Evolutionary benefits of cooking?

[Sitting Coyote]

I've spent a lot of time reading through this website, and the idea that people are meant to be raw omnivores seems to make a great deal of sense.  Among millions of species we alone cook our food.  Why should we be different than everyone else? 

This begs two questions: 

1.  Why did we (as a species) start cooking our food? 

2.  If it's so unhealthy to cook our food, why has this behavioral trait been preserved over hundreds of generations and spread among almost all extant human cultures?

[TylerDurden]

Umm, Eric, any discussion of supposed benefits of cooking should be placed in the Hot Topics forum. Dairy can be discussed in the primal diet/weston-price diet forums, if it's about raw dairy, but grains and legumes and processed food discussions should be placed in the hot topics forum as well.Anyway, I've moved it there now.

Re evolutionary benefits of cooking, if any:-

Some claim we started cooking because arctic climates in the Ice Age meant we needed to consume warm food. This theory doesn't make any sense as Inuit and other Arctic tribes are the most frequent consumers of raw meats/raw seafood.

There is a suggestion that cooking only became truly prevalent when foods such as grains were introduced into the diet, which required more processing(and cooking) than meats do(meats don't have to be cooked). Neolithic-era agriculture requires cooking by definition.

There's also the possibility that people were simply introduced to cooking via eating charred flesh after forest-fires occurred and that the highly addictive opioids found in cooked foods(and grains and dairy incidentally) caused them to develop a drug-like habit to the stuff.

[Hannibal]

Besides cooked meat doesn't decay so quickly in a warm climate. Not all the people do like high meats.

[goodsamaritan]

Knowing what I know now hands on about diet, it seems only vegetables and root crops and grains require cooking.

Maybe the cooks began experimenting with cooking meat as well.

Nowadays they even begin to experiment with cooking FRUIT! Horrors! Maybe someday cooked fruit will be the norm!

[Ioanna]

Nowadays they even begin to experiment with cooking FRUIT! Horrors! Maybe someday cooked fruit will be the norm!

Gosh, I think they nearly are here... in gourmet sauces for meats, and in desserts/breads, dried fruits/trail mixes or as jams/jellies... yogurt.   

I remember a woman I worked with when I lived on the east coast asking us what she could do (bake or cook) with all the fresh figs she had from her tree. I couldn't believe it!... at the time I had never even seen a fresh fig (grocery store does not count, they're from CA and not even ripe).  I got the idea she was bored with them, not trying to preserve them... there weren't that many.

[PaleoPhil]

I've spent a lot of time reading through this website, and the idea that people are meant to be raw omnivores seems to make a great deal of sense. 
....

Or possibly raw faunivores.

[Sitting Coyote]

Truth is I had my own idea of why cooking arose before I posted, but wanted to offer up a question rather than just offering my thoughts.  But now it seems reasonable to offer.

The Origins of Cooking paper written by folks here (which I can't seem to find again) claims that cooking originated in the range of 100,000-300,000 years ago.  This is also about the time that Homo sapiens ("anatomically modern" humans) emerged as a species distinct from other hominids such as Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus, which also existed at the time although were living in Europe and Asia, respectively.  Wikepedia, for instance, quotes the emergence of "archaic" Homo sapiens as 250,000-400,000 years ago. 

My thought is that, perhaps as Homo sapiens populations became more dense in Africa or perhaps because of some environmental change that reduced food availability, competition for food became fierce and the ability to procure enough food became a major factor in natural selection.  It wasn't about quality at this point, it was about quantity; you didn't need to live a long and healthy life, you just needed to live long enough to sire a few children who survived.

