[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

Don't shoot the messenger!

It's actually a cute paper. The primates are listed by their names. They preferred cooked over raw for every food item except for two: white potato and apple, for which they expressed no preference.

I don't think it means much except that all of us primates tend to be inherently lazy and want maximum calories with minimal effort.

This Wrangham guy has been on an anti-raw agenda for a while.

edited to add: I have the paper, PM me with your email addy if you wish to read it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/01/2008 09:46PM by arugula.

And for anyone who's still not sure if we're related to primates...

[youtube.com]

Some of the monkeys read Nietzsche.

Some of the monkeys argue about Nietzsche
without ever giving any consideration to the fact that
Nietzsche was just another monkey.

Many animals will prefer human cooked foods over their native foods. If a bear in Yosemite finds a cache of Snickers bars, he's going to go nuts over that foods, with all the fat and sugar in the candy bar. However, just because his tastes buds tell him that this food has a lot of energy in it, it doesn't mean a Snickers bar is healthier for the bear than his diet of fresh fish and berries.

Mmm.. it seems to me a bit like proposing a case for drugs and alcohol using the same argument ?

arugula Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Some of the monkeys read Nietzsche.
>
> Some of the monkeys argue about Nietzsche
> without ever giving any consideration to the fact
> that Nietzsche was just another monkey.

that's the funniest thing i have ever read. arugula i love you!

Haven't got time to read the paper unfortunately.

Just quick comment - I see it is 'captive apes' we are talking about.

Had they been given cooked food before? It is quite possible for a creature brought up on cooked food to come to prefer it over the pure and natural, for its taste buds to be perverted and deceived into preferring damaged food.

Happens all the time...:-)

Love

Debbie Took
www.rawforlife.co.uk

They were all captive apes from primate research centers. The researchers could not eliminate neophobia in every case but there was one food that the apes had no familiarity with previously in either cooked or raw form: beef. They preferred that cooked.

They referred to previous works showing that chimps preferred wild seeds that had been heated by fire over raw, and that cats and rats also prefer cooked foods.

Some reasons why they preferred cooked most of the time:
cooking raises sugar availability
tannin bitterness is diminished
glutamate availability is increased (umami taste)
smoother texture
easier to chew

What's "umami taste"?

I think it's the taste of breast milk... "ooooo, mommy!"

C'mon Narzicus, ever heard of a search engine?

[www.google.com]

jono Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> C'mon Narzicus, ever heard of a search engine?
>
> [www.google.com]
> ogle+Search

I asked Google to be my friend but he said no.

Umami links

[en.wikipedia.org]
[www.umamiinfo.com]
[www.glutamate.org]
[www.npr.org]

Bryan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Many animals will prefer human cooked foods over
> their native foods. If a bear in Yosemite finds a
> cache of Snickers bars, he's going to go nuts over
> that foods, with all the fat and sugar in the
> candy bar. However, just because his tastes buds
> tell him that this food has a lot of energy in it,
> it doesn't mean a Snickers bar is healthier for
> the bear than his diet of fresh fish and berries.

Totally agree.....animals will eat what ever they can if they are hungry enough and cooked food is no exception infact cooked food is basically a given with all the sugar/fats in it, I've worked with dogs on a raw meat diet and cooked food/kibble diet for over 12 years and I see the same thing, unfortunately what I also see is the high rate of obesity, tumors and cancers in dogs that get fed the cooked food/kibble of their guardians compared to the lean, fit and energetic dogs that eat raw meats and bones, etc.

F1

seems to me that the taste buds and such were designed to prefer foods that are easiest to digest and highest in usable energy BUT nature wouldn't have taken into consideration that we would be treating any foods with fire. since heat can render a more palatable edible it makes sense that our taste sensation would prefer it, right? i do think the taste preferance is to ensure that we go for the best foods first, the best natural foods that is. everything else falls out of the range of nature.