Why did human beings begin to cook their food?

I imagine that today people eat cooked food because that is the tradition they have inherited and are attached to. But why did it all start? If cooking creates toxins and requires an additional expense of time and perhaps money, why did we begin to do it at all?

I've been wondering about this for a while and cannot find an answer. I sometimes wonder if cooking began from an intuitive perception that it helps in ways - like making food more digestible, releasing nutrients and other such things that those critical of the raw food diet would tell us.

not enough raw food in the area where people were living.
forced to cook items for easier chewing/digestion

fresh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> not enough raw food in the area where people were
> living.
> forced to cook items for easier chewing/digestion

Right. Just throw yet another fractured fairytale into the mix that sounds logical to you and that might be something you actually know about. Fractured fairytales seem to work every time with starry eyed true believer NHers and Doug Graham's 80-10-10ers but who else will swallow your tale whole?

They tried it. It worked. They adopted it. They mastered it. They made it into industry.


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams

SueZ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> fresh Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > not enough raw food in the area where people
> were
> > living.
> > forced to cook items for easier
> chewing/digestion
>
> Right. Just throw yet another fractured fairytale
> into the mix that sounds logical to you and that
> might be something you actually know about.
> Fractured fairytales seem to work every time with
> starry eyed true believer NHers and Doug Graham's
> 80-10-10ers but who else will swallow your tale
> whole?


I am watching this thread very carefully and will begin seriously debunking stuff if the fairy tales get too wild.

www.thesproutarian.com



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2015 11:51PM by The Sproutarian Man.

fresh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> not enough raw food in the area where people were
> living.
> forced to cook items for easier chewing/digestion


Why would they want easier chewing and digestion in the first place? And why would the entire society adopt this? I can imagine that a few ill people might have wanted easier chewing and digestion.

rawgosia Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> They tried it. It worked. They adopted it. They
> mastered it. They made it into industry.

What do you have in mind when you say 'it worked'?

I can imagine that if I have been a raw fooder since birth and so have my ancestors, I would not like the effects of cooked food on my palette, emotions and body. So I don't know why I would make such a switch.

I think I am also speaking from a position that regards our ancestors to have had a certain wisdom. They did not live in industrialised cultures, they were far more in touch with nature. If one looks at Ayurveda or Tibetan medicine one sees a very sharp sensory and intuitive awareness of what foods do what to the body, what diseases are caused and ameliorated by what foods, and so on. So I wonder why the same people would accept a diet of cooked food, if it is so toxic.

Thinking out aloud, that takes me to the kind of thinking one finds in the book Nourishing Traditions, that it is not cooked food which is a problem but the way it is prepared and cooked. Non-rancid oils, whole grains, soaked grains, nuts and seeds, organic produce, fresh, season-appropriate and locally produced food, no pollution, no radiation, and more might make cooked food not so unhealthy. Both Nourishing Traditions and Victoria Boutenko also write that traditional cultures ate a large portion of raw foods. I think it is Boutenko who also claims that cooked food was largely a luxury for the rich, and common households rarely had a proper stove in their house, in the medieval ages.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2015 02:09AM by iandthou.

Suez and tsm with 2 more useless posts.

Like gosia said we controlled fire and accidentally or purposefully cooked and it improved what they were eating whether meat or whatever else to some extent.

Why would they stop eating cooked anymore than cooked eaters do today because they may have had a little less energy?

Plus it was simple cooking, not salt and spices and frying,etc

iandthou Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> fresh Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > not enough raw food in the area where people
> were
> > living.
> > forced to cook items for easier
> chewing/digestion
>
>
> Why would they want easier chewing and digestion
> in the first place? And why would the entire
> society adopt this? I can imagine that a few ill
> people might have wanted easier chewing and
> digestion.
We seek efficiency

They ate what was available.
They found that meat was easier or tastier cooked and it expanded the range of food items that otherwise could not be eaten

Iandthou, are you assuming that at one point humans as we know it ate an all raw diet. If so, what was their diet and where did they live? Or do you believe God created man and put them in the tropics only?

What about people living in temperate zones where there is snow? Did they hibernate all winter in caves and not eat?

