"Dr Kalla is .... a stakeholder in Australia’s agricultural biotechnology future"

which suggests a vested interest in encouraging us to modify our food away from its natural state.

Unfortunately Mr Kalla, cooking and processing of food does NOT make it more nutritious. In general cooked and processed food is always less nutritious than uncooked and especially unprocessed food. However, it can and often does make the food more palatable. Palatability and nutrition however are not the same thing, and to suggest that we should continue on the path of more and more processing of food is lunacy.

Actually AMSADL, cooking food DOES make it easier to process by the digestive system. Processed food or GM food is more problematic!

Cooking food breaks down the long protein chains into smaller, more digestible protein/amino acids, which are more easily absorbed, so the body does not need to invest as much energy into creating enzymes to break the food down. This is particularly true for meats, and was vital for the survival of Homo Neadathalus and Homo Sapien during recent Ice Ages. A secondary advantage is that it sterilised food from harmful bacteria and other organisms.

Evolution through Darwinian natural selection may take only a few generations. There is no doubt that inventions like electricity and all the neat gadgets that have followed has changed our society, and therefore our perceptions. Our concept of beauty has changed in the last 50 years or so, which will have an impact on our reproductive patterns - hence natural selection.

Domestication of animals and plants is only very recent, perhaps dating back 6000 years, and has allowed for humans to specialise in things other than hunter/gatherer activities. Most importantly, however was the discovery and control of fermentation which, some would argue, led to the creation of real civilisation :)

I believe that we are not getting the nutrition from our food that we once had due to depletion of our soil and the overuse of chemical fertilisers. (in the eighties the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in an effort to dispense with certain waste products approved raffinate(chemical waste stream) which became a fertiliser loaded with heavy metals that bio-accumulate up the food chain)

I've also seen an increase in food allergies which I suspect is related to genetically modified food. I myself have become less tolerant of wheat products.

To promote a processed diet is I believe irresponsible and pandering to the food manufacturing industry.

However, a raw food diet is not tolerated well by everyone. So, once again we are left with that pesky circumstance that government works so hard to erase, our individualism. No two people are alike.

I agree with Narcissist that cooking food makes it easier for the digestive system, and in some cases makes it more nutritious, by way of freeing up nutrients that are locked away in uncooked non-cell-ruptured foods. Overcooking destroys nutrients.

But fresh is good too. Fresh fruit and the like is very good. Cooking it actually reduces palatability when eaten by itself, and destroys some nutrient value.

Processed and GM foods are another story.

Whether cooked food enabled a faster rate of evolution or adaptation for early Homo sapiens is a moot point. It could well be the case that as our ancestors developed new technologies and procured food more easily, they benefited accordingly, without cooking being a factor at all.

However I am inclined to agree with Roger that it was a factor in our early development. I just wonder how significant.

The issue with cooking and processing is not nutritional - it is about our attitudes that come with technology, thinking that we have become the masters of our universe.

If the choice is between a bigger brain or a humbler brain, I prefer the later.

Let me pose this one.

Given that obesity tends to lead to a lower sex drive perhaps obese people will tend to have fewer children while those who have a more sensible weight, because they have learnt somehow to cope with modern food, will have more children.

We may be in the middle of a massive "experiment" that future generations will say was just another piece of evidence for the idea of evolution through natural selection:)

There is a common belief that evolution is very slow and change doesn't occur in genes very often in nature.

(Just two days I was told this is the reason that GMOs are dangerous.)

Mostly people hold these beliefs without considering evidence of what happens in nature. As Roger's article illustrates, genes evolve in many ways: some are very conservative and others very radical. Some actually have built in devices to change very rapidly, such as repetitive DNA regions, where the repetetetive regions tends to change rapidly. A good illustation of nature's exploitation of repeats is a gene controlling fruitfly mating song frequency, studied by scientists Hall and Kyriacou and beautifully explained in a book by Christopher Wills, The Runaway Brain, p223.

In this gene, rapid genetic change fine tunes the clock controllolling the song's pitch.

Others have even more intricate machines to generate rapid genetic change, as in our immune system where antibody defences rely on rapid DNA change to defend against infection.The genes doing this are RAG1 and RAG2 and at least one of these was borrowed from bacteria millions of years ago. Thank goodness we have rapid genetic change, because parasites have even more rapidly evolving.

