On 'Catching Fire:' Part 2.3: Implications for Raw-Foodists 3

What we've had up to this point:
Part 1
Part 2.1
Part 2.2

I concluded the previous part of this study by saying that Wrangham's demonstration of the key role of cooking in human evolution is convincing. But I remain a raw-foodist! In fact, I think that some of what he has to say argues in favor of eating at least a very high percentage of raw foods. So, now for the fun part, where we look at how his hypothesis can be true and can still motivate raw food eating. First, though, I'll summarize the 'take-home lessons' for raw-foodists from this book.

'Take-Home Lessons for Raw-Foodists'

It's a Choice and a Joy, not a Dogma
The first and most important lesson, which I already mentioned in the previous post, is to let go of the mythological beliefs about our pristine, Garden of Eden antecedents. That probably is not how we got to where we are now. As I'm going to discuss in more detail in a moment, I think it's far more interesting to look at where we are now and where we're headed than at where we came from. The sweetest part of letting go of the mythological thinking is that it frees us up: instead of saying 'we're supposed to eat this way,' 'this is our natural diet;' we can say that given the amazing options that the thousands of years of food processing, breeding and developing have wrought, these are the foods that we choose to eat in order to be at our best!

This feels quite liberating. It also does away with the inconsistency of proclaiming that we all ought to be eating like bonobos, whilst secretly feeling glad that we have more brains than they do, and are not compelled to spend so very many hours of every day masticating, and meanwhile looking at our seedless grapes, or supersweet carrots, and wondering how much resemblance these really bear to bonobo fare.

Aside from releasing this ideological mind-trap, there are a couple of practical pieces of advice that raw-foodists could glean from the book.

Fiber

The first of these is that from an evolutionary perspective, reduction of fiber in the diet was a key factor in allowing nutrients to be more readily available. Our guts shrank (to around 60% of the size predicted by comparative anatomy with other primates) in response to a reduced need for fiber, and in the absence of all the extra gut tissue doing all that metabolic work, our brains increased in size.

Fiber is a controversial subject among raw-foodists. Juicing advocates extol the benefits of removing fiber so that nutrients can be absorbed for less labor by the guts. Others contend that the fiber is necessary to produce more of a timed-release effect. What is not controversial is that the presence of fiber combined with sugar slows the release of the sugar and mitigates spikes in insulin. So if you wanted to avoid insulin spikes, it wouldn't be a good idea to juice a lot of very sweet fruits (removing their fiber), or to eat a lot of honey by itself.

However, after reading this book, I have stopped feeling the need to eat quite so much fiber (having gone through my own obsession with it as part of my quest for an answer to my own gut issues). If you are eating a plant based, mostly raw diet, you will be eating plenty of fiber (which is, of course, an important nutrient for gut flora). And drinking a nut milk or a vegetable juice can be a wonderful way to receive the nutrients 'directly,' keeping more of your available energy free to fuel your brain or the rest of your body.

Absorption

It would also benefit raw-foodists to assimilate the information given here, that bodies absorb calories more efficiently from cooked foods than from raw foods, so there would be some wisdom to paying attention to optimizing one's absorption.

From Scarcity to Abundance - The Choice to Be Raw: Outgrowing Evolutionary Programming

Wrangham concludes his book by saying that the glut of overly processed, nutrient-poor foods of today are the logical conclusion of the whole evolutionary thrust that began with cooking. From an evolutionary perspective, dismal as these foods are, they 'are the foods we have evolved to want.' p.195.

We can choose to see this as an invitation to open our eyes and look at where we are going, as well as where we came from. From an evolutionary perspective, as Wrangham says, 'life is mostly concerned with energy.' p.81. The sheer fact of absorbing more calories would have trumped any detrimental vitamin loss or toxic by-products in the race to live long enough to reproduce. What a different world from the world that many of us are blessed to live in today! Many of us can choose not to reproduce - think it a moral imperative not to, in fact. Instead of being limited to what happens to be available nearby that could conceivably yield calories, many of us have access to the pick of foods developed to be maximally appealing to us.

Many of the common foods available today provide an excess of calories, instead of what's needed for survival and reproduction, accompanied by a shortage of vital micronutrients and an exacerbation of the negative/toxic by-products of processing, and instead of growing stronger and smarter, the opposite will happen.

It's time to think about micronutrients! It's time to think about what we're here for!

The situation of being overfed and undernourished is now familiar: people are overweight and yet starving at the same time. On the other hand, people who transition to a raw food diet often report a period of initial voracity followed by a progressively increasing satisfaction with less food.

We don't need to be following the 'take in as many calories as possible' program: it is now obsolete. Our short guts and big brains mean that we require high-quality fuel, complete with all the micronutrients, that is readily assimilated, in order to be the best we can be, for as long as possible.

Environmental Toxins

Back in the Pleistocene, Maillard molecules and detrimental carbon compounds from charring may have been the bulk of the toxins our ancestors were exposed to. Once again, the picture has changed. Toxins of all kinds are so all-pervasive nowadays, and are having clearly documented and serious effects on the health of the whole ecosystem, from the individual up. Because we're not in the Pleistocene now, we're not obligated to eat manioc, or taro, (or blowfish!) or other foods that are nutritious cooked but highly toxic raw. We actually have the luxury of being able to choose foods that are edible, palatable, lacking in toxic by-products from preparation, and rich in the micronutrients we need.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a correlation between increase in sweetness (i.e. appeal to the evolutionary drive) and decrease in micronutrient profile in the development of plant foods. However, heirloom varieties are becoming increasingly available. Depletion of soil
and hybridization, as well as the general pervasiveness of toxins in the environment, create a very different nutritional environment from that in which we evolved. All three of these make choosing raw foods seem like a good idea, as they will have the least concentrated load of environmental toxins, an absence of toxic byproducts from heat exposure, and likely the most vitamins and antioxidants available. Raw plant foods will be best of all on all three counts, since toxins are concentrated up the food chain.

Final Words

So, in conclusion, our 'cooked' evolution, our drive to reproduce, and our creative intelligence have brought us to this place of massive abundance of choice, with unfortunate corollaries of excess and toxicity. We can choose to turn away from the evolutionary imperative and use our evolved large brains for more than finding fuel and reproducing. We can choose to turn away from empty calories. We can choose to eat foods that are full of micronutrients and life-protecting antioxidants. We may choose to lightly cook some foods on occasion, especially in calorie-deficit circumstances, knowing that these calories are more readily absorbed (but we can choose to be very careful about what we decide to cook). But we can choose to be raw because we love it, and not out of a feeling of compulsion, fanaticism or dogma.