A far more plausible answer is that an alien far more advanced society than ours visited planet earth a long time ago and interbreed their lower forms of life with our early ancestors and taught them how to cook?

In nature there are no orchards with manicured lawns and endless rows of mangoes trees, fig trees or durians. Those were developed afterwards. The only realistic option would have been tropical Africa, Asia or South America. In those instances you would have to be climbing up trees and on branches and competing with the apes for the high level fruit - as well as the birds, the worms and other insects.

Most of the low lying fruit or fallen fruit would be full of worms, flies and whatever with still more competition. There was no garden of Eden where you just walked from tree to tree getting tree ripened fruit from rich soil all your round.

BJ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Iandthou, are you assuming that at one point
> humans as we know it ate an all raw diet. If so,
> what was their diet and where did they live?

If fire was a discovery, rather than something we knew from the day the first human beings came into being, then there must have been a time before that discovery. Food before the use of fire would be raw food, I am imagining.

Hey iandthou,

That’s an interesting question and we can only speculate as to what really happened. The fact that it did happen is extremely obvious for those of us with any sense of logic, but as you can see, a lot of people just don’t have a very good sense of logic and that has a lot to do with their ADDICTIONS!

“Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.” -Plato

Indeed, Cooked Food produces a magical enchantment as most people seem to be under its Spell.

Anyway, here is an old Post that I thought was interesting…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hi

Here is an interesting raw food myth about the Origins of Death. It is from the Darasa, Gada (Africa) people. I don't have a date on it though.

"Formerly men had no fire but ate all their food raw. At that time they did not need to die for when they became old God made them young again. One day they decided to beg God for fire. They sent a messenger to God to convey their request. God replied to the messenger that he would give him fire if he was prepared to die. The man took the fire from God, but ever since then all men must die."

Ana
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

organic1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yeah i agree, even at a most basic level there
> would have never been anywhere near enough fruit
> trees or farms to cater for 2000 calories worth of
> fruit for every individual in the world lol.
>
> These type of theories are so stupid to even
> bother with to be honest, especially in this day
> and age.
>
> But most raw foodists live completely in fairytale
> land, rather than rooted in any sort of reality or
> practicality.


what the heck are you talking about?


at some point in our ancestry pre fire, that's all we ate. raw plants and a very small amount of animal matter.

"Most primates have the capacity for eating sugary fruit, the capacity for eating leaves and the capacity for eating meat. But meat is a rare treat, if eaten at all. Sure, chimpanzees sometimes kill and devour a baby monkey, but the proportion of the diet of the average chimpanzee composed of meat is small. And chimps eat more mammal meat than any of the other apes or any of the monkeys. The majority of the food consumed by primates today--and every indication is for the last thirty million years--is vegetable, not animal. Plants are what our apey and even earlier ancestors ate; they were our paleo diet for most of the last thirty million years during which our bodies, and our guts in particular, were evolving. In other words, there is very little evidence that our guts are terribly special and the job of a generalist primate gut is primarily to eat pieces of plants. We have special immune systems, special brains, even special hands, but our guts are ordinary and for tens of millions of years those ordinary guts have tended to be filled with fruit, leaves, and the occasional delicacy of a raw hummingbird4.

fresh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> organic1 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Yeah i agree, even at a most basic level there
> > would have never been anywhere near enough
> fruit
> > trees or farms to cater for 2000 calories worth
> of
> > fruit for every individual in the world lol.
> >
> > These type of theories are so stupid to even
> > bother with to be honest, especially in this
> day
> > and age.
> >
> > But most raw foodists live completely in
> fairytale
> > land, rather than rooted in any sort of reality
> or
> > practicality.
>
>
> what the heck are you talking about?
>
>
> at some point in our ancestry pre fire, that's all
> we ate. raw plants and a very small amount of
> animal matter.
>
> "Most primates have the capacity for eating sugary
> fruit, the capacity for eating leaves and the
> capacity for eating meat. But meat is a rare
> treat, if eaten at all. Sure, chimpanzees
> sometimes kill and devour a baby monkey, but the
> proportion of the diet of the average chimpanzee
> composed of meat is small. And chimps eat more
> mammal meat than any of the other apes or any of
> the monkeys. The majority of the food consumed by
> primates today--and every indication is for the
> last thirty million years--is vegetable, not
> animal. Plants are what our apey and even earlier
> ancestors ate; they were our paleo diet for most
> of the last thirty million years during which our
> bodies, and our guts in particular, were evolving.
> In other words, there is very little evidence that
> our guts are terribly special and the job of a
> generalist primate gut is primarily to eat pieces
> of plants. We have special immune systems, special
> brains, even special hands, but our guts are
> ordinary and for tens of millions of years those
> ordinary guts have tended to be filled with fruit,
> leaves, and the occasional delicacy of a raw
> hummingbird4.

