Frustration at Mythological Arguments Used to Promote Raw Food Lifestyle

Hello everyone! I'm really enjoying working on the second part of my essay about Catching Fire: there is so much interesting material to share there. It should be ready soon.

In the meantime, though, I need to insert a quick rant.

It is so frustrating when raw food eating is promoted with false arguments. It makes the whole concept of raw food look laughable to people who aren't into it already, and discredits something that is really valuable.

I'm feeling especially frustrated right now by the claim that I've often seen, that animals in the wild, eating their 'natural diet,' never get sick. Having lived in some pretty wild places - including at present - and observed and studied various wild animals, I know that this is false. I love the garden-of-Eden type beguiling mythology as much as the next person, but we have to grow out of this!

Even leaving aside chicken pox, swine flu, avian flu, etc, diseases that existed in those animals before their domestication, consider the wild animals up here in Alaska, with the lowest concentration of humans and human-associated pollutants of anywhere in the US. These animals are exquisitely adapted to their climate and intimately connected with the rhythms of the widely diverse seasons here. But caribou get hoof rot, lung worms, tape worms; moose get warts and mange, seals get ringworm and trichinosis, rabbits have tularemia, bears have trichinosis: these are all animals living in the wild and eating solely raw foods.

In Hawaii, the rat-lung-worm nematode that gives rise to angiostrongyliasis, a form of spinal meningitis that can ruin a person's life, is passed between rats and slugs and makes the rats pretty sick. These are jungle and orchard rats, living in the banana plants and scourge of the fruit farmers.

And what about Simian Immuno-deficiency-virus, the precursor to HIV? It came from monkeys!

What is true is that these wild animals do not get sick with 'modern western diseases' like diabetes, coronary heart disease, environmental allergies and other inflammatory conditions, and it is also true that domesticated animals eating refined and processed foods do suffer from these. I suspect that this observation is the source of the more sweeping claim that is so frustrating to me.

It should be pointed out that humans eating diets that do not involve refined, processed foods also tend to suffer less from these 'modern western diseases,' even though they cook a proportion of their food.

There are solid evolutionary and anatomical reasons why humans are the only mammals who cook their food (see 'Catching Fire'). Gorillas live on plants, but their large intestines are over 60% bigger than ours and their brains are half the size! Which would you prefer?

Our world today, especially our 'food environment,' is very different from what we evolved with, and I believe that the way our world is today makes raw food eating far more appealing and healthful.

So, please don't use comparisons with other animals as an argument for why humans shouldn't cook. It is far more credible and persuasive to focus on the benefits of incorporating more fresh and unprocessed foods into the diet given today's environment.