Ask a Vegan

[voyager]

Another NYT feature, this one = beef bourguignon with beans standing in for meat and veg broth for beef broth.   I wrote this up before under Supper thread.   Like it's muse, it is good on day one and fabulous after several.

[Orik]

On 12/1/2020 at 2:14 PM, Daniel said:

 

I would argue, though with nothing more than my strong sense of common sense, if we were carnivores, we wouldn't need to cook the food.. We would be using our sharp claws and fangs to rip apart tendons and flesh with much gusto.. Instead, we have to create utensils, cook to soften, season with plants, all just to help the body digest this foreign substance.. And then of course we get all of the diseases that as a result of our bodies still not being able to properly process it all.. 

Quote

Researchers at Tel Aviv University were able to reconstruct the nutrition of stone age humans. In a paper published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Yearbook of Physical Anthropology article), Dr. Miki Ben-Dor and Prof. Ran Barkai of the Jacob M. Alkov Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, together with Raphael Sirtoli of Portugal, show that humans were an apex predator for about two million years. Only the extinction of larger animals (megafauna) in various parts of the world, and the decline of animal food sources toward the end of the stone age, led humans to gradually increase the vegetable element in their nutrition, until finally they had no choice but to domesticate both plants and animals -- and became farmers.

 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.24247

[Stone]

I believe the advent of cooking and eating meat is one of the factors that led to homo sapiens rise and we're specifically adapted for it.  We lack the large "gut" necessary to fully digest plant materials and the jaw muscles for chewing lots of plants.  And, of course, we can only get full protein from certain plants or by eating others in combination.  Seems like a lousy way to build an herbivore.  We can still eat raw meat, but cooking it partially breaks it down allowing us to extract the nutrients quicker as it passes through our bodies.

[joethefoodie]

1 hour ago, Stone said:

We can still eat raw meat, but cooking it partially breaks it down allowing us to extract the nutrients quicker as it passes through our bodies.

And strangely, it even makes some stuff taste better.

[mongo_jones]

i have not ready this thread since the first page or so. is daniel still a vegan? i'm confused by his instagram feed.

[joethefoodie]

9 hours ago, mongo_jones said:

i have not ready this thread since the first page or so. is daniel still a vegan? i'm confused by his instagram feed.

Looks like they might have become omnivores again?