jean-claude:

>I never read anywhere on the
>instincto litterature the claim that cooking started 10000 years ago .

Try "Maximize Immunity" by Bruno Comby, p141:

"Prior to the widespread use of fire for cooking about 10,000 years ago,
the human diet consisted of fruits, grains, vegetables and insects. Also
available were legumes, leaves, roots, tree bark, and occasionally eggs,
meat, fish and honey. Water was the only beverage. Diets and regimens did
not yet exist, and the make-up of a meal was determined instinctively,
based on the odor and taste of the foods that were available, as is still
the case today for wild animals. All foods were eaten in the raw state."
etc etc

[There are so many errors in this paragraph that it would take several
posts to point them out--but apparently he considers that hunting wasn't
much occurring before 10,000 years ago. =:O ]

p142:

"The notion that prehistoric man cooked his food is a myth. This is
affirmed by the anthropologist, Dr. Vaughn Bryant, head of the Department
of Anthropology at The Texas A and M University (College Station, Texas."

Bruno makes the following citation and goes on to briefly describe the
research on fossilized feces:

Bryant Dr., Prevention Magazine, September 1979 [Quite a source!!!]

He then goes on to speak of H. L. Abrams ((elsewhere citing material from
1979-1983 published in the Journal of Applied Nutrition (OK, but ancient,
though I would like to see if no cooking before 10K ya is a conclusion
Abrams came to in any of those articles)--and a pop book, "Your Body is
Your Best Doctor" he co-wrote in 1972)).

Later on page 142 he says again:

"Only within in the last ten thousand years have the following spread
throughout all human populations:

1] the use of fire for cooking food."
etc

Maybe this could be found technically true (as in unfalsifyable ;) because
of the _all_, but then don't instinctos count? ;) Then again he gets away
with an interesting play around with "widespread" and "all" in the first
quotation. Then further again, the book is a translation from French so
I'll quit nit-picking. ;)

(I remember that Abrams was also cited by Burger--but now that I am eating
cooked foods my short-term memory may be falling off...;))

I'd cut Bruno some slack if I wasn't quoting from a second edition of the
book which came out "updated" in 1994! I still think the book is landmark,
but well-researched it isn't. Too bad too, cause he says stuff that should
be debated by rigorous researchers IMO. But why would anyone bother with
such shoddy errors?

Sorry, jean-claude, but whatever the benefits of instincto (and I believe
there are many) I see no instincto liturature that isn't extremely baised
and guilty of even more cherry-picking than Ray is. ;) And Bruno is the
only one actually trying to provide references for his writing--good on him!

Of course, beyondveg is biased--everything is. What BV is that most
everything in the alternative dietary world isn't, is more balanced and,
dare I say, more intellectually honest. The article on Maillard molecules
is a one of the best examples of this on the site IMO.

But then I am biased since I am one of the few contributors that got away
with a lengthy non-academic article. ;)

Cheers,
Kirt

Secola  /\  Nieft
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