Variety

Before humans figured out how to cook food, we basically had to spend all day finding and chewing whatever raw foods we could: roots, animals, berries, insects, plants, etc. By learning to cook, we traded some of the time and effort we used to spend chewing for time and effort spent cooking: working with wood, fire and raw plants and animals to make something to eat that didn’t require an entire damn afternoon of gnawing and chomping. Cooking introduced early humans to a new set of skills, a completely new set of activities.

It also increased the number of things we could eat, by making more things edible. (It also meant that we could sensibly talk about eating something besides a cold salad buffet.) It enabled the very idea of a cuisine.

One simple concept—applying heat to food—has replaced foraging and chewing with an abundance of different ways to spend our time and enjoy our meals.

Happy Thanksgiving!