The trouble with the notion of adaptation is that Palaeos already claim a lack of adaptation for non-Palaeo foods such as grains and dairy after 1,000s of years, while SAD-eaters claim that a generation or two is enough to adapt to any food. The fact that cooked-food is so radically different from any kind of raw food indicates a possibility that cooked-food can never be adapted to. Indeed, judging from articles by new Scientist magazine and others, any adaptations may well be very harmful for us, over time:-
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7035
Plus, if you look at the beyondveg.com timeline, you'll find that it took millions of years for our ancestors to switch from eating raw insects to eating raw fruit/veg to eating raw meats. By comparison, 250,000 years seems a pretty small figure, in which to fully adapt to such a radically different food as cooked-food, even if that is possible.
Similiarly, one "adaptation" we made when we turned to non-Palaeo foods was that our brain-size decreased by an average 8%, when our ancestors turned to non-Palaeo foods instead of eating meats. So, adaptation, even if possible, isn't necessarily a "good thing".
Whether any native-tribe eats a 100% raw diet or not, is irrelevant. After all, we humans all do stupid things that hinder our survival. For example, SAD-eaters eat plenty of cooked starch over a lifetime, despite its harmful effect on their health. Then there's the case of the 19th-century Styrian peasants who ate small amounts of arsenic for generations for supposed "health" etc.. In short, eating something out of habit for millenia does not, of itself, make that healthy. Mind you, the Nenets come pretty close, I gather that they eat mostly raw, with some boiled meats:-
http://tinyurl.com/42nqhw
Lastly, to prove full adaptation to all cooked-foods over that 250,000 year-period, you would not only have to prove that humans can handle the fact that cooking destroys nutrients(I'm talking about Palaeo foods, primarily, not grains), but you would also have to prove that humans are fully adapted to all the toxins created by heat, being totally unaffected by them(eg:- by putting humans on a 100%-cooked diet for decades, as an experiment). Most unfortunately, however, many current scientific studies, in food-science, now focus on all sorts of toxins created by cooking, such as advanced glycation end products, nitrosamines, heterocyclic amines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and their negative effect on human health, so that the claim re adaptation to cooked-foods is decidedly on shaky ground. Here's a small sample of the 1,000s of studies done so far on such toxins and their harmful effect on human health, many of which are available online:-
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/65/17/8034
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/12/6474.full
(Excerpt from above link):_
"Although the observation is only preliminary, given the prominence of this type of food in the human diet, the deleterious effects of high-fat foods may be in part due to the high content in glycotoxins, above and beyond those due to oxidized fatty acid derivatives
Although the observation is only preliminary, given the prominence of this type of food in the human diet, the deleterious effects of high-fat foods may be in part due to the high content in glycotoxins, above and beyond those due to oxidized fatty acid derivatives "
In other words, if high fat-foods are not cooked, they don't produce vast amounts of glycotoxins, and are fine to eat.
http://www.nature.com/ki/journal/v53/n2/full/4490049a.html
http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cancernet/600325.html
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1241432
Geoff.> Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 07:39:09 -0500> From: [log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: A qustion for fans of Vilhjalmur Stefansson fans> To: [log in to unmask]> > On Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:15:36 -0500, william <[log in to unmask]> wrote:> > >If Wrangham or his believers had tried eating raw paleo for a few months> >and then tried cooked paleo they would be singing a different tune.> >> >William> > Even the low-end estimate of 250,000 years is believed to be plenty of time> for adaptation by all the scientists in the field of Paleolithic nutrition,> as well as Ray Audette and others. Eating some raw foods certainly provides> benefits, such as the vitamin C one can derive from certain raw organs, but> even the traditional Inuit ate cooked as well as raw foods. Can you name a> single hunter-gatherer people which never eats cooked food?
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