garlic08
06-21-2013, 22:10
I just read an article about all the reasons cooking is good for us in the Smithsonian Magazine. The article ends with this passage:
We will now, in the spirit of impartiality, acknowledge all the ways in which cooking is a terrible idea. The demand for firewood has denuded forests. As Bee Wilson notes in her new book, Consider the Fork, the average open cooking fire generates as much carbon dioxide as a car. Indoor smoke from cooking causes breathing problems, and heterocyclic amines from grilling or roasting meat are carcinogenic. Who knows how many people are burned or scalded, or cut by cooking utensils, or die in cooking-related house fires? How many valuable nutrients are washed down the sink along with the water in which vegetables were boiled? Cooking has given the world junk food, 17-course tasting menus at restaurants where you have to be a movie star to get a reservation, and obnoxious, overbearing chefs berating their sous-chefs on reality TV shows. Wouldn’t the world be a better place without all that?
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Why-Fire-Makes-Us-Human-208349501.html#ixzz2WuFsVe71
Of course, on my non-cook backpacking trips, I get many of my calories from cooked food like breads and rolled oats. So the article really doesn't apply. Raw food hikers are extremely rare. But the last couple of sentences are pretty funny.
We will now, in the spirit of impartiality, acknowledge all the ways in which cooking is a terrible idea. The demand for firewood has denuded forests. As Bee Wilson notes in her new book, Consider the Fork, the average open cooking fire generates as much carbon dioxide as a car. Indoor smoke from cooking causes breathing problems, and heterocyclic amines from grilling or roasting meat are carcinogenic. Who knows how many people are burned or scalded, or cut by cooking utensils, or die in cooking-related house fires? How many valuable nutrients are washed down the sink along with the water in which vegetables were boiled? Cooking has given the world junk food, 17-course tasting menus at restaurants where you have to be a movie star to get a reservation, and obnoxious, overbearing chefs berating their sous-chefs on reality TV shows. Wouldn’t the world be a better place without all that?
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Why-Fire-Makes-Us-Human-208349501.html#ixzz2WuFsVe71
Of course, on my non-cook backpacking trips, I get many of my calories from cooked food like breads and rolled oats. So the article really doesn't apply. Raw food hikers are extremely rare. But the last couple of sentences are pretty funny.