs Beaton..........first catch your banana
Interesting though

cheers,
Toddy

 

[VirusKiller]

What toxins ?

From the Wikipedia description of "lectin" (under toxicity):

Foods with high concentrations of lectins, such as beans, cereal grains, seeds, and nuts, may be harmful if consumed in excess. Adverse effects include allergic reactions, nutritional deficiencies, and immune reactions. Different foods may have different effects depending on blood type.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectin#cite_note-1

 

[Toddy]

From the Wikipedia description of "lectin" (under toxicity):

Thank you ,

Hmmmm, lectins aren't poisons, they are for *some* people, an allergen

"Lectin Free: Lectins are sugar-binding proteins that mimic insulin. They bind to carbohydrates, and to various proteins. The Lectin-Free diet restricts things like grains, nightshades (ie. peppers, tomatoes, potatoes), legumes (ie. beans) and some starches."

"lectins may be inactivated by soaking, sprouting, cooking or fermenting. Soaking legumes over night, draining the water, rinsing and draining again does seem to remove or inactivate many of the lectins. "

It occurs to me that proponants of the palaeolithic diet will find this new book controversial. I don't think that the information on lectins and cooking destroys Wrangham's argument.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Wallenstein]

I read a review of this in the paper at the weekend - looks like a good read, one for the xmas list!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/17/catching-fire-richard-wrangham-review

 

[VirusKiller]

There's negative press in some circles about lectins. How much of it I believe at this point, I'm unsure. I need to research this one myself.

See http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41611, in particular the link I posted in post #17. Very anti-lectin...