Cooked foods are all the fault of women

Hi Jim,

I have been thinking lately about a couple of old myths. Perhaps you will find these ideas interesting in the context of the raw foods movement.

The first is the Greek myth of Pandora and Prometheus. Prometheus (a non-human Titan) stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. As a punishment the gods gave man (Pandora, a woman), a giftbox containing all sorts of diseases and afflictions. I find the direct link between man getting fire and man getting disease very interesting.

The other myth that I have been thinking about is the story of Adam and Eve. If you remember, they were thrown out of Eden because they ate of the forbidden fruit of a tree (knowledge). Once out of the Garden they were beset by a host of unpleasant ills: work, clothes, old age and disease.

If you read between the lines a bit and take fire as the fruit of a tree (you need wood to have fire), and that they ate of this forbidden fruit, i.e. cooked food, then this myth also relates fire and cooking to disease and hardship for mankind.

In both cases woman was closely connected with the connection of man getting fire. Perhaps it was a woman who first got the idea to cook things? We still connect women with cooking to this day.

What do you think? Pretty interesting.

Yours in health,
Eric Rothwarf
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Eric,

I'm going to post this, with the full realization of the Political Incorrectness contained within. I hope you're ready to deal with all the feedback, flames and comments you're going to get about this one!

Hahahahhahah!

Jim Carey

Comments

[Shelly Winters]

Let me tell you about one of my previous lives - as a cave woman.

First off, if Og had helped out in the garden and with the gatherin' part of life, we wouldn't have had to eat meat.

Second, if he had brought home rabbits and squirrels (that were eating the garden) like I asked, we could have enjoyed them fresh. But oh, no, Og and the boys had to bring a stinkin' Mastodon home. I had to invent cooking to keep it from spoiling.

Do you have ANY IDEA what Mastodon smells like after a few days of sitting around the cave?

So, yea, we women invented cooking, but it was mens' fault that we had to!

[Helen Terry]

Jim,
Thanks again for posting this Men's section, since many of us women know this way of life is good and right, but need you guys to tell it 'like a man' to the men in our lives that we wish only the best of life's vitality for. Your comments provide the 'third-party recognition' that usually gets the message through to them.
Very best,
Helen

[Helen Terry]

Dear Eric and Jim,

Jim, thanks ever so much for putting up this section. May I comment as an historian and a classicist? IMHO, the Pandora myth and cooking come together as a natural tendency for a woman to either recycle, fix or make do with whatever is at hand. Considering putrefying meat and muscles, bones and ligaments are quite a mess to be around much less the smell, and since women typically get the cleanup in a household, the urge to put meat and muscle to fire after removing necessary hide for clothing, rugs, and window coverings would be to get rid of the leftover parts.

Even ligaments are used for thread in a bone needle. But even if a scenario like this is possible, the smell of cooking meat is attractive to a carnal man/woman. Carnal means many things, not just eating meat. If someone ate it once, they would go back for more; we know the reverse to be true (smell still enticing in the early days of going raw, that is) in many of raw fooders coming off of meat and dairy, right?

I propose this theory of utilization more than a blame feature as those primitive eons were very harsh and any improvisation would be possibly a life-saver. Again, IMHO, though somewhat read on this train of thought. Helen, green, raw, and had my landlord remove the stove and microwave months ago... only boiling water now for teas...