_Catching Fire: how Cooking Makes us Human_
by Richard Wrangham
read by Kevin Pariseau
I've long held that the two traits that most make us human are our
ability to communicate using symbolic language both orally and in
inscribed media, and our tendency to tell our stories to one another.
Richard Wrangham holds that if it weren't for the fact our distant
pre-human ancestors began regularly cooking food we'd not likely have
developed the general tendencies to stand upright, cooperate in
searching out food sources, developed our enlarged brain with its
unique cortical structures, and had the time, leisure, and willingness
to develop socially primarily on verbal terms.
Our bodies have adapted to eat and derive our primary nutrition from
cooked food. For all some health "experts" indicate we were "not
intended to eat cooked and processed foods," the fact is that nutrition
is more easily absorbed from cooked food than it is from raw food
sources, and the intestinal tract of human beings is nowhere as long
and involved as those of other creatures, even adjusting for our mass.
Also, all cultures, whether their primary food is from animal or from
plant sources, prefer to cook at least one meal a day, with our primary
socialization as families and clans taking place around the dining
table or the cooking fire. For those who insist on eating uncooked
foods, even though they usually end up consuming more food in mass than
is eaten by the population at large, still they invariably end up
losing weight rapidly once they shift from eating cooked food, and many
women end up experiencing interruptions to their menstrual cycles,
rendering them at least temporarily sterile.
A fascinating examination of another of the many differences between
homo sapiens and other mammals, and one that has led me to a greater
appreciation for the increased incidence of obesity and diabetes in the
populations of industrialized nations.
Got this from Audible on sale. The reader I do not recommend as part
of a steady diet of reading. I think he's perhaps too articulate, with
a tendency to come to uncomfortable full stops between phrases that I
found annoying, but not sufficiently so to cause me to leave off. Only
one part to this book, so it's neither overly long nor particularly
complicated. Enjoy!
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large
"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise
cannot see all ends." LOTR
"Don't go where I can't follow."
