Dr. Michael Greger a vegan M.D. on Raw Foodism
From his free monthly nutrition e-mail news letter ( also readable on
veganmd.com):

http://www.drgreger.org/november2003.html



G. Raw versus Cooked: Which is More Natural?

"Raw foodist" lifestyle advocates tend to argue that cooking is
unnatural. They often argue that since we evolved eating raw foods like
the rest of the animal kingdom, we are better adapted to eat that way.
In a landmark article just published in the journal of Comparative
Biology and Physiology, however, two Harvard anthropologists argue just
the opposite.[10}

First, they note that other than the new deliberate "raw foodists,"
there do not seem to be any current or historical populations, small
groups or even individuals living for more than a few days without
access to cooked foods. Then they take on the belief that cooking is a
recent phenomenon for our species.

Mammalian species like ourselves can evolve adaptations in as few as
5000 years. Human beings have been cooking for at least 250,000 years,
and maybe as long as 1.9 million years, long before we were even Homo
sapiens. They argue that not only have humans adapted to eating cooked
foods, they argue that human beings have adapted so much that eating
cooked food now seems obligatory for optimum health. And indeed the
medical literature backs them up.

The only study I know of 100% raw foodists followed for years was
published in 1999.[11] It showed that a third of the raw foodists were
suffering from Chronic Energy Deficiency. Many were just wasting away.
Most of the women suffered menstrual irregularities and half of the
women lost their menstrual periods altogether, which could lead to
devastating osteoporosis. And this was in modern urban people with
relatively low activity levels who had access to high-quality
high-calorie produce from around the world year-round. How might our
nontropical gatherer/hunter ancestors lived through a single winter
without cooking, especially with their extreme energy expenditure?

There have been major changes in our digestive biology over the past few
hundred thousand years, and the researchers argue that these changes may
have been due to the availability of cooked foods. 100,000 years ago,
for example, the size of our jaws and molar teeth started to shrink,
perhaps as an adaptation to softer, easier-chewed cooked foods. They
also posit that perhaps other differences between our digestive systems
and those of the great apes may also have been because of our adaptation
to cooked foods--our smaller gut volume, longer small intestine, smaller
colon, and faster gut passage rate.

They conclude that while well-supported individuals in an urban
environment with a relatively sedentary lifestyle may be able to thrive
on a raw food diet, it is neither natural nor necessarily desirable for
optimal health.

--

Steve

Be A Healthy Vegan Or Vegetarian
http://www.geocities.com/beforewisdo...ealthyVeg.html

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http://www.geocities.com/beforewisdom/

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