The first chef
First came fire ... and then, as the camera shifts to the soon to be late-village idiot, you're left wondering -- just what was going through that mind -- and food is put on the fire, for the first time, and cooking is accidentally discovered by humanity. The first chef is ridiculed by grunts, then the local thug tries a sample of the burnt carcass, and soon, everybody gets queued at the McDonalds drive-thru. What happened? Richard Wrangham of Harvard believes there's more to cooking than evolutionary history would have you believe.
Wrangham points out that there is no way homo sapiens could survive on just raw food. Raw food just doesn't give up calories as easily as cooked food -- and raw food makes the digestive system expend more energy to get at those calories. Cooking on the other hand breaks complex molecules down, allowing the digestive system to make easy work of them -- and cooking also softens food, allowing the body to get to the calories with less effort. Wrangham suggests that the obesity epidemic probably has more to do with the fact that we're eating more processed foods than overeating.
By simple extension, you can see how important cooking has been for the evolution of the human species. Being able to get more calories from our food via cooking, has allowed us to free up more time for other pursuits. No longer needing to spend tonnes of time obtaining food, humans probably got bored, restless, and left Africa, traveling the world building cities and causing no end of trouble for life everywhere.
Slightly related ... here's Wrangham speaking on his other work on primate study:
Wrangham points out that there is no way homo sapiens could survive on just raw food. Raw food just doesn't give up calories as easily as cooked food -- and raw food makes the digestive system expend more energy to get at those calories. Cooking on the other hand breaks complex molecules down, allowing the digestive system to make easy work of them -- and cooking also softens food, allowing the body to get to the calories with less effort. Wrangham suggests that the obesity epidemic probably has more to do with the fact that we're eating more processed foods than overeating.
By simple extension, you can see how important cooking has been for the evolution of the human species. Being able to get more calories from our food via cooking, has allowed us to free up more time for other pursuits. No longer needing to spend tonnes of time obtaining food, humans probably got bored, restless, and left Africa, traveling the world building cities and causing no end of trouble for life everywhere.
Slightly related ... here's Wrangham speaking on his other work on primate study:
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