Study finds cooking increases energy from meat, may have driven human evolution

Link: Study finds cooking increases energy from meat, may have driven human evolution

In a first-of-its kind study, Harvard researchers have shown that cooked meat provides more energy than raw meat, a finding that suggests humans are biologically adapted to take advantage of the benefits of cooking, and that cooking played a key role in driving the evolution of man from an ape-like creature into one more closely resembling modern humans.

Conducted by Rachel Carmody, a student in Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS), the research also raises important questions about the way modern humans eat.