(Our small stomachs evolved along with our ability
> to >use fire and other techniques to predigest food. Fire may have been
> essential to the evolution of a large brain as it released expensive
> metabolic tissue in the stomach for our metabolically very expensive brain
> tissue.)

 I don't see how a connection can be made between these two developments
in evolution. The body doesn't steal from Peter to pay Paul as far as I
know. If man continued to eat raw food that contains it's own digestive
enzymes and chewed it well the stomach would be spared some of the
digestive work just as if the food had been cooked. Doesn't cooking meat
slightly mean that some part of it may be denatured and unsuable, so that
the net result of cooking may be more volume but less nutrition? Time
will tell if I am getting good benefit from eating pastured Beefalo meat
and liver raw and spending a lot of time chewing..:-).

My best, Ellie]