Cooking, Meat, and Evolution from NPR

[EdnaMarie]

Has anyone heard this? Discuss!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=128849908

[meg_shannon]

I've studied this concept in both physical anthropology and biochemistry coursework and research (biochemist with a passion for nutrition is my background).

The brain requires such a large amount of energy that early humanoids would have needed meat. Vegetarians/vegans usually cook/soak grains to make them more digestible and energy available. People whom eat only raw food have a much greater selection of relatively energy dense foods available year round (not so for early humanoids), and, again, can soak grains to make them more nutritionally available.

I have always found it interesting how nutrition (and environment as a whole) can affect evolution and gene expression.

[EdnaMarie]

That is a very interesting perspective, ms. Thanks!

[meemee]

this is soooo old news to me. being an anthro major this is sooo normal info for us.

however it is wrong to see this and now say oh yeah stop being a vegan or veggie. if you want to be smarter eat more meat.

so not true. imho

however the brain itself is full fat. and i also know all birds who are vegetarians feed insects (meat) to their chicks. i have even seen hummingbirds do that. all that it says is our growing children need more protein.

however going back to the original story - there are two parts to it. meat ANd cooking.

fire is what allowed homo erectus to leave Africa. and where did they go? cold climes during ice age during the time of the mammoths. and so what did they have more for food sources? meat.

also man the hunter theory has been debunked. its man the scavenger. when he started eating meat. and so what was left over? the bones. and what was in the bones? high fat nutrition dense marrow.

so really it wasnt 'meat' or muscle that gave us the frontal lobes. it was bone marrow.

again africa. rift valley. imagine barren land. not too much vegetation. mostly carcasses.

this article has really nothing to do with present diet. but more to do with evolution.

yes of course this is not taught in schools (as some of the posters commented).

however through personal knowledge i can see - some people need meat. some dont. i feel no one needs as much meat as we eat in this culture.

i can happily eat meat a few times a month. ex has a hard time if he doesnt eat it everyday. by hard time i mean hypoglycemia, lethargy and weakness. yes he can eat veggie protein but i think its personal choice. he does a bit of both but he could do completely vegetarian eating veggie and soy protein but since he's not much of a cook he doesnt go that route.

here is my thing with nutrition that this article reminds me of.

there are thousands and thousands of plants and animals. and over the years our food diversity has gone down drastically. even a hundred years ago our diet was sooo much diverse. we have stopped eating sooo many varieties. whether meat or veggies. now THAT is something to look at. and link it to all that we suffer from.

[Chicharronita]

I've only recently come across some of these ideas. The article mentions anthropologist Leslie Aiello but not her paper, "The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis." I just read about this intriguing hypothesis in Dr. Michael Eades' blog.

As for the "cooking made us human" part of the article with Wrangham, author of Catching Fire, I think he's right that cooking muscle meat makes it easier to eat and digest, and provides a food source year-round.

However, this article leaves out the probability that our early ancestors ate a lot of raw organs, especially brains, which are soft and easy to eat. It doesn't take much work to smash an animal's skull in.

[EdnaMarie]

Originally Posted by meemee

this is soooo old news to me.
.

I don't think they intended it to be news as in... an entirely new theory.

I think it's intended to give further background on human evolution which is what the series is about.

It is interesting because a lot of people do justify their food choices by suggesting that somehow they are "more natural". What "natural" means differs from context to context. So that's what I meant bringing it up.