David Sarah of Plymouth State will host in 2012 in Northern New England.
The banquet is for NEEPS members with name tags.
Introduction of Richard Wrangham by Killian
Two Ways of Thinking About People (Referencing The Little Prince)
Traditional:
Job and salary.
College and lab affiliation.
Number of publications.
Alternative (inspired by The Little Prince):
Favorite games.
Reaction to a drawing of a snake swallowing an elephant.
Quest in life.
Favorite color.
Airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.
Killian's First Impression of Dr. Wrangham
Attended a talk by Dr. Wrangham on his book, The Demonic Males, at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Wrangham's talks are well-thought-out, logical, data and theory-driven, and interesting.
An Unproductive Challenge from the Audience
A member of the audience posed a shallow, argumentative, irrelevant, and unhelpful question.
Dr. Wrangham didn't dismiss the person but was patient.
Killian learned about how a professional scientist presents ideas in a public forum and navigates complex communication.
It highlighted the complicated route from a scientist's mouth to a person's ear.
Killian learned how to behave like a scientist in a public forum.
Introduction to Dr. Richard Wrangham
The audience might learn about diet, dentition, and fire's role in human evolution.
Or they might learn about how a world-class evolutionary scientist has earned that reputation.
Dr. Wrangham's Response and Introduction
Acknowledges Killian's charming introduction.
Expresses feeling abashed because the topic isn't strictly evolutionary psychology but is related.
The Importance of Fire in Human Evolution
Quotes Rick Potts, an archaeologist, who believes human evolution is primarily about big brains and intelligence.
Argues that this view is incorrect.
Humans are adapted to fundamental patterns in their evolutionary ecology, particularly fire.
Fire is crucial, as evidenced by its role in creating the objects and environment around us.
Chimpanzees don't process their food, unlike humans who cook.
The Overlooked Significance of Cooking
Fire hasn't entered our evolutionary consciousness in a major way.
Textbooks give it only a few paragraphs.
Cooking is often seen as equivalent to inventing clothes or furniture, not as fundamental.
Argument: Cooking is fundamental.
Darwin's Perspective
Darwin recognized the importance of fire, noting that it renders hard roots digestible and poisonous herbs innocuous.
He called it the greatest discovery ever made by man, except for language.
Why Fire Is Overlooked
The common view is that fire was a human discovery, so it doesn't explain how we became human.
Standard evolutionary narrative: meat-eating led to Australopithecines becoming human, relegating fire to a later, less important role.
Archaeological Evidence
The archaeological record shows inconsistent evidence of fire control before 400,000 years ago.
Some sites, like Gennet Bashiachov (800,000 years ago), are widely accepted.
Interpretation: either fire control was sporadic or the evidence is hard to find further back.
Wrangham believes it's the latter, that current evidence isn't sufficient.
Cooking as a Luxury
Levi-Strauss argued that cooking is a conceptual division between humans and animals, not a necessity.
This view was widely accepted.
Counterargument: While some eat raw food, cooking has a significant impact.
Chimpanzee Diet vs. Human Diet
Wrangham's experience eating a chimpanzee diet: extremely hungry due to low calorie intake and unfulfilling foods.
Chimpanzees eat mostly revolting and unfulfilling foods.
This makes it difficult to imagine that early humans had a similar diet to the chimpanzees.
The Significance of Calorie Value
It took Wrangham 25 years to consider the significance of the calorie difference between raw and cooked food.
Nutritional evidence suggests cooked food has the same or slightly less calorie value than raw food, based on bomb calorimetry.
The Problem with Bomb Calorimetry
Calorie value is assessed by blowing up food in a bomb calorimeter to measure heat.
This measures chemical calorie value, not biological calorie value.
Biological calorie value is less because it takes work to digest food.
The current system is flawed, and if someone dies from following USDA guidelines, they could sue.
Cooked food provides more calories than raw food biologically.
Effects of Raw Food Diets
People on raw food diets often become thin.
