A criticism of Wrangham's "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human"

     Although there is a general consensus that Richard Wrangham delivers a well-written analysis of human eating habits over the years, I did find one thorough criticism of his book that was written on Amazon by "JDT" in Anchorage. JDT claims that Wrangham's claim that "'we [humans] fare poorly on raw diets' (p. 53) are rife with bad science and logical fallacies, and he does not substantiate his claim."
     JDT demonstrates two particular instances where Wrangham's research falls short. In his first attack on raw foodists, Wrangham writes about a study  done where nine unhealthy participants were put on a raw food diet for only 12 days, and they saw unhealthy decreases in weight as well as bad balances of cholesterol and blood pressure. JDT points out that the evidence is ridiculous considering the participants were unhealthy to begin from, and the diet lasted for only 12 days- very little time to collect any sufficient evidence. In Wrangham's second study, scientists ran a study of 513 people in Germany. In their transition to raw food, they lost an average of 21.9 pounds, and "scientists thus concluded that 'a strict raw food diet cannot guarantee an adequate energy supply.' JDT suggests this study is too broad- each of these 513 people undoubtedly had different diets, and it is unclear what outside factors affected their weight loss.

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/product-reviews/0465013627/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_summary?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending