Do you also encounter claims by proponents of various nutritional styles (e.g. paleo, "living foods", etc.) that processed and cooked grains are not natural to humans and therefore do not belong in a healthy/paleo/raw diet?
Research in recent years shows that heat and mechanical processing of grains was common in prehistoric times long before the Neolithic (agricultural) revolution. The oldest surviving records of multi-stage grain processing date back to 32,000 years ago and come from the Gargano region of Italy. The manual grinding and heat processing of (as yet undomesticated) grains was already an important source of nutrients in prehistoric times, which could be easily transported and, above all, stored during critical periods (e.g. long winters). It is even possible that this technological know-how to convert wild plants into a long-keeping source of nutrients and energy for later processing and consumption was a significant demographic advantage for modern humans compared to Neanderthals.
If modern man (homo sapiens sapiens) as a species is approximately 45,000 years old, we can therefore reliably state that modern man has been CONSUMING the greater part of his existence grains since the beginning of time. (The cooking of other food has been carried out by modern man and his predecessors for at least 790,000 years). Therefore, do not succumb to misleading claims about the naturalness of various food components and their processing with the argument that something is unnatural to humans and therefore automatically harmful, when in fact it is not even true at all.
Literature
1) Lippi, M. M., Foggi, B., Aranguren, B., Ronchitelli, A., & Revedin, A. (2015). Multistep food plant processing at Grotta Paglicci (Southern Italy) around 32,600 cal BP. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(39), 12075-12080.
2) Aranguren, B., Longo, L., Mariotti Lippi, M., & Revedin, A. (2012). Evidence of edible plant exploitation. Pavlov-excavations 2007e2011, The Dolni Vestonice Studies, 18, 170e179.
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