Why Do We Cook?

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: ↓ More info and sources below ↓ Your brain is hungry. Here’s how to feed it. SUBSCRIBE, it’s FREE! Ever wonder why we cook our food? We do it because it tastes good, of course, and because our customs and traditions are built around it. But we also cook our food for some basic biological reasons, because of evolution. Some scientists think that figuring out how to cook actually MADE us human! If conversation gets a little dry around your holiday table, now you’ll have some awesome science to share with everyone! Richard Wrangham - “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human“ “The Raw and the Stolen“ (PDF) - Richard Wrangham et al. (that one has some of the counterarguments, too) Greg Laden’s summary: