The Innovation Show | 26 December 2019 | 0h 49m | Listen Later 
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Interview with Richard Wrangham about his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Argues that the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow; helped structure human society; and created the male-female division of labour. As our ancestors adapted to using fire, humans emerged as “the cooking apes.”
This is one of my all-time favourite books.
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The point about how many fewer calories are absorbed from uncooked foods because of the effort of digesting them is very important. There is a conventional view that the obesity epidemic can be explained by “Calories in, calories out”, but the reality is more complex.