Cooking Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

[Toddy]

Our immune systems are weird things ( says she who has rheumatoid arthritis triggered it is believed by a viral infection, in my case chickenpox when I was 29 )

I wonder how many of the anti this that and the other 'proven' cases were a bit like the proof that hamburgers kill rats.............but if you actually read the report, the rats were fed nothing but the fatty hamburger for several months on end, and then died of heart, liver and kidney problems with damaged guts too........big surprise that one. The damaged gut showed pre cancerous cells so instantly the headlines screamed, "Hamburgers give you cancer !!! "

I suspect that, as usual, the cooked food issue is probably only part of the entire picture that made us 'human'.

I know that if I eat too much of any one food I can get quite lethargic and run down.
I need variety. I prefer local produce, preferrably stuff that's not full of anti fungicide and weedkiller residues. I also like seasonality in my food
I sometimes wonder if that is a big missing issue in modern diets. We can have whatever we want, whenever we want. Maybe it's not so good for us though.

Interesting review in the Guardian, Wallenstein, thanks for the link.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[lub0]

Are you refering to the China study regarding the rats being fed meat?

I used to take the China study as diet gospel until I recently discovered it has been debunked beyond any doubt.

Nowadays I believe fruit and vegetables should form the bulk of our diet, followed closely by red meats, but I'm still not at all sure about milk and milk by products. The reason is that soo many including myself are intoelrant and downright allergic to the white stuff.

Personally I get clogged up with mucus the day after eating any sort of milk product and it limits my breathing ability which is very uncomfortable.

It makes you wonder why so many people have these issues with milk. I beleive vaccines cause most food allergies. Many people who are intolerant to milk get by OK with raw unhomogenized milk but I am not so lucky and must give up my beloved cheese and milk coffee

Grains I believe should be limited again becuase of the sheer amount of people who are allergic and intolerant to them. For instance alzeimers patients are cured as soon as they stop eating gluten for just a single day then their symptoms come back instantly as soon as they ingest gluten once again. Fasinating stuff.


I now eat sprouted grain bread from the local health store which is an aquired taste I must say.

My knowledge on diet is increasing all the time and I always go where the information takes me hence the reason I give up what I love if the information correlates with my personal experiences. No doubt next week I'll be touting meat is bad and should not be eaten!

I jest -i'm pretty solidy convinced now that we should be eating meat. for example red meat is the only proper source of Tryptophan, the precursor chemical to the all important Serotonin happy drug, and of course vitamin B12.

 

[BOD]

... For instance alzeimers patients are cured as soon as they stop eating gluten for just a single day then their symptoms come back instantly as soon as they ingest gluten once again. Fasinating stuff.


.

Can you provide a source for this? I need to remember it before I lose my memory

 

[Toddy]

Hmmmm, don't know where to start with all that

Okay, I am allergic, and always have been, to fish. It makes me throw up and the smell hits me like a dose of intant hayfever, then I break out in itchy hives.
Anti histamines are always in my bag...........and I hate shopping in Morrison's

People do not need to eat meat to live healthily. The 'only' vitamin that we need that cannot be supplied without consuming something living is quite accessible from yeast. Marmite rules

Vaccines are not evil, they are a brilliant invention.
We have no smallpox; go and read the New Statistical Accounts of Scotland, from the late 18th century and into the early 1800's..............the first vaccine stopped it dead. The Parish ministers stated quite clearly in the second accounts that no one had died of the pox since the vaccine came in. My generation is the last that routinely carried the scars of the vaccine, my sons have none

Polio still kills, still maims horribly............and I am of a generation that saw others struggling with crippled limbs because of it..........no more bairns in this country in iron lungs and caged in callipers to walk...........because of a vaccine. Yet we deprive children elsewhere of this security because of our complacency and concern for the risk of side effects in a miniscule number compared to hundreds of thousands should it reappear.

My husband's grandmother buried her five youngest children in *one week* because of Diptheria, when did any of us last hear of diptheria infecting any child ?........and it goes on and on and on.
Vaccines may well have side effects, but the overwhelming evidence is that the damned things work.