This strikes me as the type of competitive environment where cooking shines.  There are many plants that are not edible raw, such as grains, beans, etc.  Cooking, because it destroys enzymes and proteins and because it can be done in a water bath that leaches out certain types of water soluble compounds, renders edible some plants that would otherwise be inedible.  So those individuals who learned to cook their food would have an advantage because they could eat things that others could not, thereby expanding the available calories in their surrounding landscape.  Animal foods can be made more safe and palatable by cooking, regardless of their age, and perhaps humans of the time endured a low enough general state of health that protection from parasites was useful.  So overall, even though cooking makes foods less healthy and negatively impacts the human body in various ways, on net it was a beneficial innovation because it made more calories available.

If cooking emerged when Homo sapiens was still an African species, this would explain why cooking is so ubiquitous among cultures around the world.  Our distant ancestors brought the technology of cooking with them when they left Africa.  It also explains, perhaps, why Homo sapiens eventually outcompeted Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus.  These species may not have cooked and thus depended on a narrow range of food species, while Homo sapiens, armed with cooking, could use a far wider array of species and was consistently better able to meet its caloric needs, expand its population, and outcompete other hominid species. 

The ability to radically expand the types of foods we can eat through cooking led to calorie-rich grains becoming a more and more important part of our diet, which would eventually lead to us experimenting with and eventually becoming dependent on agriculture.  We see this same relationship between cooking our food and our agricultural practices today, as much of the cropland throughout the world is devoted to crops that would be useless to us without cooking. 

I'm sure there are other important factors, such as the addictive nature of certain compounds found in cooked foods or the psychological and social aspects now associated with cooking, but I suspect these were long to develop so I don't think they played a role in the development and spread of cooking.


[Note:  while searching in vain for the article on when cooking emerged, I found an old post entitled "Why have we been cooking all this time?", in which Paleo Donk offers the same theory for the historical value of cooking although his wording is not as detailed.  I came up with it independently, but still wanted to give him credit as he came up with it first.]

[TylerDurden]

This is fallacious reasoning. For  one thing, Neanderthal Man is revealed as an apeman who went in a big way for cooking, yet ended up extinct.

Plus, even the most naive date for cooking non-palaeo foods was 105,000 years ago for cooking grains, which is far too late for evolutionary purposes re cooking.

[William]

Only cereals made cooking a good idea (for some), as it results in a population explosion.
Without cereal grains, eating cooked food makes people weak and sickly; if anyone tried it they became extinct.

[Sitting Coyote]

This is fallacious reasoning. For  one thing, Neanderthal Man is revealed as an apeman who went in a big way for cooking, yet ended up extinct.

Plus, even the most naive date for cooking non-palaeo foods was 105,000 years ago for cooking grains, which is far too late for evolutionary purposes re cooking.

Not fallacious at all, at least from the facts you offer.  Wikepedia cites a date of around 100,000 years ago as when Homo sapiens began migrating from Africa.  The only date I was able to find for when Homo neanderthalensis began cooking was about 50,000 years ago, which may well have been long after H. sapiens began living with him in Europe.  It seems reasonable to me that H. neanderthalensis most likely learned to cook from H. sapiens.  As for why H. neanderthalensis went extinct despite cooking, perhaps by the time he learned to do it he was already on the decline in Europe and wasn't able to become competitive against H. sapiens, even though both species now had more calories available.

Where do you get 105,000 years as the earliest point at which humans began cooking?  I remember a far broader range from the "Origins of cooking" paper.  Anyway, that's still early enough that it began in Africa, and then could migrate over the world with the spread of H. sapiens.

[Sitting Coyote]

Only cereals made cooking a good idea (for some), as it results in a population explosion.
Without cereal grains, eating cooked food makes people weak and sickly; if anyone tried it they became extinct.

This seems to imply that people on a cooked Paleo diet, of which there are many past and present, should all be weak and sickly and that they shouldn't live long enough or be healthy enough to successfully reproduce (the prerequisite for extinction).  Is this true?  Can this be backed up with data? 

[Paleo Donk]

Eric, I appreciated your thoughts on the evolution of cooking and do not find it fallacious at all. The one thing I keep seeing mentioned is that grains need to be cooked. Though there are plenty of reasons to eat them cooked, some people still comsume them raw so they apparently don't kill you immediately if you eat them raw.

