h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Although cooked meat tastes better to us now, I quarrel with the idea that a person used to raw meat would find cooked to taste better. Most of us prefer the taste of things to be what we are used to. Maybe some meat eaters had a fire problem when they had some meat and ate the cooked remainder anyway - finding that the cooked stuff did not give the eaters diarrhea or kill them, because of destruction of bacteria - and thus began to use the process to stay alive. such a hint would seem to come from God - to this day people who survive disasters which have killed all their neighbors immediately begin to trumpet to the world how really neat god is; although it is hard to tell if they are commending god for the disposal of all those pesky neighbors or for their own survival. Usually I guess it is a tribute to god's good taste in choosing them for survival.

Another example of how the victorious get to write the histories, eh?

It is doubtful that human beings ever ate raw meat on a regular basis. In an emergency, possibly, but it is unlikely that it was ever a steady part of the human diet. All true carnivores and omnivores eat their meat raw. Man cannot be a true carnivore because most people cannot eat raw meat without getting very sick. Therefore meat could not have been a regular part of the human diet until the discovery and wide use of fire. Before that, millions of years of evolution had occurred and the human digestive system evolved to exist on a raw foods vegetarian diet. It is true that some people still eat raw fish, but they also eat Snicker's candy bars and other junk food, that doesn't mean that these are a necessary part of a healthy human diet. Man is not a true carnivore and yet he eats large quantities of meat. This is not only diastrous for his health, it is also detrimental to the environment and very unpleasant for the animals brutally slaughtered so that humans can partake of this sick, perverted and unnatural diet. I'm sorry to preach to you folks like this, but I am an ethical vegetarian, which is the most obnoxious, tiresome, tedious and insufferable kind of vegetarian there is.

I spent 8 months back packing through asia without eating any meat.

After my first meat dish, I was as ill as a very ill thing, although no-one else who ate that meal was affected in the slightest...

My conclusion is/was that my stomach no longer had any meat digesting enzymes or whatever they are...

By the look of human teeth, it seems as though we have been eating omnivorous for quite some time...

six7's

on a similar point I have always wondered why Dog/Cat food is cooked ?surely dogs/cats can't cook and evolved eating raw (and still on the bone) meat

Raw meat comes off a buried bone much more easily... this must also make a difference in digestion...

Granted that cooking meat has its health benefits, as opposed to eating it raw. But could man have survived and flourished without cooking his vegetables and grains as well? I suspect not.

Eskimoes eat raw meat regularly, in order to get to all the vitamines. Just a point...

//MagnuZ

Actually any number of cultures still eat raw meat, although these days it is generally done only on occasion. Examples include steak Tartare, fteeleh nayeh, and similar dishes. You just want to be certain of both the freshness and the quality of the meat before making/eating them, as poor quality is much more obvious in the raw stuff.

Baboons also regularly eat raw meat (as part of an omnivorous diet) - unless someone's suggesting that they cook?