Cooking and Cognition: How Humans Got So Smart

To understand what caused the cognitive spurt that took place some 150,000 years ago, these researchers examined chemical brain processes that were known to have been altered in that time, and by comparing apes and humans, they found the most robust differences were for processes involved in energy metabolism.

They believe that it was an increased access to calories – not necessarily from more food, but from the advent of cooking hearths -- that spurred mankind’s cognitive advances, although they admit it may be premature to make definitive claims of this.

That is probably a good thing, because I couldn’t disagree more with some of these researchers’ assessments and dietary comments.

It’s true that your gut requires significant energy to digest and extract nutrients from your food sources, but cooking your food does more than just break down fibers to make nutrients more available. On the contrary, many nutrients are altered or destroyed in the cooking process.

Researcher Philipp Khaitovich of the Partner Institute for Computational Biology states that “eating (mostly) cooked meals would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion systems, thereby freeing up calories for our brains.” Well, maybe -- maybe not. At this point I’m thinking that’s a fairly large leap, considering the overwhelming evidence that raw diets are far healthier and more nutritious than cooking most or all your foods.

Which is why I was especially dismayed when I saw the author finish off this article with an admonition to avoid raw food, and Khaitovich’s comment that, “devoted followers end up with very severe health problems."

Raw Foods are Essential for Good Health

Unfortunately, nearly every article written on raw foods in the media makes the SERIOUS mistake of excluding meat and animal protein from the raw food diet. There are abundant and plentiful examples from the animal kingdom that show us the importance of raw animal foods.

And it’s true, if you restrict your foods to raw plant foods only, as is mistakenly advocated by many, you will likely see a radical decline in your health.

The slope of that decline is directly related to your nutritional type.  

Strong carb types will not experience much of a decline at all, but strong protein types, who have a far greater need for animal protein, will find that their health declines very rapidly when eating only plant-based foods.

The Superior Benefits of Raw Foods

Why are raw foods so beneficial to you? Because they exist in their natural, unaltered form, the way nature intended. All its inherent synergistic benefits are left intact. 

When you cook foods, on the other hand, enzymes that are necessary for metabolic purposes in your body are destroyed. Additionally:

• Toxic substances and cooked "byproducts" are created. The higher the cooking temperature, the more toxins are created.
• Nutrients, like vitamins, minerals, and amino acids are depleted, destroyed, and altered.
• Unusable waste material is created, which has a cumulative congesting and clogging effect on your body.
• Eating enzyme-dead food places a burden on your pancreas and other organs and overworks them, which eventually exhausts these organs.
• Putrefactive bacteria, particularly from cooked meat, dominate the natural population of beneficial intestinal flora resulting in dysfunction in your intestine.

Cooked food also devoid of biophotons, the light particles or “stored sun energy” that exists in raw foods. Biophotons contain important bio-information, which controls complex vital processes in your body. The biophotons have the power to order and regulate, and, in doing so, to elevate the organism -- in this case, your physical body -- to a higher oscillation or order. This is manifested as a feeling of vitality and well-being.

Yet because of the widely circulated fear of germs, and the mistaken notion that everything must be near incinerated before it’s safe to eat, most people are scared to death of eating a raw egg, raw dairy products or raw meat.

That’s truly unfortunate.

Raw Animal Foods Won’t Make You Sick

Ok, it is possible to get sick from raw animal foods. But it’s also possible to get sick from raw vegetables, as we’ve seen from the organic spinach scare in 2006 and the more recent recall of tomatoes.

The key to making sure that any food you eat is safe is to get it from a high-quality source. I can’t stress the importance of this enough. When you are getting your meat, raw dairy, and eggs from animals that are healthy and raised in natural settings, as opposed to factory farms, there is very little risk in eating these foods raw.

The same goes for produce, as well.

I realize that it’s hard for many people to get their minds around the concept of eating raw meat, dairy and eggs. This is an advanced approach and I specifically outline that in my comprehensive nutritional guidelines.

But once you grasp the enormous health benefits that come from eating foods in their natural state -- and begin to do it for yourself -- it’s easy to break free from this myth.

Easing Into a Raw Diet

My eating plan emphasizes the need for at least one-third of your foods being consumed as raw. Personally, I aim for 85 percent of my diet to be raw. Unless I’m traveling, I am almost always over 50 percent, and typically around 85 percent. And yes, that includes animal proteins, as I am a protein nutritional type.

If you like, start slowly with a raw egg or glass of raw milk. Little by little you will see that these foods the public health agencies warn you about are not only safe, they’re healthy and delicious.

When you’re ready to give raw meat a try, this delicious raw steak tartare by healthy-recipe guru Luci Lock is a great place to start.

You have to do what feels right for you, but I believe once you venture too far from the natural order of things you are setting yourself up for some serious health consequences.

You know, 90 percent of the money Americans spend on food goes toward processed foods, and I believe THIS is one of the major reasons for most of our current health problems.