Yesterday I cooked some chicken. Today I reheated the leftovers. While eating them, I had a gruesome thought: Warm food is more pleasant than food at room temperature. Could the evolutionary reason be that it is better to eat freshly-killed meat (warm) than meat killed yesterday (room temperature)? Or did a preference for warm food evolve because it caused us to prefer cooked food (sterilized) to uncooked food (unsterilized)?
Sure, thermoregulation is involved. We like warm food more when we’re cold; we like cold food more when we’re hot. Michel Cabanac has done brilliant experiments about our changing preference for hot and cold environments. But there is an overall preference for warm food. We like warm food even when we’re not cold.
In spite of thousands of books and articles promoting this or that “natural” diet, it has been incredibly hard to determine what our ancient ancestors ate, the diet that presumably fits us best. One way has been to ask what modern-day hunter-gatherers eat. Not only do their diets vary widely but also they are clearly not typical: They live in meager environments. So that is hopeless, although Weston Price showed that there was a lot to be learned by studying earlier foodways. Price was surprised to find how much those ancient foodways differed from each other yet all produced good health.
The most basic questions about our ancient diet remain unanswered. Did our ancestors eat lots of meat (savannah evolution) or lots of fish (aquatic ape theory) or neither (vegetarian proponents)? In spite of looking, Price never found a group that ate little meat that was in the best health, so I doubt the vegetarians. I suspect ancient peoples ate lots of fish at first and then started eating lots of meat as they spread away from the coasts. My main evidence for the fish is my omega-3 results that imply our brains work best with lots of omega-3. My main evidence for the meat is the huge popularity among boys of video games that contain elements of hunting. It’s hardly great evidence, of course, since the popularity of those games, and of actual hunting, has other plausible explanations.
This is why my omega-3 self-experimentation interests me so much. It is a way to figure out the best diet for our brain. It relies on fast simple cheap easy-to-control experiments that anyone can do, rather than on epidemiology (correlations) or expensive slow hard-to-control clinical trials that often involve unusual people.
Yesterday I cooked some chicken. Today I reheated the leftovers. While eating them, I had a gruesome thought: Warm food is more pleasant than food at room temperature. Could the evolutionary reason be that it is better to eat freshly-killed meat (warm) than meat killed yesterday (room temperature)? Or did a preference for warm food evolve because it caused us to prefer cooked food (sterilized) to uncooked food (unsterilized)?
Sure, thermoregulation is involved. We like warm food more when we’re cold; we like cold food more when we’re hot. Michel Cabanac has done brilliant experiments about our changing preference for hot and cold environments. But there is an overall preference for warm food. We like warm food even when we’re not cold.
In spite of thousands of books and articles promoting this or that “natural” diet, it has been incredibly hard to determine what our ancient ancestors ate, the diet that presumably fits us best. One way has been to ask what modern-day hunter-gatherers eat. Not only do their diets vary widely but also they are clearly not typical: They live in meager environments. So that is hopeless, although Weston Price showed that there was a lot to be learned by studying earlier foodways. Price was surprised to find how much those ancient foodways differed from each other yet all produced good health.
The most basic questions about our ancient diet remain unanswered. Did our ancestors eat lots of meat (savannah evolution) or lots of fish (aquatic ape theory) or neither (vegetarian proponents)? In spite of looking, Price never found a group that ate little meat that was in the best health, so I doubt the vegetarians. I suspect ancient peoples ate lots of fish at first and then started eating lots of meat as they spread away from the coasts. My main evidence for the fish is my omega-3 results that imply our brains work best with lots of omega-3. My main evidence for the meat is the huge popularity among boys of video games that contain elements of hunting. It’s hardly great evidence, of course, since the popularity of those games, and of actual hunting, has other plausible explanations.
This is why my omega-3 self-experimentation interests me so much. It is a way to figure out the best diet for our brain. It relies on fast simple cheap easy-to-control experiments that anyone can do, rather than on epidemiology (correlations) or expensive slow hard-to-control clinical trials that often involve unusual people.