Even when eating high-quality, domesticated foods (which are better than wild foods).
High Quality vs High Calories
"High quality" in an evolutionary perspective means "high calorie."
Meat Consumption in Raw Food Diets
Some raw foodists consume meat, and some get 30% of their calories from oil, which is unnatural.
Raw foodists have less physical activity.
Body Mass Index and Diet
People eating cooked diets have a higher BMI than those eating raw diets.
No significant difference between meat-eaters and vegetarians on cooked diets.
Cooking is a key factor in determining BMI.
Cooking vs. Processing
Experiment with mice fed raw vs. cooked sweet potatoes, whole or pounded.
Mice on cooked diets maintained weight, while those on raw diets lost weight, regardless of pounding.
Cooking, not pounding, is the critical factor.
y=x2 It is important to note that laboratory mice are not adapted to eating jewel yams
Importance of Cooking for Energy
In the wild, energy is critical for survival, reproduction, and disease resistance.
Cooking provides a lot of calories.
Protein Digestibility
There are no studies on the calorie difference between cooked and raw meat.
One study on egg protein: cooked egg protein is much more digestible than raw egg protein.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Raw Eggs
Arnold Schwarzenegger's mentor, Vince Girondeau, recommended eating 36 raw eggs a day for straight protein without being hardened by cooking.
Method of Measuring of Protein Digestion
The energy stored in food is utilized both by the individual and the the species of bacteria located within your colon.
Indigestible protein makes energy of no value to humans.
Ileostomy patients are required to get data at the end of their small intestine to asses labeled protein remaining after it is digested.
Results of Cooked Vs Raw Protein
90% of cooked egg protein is digested at the end of the small intestine.
51-65% of raw egg protein is digested.
Cooking denatures protein, exposing amino acids to digestive enzymes.
Softening of Food
The objective in the mind of a cook is to create soft food.
Softness and Digestion
Experiment: rats fed hard vs. soft (puffed) laboratory chow.
Results of Experiment
Rats on soft diet gained more weight than those on hard diet, despite similar food intake.
Soft diet rats had 30% more body fat.
Metabolic Rate and Digestion
Rats on hard diet expended more energy digesting food.
Increased energy expenditure of the rates eating the hard diet due to the rise of metabolic rate for 20 mins - 1hr and then accumulates.
Soft diet rats got more net calories.
Food Processing and Soft Food
Food has become increasingly finely processed over the last 100 years.
This means we get more net calories.
Meat and Cooking
Experiment: pythons fed raw vs. cooked, ground vs. whole meat.
Additive Digestive Benefits
12% reduction in digestion cost for grinding.
12% reduction for cooking.
23% reduction for both.
Hunters and gatherers do both (or equivalent processing).
The sun crush meat to make it more tender
Importance of Energy Harvest
Life is mostly a search for energy.
Natural selection acts strongly on energy acquisition.
Overall Consequences of Cooking
Cooking increases calorie availability by a lot.
A lot still has to be researched for this subject.
Metabolic Rate and Cooking
Humans have the metabolic rates scientists expects from Primates.
Humans seems as though they expend more energy (total) per day.
Long day ranges and high rate of milk production may be associated to use cooking food.
Losing weight?
Eat a raw diet, because every animal on a cooked diet gains energy
Energy Gains in the Wild
Even small energy gains matter in the wild.
Chimpanzees with 5% more ripe fruit in their diet conceive four months quicker.
Cooking provides much more benefit.
Raw Food Diets in Humans
German study of 600 raw foodists.
50% of women eating 100% raw diet were amenorrheic.
Humans are not adapted to eating raw foods.
Humans like heroines and cows, are biologically committed to eating cooked food.
Adaptations to Cooked Food
Compared to other primates, humans have:
Tiny large intestines.
Smaller teeth.
Humans are biologically adapted to eating cooked food.
Timing of Adaptations
Smaller guts are thought to have appeared with Homo erectus.
This is also when the largest drop in tooth size occurred.
