JTEM is so reasonable wrote:
Primum Sapienti wrote:
littor...@gmail.com wrote:
Can humans digest raw meat?
Yes. I posted this earlier in the year, and you even replied.
If you had any reading comprehension (you don't), you'd see that
your cite is about putrid meat, not raw meat. It does mention raw
meat but this doesn't even achieve the heights of anecdote as
it merely states that raw meat is sometimes consumed. There
are no examples.
Examples would raise it to anecdotal "evidence."
I'm probably wasting my time here so I'm gong to mock you for
your lack of reading comprehension..Oops! Too late. I already
have.
Try reading them this time.
Putrid AND raw.
While you're at it, look "steak tartare"
https://www.academia.edu/76351480/2022_Speth_and_Morin_Putrid_Meat_in_the_Tropics_It_Wasnt_Just_for_Inuit_
Paleo Anthropology
2022:2: 327−383.
https://doi.org/10.48738/2022.iss2.114
Putrid Meat in the Tropics: It Wasn’t Just for Inuit
John Speth; Eugene Morin
ABSTRACT
It is widely known that traditional northern
hunter–gatherers such as the Inuit included putrid meat,
fish, and fat in their diet, although the ubiquity and
dietary importance of decomposing animal foods seem
often to have been underappreciated. There is no evidence
that these arctic and subarctic foragers suffered from major
outbreaks of botulism (Clostridium botulinum), or from the
toxic metabolites of other pathogens such as Listeria
monocytogenes or Salmonella spp., until the 1970s and
1980s when Euroamericans introduced more "sanitary"
methods for putrefying native foods. While many ethnologists,
nutritionists, and public health officials working in these
high-latitude regions are generally aware of the importance
of putrefied foods among such peoples, most scholars,
regardless of discipline, would not expect similar practices
to have been commonplace in the tropics, especially in hot,
humid environments like the lowland rainforests of the Congo
Basin. And yet a "deep dive" into the ethnohistoric literature
of sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere in the tropics and
sub-tropics of the Old and New World, shows that both
hunter–gatherers and traditional small-scale rural farmers
commonly ate thoroughly putrefied meat, fish, and fat with
relative impunity, consuming some of it raw, frequently
cooking it, but often barely so. Not only did tropical peoples
regularly eat putrefied animal foods, these ethnohistoric
accounts make it clear that, at least in many regions, the
Indigenous populations generally preferred it that way.
Equally surprising, perhaps, is the fact that this preference
for putrid meat remained widespread in equatorial Africa
and in many other tropical and sub-tropical regions well into
the first quarter of the 20th century, only fading from view
around the time of WWI or thereabouts. Combining the
insights gained by looking at the consumption of putrid meat
in both northern and tropical environments, several
interesting implications become evident. First, it is clear that
the disgust response with regard to the taste, smell, and sight
of rotten meat and maggots is not a hardwired human
universal, but more likely a learned cultural response, one
that is closely linked to European colonization, Westernization,
urbanization, and industrialization. Second, the capacity for
both northern and tropical peoples to consume putrid meat with
impunity suggests that their ability to resist the toxic effects of
the metabolites of C. botulinum and other pathogens most likely
stems in large part from the environmental priming of their gut
floras and immune systems through early childhood exposure to
pathogens rather than from genetic factors. This conclusion fits
well with findings from recent microbiome studies, including
studies of the gut floras of monozygotic twins living in different
households. Third, putrefaction provides many of the same
benefits that one gets by cooking, because it effectively
"pre-digests" meat and fat prior to ingesting them. Moreover, in
tropical environments putrefaction occurs very rapidly and
automatically, and requires little investment of time and energy
on the part of the consumer. Finally, we suggest that, by eating
putrid meat and fat, early hominins could have acquired many of
the benefits of cooking, but at much lower cost, and quite likely
long before they gained control of fire.
This one is particularly interesting...
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/meat-rotten-putrid-paleo-diet-fire-neanderthal
In a book about his travels in Africa published in
1907, British explorer Arnold Henry Savage Landor
recounted witnessing an impromptu meal that his
companions relished but that he found unimaginably
revolting.
As he coasted down a river in the Congo Basin with
several local hunter-gatherers, a dead rodent
floated near their canoe. Its decomposing body had
bloated to the size of a small pig.
Stench from the swollen corpse left Landor gasping
for breath. Unable to speak, he tried to signal his
companions to steer the canoe away from the fetid
creature. Instead, they hauled the supersize rodent
aboard and ate it.
...
Starting in the 1500s, European and then later American
explorers, traders, missionaries, government officials
and others who lived among Indigenous peoples in many
parts of the world wrote of similar food practices.
Hunter-gatherers and small-scale farmers everywhere
commonly ate putrid meat, fish and fatty parts of a
wide range of animals. From arctic tundra to tropical
rainforests, native populations consumed rotten
remains, either raw, fermented or cooked just enough
to singe off fur and create a more chewable texture.
Many groups treated maggots as a meaty bonus.
Descriptions of these practices, which still occur in
some present-day Indigenous groups and among northern
Europeans who occasionally eat fermented fish, aren’t
likely to inspire any new Food Network shows or
cookbooks from celebrity chefs.
...
Given the ethnohistorical evidence, hominids living
3 million years ago or more could have scavenged meat
from decomposing carcasses, even without stone tools
for hunting or butchery, and eaten their raw haul
safely long before fire was used for cooking, Speth
contends. If simple stone tools appeared as early as
3.4 million years ago, as some researchers have
controversially suggested, those implements may have
been made by hominids seeking raw meat and marrow
...
Limits to the amount of daily protein that can be
safely consumed meant that ancient hunting groups,
like those today, needed animal fats and carbohydrates
from plants to fulfill daily calorie and other
nutritional needs.
...
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