How Cooking Made Us Human

This only underscores why the "raw food" movement is so utterly asinine.

I enjoy eating more raw food but I do object to the raw food movement. They can be so tribal and totalitarian.

Aye! I always say that all we need is some juicy meat, a slab of criss-crossed metal pipes and some flame.

Something beautifully simple about a grill that makes the food taste friggin' delicious.

This book looks interesting, gona check it out. Human evolution is something that's taken over me lately. Just recently finished a book called "The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Changed The Evolution Of Human Nature"

HIGHLY recommended!

OK, first, I got to say that it does not surprise me the FJ is reading that book!

On the cooking side.. I am a terrible cook but at least I try. I don't do raw stuff, sushi or tar tar.. just not for me!

I spent 28 years eating cooked food. I never really felt that great. I now have been eating 95% raw food for the past 8 years and 100% raw for the last several months (fruits vegetables and nuts). Let me say without reservation that the energy that I experience on a daily basis is indescribable. It is though I live in a different world than most of the humans I know with their constant runny noses and sore joints and headaches and general malaise that they experience constantly. When I ate cooked food all the time life was A LOT harder to get through on the day to day level. Cooked food in my experience was much more stimulating while raw and unaltered food is much nourishing and energizing, I NEVER get tired not even after 12 hours of HARD labor, in fact it just makes me feel stronger and stronger. The difference between the cooked food lifestyle and the raw vegan lifestyle is like night and day. Humans are very good at rationalizing their habits, but let me tell you when the humans have wiped themselves out from the genetic defects that come from eating all their food cooked there will be no more cooked food on the planet, but the fruits and herbs will continue to grow and flourish as they have since the beginning of life on this planet!

Having not read the book, only this summary, I would say that it might well stumble into the same error many anthropological argument hit. In that just because a certain behavior proved evolutionarily essential xthousand or million years ago, that alone does no imply that that behavior is essential or even beneficial now. No doubt the ability to murderer our fellow humans has proven pivotal in how we have evolved, but it then not a given that murderer is a recommendation now. When food was a scare commodity and made available indigestible to us, cooking was fab, but now that is not the case. The only way to prove that cooking is beneficial other raw diets is to do the science now or present day humans.

I'm curious to read it to hear what the author has to say.

Having been on a standard American diet, a vegetarian diet, a vegan diet, and finally a raw vegan diet, I can say clearly that my health improved with every step in my own dietary evolution. No more high blood pressure or migraines. Colds and flues are extremely rare (if I have them at all). No more taking sick days!

I recognize that discovering weapons and tools, as well as fire, allowed humans to protect themselves, as well as multiply and migrate to new climates. These were clearly pivotal in our evolution, but not necessarily a good thing.

I have noticed articles about raw foods mentioning the reduced or eliminated symptoms of the menstrual cycle as being a bad thing. It's the symptoms that disappear, not the fertility! Some articles mistakingly jump to the conclusion that the women missing menstrual symptoms are therefor infertile. I appreciate this author not making that mistake.

I enjoyed the article.

I belive it's very hard for the author of this article to eat fresh food...Probably he did not give it a try or he did but he has no power to give up the cooked food. I eat fresh food(raw food)for more than 5 years and it changed my life around. I have plenty of energy and NO health problems. I haven't been to a doctor for any concernes in years, there is no medicine in my cabinets, not even an aspirin... I look better now than 10 years ago. I know it is hard to give up what we've been though since childhood, but it's not imposible.

So THAT'S why all those raw foodies are so skinny! I actually eat a mostly raw diet, but not really on purpose. I just happen to really not have a lot of time to cook, so I eat a lot of things like fruits, veggies, nuts, etc. I do cook my eggs and my soups, but that's about it actually. I'd be interested in reading this book just to hear the author's view on the subject. Sounds kind of neat.

I had some systemic health problems that started about 8 years ago. I went to many doctors, from the mainstream traditional to alternative and everywhere in between. Several years and many hundreds of dollars later none of them had even slightly helped me. I somehow learned of juicing and the raw food diet and sort of randomly decided to try it. I cannot overemphasize the profoundly positive results I had and continue to have 3 years later from being on this diet. It is sometimes socially challenging, but it is more than worth it because this diet did nothing short of giving me my life back. I believe that there is really no way to judge something accurately until you have tried it. Ideas are ideas, experience is experience, and they are very different things.