Eating raw beef

I have a close friend who loves raw beef, and had been eating it for several years when he became ill. It turns out he had been infected by not just one, but several different hard-to-diagnose parasites. I don’t know exactly where he got his meat or what precautions he took, but the story still gives me pause.

In addition, there’s good evidence that cooking our food was a key factor in our evolution from Homo habilis into Homo erectus, partly since cooked food requires less digestive effort and results in more complete digestion and energy extraction, which in turn allowed our guts to shrink and our brains to grow. In keeping with the rest of the Paleo diet philosophy, I think that’s a good reason to continue cooking my food, regardless of my personal taste preferences.

There’s a good book that discusses this subject in detail: Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, by Wrangham.