Watched an interesting programme on telly last night
Horizon - it asked whether cooking led to a leap forward in Human evolution.
'Homo habilis was about a metre tall with long, swinging arms – not much to look at, apparently, but clever. Habilis had a bigger brain (50% bigger) than his forebear, Australopithecus. Was this down to his diet?'
Basically the theory is that when you cook food, a spud for example, some of the components explode and make them increase dramatically in nutritional value. In addition, cooked food requires much less energy to process, so the body gains twice.
This massive surplus of energy meant that some of the weaker members of the population did not die out, so individuals with smaller guts, but big brains, now had a chance to survive. These individuals then did better, by virtue of the bigger brains , and so progressed in a self-stoking cycle. In the end, the population was left with the small-gutted big brained types that led on to us.
Quite an interesting idea
Horizon - it asked whether cooking led to a leap forward in Human evolution.
'Homo habilis was about a metre tall with long, swinging arms – not much to look at, apparently, but clever. Habilis had a bigger brain (50% bigger) than his forebear, Australopithecus. Was this down to his diet?'
Basically the theory is that when you cook food, a spud for example, some of the components explode and make them increase dramatically in nutritional value. In addition, cooked food requires much less energy to process, so the body gains twice.
This massive surplus of energy meant that some of the weaker members of the population did not die out, so individuals with smaller guts, but big brains, now had a chance to survive. These individuals then did better, by virtue of the bigger brains , and so progressed in a self-stoking cycle. In the end, the population was left with the small-gutted big brained types that led on to us.
Quite an interesting idea
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