Cuisine

Cooking food is one of the ancient and highly significant uses of fire. Cooking makes a wide variety of foodstuffs more edible and digestible. There is evidence for both anatomical and physiological adaptations in humans to the altered diets that cooking allowed. Cooking has been reported for all known human societies. It is a cultural trait and many individuals do not cook. Some individuals avoid cooked foods. While many species can and will eat cooked foods, no species in the hominid line cooks food in natural settings. There is widespread evidence of cooking 250k BP, but some evidence that it may be as old as the evidence for the use of fire by Homo ergaster (1,900k BP). Various lines of evidence suggest adaptation of human teeth and digestive systems to cooked foods. Richard Wrangham argues that cooked foods led to the enlargement of the human brain.