Hi everybody,

I am a friend of Jean Claude Catry, who has contributed a great deal
to the list in the past.  He is not reading all the list messages now
but did read the debate about raw vs. cooked and asked me to forward
this from him:

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Jean Claude writes:

I have been away from this list for a long time but looking at the archives
and seeing this lenghy discussion  on a subject that is of importance to me,
makes me wanting to respond and winter coming , subscribe again .
here are my commentaries  to part of posts coming from many peoples .


> Todd Moody <[log in to unmask]> writes:
> If cooking provides no advantage, the burden is on you to
> explain why, once hunter-gatherers acquired the practice, it stayed and
> became universal.
>
> > This may be so, but it still leaves unexplained the fact that cooking
> > meat caught on and became universally practiced among humans.  Why do
> > you suppose this happened?


this phenomenon is not proper to humans , all animals can be
introduced and made dependant to eating cooked foods despite their
first repulsion to them . Here crows pigeons and sea gulls are waiting
for their share .It have to do with the instinctive regulation of
eating .Every species have developped a 2 way relationship with their
environment , selecting among it what is needed, day after day, to be
integrated to maintain homeostasis , and to be kept in a balanced
relationship with it .

Every individual of one species have very similar intake globally and
yet different in details .This amazing fact is possible because of the
existence of an inbuilt instinctive regulation that is problably
recorded in genetic ( try to present a piece of meat or even horse
pellets to a young horse and see for yourself ) and is refined thru
actual practice in the environement in the present.This instinctive
regulation working among others thru the filter of taste and smell, is
programmed to respond to foods that the species is "expected "to
encounter In the form it is presented in its environment during
evolution.( a horse can't stop on naked grains because it have been
impossible for a horse or his ancestors in the wild to have acces to
naked grains )

It is no surprise then that in the presence of a food not adapted
genitically to the species or in a denatured form , this instinctive
regulation don't work , leading the body away from balance .The
diruptive effect of the denatured food is such that eaten beyond the
body needs of the moment it will become unappealling in its raw state
the next day ( the body had more than enough and don't want it , the
instinct is working with the food in its raw state).It also blocked
the ability to enjoy other similar raw foods that could be
presented. ( experienced many many time )what is left to the poor
fellow ? , he goes back to the cooked form not experiencing any "stop"
with it even if the body don't need it .

One day we will have a biochemical explanation how a denatured food (
or drink ) becomes addictive at the cellular level.Our young horse
,once forced to taste the pellets will crave for it forever despite
its first stubborn repulsion to them .( i raised horses free range and
we learned to tame and makes them dependant thru denatured bait.It
kind of introduce my answer to the next question:

> So, your view is that the conquerors didn't cook, but forced the
> conquered to eat cooked food, to keep them down.  It's an
> interesting theory.  Is there any evidence for it?


jean-claude: there is quickly some indications of the role denatured
or non species adapted foods played in the establishment of dominating
type of cultures , like the fact that the lords and kings during a big
part of history reserved to themselves the right to hunt while the
grains was mostly left to the farmers.The slaves of egypt accepted to
work hard to get their daily grains .The natives of the plains( who
were eaten part of their meat raw ) have been hard to buy with flour ,
as long the buffallo roamed around they will just not submit to the
new order .( the buffallo had to be exterminated first ) Same with the
horses , as long they had good grass to eat in the mountain they
didn't had any incentive to respond to our pal shaking and move toward
us ,but once confined in the valley on an overgrazed pasture they did
run from far at the sound of the grain in a bucket.


> ......
>
> Any hunters in the group?  It's one thing to slice a piece of raw,
> refrigerated, sanitized beef and eat it.  Now try killing a deer, or pig, or
> cow in the wild.  Make sure you let the body cool before you clean it.
> Otherwise, the fleas and ticks that infest the animal will jump all over
> you.
>
> I doubt our hunter-gather ancestors neatly cut their kills into steaks and
> chops.  And if I'm going to chaw on a haunch of pig, holding it over the
> fire for a little bit seems the sensible thing to do.

jean-claude: yesterday i did skinned a beautiful male deer and he was
full of ticks that actually jump all over me .when i butcher an animal
i don't cut conventional cuts i remove muscles by muscles because i
let them to dry whole in the fridge (what i don't eat fresh) i also
eat almost everything except the hard parts of the squeletton and the
intestine content ( still not there yet ), but the stomachs yes (
remind of french andouillettes)when you remove muscles by muscles
there is just the ligaments to cut and an obsidian tool is better than
a knife for skinning too