What is this moron thinking? Now he's posted a second totally unsubstantiated hypotheses he's cut, pasted and/or ripped off from some other unacknowledged person's thoughts. This time, though, "fresh" didn't even bother to remove the telltale "4" from the true authors footnote.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2015 06:39PM by SueZ.

“As we look at global food needs, it is clear that compared to meat-eating, switching to grains would meet our worldwide food problems. You can feed forty times more people on grains before the grains are eaten by livestock than once they have been converted to meat. Grain consumption is certainly better for the world and personal health than eating animals and dairy. However, eating grains does not take us to the highest octave of health that we can achieve.” -Gabriel Cousens, M.D. “Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine” pp. 19-20

“From an ecological point of view, grain consumption is significantly better than consuming livestock, but when compared to fruit orchards and vegetable growth we see that almost 250% more people can be fed with an acre of orchard than with an acre of grain. So even though it is an improvement, it is not the most beneficial path. It is really the same with health: from the vegetarian and vegan point of view, clearly grains are a more healthy food than flesh and dairy. But compared to live, raw vegetables and a little bit of fruits, nuts, and seeds, grains are a poor second choice. Not only are most grains stored, which is why we have the mycotoxin problem, but once the grains are harvested and milled, they lose a significant amount of their nutritive value. There is no such thing as “fresh bread.” Most flour may be years old before it is used. Not only am I concerned about the mold and fungus in storage, but infestation of insects and rodents. The freshest foods are, of course, vegetables, nuts, fruits, and seeds that are picked directly from the garden." -Gabriel Cousens, M.D. “Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine” pp. 22-23





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2015 07:42PM by John Rose.

For the mathematically challenged, 40 X 250% = 100!!!

So 100 Raw Vegans can live on the same amount of land and water as do some of the TROLLS who are so SICK that they come to places where NO one wants them to be, except for other SICK people!

Why do people go to message boards that support lifestyles that are different than their own?

Is it because they're ???

John Rose Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hey iandthou,
>
> That’s an interesting question and we can only
> speculate as to what really happened. The fact
> that it did happen is extremely obvious for those
> of us with any sense of logic, but as you can see,
> a lot of people just don’t have a very good
> sense of logic and that has a lot to do with their
> ADDICTIONS!
>
> “Whatever deceives men seems to produce a
> magical enchantment.” -Plato
>
> Indeed, Cooked Food produces a magical enchantment
> as most people seem to be under its Spell.
>
> Anyway, here is an old Post that I thought was
> interesting…
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> John Hi
>
> Here is an interesting raw food myth about the
> Origins of Death. It is from the Darasa, Gada
> (Africa) people. I don't have a date on it
> though.
>
> "Formerly men had no fire but ate all their food
> raw. At that time they did not need to die for
> when they became old God made them young again.
> One day they decided to beg God for fire. They
> sent a messenger to God to convey their request.
> God replied to the messenger that he would give
> him fire if he was prepared to die. The man took
> the fire from God, but ever since then all men
> must die."
>
> Ana
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well finally rose posts a sensible sentence. Too bad about all that came after that.

For those who are unfamiliar with this Message Board, the TROLLS are organic1 formerly known as temp formerly known as burtreynolds formerly known as anon103 formerly known as powerLIAR formerly known as chris the LYING MAN and the LYING MAN was formerly known by ALL of those names because this sad excuse for a human being has been banned over and over and over and over again and he is so SICK that he keeps coming back.

