Cooking food and eating meat - good for our evolution

[Zizzle]

I heard this story on NPR this morning. It explains that eating meat allowed humans to grow larger brains, and cooking made food much more digestible. Seems many of us are on the right diet track.

Vegetarian and/or raw food diets, therefore, are not necessarily better for humans.

"Food For Thought: Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter"
by Christopher Joyce

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =128849908

[tex]

Meat contains all of the essential amino acids, of course, which makes it a very healthy food. That doesn't explain why human brain size exceeded that of the other carnivores, though. Apparently, meat was an essential part of the equation, but not sufficient, in itself. IMO, the desire, (and the ability), to learn, is what boosted brain size more than anything. Of course, meat in the diet was necessary, in order to optimize the process. What puzzles me, is why on earth the author chose to include this line, to close the article:

So, as the Neanderthals liked to say around the campfire: bon appetit.

Say what? The neanderthals were a separate species from homo sapiens, and they became extinct somewhere in the period of from 30,000 to 50,000 years ago. Even though they were a superior race, (bigger brains, with bigger and stronger bodies), homo sapiens somehow apparently exterminated them. Evidently, homo sapiens as a species, was much smarter than the neanderthals, so why "quote" the neanderthals? I get the impression that the author considers neanderthals to be a part of human ancestry - they are not, apparently. That seeming mistake, unnecessarily raises questions about the author's knowledge on the topic, and detracts from an otherwise good article, but maybe I'm just taking that quote out of context from the authors original intentions. Maybe that was just supposed to be a "cute", irrelevant statement.

Thanks for the reminder, though, because these days, thoughts about food have become so distorted that we tend to forget the facts about the food that allowed us to rise to the top of the food chain in the first place.

Tex

[Rosie]

The neanderthals were a separate species from homo sapiens, and they became extinct somewhere in the period of from 30,000 to 50,000 years ago.

Tex, I read an article about Neanderthals in last month's issue of National Geographic. The latest thinking is that Neanderthals interbred with humans in the Middle East around 60,000 years ago. The Neanderthal genome was recently sequenced from old bones. They were able to get DNA sequences for about 60% of the Neanderthal genome. Comparison with humans indicate that from 1%-4% of our genome is Neanderthal. Because of this, they are proposing that Neanderthals and humans are not separate species, but different subspecies of Homo sapiens. Of course that didn't stop humans from making war as well as love with the Neanderthals and probably eliminating them.......

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -dna-gene/

But I agree that even if we do happen to have some Neanderthal genes, that "bon appetit" comment was pretty lame........

Rosie

[tex]

Hi Rosie,

I had read that DNA tracking was being done, but I hadn't seen any results. 1 to 4% seems like a pretty low incidence rate. We probably have that much orangutan DNA. Just kidding - that does seem like a pretty low number, though, so I'm not sure if I should be convinced, at this point.

Thanks for the link. I've got to go make some deliveries, so I'll have to read that later.

Tex