On Wed, 13 Aug 1997, Denis Peyrat wrote:
> I was reading  recently in a french pamphlet nearly as old as my grand
> mother , titled "Should we eat raw?"    that chicken  fed freely (ad
> libitum) on raw meat, instead of earthworms, die fast (I don't have the
> full article so I cannot tell you more for the moment) due to internal
> poisoning of organs.
> Would it be that the incomparable instinct of  chickens be baffled by raw
> meat  ?

You might want to be a little more specific when it comes to "age" next
time, Denis; we've been having some rather interesting discussions on the
subject lately -- inconclusive as usual, mind you -- and I'm afraid
"grand mother" just don't cut it anymore and can be very misleading. :)

Was that an all-meat diet, Denis?  I don't quite get it.

> You might as well answer that this result should have been expected given
> the fact that in the course of evolution, hens have rarely eaten raw red
> meat. But this was  also the case of pre-fire, pre-weapon  human beings,
> wasn't it ?.   The question of whether we are "entitled" to eat much more
> raw red meat than chimpanzees (ie very little) is of course hard to
> establish, and in any case,   I wouldn't rely on paleostudies to find out
> the truth for me.

Well, if you give anything or anyone too much of one thing, I think
you're bound to see them become confused.  And I guess you're right -
it's either the paleostudies or the chickens then!  I'm not sure which
I'd go with either..

> desired, as far as human nutrition is concerned.   Can one make modern
> science with ambiguous and antiquated concepts such as "meat" and
> "omnivorous" ?  This question is much less innocent than you might thought
> of  in first instance, and is certainly one which has been hotly  debated
> in linguistic and philosophical circles ever since Plato.

Science is where ambiguous things and questions go and live.  The sad
part of course is that they also die there, equally ambiguous.

> Arrgh, where are  the damn  earthworms  which I brought for lunch this
> morning  ?

Well, you must chew properly or else they could crawl right back out; they
are rather lively, mind you...

> Bye to everybody. See you in a few months time ...

Oh!  But what about the worms? :)