From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Tue Apr 15 2003 - 17:33:46 MDT
gts wrote:
>
> On the other hand I do know some paleodiet purists who are willing to risk
> infectious disease by eating raw meat. Evidence that we are not adapted to
> cooked meat: meat produces carcinogenic heterocyclic amines when cooked over
> a fire. Paleodieters who prefer cooked meat (most of them) therefore try to
> broil or boil it, or at least to cook it very slowly and lightly over a very
> low fire so as reduce the production of heterocyclic amines.
>
I don't think that qualifies as evidence. Evidence as presented at the
following URL for instance says that homo sapiens were likely cooking
meat and otherwise using fire right when they were first evolving 125k+
years ago.
http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview2c.shtml#fire,%20first%20control
Actually I still am wavering on the idea that cooked meat causes cancer.
Many of the studies I have seen people use to claim this end up having
problems when you look at them closely. For instance look at this
recently reported study:
http://www.applesforhealth.com/WomensHealth/redmeacolc4.html
this is just a news summary, but can you spot some obvious problems with
the conclusions?
Here's a good page on beyondveg talking about this. It appears from a
quick glance at the table summarizing results from one of these human
studies that people who overcook their food actually have significantly
lower amounts of some cancers.
http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-1e.shtml
The quote from the study authors even says that there was no
carcinogenic effect seen. This study is just another case where people
with their own anti-meat or anti-fat agendas selectively quote random
figures from a study to try and bolster their case to those who won't
dig into the real study design and results.
Also of note at that link is a reported study by Turesky.. a quick
Google seems to show he has done plenty of work to show that the human
body is fully capable of breaking down/detoxifying HCAs.
Finally, note that HCAs form primarily in cooked high-protein muscle
tissue which has been shown to be one of the least preferred foods of
primitive peoples available from a "fresh kill". Things like cooked
liver, brain, or other organs have little to no HCA formation.
-- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/
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