My point is that rapid genetic change is a fact of life, and it's a fact of germs' lives too.

As far as cooking, last week I has a raw oyster. As it went down, all I could think of was the risk of infection from bacteria and viruses. No doubt about it, cooked food was a new force in shaping our survivival from infectious disease, and this is one of the strongest selection pressures in evolution. Maybe even a reason why we are sexexexual beings!

Sorry for the repetition errors.
GMO Pundit
gmopundit.blogspot.com

Climate change will be a very big factor in natural selection. Look at the high skin cancer rates around North Queensland for example – are white European descendents really supposed to live in such places?

Fickle

Your obesity vs sex-drive theory sounds reasonable. But in the real world this logic is lost. Have you noticed the number of overweight women wandering around shopping centres with babies or annoying sprogs attached to them? Or the number of overweight couples with kids compared to non-overweight people?

My theory is that overweight people, who have indicated a lack of interest in physical pursuits, have further limited their options in life by becoming fat and are thus more likely to breed. They seek out others of their type. Whereas trim athletic people have all sorts of options other than being tied down by kids.

Maybe the fat are destined to outbreed the non-fat, and rule the world

Ludwig, shame we do not have video cam here, you could show us your trim taunt & slim figure. Diets can mess up your metabolism, so eat a balanced of foods, both raw and cooked, and stop worrying, because worry is what kills us in the end.

It is a pity ELIDA that we don’t have webcam.

I would love to show my trim taut slim figure, maintained through a balanced eating regime and a rigorous exercise regime. I’m proud of it, in my late 40s.

I agree, we have to be careful with diets. Eat cooked and raw foods, and for goodness sake stop stressing.

But you have made no comment about my views on obesity vs sex-drive.

Well, then, I will. It seems both the volume of ejaculate and its sperm content are higher in sex acts with fat women than with their thinner counterparts (Baker, R., Sperm Wars, London, Fourth Estate, 1996). It's another example of biology failing to keep pace wih society. The willie continues to regard fatness as fitness. A reasonable supposition in the Stone Age, but totally erroneous in non-hunter/gatherer societies.

You seem to have forgotten the Jack Spratt part of the equation. What is the sperm count for fat men versus thin men?

Being a slender fit woman, I have always been repulsed by fat men. I admit that I am biased and have always been blessed by a good metabolism, but find it very hard to be sympathetic to grossly overweight people. Therefore, not at all interested in fat men's sperm counts - eeuuuwww!

As to food, like everything else - variety is the key. Eat moderately, keep saturated fats down (not eliminated entirely - we do need some), keep up the good fats such as Olive oil, oily fish, exercise regularly, don't smoke - a glass of wine now and then.

What WAS the point of this debate?

Evolutionary success is measured by the sucessful reproduction of your offspring i.e your grandkids. Take lactose intolerance for example. An inability to digest lactose after infancy will not stop your children from breeding sucessfully in a society with diverse dietary choices and is unlikely to lead to a change in allele frequency ( the dominant and recessive genes that make us slightly different from each other).
For a true evolutionary change, lactose tolerance for example would have to be evident in all humans. During harsh times (i.e ice ages, prolonged drought) lactose intolerance could lead to death by starvation. If dairy products were the main source of food for the planet and the bad times continued for long enough then we might see an evolutionary change wereby all humans were lactose tolerant.
Cooked food reducing bacterial infection may result in us being less able to deal with bacterial infection naturally and when the tough times hit the intolerant would die and the cast iron stomachs would breed more sucessfully.
The ability to store fat has obvious survival benefits in harsh times and apparently does not effect the breeding sucess of humans in good times. The ability to stay skinny is a heat adaption (more skin, less meat means better cooling of the body).
I have heard that it was the higher protein of meat that allowed the human brain to grow(not the cooking process)but watching chimps eat termites which have four times the protein of meat makes me wonder about this. I wonder if they taste better cooked?

Trees

“Evolutionary success is measured by the successful reproduction of your offspring i.e. your grandkids.”

Really? Why not the successful reproduction of one’s self, or the successful life of one’s self?

I consider myself to be a product of evolutionary success, but I am not going to have kids.

Evolutionary success could just as meaningfully be measured by quality of life. My quality of life without kids, with maximised freedom to do my own thing, is just wonderful!

