Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

Question

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One of the low reward strategies proposed by Stephan is to 'eat gently cooked food', as in boiling and gentle steaming over roasting, grilling, frying.

I have found this to be the case. For example take some potato, mash it with some fat and it's tasty to me but take that same potato, chop it into pieces and deep fry in the same fat and voila, high reward food that I am guaranteed to over-eat.

Same goes for the delicious charred coating of a steak or rib compared to their stewed counterparts.

Now, other reward properties make sense in an evolutionary context when not co-opted by food companies, they lead us toward calorific and nutritious goodness. Why would we be more likely to favour the taste of high heat cooking?

flag	asked Jan 3 2012 at 23:10 sarah-ann 4,909●14●31

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Suppressing flavor seems silly to me because I suppress portion size and accomplish the same thing. My grandma could wreck a sirloin by putting it in the pressure cooker. If you want food to taste like dog food, eat dog food and save your money. – thhq Jan 4 2012 at 18:21

portion size?? we're talking Paleo nutrition not outdated dieting tips – DH Mar 4 2012 at 7:40

FED at LiveCaveman.com · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-04 19:28:54Z UTC

Caramelized sugars, changes to protein structure, the formation of unique compounds, etc. all create that meaty crust that we find so appealing. Food scientists are hard at work trying to uncover what exactly makes "browning compounds" so delicious (in no small part because they would like to figure out how to add these flavors to processed foods) but mysteries still about.

Some theories as to why we find these compounds pleasurable in the first place suggest that a nicely browned crust indicates cooked meat. The human gut was not initially a carnivorous one. Our shared ancestor with the chimpanzee likely has a more chimp-like diet of primarily fruit supplemented by a smaller portion of hunted game. When we moved to the savannah and began to rely on animal flesh for a greater portion of our nutrition, those who enjoyed cooked meat were able to consume/assimilate calories more efficiently. A survival advantage of only 1% is enough to increase a gene's frequency to 99% within a population after only a few thousand generations and we spend way more time than that as plain dwelling Pleistocene hunters.

Of course, this is just conjecture, but the fact that we do enjoy (and are "rewarded" by) a nice crusty piece of meat with a moist, juicy center indicates that there is some sort of survival advantage signalling at work.

jessica · Answer 2 · 2012-01-04 20:40:03Z UTC

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pretty sure worrying about char is an inherent part of dis-ease that even our recent ancestors rarely had the time or "luxury" to contemplate

answered Jan 4 2012 at 20:40

jessica
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Matthius · Answer 3 · 2012-01-04 13:57:20Z UTC

For me it's definitely more of a textural affair; the crunch factor of roasted food and the contrast between the charred outside and softer inside is wonderful.

Benefits of low-reward be damned, I'm going to keep noshing on my roasted sweet potatoes.

Also, I've read that more intensely-cooked food has a higher caloric yield, though I'm suspicious of the notion that the difference is significant enough to induce such a strong preference for roasted food as compared to, say, steamed.

Shari Bambino · Answer 4 · 2012-01-04 15:18:02Z UTC

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Caramelization. This high-heat reaction causes the formation of many flavor compounds which = deliciousness.

Edit: As FED said we simply don't know. Browning is a series of very complex processes that we know little about. This is all just speculation therefore there is no answer.

edited Jan 4 2012 at 15:18

answered Jan 4 2012 at 0:10

Shari Bambino
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Yes but my question would be why the caramelisation process be delicious to us? – sarah-ann Jan 4 2012 at 0:39

Why is the sky blue? Our taste buds have evolved to like the roasted flavor over the boiled/steam flavor. If there's a known reason for that evolution, I haven't heard it and I'd be interested too. Otherwise, my happy compromise is to use a lot of material, and not much water, in my slow-cooker so I have the roasted element from the foods that stick out above the moisture plus I have the tenderness of slow-simmered in the material down in the fat/broth. – Nance Jan 4 2012 at 0:54

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^ Because air molecules scatter blue light more readily than other wavelengths of light , next question. – Kasra Jan 4 2012 at 2:40

Good comments, lol. I think these are flavor compounds that are unavaiable to us elsewhere and clearly they trigger something in us. Why do we like salt? Why do we like creamy things? You don't want to go there do you? I see it as an issue of slow cooking not allowing as many flavor compounds to develop via the different processes that take place during cooking. High heat gives us ones that low heat does not. – Shari Bambino Jan 4 2012 at 3:33

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Also as FED points out below, association of caramelization flavors with cooked meat = more available nutrients = survival advantage for those who have a taste preference for those flavors. – Karen Jan 4 2012 at 14:43

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Why does roasting increase food reward?

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