The Archaeology News Network: Cooking may have driven human evolution

The Archaeology News Network: Cooking may have driven human evolution:

'via Blog this'

Next time you’re out to dinner, you may want to think twice before ordering your steak rare. In a first-of-its-kind study, Harvard researchers have shown that cooked meat provides more energy than raw meat, a finding that challenges the current food labeling system and suggests humans are evolutionarily adapted to take advantage of the benefits of cooking.

“Every day, humans in every global society devote time and energy to processing food — cooking it, grinding it, slicing it, pounding it — yet we don’t understand what effect these efforts have on the energy we extract from food, or the role they might have played in our evolution,” Carmody said. “It is astonishing, since energy gain is the primary reason we eat.”