The argument about cooked food reducing bacterial infection doesn’t stack up. In many cases cooked food that was left for a little while (without refrigeration) was much more prone to bacterial infection than raw food of the same sort. This certainly applies with fruit and veges. With meat, it is no less prone to bacterial infection, unless eaten immediately.

“The ability to store fat has obvious survival benefits in harsh times and apparently does not effect the breeding success of humans in good times.”

Yes, but only up to a point. Too much fat does affect breeding, vigour and life expectancy. Obese people generally do have a harder time finding a mate, maintaining a healthy sex life and providing an upbringing for their kids. As I said in an earlier post, trim fit people have all sorts of life options other than having lots of kids, and are much less likely to breed or to have more than on or two kids than they used to be. You could argue that the moderate fatties will outbreed the rest of us!

Interesting thing about chimps eating termites – it seems that the energy gained / energy expended ratio is pretty low. It takes a long time to get a few termites. So much so that it seems to be a taste thing rather than an important food source that has attracted chimps to termites. Surely they would do a lot better if they broke open the termite mounds and got at the critters wholesale, instead of poking sticks in the entrance holes. It seems to be little more than a recreational activity.

Dear Ludwig

I am pleased that you feel you are a successful person, but unless you have children (who in turn have children) your physical characteristics will not be part of our physical evolution. I look forward to giving your memoirs to my grandkids.
Fat people having less kids?? If skinny people have more options in life they are less likely to have children or at least have only one or two(are you skinny?).
I'm glad you agree that cooked food has its own bacterial problems, as it was claimed to have less bacteria and be an evolutionary influence in one of the original arguments in this forum.
Can our fragile egos live with the fact that there may have been very little evolutionary change for the past million years?

Trees, how important is it to pass on one’s own genes?

If you can see past the instinct to do so, and examine it in a dispassionate logical manner, it isn’t important at all. Not in a chronically overpopulated world.

I see lots of people who are mentality more astute or physically more robust or genetically better suited to this north Queensland or Australian environment or better able to cope with the everyday frustrations than myself. Why would I want to breed a couple more average drongos like me?

Taking this line of thought further, perhaps only the best mental and physical specimens should be allowed to breed. Oh uh, now I’m being more Orwellian than Orwell… or perhaps more Hitlerian than Herr Fuhrer!

My fragile ego can very easily cope with the notion that we have hardly evolved at all for a million year or so. But the change that humanity has gone through a different sort of evolution in that time that is so enormous that it has completely overridden the genetic evolutionary process.

This is all the more reason not to bother with breeding – passing on one’s mental or physical traits doesn’t mean much when you can pass on your or philosophies or other significant characteristics by other means. If you are successful, others will take up your life’s work and build on it. As far as I’m concerned, that would be just as good or better than having sprogs, which in all probability would have completely different interests in life and not be very interested in your life’s work.

Why leave any legacy at all? Why not just concentrate on enjoying yourself?….so long as it is not at the expense of others.

Am I skinny? I refer you to my post of 8th of April on this thread.

Cheers

Ludwig I like your philosophy. We have had children but purely for our own (or at least my) enjoyment - and the objective was met.

I believe the next stage of evolution is going to be silicon based or at least some form of digital intelligence for want of a better word. You can expect your desk top computer (or mobile phone) to have the complexity of your brain within about 15 years and to have what we call consciousness. If complexity of machines continues to advance at the same rate - and why shouldn't it when we put all that brain power at work on the problem - your desktop computer in 2040 may have 1,000,000 times the complexity of the best brain that ever existed.

How good it is that you and I have lived long enough to have left our digital imprint on the world in the form of this online opinion. As a gambler I would lay odds that these thoughts and musings will last a lot longer than any old gene that happens to be accidently left around.

Where we differ is that I believe the over population problem will sort itself out if we put our minds to it. At the moment I think the evidence for the cause of the population explosion shows that poverty of material things and of the mind is the major determinant of how many people are born. Working on ways to do more with less and of allowing all to share in the bounty will solve the population problem and what does it matter as long as our digital descendants survive.

Fickle

“We have had children but purely for our own (or at least my) enjoyment - and the objective was met.”

Excellent.

Those who have kids do so for their own fulfilment. Well, for some of us it just happens without too much forethought. But at least we are not pressured to have kids for fear of being socially outcast, as with many cultures around the world.

