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[books 2013] Catching Fire
Sep. 13th, 2013 02:39 pm55. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human by Richard Wrangham
I was interested in this when it came out, and then I forgot about it, but then Zuk made reference to it in Paleofantasy, so I grabbed a copy.
It's really short and easy to read, but also extremely well set out and argued.
Wrangham's theory is that regularly cooking food is what caused some of the physiological changes that separate us from apes, and also many of the cultural differences, around about when Homo erectus emerged.
Like I said, really quite convincing. Also he examines what scientific work has been done on exclusively raw-food diets - firstly, all supposed reports of cultures that don't cook their food have been proved to be wrong; and secondly, if you want to lose a lot of weight, stick to a raw food diet. It's pretty much impossible to absorb enough nutrients to stay healthy and functional (the relevant study was done in Germany, so the participants had all the benefits of a modern consumer society and being able to obtain everything they ate with ease). I also did not realise there was quite such extreme raw-food wintnuttery out there.
This is definitely well worthwhile.
I was interested in this when it came out, and then I forgot about it, but then Zuk made reference to it in Paleofantasy, so I grabbed a copy.
It's really short and easy to read, but also extremely well set out and argued.
Wrangham's theory is that regularly cooking food is what caused some of the physiological changes that separate us from apes, and also many of the cultural differences, around about when Homo erectus emerged.
Like I said, really quite convincing. Also he examines what scientific work has been done on exclusively raw-food diets - firstly, all supposed reports of cultures that don't cook their food have been proved to be wrong; and secondly, if you want to lose a lot of weight, stick to a raw food diet. It's pretty much impossible to absorb enough nutrients to stay healthy and functional (the relevant study was done in Germany, so the participants had all the benefits of a modern consumer society and being able to obtain everything they ate with ease). I also did not realise there was quite such extreme raw-food wintnuttery out there.
This is definitely well worthwhile.