And then, the other SICK pathetic excuse for a human being that comes to a place where NO one wants them to be, except for other SICK people, is the one and only SueZ formerly known as ZeuS formerly known as ZeuS (The T___U___R___D) formerly known as ZeuS the third (T u_r_d) formerly known as just the "T__U___R___D" formerly known as Hera formerly known as Sue Schadenfreude and there’s a very good reason why this SICK pathetic excuse for a human being has been given all of these very deserving names and that’s because Lois knew what she was saying when she wrote:

SueZ has insulted almost everyone on the board at one time or another this year -

A partial list of the victims -

UtopianLife
banana who
LaVeronique
Panchito
Fresh
NuNativis
TSM
CommonSenseRaw
RawPracticalist
Bryan

There are others.

That's practically everyone who posts on the board.

In just the last two threads (Love on a Plate and LOL--Harley), four people were chastised or ridiculed - Panchito, RawPracticalist, TSM and bananawho.

What's interesting is that some of the guys - after she humiliated them, they ended up becoming her loyal followers - "LOL"

[www.merriam-webster.com]
T_u_r_d - usually vulgar : a contemptible person
[www.merriam-webster.com]

So why do these SICK pathetic excuses for a human beings come to this message board when they don’t support our Way of Life?

Is it because they're ???

organic1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> My point was that there wouldn't have been enough
> fruit to sustain a global population of
> fruitarians eating 1000-2000 calories a day, so
> your point is mute.
>

I don't know at what point in time you are talking about.

> Not that these silly diet theories matter anyway,
> because we clearly aren't fruitarians in this day
> and age thats for sure, which is all that matters
> at the end of the day.

SueZ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> John Rose Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Hey iandthou,
> >
> > That’s an interesting question and we can
> only
> > speculate as to what really happened. The fact
> > that it did happen is extremely obvious for
> those
> > of us with any sense of logic, but as you can
> see,
> > a lot of people just don’t have a very good
> > sense of logic and that has a lot to do with
> their
> > ADDICTIONS!
> >
> > “Whatever deceives men seems to produce a
> > magical enchantment.” -Plato
> >
> > Indeed, Cooked Food produces a magical
> enchantment
> > as most people seem to be under its Spell.
> >
> > Anyway, here is an old Post that I thought was
> > interesting…
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > John Hi
> >
> > Here is an interesting raw food myth about the
> > Origins of Death. It is from the Darasa, Gada
> > (Africa) people. I don't have a date on it
> > though.
> >
> > "Formerly men had no fire but ate all their
> food
> > raw. At that time they did not need to die for
> > when they became old God made them young again.
>
> > One day they decided to beg God for fire. They
> > sent a messenger to God to convey their request.
>
> > God replied to the messenger that he would give
> > him fire if he was prepared to die. The man
> took
> > the fire from God, but ever since then all men
> > must die."
> >
> > Ana
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Well finally rose posts a sensible sentence. Too
> bad about all that came after that.

A few sane words to start and then he's off into left field like a rocket.

Cooked food = warming, building

Raw food = cooling, detoxifying

But this of course is just a generalization. There is some overlap.

This has been known for ages in the "natural" health field.

BJ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Iandthou, are you assuming that at one point
> humans as we know it ate an all raw diet. If so,
> what was their diet and where did they live? Or do
> you believe God created man and put them in the
> tropics only?

>
> A far more plausible answer is that an alien far
> more advanced society than ours visited planet
> earth a long time ago and interbreed their lower
> forms of life with our early ancestors and taught
> them how to cook?


A strong case can be put that mankind has had fire for millions of years (possibly much longer) and has had advanced civilisations long before our current one,l can provide quite strong proof of this and show that Darwin's theory of evolution and humans evolving from apes was far from the case. I put to everyone that we have always had fire throughout the ages.

Will humans who eat 100% raw live twice as long like in animals studies? I would say very unlikely. Lets also remember that we are not like any animals on Earth, so comparing raw animal studies to us is not a good idea.