Alternative Explanations
Humans may have found a way to process meat to make it soft.
Or they became marrow specialists.
Or relied on honey and fruit.
Homo Erectus Obligate Terrestrial
Homo erectus also became an obligate terrestrial.
They must have slept on the ground.
Chimpanzees and Gorillas Love Cooking
Apes prefer cooked food.
Cooking, along with meat, was responsible for the generation of Homo erectus.
Either way, humans have been adapted to using fire for a long time.
The Habiline Phase
Cut marks on bones and stone tools suggest increased meat eating by Homo habilis.
Wine Industries did a lot of non-thermal processing.
They demonstrated pounding meat to reduce it increasing its digestibility and reducing the cost digestion.
The Argument for Cooking
We can't just say we're intelligent and choose to cook because it makes our food taste nicer, its apart of our biology at work.
Benefits of Cooking
Micro energy.
Softness of food.
Light for protection against predators.
Warmth at night.
Shifts food into a food pile, changing social relationships.
Brain Evolution
Humans use a higher proportion of their resting metabolic rate to fuel the brain.
Eiloh and Wheeler's Theory
High food quality allows for small guts and more energy for the brain.
Humans have the smallest gut mass and the largest brain mass.
The role of Mead in Food Processing
Food processing depends on the particular digestive adaptation that is present.
Psychological and behavioral effects of cooking
Taste - Spontaneous like for certain food tastes and textures
Smell - Are humans drawn to the smell of food in a specific way?
Fire - Are humans specially drawn to fire in a spontaneous way.
Partnering - How has fire shifted the quality of relationships and mating?
Evolution of Cranial Capacity
Homo erectus showed a rise in brain size.
Cooking was responsible for the first rise.
Cooking techniques have improved over the last two million years.
Patience Tolerance and Cooking
Cooking requires patience.
Humans have lower rates of impulsive aggression than chimpanzees.
Children & Childcare
Cooking allows for earlier weaning.
Sarah Hurley would say that this is associated with cooperative breeding aspect of human.
This leads to higher birth rates.
Chewing & Cooking
Cooking reduces chewing time, freeing up hours a day to do other things.
We chew food as apes is around 6 hours.
We chew around 1 hour as humans.
The Cooked Evening Meal
It’s a human universal
Most calories are from cooked food in the evening meal.
Sexual Division of Labor
Women exchange the time cooking for the spared time eating it
Men have much less direct obligation in the household
It is found that across societies Men feel that they require to be fed by woman, and if the food isn't ready they get beaten
Darwin's Perspective Revisited
The greatest discovery (fire) wasn't made by humans but by pre humans.
Q&A
Cycling & Diet
Women in persistent societies cycle less often
Women in the modern societies on cooked diet cycle high rates all the time
Brain Size & Cooking
For human to be able to get cooking going its expected a slight incline in size
Research Potential
There is a whole reserach agneda that should be worked upon
Food Perception Systems
Food perception, tastes. Particularly interesting smells specifically cooked foods, since there is clear reason why food and textures get a spontaneously reaction.
How are we spontaneously to fire, and how cooking changes relationships.
How does cooking change relationships.
Spontaneously liking Cooked food.
It was found that that Mices was 50/50 in what they desired but after being exposed to the diets there was 100% agreement to what diet was desired.
Obesity and Hunther and gathers
It appears hunter and gathers tend to not be Obese
Chimpanzees Process Food?
For Chimpanzees, the two Bonobos are really into cooking while other bonobos only use rough walls to cook. And a barbecue is located close to their enclosure.
Reactions to Fire
It has been seen that Chimpanzees are found licking at ash
It has also been seen that they also can tell were a fire is headed and treat it like a slow moving animal
Stick Collecting Birds
There is an account of birds collecting bits of wood in order to start new fires.
Fire and Civilization.
Pottery changed a lot to do with agriculture
The earth oven which emerged has people uncertain was great when putting fire under leaves in the oven over for over a number of hours.