Ward,

thanks so much for your detailed answer!

> One thing I would be very interested in seeing is some sort of scientific
> evidence as to what the taste-change phenomenon correlates with that
> researchers can put hard data on, and which might have some bearing on
> toxicity questions, nutrient levels/types in the food, etc.

Thinking about it again, I realize that there has been lots of research
about food preferences. The few I can remember are:
 *Give a food X that is deficient in an essential amino-acid to rats: they
won't eat much of it, which indicates that X is not very palatable. Now,
if you inject them the missing amino-acid just before their meal, they
will show much more appetite.
 *Experiments on children of 3-5 years old: let them compose their meal
(at noon) freely. It appears that, although the nutrient profile varies
considerably from one day to another, on the long term they have a quite
balanced nutrition.
These experiments were done with cooked food, of course.
[Don't ask me for the references, I left them in France]

Regarding toxicity, the most poisonous mushrooms don't necessarily taste
the worst, and actually I heard that some deadly mushrooms don't taste bad
at all (whereas garlic, which is certainly not deadly, stings my tongue so
much that it's impossible for me to eat more than 1 cubic millimeter at a
time).

So I would say that the taste-change is weakly correlated with toxicity,
and is correlated with nutrient levels/types regardless of cooking.

A brief analysis of the instinctive stop mechanism shows that it splits
into two components:
  A - the food becomes tasteless, boring, my stomach is full, my mouth
      becomes dry, I lose interest in eating, etc.
  B - feelings of burning, like when you eat too much pineapple or honey, etc.

Instinctive-eaters typically insist on type B to "prove" that we are more
adapted to raw than to cooked food, but it appears that most of the time,
the stop we encounter is of type "A", and since many people have trouble
listening to type "A" stops, it results in overeating. The classical
pseudo-"solution" is to eat higher-quality foods, more wild foods, so that
type B stops are more frequently encountered. Probably type A stops (loss
of attraction) is related to nutrient profile, and still exists in cooked
food, but the majority of people don't listen to the signals of their body,
so are unaware of its existence; and type B stops are suppressed by cooking,
perhaps because natural toxins are destroyed AS WELL AS some specific
chemical species that produce these sensations of burning, etc.

Now a question remains: if X tastes better than Y (let's introduce the
notation X>Y), is it true that X is more useful to the body than Y? To me,
it is plausible that there is some correlation between usefulness and
palatability (as shown by studies about food preferences), but there is a
lack of a precise definition of "usefulness", if such a definition was
ever possible. Moreover, the surprising fact, well-known among researchers
on food preferences [again, I left the reference on the other side of the
Atlantic, so don't ask for it], is that the situation X>Y, Y>Z and Z>X
sometimes happens!!

> One would suspect that if a creature adapted to a 50%
> diet of anything, it would be very likely to need it. For instance humans
> have apparently had a 50% meat diet since Homo erectus 1.7 million years
> ago. The experience of not-insignificant numbers of vegetarians and vegans
> with deficiencies suggests that we do need it.

Okay, if you introduce a new nutrient in high quantity, we may become
dependent on it. But cooking doesn't introduce new nutrients, at least
directly, so I only see three possible reasons why cooking might me useful:
  1- loss of ability to process natural toxins that are destroyed by cooking;
  2- loss of ability to digest some raw foods efficiently;
  3- cooking modifies the nutrient profile of your diet (you eat more of
     certain foods and/or eat foods that would be inedible raw), so if you
     eat raw you might have some deficiencies.

As far as I understood from your post, there is no evidence, but only
presumptions that 1 and 2 are true. As far as 3 is concerned, it's
certainly true that cooking changes the quantities of the foods you eat,
but maybe the functioning of the body is flexible enough and can still
thrive on a 100% raw diet for a lifetime, I don't know [as I said in an
earlier post, I am starting to cook a little quantity of vegetables; even
if I wasn't deficient in broccoli, I feel happier with more variety in my
diet].

> P.S. Due to a recent spate of work that's come in the last few days, I'll
> be on deadline for the next week or so--so will not be able to make more
> than minimal posts on any follow-up questions to this until I get the work
> out the door. Thanks...

That's all right, take your time (if you have anything to add)...

Best wishes,

Jean-Louis
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