It is a selfish thing, no less than my selfish desire to not have kids in order to maintain personal space, and be able to get into my lifelong passion of botany and other acquired passions of ecology, geology, geomorphology and ornithology, and if I had more time, many other related fields. Oh yeah, and environmentalism and sustainability.

No time for kids of this little black Anas superciliosa! Life is tooo good without brats running around your ankles.

Yes I think you are on the right track about the future of evolution. The silicon / digital evolutionary trend will continue to, well, evolve, very rapidly. I think we will be seeing a Hal in the quite near future….if the Mad Max scenario doesn’t beat us to it. But even if peak oil, or the blowout of resource demand vs supply issues do set society back and considerably lower the population, it will only be a temporary setback.

The evolution of artificial intelligence is only a short time away….. and then what on earth will happen? The mind really boggles!

The population problem will sort itself out. But I don’t think it is a matter of putting our minds to it. I think it is too big for us. Besides, if we haven’t put our minds to it by now, then we ain’t gonna, before it hits us where it hurts.

By crikey have we got off topic of what?!

Sorry, I thought this forum was about the effect of cooked food on our physical evolution.
If we were talking about the benefits to mankind, on an over crowded planet, of self-actualised adults voluntarily choosing not to breed I would be applauding you. However, your self fullfilling lifesyle will not have any effect on the physical evolution of the planet. Your attitude is an evolutionary dead end.
The ability to choose whether or not to have children is a product of our medical technology. In the past the choice would have been whether or not to have a sex life. The sexual urge is produced in the reptilian part of our brain and was evolved many millions of years ago. It continues to be perpetuated in humans because it leads to human reproduction which carry on these reptilian genes.

My attitude is only an evolutionary dead-end in the conventional sense of evolution.

That is my main point – there are other much more significant ways of passing on your heritage, memory, or whatever. And anyway, so utterly what if you don’t pass anything on, if you don’t feel the need?

“The ability to choose whether or not to have children is a product of our medical technology.”

Not at all. This ability is a product of our free lifestyle that places no demands on us to have kids nor any disadvantages for not having any, and which offers a wide variety of alternatives to having a family in order to feel fulfilled in life.

The sexual urge doesn’t have to translate into a house full of screaming sproglets. Yes, that stupid urge is primordial, awfully powerful and a bloody nuisance at times! But it can be overridden… by some of us…. especially after a couple of bad experiences with the opposite sex. Anyway, offspring really do get in the way of a good sex life!!

So I’ll continue to eat a wide variety of raw and cooked foods, add to the country’s botanical knowledge, try to have some sort of influence on the big environmental issues…. and stay away from temptation!! :)

"There is new evidence emerging - - that we are still evolving."
Other than for "creation scientists", is it possible that people believe the process has stalled? Just for the human animal alone?
But, discouraging humanity from a life in the raw is fair enough. Who wants our descendants having guts like Gorillas a few million years down the evolutionary track? Blessed be our ancestors one and a half million years past. Those who domesticated fire for cooking and set the direction for our smaller colons and swelled heads.
"Homo sapiens 13,000 years ago were very different from Homo sapiens today". How much, over those 400 generations?
We are not fruit-flies turning over generations with extreme rapidity in closely restricted conditions. Many humans embraced agriculture during this time; others persisted with hunter-gathering lifestyles. Yet what differences have evolved between a true-blue Dutch person and an Indigenous Australian; between Innuit and Ugandan? Hair styles for sure; skin colour; minor variations in food tolerance; and shifting levels of resistance to disease (eg. natural resistance against smallpox no longer exists). Otherwise, we are all much the same nasty brutes and compassionate colleagues, and demonstrably capable of interbreeding. Overall potential for diabetes remains unchanged, as do our hopes, desires, aggression, compassion, and our brain's processing potential.
Evolutionary change rolls on; but slowly, as ever. Don't expect it to escalate. What is needed, however, is redirection of our cerebral processes, and quickly.
Starting at 13,000 years back, Homo sapiens possibly took about 11 thousand years to double their numbers, so that we were about 150 million by the time of Christ. Rabbit-like, we have since progressively shortened the duration for doubling times:
1,350 years; 350; 150; 90; 45. That took us to 5 billion in 1985. We have now slackened off a bit - in this new century we increase from six and a half billion at "only" 1.3% (that is about 50 years doubling time). That is raw data, which needs no cooking to alert us to fierce problems ahead for our little-evolving descendants in this world of limited and rapidly-diminishing environmental resources.