On Friday, Jan 7, 2005, at 08:49 US/Pacific, Todd Moody wrote:

> ..... The human species (i.e., humans anatomically like us) is
> believed to be 150,000-225,000 years old.  The earliest evidence of
> cooking hearths is 250,000 years old.  I think it's important to note,
> therefore, that humans have *always* cooked, for as long as there have
> been humans.  Remember that the paleolithic era ends only about 12,000
> or so years ago, so any claim that cooking is "unpaleo" must be
> rejected.  If the paleo diet is to include what paleolithic humans ate,
> then it would include cooked food.  One might want to restrict the
> "paleo diet" to what pre-human hominids ate, but I'm not sure what the
> rationale would be for doing so.

One rationale might be that cooking is actually an unfortunate
development, an accidental perversion of basic drives which became so
important as to be the norm rather than the exception. Even if humans
per se have had a longtime association with cooking, it might have no
relevance to the larger picture of how all organisms eat and digest,
including our immediate forbears. What I'm saying is that raw, live
food is the norm for every species except humans, a sort of basic
design premise. That gives it a bit of weight as far as
appropriateness. There is no reason to stop at the Paleolithic in
search of our most efficient biological function, if we're really after
it...


ginny



All stunts performed without a net!