TED is now a platform where people can come to showcase their studies, thoughts, ideas, observations. It is really a nice initiative. Although there are many videos that I am not aligned with. But, who said it will satisfy everyone’s requirements. If TED would have achieved that, then for me it would be a miracle. 100% satisfaction or not but recently, I watched an interesting thought by Suzana Herculano-Houzel on “What makes human brain special”. It is not about the capabilities of human brain, but more about how it would have evolved to be such a piece of beauty.
Suzana proposed that “cooked food” has changed the parameters of human body-brain equation. She has done a lot of study , collected a lot of data and after analysis proposed this thought. This surely is a very interesting proposal. Simply, put eat cooked food and develop your brain. Today, it seems its even more accelerated. We have special diets, supplements that directly gets into system, without much effort from body side. This way we may have amazing computing power in small body.
On the other side we have world full of health issues; obesity etc. Most of the solutions for such problems involves eating lots of “raw food”; vegetables, fruits etc. Some of the top links if you just ask Mr. Google.
Major benefits listed are “weight loss”, increased energy and stamina, mental clarity and focus and even emotional balance. I do not know all of those are related to raw food, but I am sure both sides can defend their stance. “Raw food community” not only praise raw style, but also suggests downsides of “cooked food”. Below is a paragraph used from one of “raw food” group sites.
Cooking may actually upset the natural structure of food, robbing it of its essential nutritional value. Ed Douglas, the director of the American Living Foods Institute, believes that the human body was never meant to eat cooked food. Stephen Arlin, co-author of the book Nature’s First Law: The Raw Food Diet, even goes so far as to state that, “Cooked food is poison.”
Human life cycle in different dimension
I am not sure, who is right and who is wrong. However, I happened to think in a different direction. Lets assume that “cooked food” was indeed the reason for human brain to get so powerful. Today with the same developed brain we are proving that in fact raw food is healthier. Once again lets assume that humans will starting eating raw food from now onward. Does that mean that slowly we will loose our brains special capabilities? Will we be using more of physical activities than mental because of reversal of brain-body equation’s parameters? Will we, given sufficient time, become monkeys again?
It is all theoretical, but if it is true then it means that like many other things in nature, this also has cyclic nature. Like water we may change to different forms, but one day, somewhere it becomes water again.
Only time will tell, which theory will come true. Either we develop to have extraordinary brain to body proportion or we go back to jungle again.Whichever way it turns, I hope that we still have the capability to smile and we can share it with others.
What do you think which way evolution will take? Leave a comment..
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Arundeep