People say we are frugivores and say we are like the apes, yet the majority of humans seem to bomb out on raw frugivore diets, unlike primates. We may have many similarities, but it still doesn't mean we are a primate.

Mankind can seem to live on all types of diets and many can live long and strong. The long lived Hunza and other long lived cultures eat most of their food cooked and eat dairy and meat at most meals (I have a science book on this) and live longer than most of us. Other people eat poor diets and drink alcohol and have cigarettes and live to over 100. If these people who smoke and eat meat were all raw vegan, would they have lived to 150 or 200?...I doubt it.

Another question is, can animals eat anything like mankind and smoke and drink and still live long?...I doubt it. The point is that we are not animals and we are designed to live on all different foods to suit the various geographic locations we may move to. Now scientists will say that our intestines and teeth are different and then draw narrow conclusions and compare us to plant eating animals, but they forget than mankind is more advanced than animals and can use tools to eat with and cook his food and live long. Humans seem to be the only being on Earth who can cook all their food and still live long, so lets not be fooled by the narrow science comparing us to animals and lets look at the broader picture instead.

We then have the enzyme theory LOL that says we have a limited supply of enzymes in our body and that cooked food will shorten our lives because it causes us to use our valuable supply of limited enzymes. So why are some people who eat mainly cooked food living to their 90's or older, yet most raw vegans struggle to keep healthy?

www.thesproutarian.com

SueZ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> What is this moron thinking? Now he's posted a
> second totally unsubstantiated hypotheses he's
> cut, pasted and/or ripped off from some other
> unacknowledged person's thoughts. This time,
> though, "fresh" didn't even bother to remove the
> telltale "4" from the true authors footnote.


So we are not allowed to post anything else from the internet?
Is that what you are saying?
What is the difference who, what, where?
What matters is you have made another garbage post and failed to counter anything factually. but that appears to be your modus operandi

Animals have no constant source of readily available food supply like humans do - they can't go shopping and bring bags full of food home and leave it in the fridge. They don't sit down to 2 or 3 big meals a day and eat 15 bananas after a tiring day. They graze and eat what they can get. They don't have jobs to go to. They don't use public transport or cars so let's stop this idiotic comparison to what animals eat in the wild and face reality.

What some of us are about is not denying the possibility of humans eating a 100% raw diet, but not being fooled by phony arguments about failed extremely high fruit diets, or what out ancestors supposedly ate millions of years ago.

Ehret said that fruit was the perfect food for man, and from there this whole idea of eating unlimited and excessive amounts of commercially bought store fruit started. The reality is that for most people eating unlimited amounts of fruit has caused all sorts of problems, not just with their teeth. Now people are being more sensible about raw diets and including lots of leafy greens, seaweeds, sea salt, green powders ( not really raw ) and what nots. I eat more fruit than anyone I know, and probably still eat too much fruit, but I don't eat obscene amounts like I used to.

Aside from John Kohler and Harley who are honest about what they really eat, who knows what some of these raw gurus actually eat. Cheating is a big problem on raw high fruit diets, but the cheats won't admit to it publicly, but if you hang around with normal raw foodists you see that a lot of them end up eating non raw foods.

I'm about helping people avoid the mistakes a lot of us made in the past.

How can we solve this problem of not getting along. What if we all just agreed with whatever everyone says and then write what we think anyways.

I love SUEZ and I love John. I can see where some comments can LOOK like they are attacks, but words can be so easily misunderstood.

WE are all into raw vegan foods here. I love even the arguments. I just want others to be happy. If not then disregard my suggestion. You know I feel lik I have to be a problem solver when I see something

Humans did this to survive. When you are alone in the wild....all by yourself..people die, they are found starving and emaciated in the wild..sometimes its easier to cheat on the raw food diet when you need to live.

I believe its a luxury to those who don't live in the tropics...one must try to solve this problem.

Why cant wild raw fruits grow everywhere and in all climates. We are PART ANIMAL and we live in this planet and we must act like chimps and eat what they eat and if in the cold, well, you better have a dehydrator.

Is there an animal that thrives in every climate? Its us right





Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/22/2015 01:03AM by suvine.