Raw Foodists: Beware!

Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham came by Big Think a few weeks ago to discuss cooking and all of its evolutionary implications. Did you know that cooking is a huge influence on the availability of energy? When our ancestors first learned to cook, the initial impact was that they got so much more energy that they began having more babies than before. Wrangham argues that raw food diets are an unsatisfactory source of nutrients. 50 percent of women living on an ideal raw food diet aren’t able to become pregnant.Wrangham also ventures outside the realm of food in his discussion on human aggression and why we kill. He wonders how the climate of war would change if more females were in positions of power. Plus, how will we eat in the future? Get ready for quite the image: “There will be a day when our food will be piped into our houses in some form of algomash that we can then turn into the equivalent of today’s hamburgers and donuts.” Bon Appetit!