[Sitting Coyote]

Thanks Paleo Donk.  I agree that grains can be eaten raw.  I first tried raw food-ism as a raw food vegan a few years back, and sprouted grains of many types were a part of my diet, although not a larger part.  I imagine you could eat them without sprouting too, although... yuk!  This begs the question of whether Homo sapiens or other hominid species would have sprouted them to eat them or whether they would have attempted to eat them dry and raw.  I can't imagine they'd do either with any frequency, so it seems to me that most grains consumed by early humans would have been cooked.

[William]

This seems to imply that people on a cooked Paleo diet, of which there are many past and present, should all be weak and sickly and that they shouldn't live long enough or be healthy enough to successfully reproduce (the prerequisite for extinction).  Is this true?  Can this be backed up with data? 

We know that the immune system creates all the enzymes needed for adequate digestion until ~30, after which there is a progressive decline in enzyme production. Still weak and sickly compared to those who did not abuse their bodies with cooked food.

When TD is being irrational, he does better than your comment.

[alphagruis]

My thought is that, perhaps as Homo sapiens populations became more dense in Africa or perhaps because of some environmental change that reduced food availability, competition for food became fierce and the ability to procure enough food became a major factor in natural selection.  It wasn't about quality at this point, it was about quantity; you didn't need to live a long and healthy life, you just needed to live long enough to sire a few children who survived.

This strikes me as the type of competitive environment where cooking shines.  There are many plants that are not edible raw, such as grains, beans, etc.  Cooking, because it destroys enzymes and proteins and because it can be done in a water bath that leaches out certain types of water soluble compounds, renders edible some plants that would otherwise be inedible.  So those individuals who learned to cook their food would have an advantage because they could eat things that others could not, thereby expanding the available calories in their surrounding landscape.  Animal foods can be made more safe and palatable by cooking, regardless of their age, and perhaps humans of the time endured a low enough general state of health that protection from parasites was useful.  So overall, even though cooking makes foods less healthy and negatively impacts the human body in various ways, on net it was a beneficial innovation because it made more calories available.

Interesting hypothesis.

Cooking plants needs however a priori special knowledge and invention of pottery or other tools and techniques. So it seems that the first food that has ever been cooked is rather meat just grilled over an open fire. Why did our ancestors do that for the first time? Maybe first just for fun and then they adopted the practice for the new taste...

And HGs with dominant animal food also cooked at least part of it such as the inuits.

I'm sure there are other important factors, such as the addictive nature of certain compounds found in cooked foods or the psychological and social aspects now associated with cooking, but I suspect these were long to develop so I don't think they played a role in the development and spread of cooking.

Yes I also believe that we should not underestimate these other factors and cooking is probably an emerging phenomenon that was the result of many intertwinned factors and conditions. (The first condition being to be a primate with hands and a big brain, ants or dolphins couldn't invent cooking).

I suspect that the addictive character of cooked food most likely played a major role in the rapid spread or adoption of the practice.  

[Sitting Coyote]

Cooking plants needs however a priori special knowledge and invention of pottery or other tools and techniques. So it seems that the first food that has ever been cooked is rather meat just grilled over an open fire. Why did our ancestors do that for the first time? Maybe first just for fun and then they adopted the practice for the new taste...

Not necessarily.  Many plants can be roasted in the coals of a fire.  Roots and tubers are an example.  These plant foods would become easier to chew and perhaps easier to digest ignoring the harmful byproducts of heat.  Regarding boiling, you don't need pottery to boil water.  The earliest evidence of boiling was of rock boiling.  You need some sort of vessel, which might be as simple as a water-tight basket, a piece of rawhide shaped to form a pouch or a piece of tree-bark folded to form a vessel and allowed to dry.  Fill the vessel with water and whatever you want to cook, then add hot rocks to get the water to boil and keep it boiling long enough to cook the food.  This is admittedly tedious, but at a wilderness survival class I took a couple years back we make vessels out of birch bark on our first day and that was all we were allowed to use to cook food for the remaining four days of the workshop.  It worked surprisingly well.  At least I was very surprised.

