Comment on Rip
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 week agothe whole reason primitive people started baking bread, roasting meat,
It’s to start the break down of food. We evolved to outsource our digestion to cooking.
Brewing beer is entirely different though.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 week ago
That too. But killing parasites in meat and fish is another big benefit.
To a degree. But we also just died more often to infection and disease. Cooking reduced mortality rates, which spurred a larger population, whose members transmitted the knowledge of how and what to cook before eating.
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I mean our evolution really kicked off from outsourcing our digestion. That meant more calories could go to the brain. That’s the aspect I’m focused on.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Well… if you want to get really into anthropology, there’s an argument that outsourcing our digestion (via early agriculture) actually made us a lot weaker and dumber. It was social pressure (often explicit enslavement) that forced people into the agricultural lifestyle. But that a booming population powered by cheap, reliable agriculture allowed multitudes to outperform by volume what exceptionally smart and strong but scare individuals achieved in small tribes.
More advanced forms of sterilization became necessary as populations hit certain critical levels of risk for pathogens and other hygiene problems. And so modern techniques, like vaccination and pasteurization, are really just extensions of this ten-thousand year trend towards urbanization that require health and safety precautions as a condition of our dense population centers.
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Agriculture is different than cooking.