Mon, 16 Aug 1999 21:36:10 -0400 Todd Moody wrote:
>... http://cnn.com/HEALTH/diet.fitness/9908/11/science.cooking.reut/
Rachel Matesz wrote:
>My husband, Don, wrote a lengthy response.
>Here's the short version.
>... This idea that we got smart by cooking vegetables,
>not by hunting and meat eating ...... is
>illogical and biochemically incredible. Here are my reasons:
>1) Cooking is a highly sophisticated behavior that requires
intelligece
> ... Hence, cooking must have come after man became
>"smart"--in other words, man did not become "smart" by cooking, he
>stared cooking after becoming "smart".
You seem to assume the idea that "becomeing smart" was the *result*
of a certain way of nutrition.
I wonder what we should eat then, to get longer arms or smaller feet.
I'd personally prefer to consider the view that for any change
in the genes there *must* be an evolutionary advantage.
Organs are not developed because enough food is available.
Organs are developed to fulfil an evolutionary need better.
Just my view.
>2) Further, there is nothing in cooked vegetables that would
>support
>development of a more sophisticated nervous system or brain.
Bigger brains need additional energy in the form of glucose and
vitamins (the nerve vitamin b1 for example.).
The carbohydrates are (nearly only) found in plants. Cooking is
able to reduce the toxins in some plants to a big extent -
relieving the liver and digestion detoxifying systems and therefore
makes more plants available as a carbohydrate source(roots, tubers).
Carbohydrate supply by meat is very awkward for the body,
digesting end rebuilding a whole kg of meat per day for the brain
*only*.
Vitamin b1 (nerve vitamin) is heat sensible and reduced by cooking.
But cooking made edible some plants with a tremendous vitamin-b1
content, even after cooking still multifold per carbohydrate content
compared to any other food.
This is indeed a evolutionary advantage.
>The primary
>structural material of the brain is the omega-3 EFA known as
>DHA(Docosahexaenoic acid).
The brain contains a whole 0.5 g of DHA per 100 g (0.5 percent).
Makes for a 1500 g brain 7.5g DHA.
>There are no vegetables that provide DHA. Greens
>provide alpha-linolenic acid, which some animals can convert to DHA,
>but modern humans have
>little or no ability to achieve this conversion.
I guess you know where in animals the DHA is found.
Inside the brain and marrow.
After that most humans on earth, including well fed inhabitants of
the US hardly ever eat brains and still have own brains,
you statement (little or no ability) can't be true.
I seems obvious that the conversion ability *is* sufficient.
>Chimps
>also obviously have no marked ability
>to achieve this conversion--if they
>did, they'd probably have bigger brains.
Funny theory. And if you feed a chimp DHA directly -in double dose-
or give it to a human kid - will they have bigger brains then?
Nope - brain size is genetically determined as for evolutionary
needs.
What i learnt from the website jean-claude posted, is that
the brains of humans, apes and pigs grow in the same speed
of 0.6 grams per day. Humans' brains just grow longer.
So we need the same supply if DHA as chimps, just for a longer time.
Well, and Tigers have the best access to meat and DHA.
They are of course the most intelligent living beeings
with the biggest brains on earth, are they?
>3) The authors of this "research" say
> "We don't see meat as a high energy
>food source.
>It has to be (a) high energy food source to explain this
>doubling of body size." ...
Indeed meat is a rather low energy source.
Only 1500 kcal per kg and in the costly form of protein.
Your own text shows that the tuber sweet potatoe is denser
than meat:
>Sweet potato, boiled and mashed 364
>Wild game, raw, lean only 232
If it comes to calories then everything fatty is best of course.
But fat is only under special circumstances(ketosis) and only partly
usable by the brain.
>Nuts, raw 933
>Beef brains, raw 392
>Animal fat, raw 1840
Plant fat, raw same
Alas, animal fat is hard to get with wild game.
5% of a mammouth (the brain and kidney fat) may be much.
But do you think that 90% meat of the mammouth's fat was left there?
Then the fossil record should show skeletons with smashed heads
and the rest (except marrow bones) in compact order.
>From these figures it is hard to understand how the authors of the
>"study"
>in question could conclude that cooking vegetables gave early man
>acces to "high energy" foods.
Because, for ex.sweet potatoe became edible, or edible in larger
scale through cooking.
>My guess is that the authors have not looked at energy
>density in terms of volume, i.e. calories per cup, but have been
>misled by looking only at calories per gram.
Do you imply that food input is restricted by volume or weight?
Certainly not in the daily amounts needed by a humans' brains.
3 bananas in the afternoon. Whats the volume, what's the weight?
1kg of meat(additional) would be more difficult to eat,
don't you think so?
The restriction lies in the availability of foods
(in a given area).
Annother possible restriction however is through
the maximum tolerable toxin load.
This restriction would be reduced by meat eating and by cooking.
>who is going to publish a head-line stating that "EARLY MAN
>DEVELOPED A BIG
>BRAIN BY EATING BRAINS AND FAT, STUDY SAYS"?
Why not, we've seen suchalike hypothesis.
I apologize for the parts i have repeated myself (like URLs below).
I just had to answer to ideas that don't look logical to me.
regards,
Amadeus (now on vacancy)
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?A2=ind9907&L=paleofood&P=7378
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?A2=ind9907&L=paleofood&P=8872
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