Yes I also believe that we should not underestimate these other factors and cooking is probably an emerging phenomenon that was the result of many intertwinned factors and conditions. (The first condition being to be a primate with hands and a big brain, ants or dolphins couldn't invent cooking).

I suspect that the addictive character of cooked food most likely played a major role in the rapid spread or adoption of the practice.  

Admittedly, the more I think about this the more I suspect you are probably correct.  I should not have discounted it so quickly in my earlier post.

[Sitting Coyote]

When TD is being irrational, he does better than your comment.

William, would you be willing to explain to me what you mean by this?

[William]

William, would you be willing to explain to me what you mean by this?

It was a product of annoyance.
This is the rawpaleoforum. It's what we do.

To me, discussing the spread  of cooking which is to say deliberately poisoning oneself is too irrational, especially when added to the fantasy of evolution.

[Sitting Coyote]

I guess my motivation for exploring the "benefits" of cooking is related to another post in "Hot Topics" called "Common Criticisms Directed at Paleo Diet Proponents".  

Cooking, like the consumption of grain as an important source of calories, is so ubiquitous among human cultures that most people are tempted to assume that it must be good.  Reaching this conclusion through evolutionary reasoning is easy, as given Darwin's ideal of survival of the fittest we all theoretically are descended of the fittest of the fittest, so what we do, how we behave, how we eat, etc. should represent the best of the best behavioral traits--an ideal.  So if a group is to stand up and say that a common practice like deriving the bulk of our daily calories from cooked grain or that cooking food more generally isn't ideal, then we need to be ready with a well articulated, logical and believable story line to support this.  While it may seem a circuitous path, I decided to start my exploration of this story by asking how cooking, if it really is as bad as we believe, could have become so ubiquitous.

Even those who don't espouse evolution follow similar logic, believing that common practice must be best because everyone does it.  A perfectly circular argument to be sure, but if you're going to stand up to that you need an articulate story that can break the circle.  So if you'd like to extract the ubiquity of cooking from the process of evolution in hopes of finding a story that doesn't rely on evolutionary logic to explain why such a detrimental process has become so common, please feel free.  You won't hurt my feelings.

[carnivore]

I suspect that the addictive character of cooked food most likely played a major role in the rapid spread or adoption of the practice.  

The firsts to cook their food did not have access to modern grain, so they cooked roots and other plants which are less addictive than cooked grain, especially selected and hybridized ones.
I believe cooking plants was primary an artifice to survive.

[goodsamaritan]

I've spent a lot of time reading through this website, and the idea that people are meant to be raw omnivores seems to make a great deal of sense.  Among millions of species we alone cook our food.  Why should we be different than everyone else?  

This begs two questions:  

1.  Why did we (as a species) start cooking our food?  

2.  If it's so unhealthy to cook our food, why has this behavioral trait been preserved over hundreds of generations and spread among almost all extant human cultures?

My 2 cents.
Cooking makes OTHER material consumable as food.
Yes humans optimally thrive and are healthy on the original human diet of mostly raw meat, some fruits, some vegs.
But cooking made starches available, many vegetables available, made other animals available to eat (turtles, etc.) - made more efficient consumption of animals.
Since we are a hardy species, the tribes who accessed more food was able to multiply more and conquer other tribes.
Nice examples are in Guns Germs and Steel.

My point of view is from the sickly point of view.  Raw paleo diet is curative.  Because this is the originally intended fuel.  The optimal fuel.

The others can fuel population expansion, conquest, but not cure sick people.

