Earlier this week Wired wrote about Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham’s talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting.  Dr. Wrangham spoke about the evolutionary advantages to cooking.

In a numbered list:

1. Kills parasites.  (Preventing us from getting sick.)
2. Heat softens food making it less energy intensive to digest. (Less energy spent digesting food is more energy for other things.)
3. Heat breaks down starch and protein which increases the body’s ability to digest them. (For the same amount of food, we get more starch/carbs and proteins cooked than raw.)

Evolutionarily, when humans learned to control fire (up to 790,000 years ago) and cook their food, eating became more energy/nutrient efficient (2 = less energy in and 3 = more energy/nutrients out).  This may well have played a big part in supporting the energy needs of the human brain, allowing us to evolve such big smart crazy connected brains (the accurate scientific phrasing clearly).

Related:

Book sized story from Dr. Wrangham available in June. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human