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J Scott Hill

Food For Thought: Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter : NPR - 1 views

www.npr.org/...eat-based-diet-made-us-smarter

evolution human thought food diet

shared by J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Our earliest ancestors ate their food raw — fruit, leaves, maybe some nuts. When they ventured down onto land, they added things like underground tubers, roots and berries.
  • "You can't have a large brain and big guts at the same time," explains Leslie Aiello, an anthropologist and director of the Wenner-Gren Foundation in New York City, which funds research on evolution. Digestion, she says, was the energy-hog of our primate ancestor's body. The brain was the poor stepsister who got the leftovers.
  • "What we think is that this dietary change around 2.3 million years ago was one of the major significant factors in the evolution of our own species," Aiello says.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • cut marks on animal bones appeared
  • that could have been made only by a sharp tool.
  • But Aiello's favorite clue is somewhat ickier — it's a tapeworm. "The closest relative of human tapeworms are tapeworms that affect African hyenas and wild dogs," she says.
  • Besides better taste, cooked food had other benefits — cooking killed some pathogens on food.
  • It breaks up the long protein chains, and that makes them easier for stomach enzymes to digest. "
  • collagen is very hard to digest. But if you heat it, it turns to jelly."
  • starchy foods like turnips, cooking gelatinizes the tough starch granules and makes them easier to digest too. Even just softening food — which cooking does — makes it more digestible. In the end, you get more energy out of the food.
  • J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13
     
    Interesting audio piece on cooked food, meat, and the evolution of our big brains.
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