[alphagruis]

 
Cooking, like the consumption of grain as an important source of calories, is so ubiquitous among human cultures that most people are tempted to assume that it must be good.  Reaching this conclusion through evolutionary reasoning is easy, as given Darwin's ideal of survival of the fittest we all theoretically are descended of the fittest of the fittest, so what we do, how we behave, how we eat, etc. should represent the best of the best behavioral traits--an ideal.  So if a group is to stand up and say that a common practice like deriving the bulk of our daily calories from cooked grain or that cooking food more generally isn't ideal, then we need to be ready with a well articulated, logical and believable story line to support this.  While it may seem a circuitous path, I decided to start my exploration of this story by asking how cooking, if it really is as bad as we believe, could have become so ubiquitous.

I don't think that this is a correct view of Darwin's "theory" of natural selection. The popular view of Darwin's idea in terms of survival of the "fittest" is definitely misleading and inappropriate and actually a distortion of Darwin's views and of observed reality. The important point in the survival of a species in a group of species in competition for the same ressources is just its differential rate of reproduction. Similarly within the same species it is the group of animals or plants that reproduce the fastest that necessarily outbreeds definitely the others within a few generations. That's just simple mathematics at work. And it turns out that the only way to define unambiguously the word "fittest" in Darwin's "theory" is to state that the "fittest" are just those who reproduce the fastest and this is clearly circular reasoning...

The central point here is precisely that  one does not need to be the fittest in some usual sense of this word to reproduce the fastest. Though such fitness may favor reproduction it does not necessarily so and is not necessarily the relevant factor. So it is by no means true that 'we all theoretically descend from the fittest of the fittest unless we use the circular definition of the "fittest" I recalled above.
If perfect health and longevity for instance are viewed as fitness as usual in our minds here this is definitely not a simple synonym of darwinian fitness. Things are much more complex.
Hence it is essential to acknowledge that fitness in the usual sense is not an ipso facto consequence of darwinian natural selection. It may be of course and in many simple things such as optimization of an organ such as the eye during evolution it is indeed. But in many more involved cases, in particular more complex behaviours, it is not.
The transition from paleolithic to neolithic is precisely a nice illustration of this latter situation. We perfectly well know that paleo HGs were healthier with better longevity than agrarian i.e. fitter in some usual sense. Yet in darwinian terms agrarians rapidly outbred HGs because of their lifestyle that permitted them to definitely reproduce faster (much more food, sedentarity etc).
Again the only thing that counts in terms of darwinian survival is differential reproduction
An agrarian's life was worse than a HG's life in many respects and so it was by no means a progress. It is thus basically false to believe that "darwinian selection" merely implies a progress during evolution.            

[Sitting Coyote]

Alphagruis, you make an excellent point regarding the need to distinguish between "fitness" and differential reproduction and the fact that differential reproduction is really what matters.  In the future I'll take care to better incorporate that distinction in my posts, when needed.

And to goodsamaritan, I agree with you completely.  It was certainly never my intent to put forward the notion that a cooked food diet was somehow ideal, just that it allowed Homo sapiens to persevere in areas where it may not have otherwise been able to.  In fact, I'm already noticing benefits from having started a raw omnivorous diet just a couple weeks after starting, particularly in the realm of skin health.  I live in cold, dry Vermont and usually have a terrible problem with dry skin all winter, particularly on my scalp, hands and lower legs.  The dry skin began in early December this year, but within less than a week of starting raw it has gone away completely.  I've gotten so used to having cracking, dry skin all winter that not having this feels weird.  But I'll get used to it.

[William]

It was certainly never my intent to put forward the notion that a cooked food diet was somehow ideal, just that it allowed Homo sapiens to persevere in areas where it may not have otherwise been able to. 

You have it backwards.

[MMD]

This seems to imply that people on a cooked Paleo diet, of which there are many past and present, should all be weak and sickly and that they shouldn't live long enough or be healthy enough to successfully reproduce (the prerequisite for extinction).  Is this true?  Can this be backed up with data? 

Plenty of weak and sickly people, compared to Upper Paleo-man, reproduce every single day.  One does not need to be the epitome of health to reproduce.  One need only survive and have lots of sex.