Horizon - Did Cooking Make Us Human?

[dlorde]

Just watching this BBC flagship science prog - even worse than usual. They put some volunteers on a raw fruit & veg diet for two weeks, find they can't eat the amount assigned for their calorie 'requirements', and that they lose about 5 kilos (but still look fat). From this they conclude that modern humans can't survive on raw fruit & veg, so something drastic must have happened in our evolution that caused this...:rolleyes:

Cut to hunting scene with tribesmen - voiceover says "Our ancestors may well have hunted for meat, but when did they start to eat it?" :covereyes

I had a vision of hunters standing over a kill, looking at each other, saying "So remind me why we do this?"

I realise they probably meant "When did they start to cook it?", but the lack of quality is boggling :bwall

[AvalonXQ]

Just watching this - even worse than usual. They put some volunteers on a raw fruit & veg diet for two weeks, find they can't eat the amount assigned for their calorie 'requirements', and that they lose about 5 kilos (but still look fat).

That's pretty ridiculous. We physically can't eat enough for our calorie requirements? How long does it take someone to eat a dozen bananas?

[Rolfe]

Still 20 minutes of the programme to go - I'm still watching.

Rolfe

[Dorian Gray]

Hey, I remember starting a thread like this a while ago.

[casebro]

I'd guess meat eating came a couple million years before farming of grains.

I wonder what the raw diet was? I don't think you can eat enough green leafy stuff to get the required calories. Ten kilos of cabbage per day?

[Trent Wray]

I ran into some chimps having a barbecue the other day ... :)

[dafydd]

That's pretty ridiculous. We physically can't eat enough for our calorie requirements? How long does it take someone to eat a dozen bananas?

I saw the program,it was more than a dozen bananas,more like bags full of fruit,vegetables (raw) and nuts.After 2 days the volunteers were fighting to get into the toilets.

[Soapy Sam]

Old joke.
Big wargame, Nato vs Red Army. The generals are having dinner.

Russian general: " Soldiers of glorious Red Army are well fed. 2000 calories per day!"
British general: "I say- that's a bit mean. We give our chaps 3000 calories a day."
American general:"Well goddam! No wonder you guys are so skinny. Our boys eat 4000 calories a day."
Russian general: "This is lie. NOBODY can eat so many potatoes!"

[Soapy Sam]

In answer to the OP, I suspect the answer is no.
It was drinking that made us human.

[Bikewer]

Our ancestors did and still do eat meat; chimps often hunt a variety of other creatures including monkeys. Eat 'em raw and with great relish....
Likely our more recent ancestors did the same....Even before the development of quality weapons they would have been able to capture all sorts of small game and to scavenge larger...
Surely someone would have sampled fire-killed critters after a wildfire...."Hmmm....If only we had some garlic..."
I imagine meat-eating is as old as anything resembling a human.

[casebro]

It's not the cooking that made us human, it's the meat eating. The high protein diet fed out larger brains.

Of course, the cooking did break down the proteins into Umami, making the meat more savory...

[Roboramma]

Our ancestors did and still do eat meat;

I don't think our ancestors "still" eat anything. They're dead.

[Roboramma]

That's pretty ridiculous. We physically can't eat enough for our calorie requirements? How long does it take someone to eat a dozen bananas?

Especially considering I've known people who ate nothing but raw food for years. It doesn't seem particularly healthy, and those that I've known were far too skinny, but they certainly hadn't starved to death.

But that's beside the point. I mean, we have much better evidence than getting a few people together and asking them to eat raw food that we've been cooking for a very long time.
As to what that's done to our anatomy/physiology, well, our relatively small jaws may be an adaptation to eating cooked food.

[Soapy Sam]

I don't think our ancestors "still" eat anything. They're dead.

Well- parents are technically ancestors.

[Redtail]

Well- parents are technically ancestors.

Hell, Grandaddy and daddy taught me how to BBQ.

[sphenisc]

I don't think our ancestors "still" eat anything. They're dead.
...parents are technically ancestors.

****! Ever thought of going into bereavement counselling?





:D

[zooterkin]

I caught the end of the programme, and what they were saying seemed to make sense; cooking food makes more of the calories available for the body to use. Therefore, if humans learnt to do this routinely, they were able to evolve with smaller guts, and have more energy available for the brain to develop (though given that no other animals use cooking, we must have had bigger brains to start with...).

What I was surprised by was that the way it was presented, they seemed to be only now testing how much more energy is available from cooked food than from raw. Surely that's something that's been known for a while?

