Hans:
>I tried some salmon an tuna today. First raw, and then
>I fried the rest of it. They tasted a little better raw
>but I think you dont want to eat very much of it and
>you want to eat something else.
>Cook them, and you can go on eating until you are full.

Exactly. The denaturing changes the taste-change potential in raw food
(actually it is a dynamic _process_ located neither in the food or the
mouth, but in the _interaction_).

>There is a theory that early humans were (partly) scavengers.
>Maybee when we then evolved into hunting our instinct was
>"left behind" and we started to use other means of judging
>what to eat (knowledge). When digging out the old instincts
>we revert partly to this earlier state.
>Another explanation is that preferring aged meat makes people
>not to eat all at once, but to leave some to next week.
>This levels out meat consumption, wich could be an advantige.


Interesting ideas. Lions tend to eat organs and leave muscle for later,
after someaging has taken place. Leopards are known to hang carcasses in
trees and return to consume them later.

According to Howell (Enzyme Nutrition) aged meat/fish is predigested in
that the naturally occuring enzymes in the RAF start breaking down the
components (proteins into simpler proteins and aminos, fats in fatty
acids). If so then aged RAF is similar in a way to a ripened banana. A
green banana is hard to digest, calling on the bodies enzymes to convert
the starchs into simple sugars, whereas a spotted banana has more easily
assimilated simple sugars as a result of the ripening process. Perhaps aged
RAF is easier to digest and that explains why it can be more attractive to
the senses.

In so far as cooking mimics the aging process, we might hypothesize that
our ancestors had found a way to "ripen: meat immediately after a kill...

>Robert
>> Im not so sure how wonderful taste is as a judge of the body "needing"
>> somthing.
>> There are accounts of people who ate poisonous mushrooms and thought they
>> tasted great--before they *died*, that is.

Hans
>Did they eat them cooked or raw?
>Also it is probably not always possible for a modern human
>to pick up the old instincts just so...

You are probably both right. Even the founder of instincto (a strange bird
named Guy-Claude Burger) cautions that mushrooms shouldn't be eaten unless
they taste fantastic, and even then only a long-time instincto should be so
cavalier.

Taste won't protect us from botulism either. It isn't so much that taste is
a 100% perfect guide, but that if you have great need of a particular raw
food, it _should_ taste great. There must be some sort of alimentary
mechanism which regulates the diet of wild foraging animals as well as
preditors. Of course, this mechanism is in synergy with the wild
environment, not a moden supermarket--so the "supply" side of the mechanism
is all askew in modern times.

Cheers,
Kirt


Secola  /\  Nieft
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