I disagree.  It's extremely relevant.  Eating raw meat--perhaps still warm
>from a kill--is not very appealing anyone I know, and I don't think it's just
cultural habit.  Cooked meat tastes better to most of us (I assume there are
exceptions, though I haven't met these people).  I'd hypothesize that this is
body wisdom, and arises from our 1.5 million year history of eating cooked
food.  I'd guess that our bodies are better adapted to eat certain foods
cooked--for example, red meat.

     - Sheryl


Okay, I need to comment on this one... I can't cite studies, but I think it
is commonly held that cooked proteins are much harder to digest. I think
the appeal of cooked meats is cultural rather than instinctive, and heavily
weighted by some sort of moral perception about the proper way to handle
food. Of course, cultures that relied on agricultural carbohydrates and
meats would have good reason to emphasize cooking, since it makes edible
the inedible, spoiled, tough, or bad-tasting items.

I'll buy that hunters with fire probably stuck meat on sticks. We are wired
to respond to the smell of hot fats, because they concentrate the odors
which lead us to food. It's an assault on the senses that we cannot resist.
But I also think those hunters didn't do it all the time, or that they
didn't get stuff cooked through. And I don't think any of this happened
before our genes and digestive tracts were cast in stone. Regardless of
what was done later, those first 500,000 years, AND the evolutionary time
previous, are what defined how we succeeded as a species in the food chain.

I, for one, and I'll wager I have company here, enjoy raw meats, fish,
eggs, and of course vegetables and fruits. And I can well imagine that
just-killed meat would seem very appealing, assuming a degree of hunger
that would motivate a hunter. It just takes an open mind, or perhaps
listening to one's own body wisdom.

ginny

All stunts performed without a net!