Food, Fire, and the Human Brain

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You are what you eat, or so the old adage goes.

But unlike other primates and animals, humans are the only animals who cook their food, which may have more to do with how we became humans in the first place.

Richard Wrangham, Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and MacArthur Fellow, has proposed the hypothesis that cooking has actually played a bigger role in our ancestral development than first believed. In his book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, he argues that the invention of fire, and subsequent use of fire to cook food, helped steer the evolution of the human brain from two million years ago to where it is today.

He shares evidence that cooking provided more nutrients to early fire-using hominids, or members of the great ape family, than the raw foods eaten by other hominids. By breaking down indigestible carbohydrates, tenderizing meat proteins, and deactivating toxins, more diverse foods became available to early humans while also requiring less energy to digest, after utilizing the primal technology of heating food over an open fire.

In addition to the benefits mentioned, cooked foods were also safer to eat because the cooking process reduced the risk of food-borne pathogens and parasites, especially those commonly found on and in meats. Cooking gave early…