I recommend the very interesting book, “Catching Fire, How Cooking Made Us Human,” by British primatologist Richard Wrangham.
There’s a lecture by Wrangham about the book on youtube https://youtu.be/69ckWLrvVhg.
Here is a wildly exaggerated synopsis of his talk. Despite my snark, the video was entertaining and Wrangham is actually very polite and modest. In the spirit of the “what they say and what they mean” memes, here goes,
Here’s a long boring promotional video for the Leakey foundation they made me show because they give me money. I’m old so I can’t work the technology.
Cooking made us human. Everyone used to think cooking didn’t have any impact on evolution but recent evidence, my evidence, I am a Harvard professor after all, shows I’m right.
When I was young working with, name-drop, Jane Goodall, I studied what chimpanzees eat and since I’m cool I ate everything chimpanzees ate except some, laugh line, gross bodily secretions. I was hungry, so I ate dinner at camp.
Humble brag it took me 20 years to realize eating cooked food gives more energy and I wrote the first paper about it. Everyone said I was wrong because government calorie measurements show raw and cooked foods have the same calories.
They’re all wrong and I’ll tell you why. Here’s some social media pictures of a fat woman who lost weight on a raw food diet. Let me tell you some funny anecdotes about how animals who eat human food are gaining weight, dogs, cats, urban rats, and, oh you’ll like this, hedgehogs. Arnold Schwarzenegger, name-drop and buff picture, said eat raw eggs but he’s wrong and scientists analyzing poop and colostomy bags (gross!) tell us why. See, I’m right.
Humans are evolutionarily adapted to cooked food. Women on raw food diets tend to stop menstruating, so no babies. Homo erectus had small guts and teeth so they must have eaten cooked food. Apes have big guts and big teeth. My critics say there’s no evidence of fire as far back as Homo erectus. They’re wrong. I told them to go back and look at their evidence again and I’m sure they’ll get it right soon.
Everyone is wrong that cooking doesn’t affect calories. The government measures calories wrong. I’m right, fix it, and I’ll have solved the obesity problem.
Hunter gatherers have babies at twice the rate of apes because we wean them on “solid” food that is cooked and blended. To survive on raw foods, apes spend half their day chewing. We chew an hour a day. Chewing is boring. We have free time to hunt and gather, make tools, ooh, now I’m risqué and here’s a little non-pc mention of gender roles in cooking but I won’t go too far because I am, after all, a Harvard professor.
Not everyone’s convinced yet, give me more money and I’ll get them to agree.
I conclude by saying I’m right, name-drop Virginia Woolf, I’m right, here’s a funny evolution parody picture of Michelangelo’s famous biblical fresco, I’m right.
Some of the questions in the Q&A:
Q: You’re wrong for this reason phrased as a question
A: No, your reason is wrong, I’m right.
Q: How did this thing happen?
A: No one knows and there’s no evidence but I’ll talk for a while because I am, after all, a Harvard Professor, and, by the way, I’m right.
In the end, I think he’s right too.