S.B. Feldman, MD, said:
> <<
> What about the thought that no animal except humans eats anything cooked?
> Why are we discussing this when any prototypical diet for which we are
> designed would be raw? >>  The opposite seems to make better sense:  We are
>the only animals that are able to cook and thus modify food and food
>choices...Also, we are and were not "designed" for anything...all hit and
>miss, and something about our ability to survive must be very worthy of being
>maintained; do we know of any human groups that avoid all cooking ?


Pardon me in advance, but your words remind me of all the veterinarians who
insist that kibble has been designed by experts to supply everything dogs
need. How would we know, other than looking at what the survivors of any
given species are eating when in nature? Hit and miss sums it up nicely;
the mere fact that we are still around, riddled by autoimmune disorders,
heart disease, cancers, diabetes, etc., doesn't look like a success. We
were probably doing just fine in the food chain until our big brains
started trying to preserve food, eat things we weren't supposed to be able
to eat, and grow stuff that filled bellies but not needs, just so we could
live in bigger social units. This wasn't a rational decision, just a misuse
of a basic drive: bigger units are better in most survival scenarios, but
we achieved them in a new way by eating inferior food, living in places we
weren't naturally able to endure, and changing our environment to a point
where agriculture and cooking became absolutely necessary for survival.

There is a big difference between survival and thriving. Dogs, wolves,
rodents, and humans can all eat garbage for a while when necessary to avoid
starvation, but that doesn't make it optimal for any individuals. We have a
whole race eating out of garbage dumps and wondering why they get sick. Our
digestive systems WERE designed to fit into a non-manipulated world, a
world we changed willy-nilly.  We have "modified" our food choices by
accident, and then tried to educate ourselves about what we did. Our
ability to learn to cook says nothing about the value of cooking or the
wisdom of our choices. My opinion is that we screwed up bigtime. If things
don't change, this is a dying race, not an enduring one, but the odd
individual can still decide to reach back and eat as much as possible as we
did before we ruined it for ourselves.

The excellent researchers on the list can answer the question of
non-cooking groups. I'll wager that some come very close: ageing,
fermenting, and drying foods can make them more palatable and storable
without cooking per se.

End of rant. I'm still really interested in eating raw and the issues
involved in that choice.

ginny and Tomo, for whom it works fine

All stunts performed without a net!