Humans are biologically dependent on cooked food and cannot survive long without it

Evidence

The impact of this culturally transmitted know-how about fire and cooking has had such an impact on our species’ genetic evolution that we are now, essentially, addicted to cooked food. Wrangham reviewed the literature on the ability of humans to survive by eating only raw foods. His review includes historical cases in which people had to survive without cooking, as well as studies of modern fads, such as the raw foods movement, The long and short of all this is that it’s very difficult to survive for months without cooking. Raw-foodists are thin and often feel hungry. Their body fat drops so low that women often stop menstruating or menstruate only irregularly. This occurs despite the supermarket availability of a vast range of raw foods, the use of powerful processing technologies like blenders, and the consumption of some preprocessed foods. The upshot is that human foraging populations could never survive without cooking; meanwhile, apes do just fine without cooking, though they do love cooked foods. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 230

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Human digestive organs are dramatically undersized for our body compared to other primates — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 221; Cooking evolved culturally and reshaped human digestive anatomy and function — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 224; Culture-driven cooking let natural selection shrink gut tissue to fund bigger brains — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 233 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Culture-driven cooking let natural selection shrink gut tissue to fund bigger brains #expands (0.93) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 233
• Ancient diets included substances hard for us to digest, requiring adaptation. #qualifies (0.72) — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 167