Cooking, according to the hypothesis, is not merely a metaphor for the creation of culture, as Lévi-Strauss proposed; it is its evolutionary prerequisite and biological foundation. Had our protohuman ancestors not seized control of fire and used it to cook their food, they would never have evolved into Homo sapiens. We think of cooking as a cultural innovation that lifts us up out of nature, a manifestation of human transcendence. But the reality is much more interesting: Cooking is by now baked into our biology {as it were}, something that we have no choice but to do, if we are to feed our big, energy-guzzling brains. For our species, cooking is not a turn away from nature-it is our nature, by now as obligatory as nest building is for the birds.
( Michael Pollan )
[ Cooked: A Natural History of ]
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