Kirt wrote:

>There's no all-raw culture either. Hmmm...

And Doug responded:

>Yeah, this may now be true, but was it always true for our species,
>the only one which is not all-raw?  How is it that every animal in
>nature can do just fine without eating any cooked food, but we need
>it?  I don't buy it.

For those who are interested in the question of fire and cooking, Part 2 of
my 3-part interview in Chet Day's Health & Beyond newsletter will be
published the first week in December.

There will be a discussion of the data on fire in evolutionary history,
much of which is referenced to peer-reviewed scientific journals, or to
books by anthropologists and other scientists which are themselves
referenced to scientific journals.

Most evolutionary scientists seem to vaguely assume as a matter of course
without ever exploring the question that the human species is adapted to
cooking. But the data I've put together for this interview is the first to
my knowledge to attempt to look into the question of ancient fire use
specifically as it relates to genetic adaptation. Like everyone else into
raw foods, I was very skeptical for many years about cooked foods. The data
I've uncovered, however, about when fire began to be used on a widespread
basis, along with an accompanying discussion in the interview about rates
of genetic change, I think shows it is highly likely homo sapiens is
evolutionarily adapted to at least some cooked food.

I won't say any more than that here, because I don't want to spoil the
interview, but one of the reasons, among others, I haven't been
participating in Veg-Raw lately is because of the time and energy I've had
to put into this series of interviews. If you want to know what the
scientific facts are about fire in human evolution, drop Chet a line at
<[log in to unmask]>, and ask him how much to send him for a sample
copy of the December issue. Some of the info in the December issue builds
on data previously explored in Part 1 of the interview, which ran in
October. You can read this interview on the Web at:

http://members.GNN.COM/chetday/ward1.htm, which is on Chet's Health &
Beyond website.

These interviews are heavily footnoted (approx. 160 references through Part
2), and when the 3-part series is done, I'll be making the full set of
footnotes and bibliography available for $3 to those who want to trace the
references themselves. Just write me, at:

--Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]> Wichita, KS