On Fri, 15 May 2009 04:58:43 -0500, Geoffrey Purcell  
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Since, clearly, cooked foods do harm humans(with greater
> harm done as the cooking temperature increases), it is quite safe to  
> state that humans are not fully adapted to cooked foods, and that cooked  
> foods are not natural.

Replace "cooking" with any modern technology and you can make the same  
argument.  For example:

Since, clearly, automobiles do harm humans (with greater harm done as the  
speed of the crash increases), it is quite safe to state that humans are  
not fully adapted to automobiles, and that automobiles are not natural.

Obviously, the benefits of rapid movement and vastly increased  
load-bearing capacity with much less effort have outweighed the risks of  
dying in a car crash.  Maybe cooking is the same way -- the benefits  
outweigh the risks.

> Besides, geneticists have claimed that it takes c.1 million years for  
> wild animals to adapt to quite different(raw) foods(our hominid  
> ancestors also took millions of years to change from fruit to meat etc.)  
> Since cooked foods are so radically different from raw foods, it's quite  
> likely that it's impossible to fully adapt to them, ever.

I doubt that.  Evolution can, and does, happen much more rapidly.  The  
biggest problem human adaptation has is that people don't die anymore.  If  
you get sick, you take drugs, get surgery, whatever -- and you keep  
going.  You don't eat a bad piece of meat and die (at least not usually).   
If you eat something you're only partially adapted to, but it doesn't kill  
you outright, you'll live to reproduce.  No adaptation necessary.  Your  
genes don't care if you live life to the fullest, they only care that you  
replicate.


-- 
   Robert Kesterson
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