[casebro]

.... They put some volunteers on a raw fruit & veg diet for two weeks,..... From this they conclude that modern humans can't survive on raw fruit & veg, so something drastic must have happened in our evolution that caused this...:rolleyes:

Cut to hunting scene with tribesmen - voiceover says "Our ancestors may well have hunted for meat, but when did they start to eat it?" :covereyes
:bwall

False dichotomy. They are comparing a "raw fruit & veg diet" to a diet that includes cooked meat. Our ancestor would have eaten lots of meat, raw, before cooking was invented.

FSM, what a closed mind the writers have. Can't even consider eating raw meat. Morons.

[commandlinegamer]

BBC science has fallen short in recent years. Horizon was the (relatively) high-brow cousin to programming like Tomorrow's World and QED, but now they've gone I think it's trying to play to too wide an audience. And don't get me started on the axing of the Open University stuff on BBC2; now all you've got to look forward to when you come home late at night drunk from the pub is endless casino games.

[drkitten]

I don't think our ancestors "still" eat anything. They're dead.

Really? Mum seemed quite chipper when I spoke to her last week.

[zooterkin]

False dichotomy. They are comparing a "raw fruit & veg diet" to a diet that includes cooked meat. Our ancestor would have eaten lots of meat, raw, before cooking was invented.

FSM, what a closed mind the writers have. Can't even consider eating raw meat. Morons.

They did compare the energy used to digest raw and cooked meat, by feeding it to a python. Of course, they spoilt it by comparing a rat-sized chunk of raw steak with an equivalent amount of cooked mince, introducing an unnecessary variable.

[Bikewer]

Just to satisfy Roborama....I perhaps should have said "cousins". Chimps actively hunt, and do not cook. (that anyone has been able to discover.)

[Modified]

I saw the program,it was more than a dozen bananas,more like bags full of fruit,vegetables (raw) and nuts.After 2 days the volunteers were fighting to get into the toilets.

Your guts will eventually adjust to the high fiber and sugar.

[casebro]

I eat all the raw meat I can get. Salami. Seems I absorb plenty of calories. ;)

[AvalonXQ]

I eat all the raw meat I can get. Salami. Seems I absorb plenty of calories. ;)
I don't think I'd consider cured meat to be "raw".

[casebro]

I don't think I'd consider cured meat to be "raw".

I have no doubt that the cave men ate similar fermented, dried, spiced meat. As leaf covered carrion. Hmm, I wonder when 'jerking' was invented? Before or after cooking? Jerky = not-ground salami.

[Roboramma]

Well- parents are technically ancestors.
:D I almost wrote an extra sentence to make clear that I wasn't talking about recent ancestors, then figured that it wasn't necessary given the context...
:p

[Roboramma]

Just to satisfy Roborama....I perhaps should have said "cousins". Chimps actively hunt, and do not cook. (that anyone has been able to discover.)

And our common ancestor with chimpanzees likely did the same. Now I'm satisfied. :)

[dlorde]

I think the thesis that the advent of cooking provided a sufficient calorific boost to support the evolution of larger, more energy-demanding brains, is plausible enough, although I don't see how it can ever be more than speculation.

It was the abysmal quality of the programme science that was so depressing. If they used a scientific advisor, he/she only had a passing familiarity with the fundamentals, and even a number of the talking heads representing the research in that field seemed deficient in logic and knowledge of experimental design - although to be fair, this was probably because they had to fake up simplified versions of lab experiments for the camera. It all just seemed so sloppy and biased...

The BBC is now committed to massive cutbacks 'to focus the money on better quality programming'. I suspect it won't improve.

[Cayvmann]

I have no doubt that the cave men ate similar fermented, dried, spiced meat. As leaf covered carrion. Hmm, I wonder when 'jerking' was invented? Before or after cooking? Jerky = not-ground salami.

I suspect that jerking predates cooking.

[Comrade Raptor]

Old joke.
Big wargame, Nato vs Red Army. The generals are having dinner.

Russian general: " Soldiers of glorious Red Army are well fed. 2000 calories per day!"
British general: "I say- that's a bit mean. We give our chaps 3000 calories a day."
American general:"Well goddam! No wonder you guys are so skinny. Our boys eat 4000 calories a day."
Russian general: "This is lie. NOBODY can eat so many potatoes!"


Ah ha ha ha ha ha!


I'm writing that one down.


p.s. this forum needs a better laughing smiley

[dlorde]

p.s. this forum needs a better laughing smiley
:dl: