A life in the raw

The conclusion of this study is that natural selection has and is a major driving point in our evolution during the last 10,000 years and must come as something of a shock to the “back to mother earth” proponents enamored with the latest food fad among the organic movement - the consumption of “living raw foods”.

This is a movement with a beliefs system that runs counter to the recent findings of the evolution of the human digestive system. Do away with cooking and other forms of food processing and “eat closer to mother nature” or “eat raw” is the message.

Against this new food fad stands the anthropological view, supported to some degree by genetics, that the major increase in brain size (with the appearance of archaic homo sapiens) was due to the appearance of cooking practices.

Cooking and other forms of food preparation is paying a vital role in making foods accessible and safe for modern humans and unlocking more of the nutrients in the food thereby freeing up energy for building a bigger brain.

The changes in physiology due to the processing of foods were part of a process that produced a more streamlined digestive system and larger brains and erect posture, freeing the hands for tool making. It is highly likely that control of fire and cooking played a critical role in this evolutionary transformation from a hunter gatherer to a farmer with an inquisitive mind actively seeking out new technologies.

A return to a “life in the raw” where we live in small bands as merry hunter-gatherers or even just trying to replicate the “raw” diet of our ancestors doesn’t make any sense from an evolutionary point of view. The human race has moved on and our digestive system is not equipped to extract the full benefits from a diet of uncooked food.

In fact eating “raw” is counter evolutionary and if continued long enough could arguably lead to an evolved human with more brawn than brain.