Cooking Cavemen

Boy, people sure get messed up as soon as they try to drag science into food debates. I sometimes get a laugh out of people posting comments about cavemen cooking.

Why? Well, if you read accounts of modern hunter-gatherers, they, like many omnivores, were opportunists. They ate a LOT of raw food, snacking as they went, especially in summer. Most of them only cooked game at rare intervals and then pigged out on it. What if modern Americans just ate meat once a week, but ate a couple of pounds or more of it at that sitting? The other thing that hunter-gatherers cook are roots, which are usually tough and hard to eat. So, they ate soup/stew once a day. I don't see any caveman of any kind passing up a patch of berries or a tree full of fruit and not pigging out. Susun Weed in the debate, claims that raw fruit that is ripe has been "cooked" by the sun, by it's own enzymes and it's not raw. ???? Hm.

She also goes into great detail about some idea that cooking gave us a bigger brain. No, not so. Cutting edge archeologists have decided that we got the bigger brain by accident. Our ancestors probably lived in the shallow waters along the coasts of Africa and ate a lot of raw shellfish. Easy to eat, good for you, and gives kids bigger brains.

Most ancient people despised muscle meat. They preferred organ meats. I'm not a vegetarian, and eating raw meat is quite the treat, but very rich. It may be important to cook the bones down into a stew, but I'm sure that our cavemen ancestors ate plenty of raw liver, raw fish, raw shellfish, raw bugs, and raw fruit.

One can certainly join either side in the enzyme debate, but trying to "prove" that cavemen ate all their food cooked and that gave them bigger brains is pretty silly.

Brigitte Mars

Going raw for me was not as big a deal as it is for some people. I was Brigitte's neighbor in Boulder and was continuing to have my usual problems with food allergies and doing an elimination diet for severe acid reflux. I had always eaten a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, even being teased as a child for it. I was also an avid gardener, which is how Brigitte and I met again, over the garden fence, so to speak.

I read many of her books and picked up her book, Rawsome and decided to give raw a try, since I was already half-way there. I did not have Brigitte's experience with going raw; my food allergies were too severe and my body was very different from hers. I have since discovered that I am allergic to many of the "backbone" foods of the raw diet: citrus, coconut, and all soy products. I also have major problems with many foods, raw or cooked and stay away from all plants in the onion family, most crucifers, all plants in the grain family, sprouted or cooked or whatever, many plants in the beet family, and many fruits that are very sugary, like apples.

I'm not sure about the enzyme debate, however, I do think that eating raw forces us to eat better food, and, as Brigitte often says, that may be what is really going on, we just don't know.

Yet, what inspired me to finally write this blog was seeing this debate on YouTube between renowned herbalist Susun Weed and Brigitte. I found it appalling.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nRwn7VRvb8&feature=related

Some of why I found this debate really sad and appalling was that Susun not only gets much of her nutrition wrong, but she backpedals on much of the cooking definition until she's talking about dehydration and fermenting foods as "cooking" them. This is just silly. By the rawfoodists' definition, "cooking" is raising the temperature of food over 114 degrees Fahrenheit. Neither dehydration or fermenting need raise the temperature of food this high.

But the positive treat of this debate is that Brigitte is loving, shining, glowing with health, and she's just enthusiastic. Now Brigitte is an enthusiastic person, but you can just see that she's done something that agrees with her health, period.

My experience going raw is that it is an alternative for HEALTH. It's not weird or funky or trendy or all of that, it just makes me feel better. The first rule of nutrition is: eat what makes your body feel and work better. So much of what we eat makes our moods temporarily better. Although we may pay the price later with a sugar crash, that chocolate bar does a temporary trick. Eating for long-term health just has to be a pleasant experience that will make you feel better all the time.

I have always disliked eating. I'm a grazer and a muncher, but I don't like sitting down and eating. I get no rush off of eating, no pleasure. Eating for me became a nightmare of pain and terrible side effects. Going raw has allowed me to eliminate the foods from my diet that gave me problems and has made eating something I actually enjoy.

So, I'm going to post quite a bit here. Enjoy!