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Very cool work!
It reminds me of a really interesting book by a primatologist, postulating that the adoption of cooking likely played a major role in human brain development.
Basically, the author argues that the energy provided by cooking drastically reduced the physiological energy required to extract nutrients (like starch) from our food, leaving a relative excess available to power our energetically-expensive cognition.
I've read about this before as well, and makes sense that being able to get more calories through cooking would facilitate large brain development. It's interesting how there's a feedback loop between technology we create and our own evolution.
Absolutely, and to me, it really hammers home how biologically impactful food processing can be!
If you think about it it makes sense. Wild animals are very lean, so from hunting you mostly get protein and only some fat calories. How is the body supposed to sustain large energy needs from that alone.