I cannot drink milk, haven't been able to do so without feeling queasy since my early twenties, my Grandmother was the same. My 64 year old husband still drinks it by the pint, is as fit as a fiddle, walks miles everyday, is as sharp as a tack.
One of our sons is fine with it, gets through nearly a litre a day, the other enjoys it but can't drink anything like that much any more.

I think the milk/ lactose thing is an individual issue.

Similarly with grains, we can all eat oats, albeit in very small quantities for me I've found, but while the three of them can eat wheat, rye and barley, I can't since it triggers the RA.
Again, an individual issue.
I know of people who have a similar reaction to soya, yet I am totally fine with it.

I don't see why raw unhomogenized milk is any different, slight taste apart, from the non heat treated stuff. There's no enzyme added or removed, just bacteria.........and it used to be the easiest way to spread and catch TB, one of the reasons that pasteurisation came about in the first place.
I reckon homogenization was just a neat scam to strip out the bulk of the cream and sell it on seperately and like mugs folks fell for it

Okay, that's a hornets nest..............fireworks ?

cheers,
M

 

[Wallenstein]

People do not need to eat meat to live healthily. The 'only' vitamin that we need that cannot be supplied without consuming something living is quite accessible from yeast. Marmite rules

While that's certainly true, I guess the argument is that ingesting cooked meat is a much more effective and efficient way of delivering certain beneficial nutrients.

Pandas live quite healthily on bamboo, but they eat the stuff every waking hour they have, and are too tired to do much else.

By eating meat - particularly cooked meat - humans got the protein, iron and whatever else more efficiently, meaning they could spend more time on other activities (farming, art, hunting etc).

Obviously there is potentially more effort involved in catching meat in the first place (rather than harvesting grains or fruit), but presumably the cost-benefit calculation falls in favour of spending the effort.

It'd be interesting to know if there are any successful non-meat-eating neolithic / primitive societies... my assumption would be that most humans cultures include meat as a crucial part of their diet. Of course as soon as you have domestication of animals sorted, the cost-benefit equation changes much more in favour of eating meat - hunting kudu is hard work, raising goats is rather easier!

 

[Toddy]

The meat issue is a kind of emotive one here in what is euphemistically called the First world
I know that we refuse insect protein when it's an incredibly rich source of that and minerals too. We refuse to eat horses and dogs, yet these domesticated animals are a ready supply of food. We routinely neuter both not to create a surplus.
My father fined an entire team of boatbuilders working in the Middle East during the war for eating the company cat..........they did so because everyone 'knew' that eating a cat stopped a stomach bug..........my brother while in Kenya watched locusts devastate the countryside yet the locals happily munched them........apparantly they taste of butter.

If by meat, these sources are included in the diet of prehistoric peoples then their protein needs could be met without big game hunting.

Traditional recipes call for singed sheeps heid, cullen skink, assorted offal products, but show those to most folks in the western world today and watch appetites totally disappear.

As already discussed, I suspect the real story is a sum of a great many parts

cheers,
Toddy

 

[superc0ntra]

A rather interesting read, I put the book on my christmas list.

 

[firecrest]

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

Isnt it more likely that our taste of meat came from eating animals killed out in bushfires? Perhaps us learning not to fear fire gave us an advantage over other animals as we would go back to burned areas first. I wonder if its possible that humans had fire for many years (thousands perhaps) before they actually learned to make it. Maybe they just kept it going.

 

[Nyayo]

Referring to the dairy intolerance thing - I've seen this explained in recent evolutionary terms. We started eating wild meat and veg a long old time ago, so there are few allegies assiciated with this apart from those that go with overconsumption (especially rich red meat). Goat/Sheeps were domesticated next, and most middle eastern-derived cultures have had ages to adapt to the smaller molecular structure of sheep/goat milk/meat/cheese. Cows came along much later, and were generally rarer, more expensive, and so most people have had relatively less time to adapt their digestive/immune systems accordingly. Africans have virtually no issues with diary - as they have had the longest time to adapt, while asian populations have more diary intolerances, as bovine pastoralism reached asia more recently. This was all current and cutting-edge stuff when I was an undergrad. 20 years ago. *ahem* so it may have all changed by now....

PS I just edited this from 'Diary Intolerances', which means not liking Adrian Mole or Anne Frank, or Pepys and his cheese....