> .....
> In theory, eating only raw meat may have certain nutritional benefits However
> in reality if a small group (which humans evolved in) ate all raw meat they
> would run the risk of killing some kind of diseased animal.  If the whole
> group ate that diseased animal they might have a 1-100 percentage death or
> severe sickness rate. It is a calculated risk to eat raw meat. There is
> cooking wherever there are humans, so I would assume that most groups did not
> want to take that risk.
> >From the evidence I have read, I believe that HIV does not cause AIDS.
> However, I would not be physically intimate with a woman who I knew had HIV.
> Survival is all about calculated risk.
> -David

jean-claude: eating cooked or seasonned can in fact be more risky
because you don't allow the instinctive response to let you know if a
food is spoiled or is infected with toxins ( like with the red tide
where you can feel a sting )when i eat clams for ex there is allways
one that don't taste right and is spit out ,with some lemon on it it
might pass)I have been eating all kind of raw animals in evry stage of
maturity for 13 years and i never had any problems i did vomit some
oysters or salmon at time but without any ill feeling ( after the
smell and taste barrier there is the stomach barrier , then the
intestine , immune system and cells barriers.I have been to a
primitive life skill gathering where almost everybody got sick during
the night because of the bean soup\, with my wife we were the only one
not affected ( we didn't eat the beans but something raw )The next day
our class on instinctive eating was full.

I hear lot of food poisonning is occuring in restaurants , ...where
raw meats are forbidden )In the book maximise immunity Bruno Comby
report that chimpanzee have been abandonned for research on AIds
becausedespite injection of the virus they refuse to developp symptoms
.Green monkeys are much better subject , they get sick .do you know
what ?  chimpanzee are costly animals and to keep them alive they need
to be fed raw foods, green monkey being cheaper , industrial foods is
good enough for them .Healthy carrier of virus, bacterias and
parasites is problably the norm , the symptmotic infection rather the
exception.......

> If such scenario is in fact the case, would it not then also be
> correct to say that human evolution did include > the eating of and
> adaptation to "cooked" meat?

jean-claude: we might have certainly encounter accidentelly cooked
items but how often ? probably roots will be the most likelly but how
cooked ?without thermostats it will have been hard to find the" juste
a point " .I have been travelling in france thru a recently burned
forest and din't find anything , i also travelled thru yellowstone
after the fire and saw a video about it saying that very little
animals got trapped and killed but everyone who could move enough was
gone before .Among them only a very small percentage got killed.( just
few percent i think )Now the debate is open for how long we
systematically cooked our foods. ....

> Maybe paranoia about raw meat in basically an American/English
> thing?

jean-claude: oh yes ! I am so happy to have encounter a new friend ,
he is japanese and we eat and share foods together, what a delight?(
he is not eating raw foods but try without a blink what i have to
propose, like mature deer meats, organs ,pigeon or grouse head
,etc...)a french eating instinctivilly who live in canada and suffer
greatly from the faces making , even if i eat just a raw egg .

>.... Fresh fish yes, there was even a rule in England that you could
>feed servants salmon no more then three times a week.


jean-claude: Interesting because i read in an old book the archives of
the workers on the Loire valley in France many centuries ago ,who made
the request to not have salmon more than 4 times a week, served at the
canteen

> .....Ah, Christy.  What do you intend to do re. parasite control if
> you do go raw?

jean-claude: the parasites are integral parts of an ecosystem , and
are regulated like any other species in their numbers to reach a point
of equilibrium with the rest of the organisms. This balanced is not
the result of a control of any species .It is very subttle regulation
that is beyond our understanding and better left to the great
organiser. .When humans loose control over their place in the food web
,it is understandable that out of anxiety, a need for a certain
control occur .For peoples who have understood than trying to control
somebody else behavior is guarantee for failure and source of more out
of control repercussions , there is an opening toward focusing on
their own contribution to the problems instead.In the cooked food
frame work parasites are more likelly to create symptoms than in a raw
food eater. Every animal on earth are in fact a transcient symbiotic
association of multiples organisms , One day it will have to fall
apart and i don't thinkany control over the microcospic world had or
will have any chance to be successfull .It might be in my eyes even
the cause of the autoimmune epidemic of our time ( thru vaccination ,
antibiotics and control over life biodiversity in general.)higly
symbolic , In our struggle and fight against many indesirable
organisms , we are just starting to begin to understand that we tried
hard to get rid of..... ourselves in fact.a bientot de vous rejoindre
jean-claude
>
>
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