> We have no reason to believe that eating rotten meat wasn't a choice made out of necessity rather than out of some sort of optimal health. First, basically e

> We have no reason to believe that eating rotten meat wasn't a choice made out of necessity rather than out of some sort of optimal health. First, basically every choice could be said to be made out of some kind of necessity. There's a big middle ground even from this. E.g. "eating rotten meat caused a lot of harms, but it also happened to fulfill a couple of somewhat important functions, and thus there was no evolutionary pressure to meet these requirements in any other way" Thus, even if eating rotten meat today would be a net negative for many, many reasons (and I strongly suspect this is the case), it makes a lot of sense to think about and study what possible benefits it could have had besides merely being available.