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> A human brain would be impossible to sustain without cooked foods. How do we explain the survival of people that eat only raw foods even today? Wouldn't that

> A human brain would be impossible to sustain without cooked foods. How do we explain the survival of people that eat only raw foods even today? Wouldn't that argue against your theory? I suppose we're speaking about a population and that there will be individual exceptions. But even in a population, shouldn't raw food eaters die sooner or be worse off than cooked food eaters on average?

CuriouslyC 9y ago
One problem with that is the fact that people (at least in the west) who choose to eat raw food are usually health conscious and comparably affluent. This biases the sample. Furthermore, the issue is complicated by the effects on adults vs children.
steve_adams_86 9y ago
I guess it could be argued that raw food dieters now have access to rich foods like oils, avocados, sprouted legumes and grains, nuts and seeds, etc. That makes the diet far easier than it would have been even 100 years ago, I think. I'm not in favor or opposed to the person you're responding to. Just thinking about how humans eating a raw diet are different from other animals doing so.
- ac29 9y ago
  Right, humans have a massive global supply chain available to them. The variety of foods available to a raw food dieter probably come from multiple continents and travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get to them. Obviously the energy expenditure required makes this sort of diet (and really any modern diet) unsustainable on just the calories consumed by eating.
lostmsu 9y ago
The "even today" part destroys the entire question. Obviously, you would not survive on uncooked food 400 years ago as there were no refrigerators (unless you were a king or something, and even then).
InitialLastName 9y ago
People don't tend to survive on a raw diet, in the evolutionary sense. I don't see anything scientific at the moment (because studying diet is hard + pre-coffee apathy), but an internet search for "raw food menstruation" indicates that the most common next word is "stops". "Survival," in the evolutionary sense, doesn't just mean "living into old age" but "reproducing successfully", which paused menses preclude.

CuriouslyC 9y ago

One problem with that is the fact that people (at least in the west) who choose to eat raw food are usually health conscious and comparably affluent. This biases the sample. Furthermore, the issue is complicated by the effects on adults vs children.

steve_adams_86 9y ago

I guess it could be argued that raw food dieters now have access to rich foods like oils, avocados, sprouted legumes and grains, nuts and seeds, etc. That makes the diet far easier than it would have been even 100 years ago, I think. I'm not in favor or opposed to the person you're responding to. Just thinking about how humans eating a raw diet are different from other animals doing so.

ac29 9y ago
Right, humans have a massive global supply chain available to them. The variety of foods available to a raw food dieter probably come from multiple continents and travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get to them. Obviously the energy expenditure required makes this sort of diet (and really any modern diet) unsustainable on just the calories consumed by eating.

lostmsu 9y ago

The "even today" part destroys the entire question. Obviously, you would not survive on uncooked food 400 years ago as there were no refrigerators (unless you were a king or something, and even then).

InitialLastName 9y ago

People don't tend to survive on a raw diet, in the evolutionary sense. I don't see anything scientific at the moment (because studying diet is hard + pre-coffee apathy), but an internet search for "raw food menstruation" indicates that the most common next word is "stops". "Survival," in the evolutionary sense, doesn't just mean "living into old age" but "reproducing successfully", which paused menses preclude.