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Originally Posted by Cassini90125
One thing I'm not clear on is why we cook meat, or any other food. I mean, no other species does this, nor does one ever encounter cooked food in nature, except near forest fires and active volcanoes. Why did we start doing that? Just to improve the flavor and texture? True, cooking kills bacteria and neutralizes some plant toxins, but because the body hasn't had to deal with those things for so long it seems that we've lost the ability to do so. Hence we have e. coli scares now and then from undercooked foods, mostly meat, while other species seem to get by fine on a diet that's 100% raw. Any thoughts?
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I given this a lot of thought in my life and this is what I 'reckon'. It all comes down to our relationships with the dominant form of life on this planet, namely bacteria. Were we to eat raw meat from a young age, it is likely different bacteria would develop in our digestive system to process it efficiently that we lack as cooked-meat eaters. A lifelong eater of cooked-meat would probably experience digestive discomfort eating raw meat even if it was free from the unfriendly bacteria that has evolved to flourish in our intensive food-production environments.
It is likely this behaviour developed by accident as a result of our noses leading us to the charred victims of forest fires and finding the taste actually enhanced. Animals too have very probably made the same discovery but lack advanced communication (ie culture) to transmit this discovery to the rest of their kind.
OK another mystery. Our nearest relative, the Chimpanzee, can be divided into 2 groups - The Chimps and the slightly smaller Bonobos who developed independantly of each other probably because of the physical divide of the Congo River. The Chimps on the North side like us eat whatever they can get their hands on yet the southern Bonobos are pretty much vegetarian. Why?