Cooking: Evolution to Culture of Human Beings

For many people, when they think about food, it appears to be a magical happiness even under constraints. Even, we may experience the magical happiness, when the smells of cooking spread around ourselves.  The connection between foods we eat every day, can tell us more about our evolution and culture. Not only in taste but also in cooking methods, varieties of foods are available in different parts of the world.

A Key to Modern Human Evolution

In the discourse of evolution, cooking has more contribution in development of human beings. Scientists accept that eating cooked food made major effects in the human body over the time period. At about 1.8 million years ago, our ancestors known as Homo erectus develop larger brain than their ancestors.  Scientists found that around these periods significant changes such as increase in brain size, decrease in tooth size and smaller gut when compared to their ancestors who came before. 

It is impossible to know the exact things happened in our evolutionary history. However, a theory which has been accepted by many scientists called Cooking Hypothesis which explains, because of cooking our brain became significantly larger than our ancestor. 

Cooking: Major effects on human body

Most of the human societies eat cooked food. When compared to raw food, the energy and effort to chew the food is easier for the cooked as they tend to be softer than the raw ones. Improper chewed foods are more difficult to digest and can lead to a buildup of gas in the stomach and intestines. Since it is softer we can eat it with smaller teeth. 

Potatoes and other tuber are common in many countries, they are difficult to digest when raw, and hence it must be cooked for easy digestion. Further, research also proves that nearly 50% of women who exclusively eat raw foods does not have enough energy to support a pregnancy. These evidences suggest an evolutionary perspective that modern humans are biologically dependent on cooking.

Food as culture

Needless to say, food becomes a unifier of human beings. Cooking opens the door for varieties of cuisines. Every country has its own cuisine and every town has its special dishes, which define their historic changes, lifestyles, social class, etc. Every single culture uses food as part of their celebrations. For example, Chinese will celebrate their festival in an ornate style which also influence in their food. Hence while preparing their dishes they put a lot of effort not necessarily for taste, but for texture.

Immigrants are willing to open their own restaurants and serve traditional dishes when they move to new places. They see this as an opportunity to spread their culture and way of preserving it. Although the food does not remain as the original one, there will be certain alterations according to availability of the ingredients in the region; still it retains the cultural significance of the dish. Now a days, most culture do not have unitary cuisine, for example Chinese, French and Mexican cuisines consists of many distinct regional foods. 

However, introduction of global foods and brands has made food as symbol of status for many of the Millenials. A study shows that more than 40 percent of Millennials have posted a photo of food or drinks they had and 20% of 20-25 years olds have borrowed someone else’s food to take a picture of it and post on social media.

We are the only species that ate a wider variety of foods. It is important to remember, cooking always has special place in which it droves our evolution and culture this far. Hence, we should hold our culture through our foods which helps us to evolve bigger and better.