
NPR (I will find another source of information in a couple of more posts I’m trying to make up for the dearth from the past two weeks ok!), has come up with interesting story about the evolution of humans with regard to our diets.
Keeping with the theme of the last post, the article discusses how our ancestors used to eat things raw. However, instead of that being a benefit (as raw foodists proclaim), foraging and eating all that raw food required a large gut. Not a fat gut, but a big one for processing all that food to survive.
There was one problem with that, big guts require a lot of energy. Therefore, more energy meant less power for our brains. Digestion required a lot of energy and the brain power was not a priority. Eating trumped thinking (which I can sometimes agree with). Anyway, we then discovered MEAT!
What’s so special about meat? It’s packed with a lot of calories and fat. With influx of energy our guts shrank and no longer needed to be a veggie processor. And what did we do with this new found energy? Think of new ways to hunt animals and chop them into bits to eat easier! That is how the theory goes from Leslie Aiello, an anthropologist.
However, that theory is not for fellow anthropologist, Richard Wrangham. He feels that is not enough to explain the new mental power we have gained through evolution. He cites a study where people lost weight and had chronic energy deficits while on raw food diet. He believes that it was actually cooking that made us smarter. By cooking things, their make-up changes, making it easier to digest.
Whatever the reason we are smarter it sure tastes great to me . . . . now where’s the beef?