CARTA: The Evolution of Human Nutrition -- Richard Wrangham: Fire Starch Meat and Honey

(Visit: www.uctv.tv/) Unlike all other free-living animals, human populations need to eat much of their food cooked. We now know that cooking causes starch and meat to provide much extra energy; that cooked food saves so much eating time that it makes dedicated hunting possible; and that honey-eating by African hunter-gatherers offers a remarkable clue that the control of fire is an ancient habit. From an evolutionary perspective, Richard Wrangham (Harvard Univ) contends that the special feature of the human diet is not so much its ingredients, as how we prepare them. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 24839]

[@SSSyndrome214]

The bird that guides people to honey is amazing!

[@SSNewberry]

Sometimes particular foods are consumed raw, especially C vitamins. But this is exceptional.

[@ericarhollis]

@shirehorse91 He is talking about early human adaptions from the time when almost all humans were still in Africa.

[@hippocrates72]

5:00 raw-foodists BMI 6:40 raw-foodist amenorrhea 14:03 protein denaturation

[@Tamizushi]

What I got from this is that if I eat raw it might make it easier to diet.

[@rawfoodphilosophy7061]

Kamizushi Akinari If you slam in raw fruits and veggies, you'll become a skeleton......then after that you can start adding back in the cheese, eggs, milk to fatten you back up to whatever weight you want.

[@antr6092]

RAW FOOD PHILOSOPHY sounds fine

[@dustinbossmusic]

@@rawfoodphilosophy7061 It's not that easy, I have tried the carnivore diet, with milk, eggs, and cheese and I don't gain weight sadly. The only thing that helps is stretching my stomach with heavy liquids like beer, and then I gain more ability to feed more food. Look up competitive food eaters, the way they stretch their stomachs usually relies on liquids. The amount of food increases thereafter, genetics does play some role in the process too.

[@shirehorse91]

There's a problem with extrapolating the diet of South African hunter gathers to the rest of the world given the habitat variance.

[@ThePorkupine73]

Well, a lot of raw foodists have eating disorders. So there's that.

[@TheVietnameseDevil]

🔼

[@CraigCastanet]

the honey birds use tools.............................humans.

[@Rachypenguins]

Eat a mix :) raw fruit/veg and cooked starches

[@ggrey5990]

Great... where's the meat?

[@Regenbogenwurm1]

And whatever I like :)

[@Kgeorge86]

He seems to be looking at high fat raw foodists who eat a diet of 80% fat or something... their lack of health might not be due to the food being raw but on just being plain unhealthy.

[@jamesarness991]

This doesn't make sense. Cooking is such a sophisticated skill requiring us to know how to make and control fire, manage ingredients, prevent them from being destroyed by too much heat, and not becoming distracted and walking away to do something else, that it requires an already developed brain. An ape with a small brain couldn't master cooking in order to develop a large brain. You already have to have a large brain to cook, so forget about this crazy idea.

[@Bogoris]

I remember reading in Wrangham's book that when given matches, chimpanzees (or bonobos ?) are able to make a fire and cook marshmallows. His assumption about the point you are making is that prior to being made fire was "stolen". His supposition is that ecological conditions 2 millions years ago were so that fires occurred on a regular basis. His book is very interesting and thorough :)

[@paulcohen6727]

The way Prometheus stole fire from the Olympian gods? Try going to the zoo and toss the chimps a book of matches and a marshmallow. What do you expect will happen? Fires still occur naturally, from lightning strikes for example. Has anyone observed bonobos or any other kind of primate, other than man, using that fire for cooking or keeping it going? Wrangham must think us pretty credulous.

[@youwhatmadeidk]

Starchy fruit dumbass.

[@robinlillian9471]

Video of Bonobo (ape related to chimpanzees) building a fire and toasting marshmallows: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fYLGf2qifbh3a7s Gourmet food may be sophisticated, but the basics of cooking aren't all that difficult.

[@bennichols561]

I disagree. you can transfer fire and set the environment on fire and then just eat what you find, which you can do by smell.