We cooked meat primarily to make it easier to digest, safer to eat by killing pathogens, and to more efficiently enable body and brain growth.
Cooking meat (and other foods) provided significant advantages for early humans, ultimately contributing to our evolutionary success. Here's a more detailed breakdown:
-
Improved Digestibility: Cooking breaks down complex proteins and fibers within the meat, making it softer and easier for our bodies to digest. This means we expend less energy processing the food, freeing up more energy for other bodily functions.
-
Increased Nutrient Availability: The cooking process unlocks nutrients that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. For example, heat can denature proteins, making them more susceptible to enzymatic breakdown in the digestive tract.
-
Enhanced Safety: Raw meat can harbor harmful bacteria, parasites, and other pathogens. Cooking to a sufficient temperature kills these microorganisms, significantly reducing the risk of foodborne illnesses. This was a particularly important benefit in environments where hygiene standards were not always ideal.
-
More Efficient Energy Gain: By making meat easier to digest and increasing nutrient availability, cooking allows us to extract more energy from a given amount of food. This increased energy intake fueled brain development and overall body growth, contributing to our cognitive and physical capabilities.
-
Evidence Supports Early Cooking: Archeological evidence is increasingly supporting the hypothesis that early humans cooked food, including meat, far earlier than previously believed. This suggests that the benefits of cooking played a crucial role in our evolution.
In summary, cooking meat provided a multifaceted advantage, making food safer, more digestible, and more energy-efficient, thereby contributing significantly to the physical and cognitive development of early humans.
