Cook­ing is “the evo­lu­tion­ary change that under­pins all oth­ers” and is what makes us human, accord­ing to Richard Wrang­ham, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity. The the­ory: the process of cook­ing makes our food more digestible, free­ing up a huge amount of calo­ries that are then expended on other, more impor­tant, activities.

And with Homo sapi­ens, what makes the species unique in Dr Wrangham’s opin­ion is that its food is so often cooked.

Cook­ing is a human uni­ver­sal. No soci­ety is with­out it. No one other than a few fad­dists tries to sur­vive on raw food alone. And the con­sump­tion of a cooked meal in the evening, usu­ally in the com­pany of fam­ily and friends, is nor­mal in every known soci­ety. More­over, with­out cook­ing, the human brain (which con­sumes 20–25% of the body’s energy) could not keep run­ning. Dr Wrang­ham thus believes that cook­ing and human­ity are coeval.

via Link Banana