1st Part of 2nd Section, Wanjek Article Response

[Guest guest]

Good day,

 

Here is the beginning of my reply to the LiveScience article. The

full article is at:

 

www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060704_bad_raw_food.html

 

If my reply is anything, it's a practice in paying attention to words

and what they mean, how they are arranged into sentences, into

paragraphs, and then articles to create an impression or

understanding. Besides using inaccurate information, speculation, and

straw-man arguments, the Wanjek article took advantage of misused

terms and poorly defined words to create an impression that raw food

eating is just another whacko idea, that might have good elements to

it, maybe, for interested persons, perhaps. Wanjek had an opportunity

to bring clarity to the issue, but he mostly made the picture more

confusing.

 

The sensible conclusion is to eat more human-species appropriate raw

foods, which is consistent with a frugivorous diet - mostly fruit.

 

The below is a continuation of my previous post in which I outlined

geological events on earth that have precipitated the current state

humanity finds itself in. I consider the article's statements, one by

one, quoted, with my reply after. The entire article is replied to,

in order.

 

Robert

 

 

........................................................

 

 

 

I'll look at the article paragraph by paragraph, idea by idea. I'll

quote the article, in italics, then I'll comment.

 

Part I Introductory Paragraphs

 

" American ingenuity has found one solution to the energy crisis: food

you never need to cook. There's no need for fuel when everything you

eat---from salad to, well, more salad—is served up at piping room

temperature. "

 

A return to natural eating habits requires a correction of perverted

senses and a listening to improved senses and those that remain

unperverted. I realize the humour, but ingenuity has little to do

with returning to health. It's all about becoming sensible again, not

inventing new sensibility. Raw food requires no fuel, of course,

other than natural sunlight, water, earth, air, warmth, and security

for growth.

 

" I'm speaking of the raw food diet, for those who find the vegan

lifestyle of no animal food products far too opulent. This is

particularly popular in, where else, California, yet it's making its

way across the country. "

 

It serves little to isolate California in a constructive, productive

discussion of raw food lifestyles. Californians didn't introduce raw

food eating to the thousands of animal species on the planet.

 

" On one level, the raw diet has much going for it. Hardly anyone on

this diet is overweight. With mostly fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts,

seeds and sprouted beans, the diet is low in fat and high in

nutrients. "

 

A good observation. Wild animal species are never overweight and, on

the whole, their diet is largely low fat. In fact, as the farmers

say, to fatten up the cow, feed it grain. Cooked grain does an even

better job. The obesity and overweight epidemics in our civilized

culture are directly proportional to the abnormal grain-eating

epidemic. Grains include bread, cereals, pasta, corn, rice, barley,

malt, and any of their products.

 

" Some followers believe the raw lifestyle can prevent or cure cancer;

and it has high-profile adherents, such as Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who

was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few years ago. "

 

The raw lifestyle doesn't prevent or cure cancer. Cancer is a symptom

primarily created by the prolonged eating of denatured foods. What

one doesn't create one doesn't have to experience, let alone cure.

Eating raw food simply doesn't create cancer. Eating cooked food

does, eventually. Steve Jobs wizened up. Whether a famous person

follows a diet is no way to judge a diet. Correct diet determination

is not a popularity contest nor a matter of voting.

 

" On another level, this is just whacked. "

 

A credible science article doesn't often use this type of language,

but then this is a less formal, much more casually written article,

of course.

 

Part II Natural: A dangerous word

 

" Like many alternative diets, the raw food diet is grounded on a few

solid principles. Americans eat too much processed food; and fresh,

minimally prepared food is more nutritious. Blackened food, that

delicious charbroiled taste, can cause cancer in the long run. But

on closer examination, the raw diet makes little sense biologically. "

 

All true, except for the last claim. The normal, natural raw food

diet for human is grounded on only solid principles. What that diet

is, is determined by careful study of the sciences and astute

observation of the wild world that still follows sensible,

unadulterated eating practices. If the raw diet makes little sense

biologically, then biology is a fraud. The rest of the thousands of

species that eat only raw food have diets that make complete

biological sense. The entire animal world is raw and eats raw, except

for humans and their favourite pets.

 

A clarification of what is truly an appropriate raw diet for the

human species is required before passing judgment on the raw diet.

