UPDATE—WHY IT MATTERS THAT COOKED FOOD HAS MORE CALORIES.

UPDATE—WHY IT MATTERS THAT COOKED FOOD HAS MORE CALORIES. I posted here three years ago about my memory of an anthropologist’s claim that cooking was the greatest labor saving invention of all time because it reduced chewing time. Since then, I found other research on the importance of cooking for human evolution, including this post about CATCHING FIRE; HOW COOKING MADE US HUMAN by Richard Wrangham. Wrangham cited: smaller teeth and jaws, easier digestion and smaller guts, more energy for walking and running over long distances…. Now Wrangham in this interview reports on recent research by himself and his students that shows another basic advantage of cooking. Cooking increases the available calories in food, which was of enormous advantage when hunger was an important issue. (Of course, if you want to lose weight today, then, other things being equal, you may prefer to cut down on how much cooked food you eat).