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Not too long ago, Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution posted a blog entry on Richard Wrangham's How Cooking Made Us Human. Cowen highlighted the following memorable quote from the book:
"Instinctotherapists, a minority group among raw-foodists, believe that because we are closely related to apes we should model our eating behavior on theirs."
That's really just the tip of the instinctotherapy vignette, though. Here's a bit more:
"In 2003 I had lunch with Roman Devivo and Antje Spors, whose book Genefit Nutrition argues that cooked food provides an unhealthy diet to which we are not adapted. They were lean and healthy. They were clear about their preference, which was to eat all of their food not merely raw but without any preparation at all. They politely declined a salad because its ingredients had been chopped and mixed. The natural way, they explained, is to do what chimpanzees do. Just as those apes find only one kind of fruit when eating in a given tree, so we should eat only one kind of food in any meal.
"To illustrate their habit, Devivo, Spors, and a friend had brought a basket containing a selection of organic foods. They sniffed at several fruits, one at a time, to allow their bodies to decide what would suit them best."
The story goes on to mention how the friend scooped out bone marrow from a buffalo femur for lunch. The threesome are apparently experienced enough at this point to avoid following their own advice to blindfold themselves, a procedure recommended in Genefit Nutrition:
“It may be beneficial to close your eyes or use a blindfold when choosing. Have a friend hold each fruit for you to smell without looking at them. In doing so you will not be influence by your mind [sic]. The results are often surprising.”
Interested in more surprises? Check out the website.