 

" A primary claim among raw food advocates is that the raw diet is a

natural diet. "

 

Yes, it's a very natural diet. Natural as opposed to artificially

made by civilized humans. Natural in the sense of having been around

for billions of years before humans recently started fooling around

with their food supply. Natural as in wild animals who are eating

their wild foods, all raw. If we cannot claim that wild animals are

eating their normal and natural foods, then normal and natural are

meaningless words.

 

It is very consistent with sensibility, rationality, and the

evolution of life itself, that the human species' natural diet can be

said to be a raw food diet. To say the opposite is to speak nonsense

and to contradict all of nature itself.

 

" After all, no other animal cooks its food, and humans only started

cooking after the domestication of fire. "

 

True and a good point ever worth keeping in mind. Fire control is a

recent development in human evolution. In regards to its application

to food preparation, it cannot be claimed a success yet. Time and

evidence will tell, but no one should hold their breath.

 

" But 'natural' is always a dangerous word. "

 

Yes, most people misuse, abuse, and confuse the term to suit their

argumentive needs, disregarding the true meaning of the word,

particularly in regard to what is natural for humans. The word has

been confused with and abused into the word 'average', and represents

only looking at history's recent crowd of civilized humans. It is

average for the civilized human to eat cooked food, but it is not

natural or normal for the human species to eat cooked food. For the

vast majority of its existence, the human ate a raw diet. It was the

norm and completely natural, consistent with the habits of every

other biological species on the planet. Human bodies have changed

very little in form and function in the last half million years and

more.

 

" Humans have evolved to eat and survive on a wide range of diets. "

 

That civilized humans eat a wide range of " foods " is no evidence for

their normal or natural diet. Diet means daily fare, and as applied

to a species, it means what that species eats. Species are identified

partly by being classified according to their diet, which is

reflected in their biological features such as their anatomy and

phyisology.

 

The article statement above implies that humans are carnivores,

herbivores, graminovores, omnivores, insectivores, and frugivores

all at the same time. This would mean that biological science

applies only to non-human creatures. Are civilized humans part of

biological life?

 

A classification doesn't limit a species to just one type of food,

but it does limit its diet. A carnivore can eat small amounts of

herbage. An insectivore can eat seeds. A graminovore (grain eater)

can eat some flesh or insects. An herbivore can eat some meat. A

frugivore can eat small amounts of non-fruit items too, without harm.

 

Humans are evolved as frugivores, a process that took millions of

years to come into being and that doesn't change in mere thousands of

years. There is only one diet that suits the human species -- a

frugivorous diet.

 

A frugivorous diet consists primarily of fruit (80 -90%), with

smaller amounts of vegetables, seeds, nuts, grasses, tubers, legumes,

flesh, grubs, and mushrooms eaten to varying extents. Animal flesh

and parts can even be eaten, but its stretching the classification of

frugivore.

 

The closest animal to the human in nature is the peace-loving,

friendly, and gentle Bonobo ape which shares 98 to 99 percent of the

human genes. It is a frugivore and eats mostly fruit and displays

very human-like behaviour, especially reproductively. Humans share

the same anatomy and physiology with it. No doubt psychology too,

considering its mating and cultural habits.

 

" The Inuit have survived thousands of years almost entirely on a diet

of raw fish and meat "

 

In truth, the recent civilized culture called the Inuit ate a diet of

berries (dried and fresh), small greens and shoots, flowers,

mushrooms, insects, dried fish, whale and seal blubber (a treat), and

related fare that can be found in sub arctic and artic environments.

They refrained from eating too much flesh, and more often than not

fed the flesh to their pack dogs. They ate primarily raw food until

recent contact with the western world. The Inuit's diet is greatly

misrepresented by researchers who haven't done their homework.

 

In recent millennia, the human species has attempted to adapt to a

diet of non-fruit items, and the practice has become a custom of

modern cultures dating beyond the Egyptians and Phoenicians (not long

ago, in geology and evolution). It is not successful adaptation, for

these humans all exhibit signs of disease, reduced health, and

shortened longevity.

 

Evolution is partly the result of successful adaptation over millions

of years. Attempts at adaptation that fail are the part of evolution

called extinction. Humans have only been eating non-fruit foods as a

primary source of nutrition for mere thousands of years. There's no

time for successful adaptation here, let alone evolution.

 

" Some cultures, conveniently in regions of prolonged growing seasons,

shun all meat as unnatural. "

 

Being flesh, meat is natural, but it is not normally nor naturally a

large part of the human species' diet, if at all. The Bonobo ape

rarely eats flesh, and then only as a momentary curiosity at best. In

its raw form, flesh is mostly unpleasant to the human species. Our

natural, unabused senses still tell us this today. Raw fresh fish,

including the head, bones, organs and other entrails, is not

intrinsically appealing to us, as it is to all animals for which it

is suitable food.

 

" That said, humans have always eaten some cooked food. So, too, do

many land animals; and so did our human ancestors. How? Largely in

the form of roasted grasshoppers or other small critters caught in

forest fires and brushfires. "

 

This is speculation.

 

Are we to suppose prehistoric humans, for subsidence, waited

patiently til fires burned enough nearby forests and plains to

provide enough scorched grasshoppers and slowly fleeing squirrels to

eat? Evidently you've never seen the remains of a forest fire. Wild

animals don't stick around to roast hot dogs and pose for pictures,

like civilized humans.

 

Humans have progressively eaten more cooked food over the last 20,000

years. It is only in recent centuries that humans have gone off the

deep end. Fire foraging, if it was ever done, is more evidently a

curiosity-inspired desperate measure for sustenance that became a

cultural habit for some displaced human tribes. Today there is a

cultural habit of drinking a processed alkaloid called caffeine, a

drug in the same family as cocaine, morphine, nicotine, strychnine,

quinine, and codeine. Fried grasshopper eating hasn't quite

progressed as far as Star Bucks yet.

 

" Fire foraging was quite natural and helped secure our survival. "

 

Again, fire foraging is speculation based. Speculation isn't

supporting evidence for a theory or claim. Speculation is guessing

and guessing is no way to determine a species natural, normal diet.

Legitimate scientific study can be used to determine that.

 

If charred bugs and critters were eaten, they were an emergency or

curiosity fare. Emergency foods certainly did secure our survival for

another day, after the human species' movement away from the tropics

and into the tougher climes of the temperate and polar zones, but not

for any time period significant in geological or evolutionary terms.

 

Evidence shows the emergency foods were grass grains, domesticated

weeds and plants, animal flesh and body parts, baked roots, and

other items not common or normal to a frugivorous diet.

 

" This is how we developed the taste for cooked food. "

 

Similar to how we developed our taste for coffee, anchovies,

chocolate bars, barbecued ribs, cakes, cigarettes, sugar, Big Macs,

grape wines, Twinkies, drugs, pasta, peanuts, strawberry ice cream,

glazed donuts, tacos, bread, frog legs, sweet candies, fish eggs

(caviar), French fries, French toast, cheese, orange sodas, rice,

apple pies, sushi, sauces, cornflakes, pizza, and infinite other

oddities that contradict the human species' normal and natural

frugivorous nature. It does well to note that these " foods " , with

their sauces and other additions, attempt to simulate fruit's

juiciness, sweetness, flavours, textures and colours to make them

palatable. There's a good reason why humans attempt to make their

foods more sweet, tasty, and mouth-watering like fruit. As examples

of the unpleasantness of non-frugivorous foods, flour is a tasteless,

gooey paste in the mouth, and raw meat is repulsive unless disguised

in sauces and its BBQ sauce for cooked meat.

 

Having a taste for an abnormal substance doesn't make it an

appropriate substance to eat. Appetite is largely a learned, culture-

reinforced response, and in the civilized world it has little to do

with true hunger and most to do with desperate action. Desperate

action includes addiction to harmful substances, such as coffee,

pastries, alcohol, cooked foods of all sorts, cigarettes, etc. (see

list above).

 

An addict finds it difficult to get off an addictive substance.

Cooked food is the most insipid, deceptive addiction of all

addictions and the hardest to get a civilized culture off of once

it's started. It's extremely tough for an individual to remove

him/herself from the sticky web of cooked food addiction.

 

The " taste " for cooked food is in actuality an addiction to a harmful

substance initially used as an emergency food to survive a long-

developing geological disaster (for the human species).

 

...................................................

 

...........to be continued