WEBVTT - The Beast Wore an Apron, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.520 My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:18.040 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.200 today we're going to be starting on a series that 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:26.119 has to do with animal feeding behaviors, but specifically what 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:30.320 comes before the feeding itself. I got into this topic 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:33.199 by wondering about a simple question, and it was are 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:37.320 there any animals other than humans that cook their food? 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:40.720 Because if if you look at the relationship that humans 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:44.000 have with food versus the at least obvious relationships that 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:47.159 we can see on the surface level between most wild 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:51.040 animals and their food, there were some pretty stark differences. 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:54.520 So you know, you watch like a grazing herbivore mammal 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:58.840 that's eating grass or eating leaves, it doesn't seem like 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:03.480 they're putting the vegetation through any kind of external processing. 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.520 It's just there in the environment. They bite it, they 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:09.800 chew it, and they swallow it. Though once they swallow it, 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:12.800 of course, if you're talking about like you know, ruminant 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:15.840 mammals or something, plenty of interesting things happened to the 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:19.160 food after it has been processed, say by the teeth 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:22.399 in the mouth, there might be multiple different interesting stages 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:26.240 of digestion, but in that first stage, before the food 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:29.400 reaches the mouth, there's not really anything complex going on 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:32.880 that There's just some material in the environment that has 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:37.319 nutritional value. The animal comes within reach of that food, 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:39.679 they bite it, they chew it up, they swallow it, 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.640 they just eat it. And if you compared that to 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:49.480 all of the sometimes mind bogglingly complex stages of manipulation, combination, 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:53.760 and alteration of raw plant and animal materials that go 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:57.120 into making a standard human meal, even meals that we 0:01:57.160 --> 0:01:59.280 would perceive as kind of simple. Like if you think 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:02.880 about all of the pre processing and alteration that goes 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:07.280 into the foods that make a cheeseburger, the difference is overwhelming. 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:10.080 Oh yeah, I mean even if you're I mean, you 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:12.160 can go even simpler than that. I guess if even 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:14.639 if you just you don't even take into accounts, say meat, 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:19.360 because meat processing, especially something like a hamburger, Uh, there's 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:21.800 a lot of there are a lot of grotesque details 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:24.359 that go into that. But but just like thinking about yeah, 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:27.720 like the bread, uh, the the you know, the vegetables, 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:30.520 even you know, being prepared the various sauces. I mean 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:33.320 all the things that go into it. Uh, it's it's 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:35.200 it's quite a lot. And yeah, coming back to what 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:38.079 you said earlier that we think about animals, we think 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:44.639 about purely internal food processing and in human cuisine. Human 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:50.919 cooking is the externalization of various processes um things that 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.200 that that we we tend to imagine generally only take 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.000 place within the bodies of animals. We found ways to 0:02:57.040 --> 0:03:01.360 do them externally to give our internal digestion of break 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.080 as well as to make things that are otherwise inedible 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:08.560 edible exactly right, and of course the central idea, the 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:10.400 thing that most people think about when you say the 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:14.920 word cooking is the narrow sense of cooking, meaning causing 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.800 chemical and structural changes to food by the application of heat, 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.120 specifically heating. Uh. This is one of the most common 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:24.799 ways of processing food before we eat it. And this 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:27.600 does exactly the things you're talking about. It takes foods 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:30.280 that would not otherwise be edible to humans and makes 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:33.640 them edible, or makes them safe to eat, or increases 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:38.280 the availability of nutrition from the same starting quantities of food. 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:40.880 So you take a mass of raw food, you cook it. 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:44.040 You can usually increase its nutritional efficiency, you can get 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:46.880 more nutrition out of it. And so to come back 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:49.880 to the question of are there animals that cook, I 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:52.560 would say, based on my research, if you're talking about 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:55.800 on their own in the wild, it appears that the 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:59.480 answer is no. In that narrow sense of cooking, meaning 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:01.840 cooking by applying heat, it seems that humans are the 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:05.240 only animals that do that in a consistent way. That 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:07.440 we can talk about a few interesting wrinkles to that 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.920 generalization in a minute. But when it comes to the 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:14.440 broader sense of cooking, which is you could imagine anything 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.120 that people would do in a restaurant kitchen or in 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:21.479 a home kitchen, any way that people manipulate food or 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:25.440 prepare meals other than by applying heat. It turns out 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:29.080 non human animals do all kinds of fascinating things to 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:33.160 their food before consuming it along these lines. And so 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:35.520 that's what I wanted to talk about in this series. 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:38.880 What do animals do that could be construed as cooking 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:41.919 in one way or another, Even accepting that no animals 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:44.880 in the wild cook their food with heat, well with 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:48.960 the exception of the rat, to a phenomenon by which 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:53.800 a rat uh once exposed to culinary traditions in an 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:58.400 urban environment, will then begin to cook itself, um to 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:02.120 to actually copy various recipes that are around it, improve 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:05.359 upon those recipes, and sometimes crawl on top of a 0:05:05.360 --> 0:05:08.719 man's head and pull his hair to use said human 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:11.800 as a puppet to move around the kitchen and prepare um, 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:15.160 you know, fine works of French cuisine or yes I 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:21.680 can't recall. Okay, yes, the ratitui itself. Yes, but it 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:23.479 begs the question is this is this do we see 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.919 this only with French cuisine or uh does the ratitui 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:32.960 phenomenon um repeat itself in various other cultures? Animals can 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:35.839 only be trained to make sauces that are heavy and dairy, 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:38.480 So yeah, it is a French thing. Okay, But no, 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.719 that's a good point because actually, by raising ratitui, you 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:44.640 point out that I think you could quite clearly find 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:48.600 plenty of examples of animals that have been trained in 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:52.039 some sense to cook. Now, uh, they're probably never going 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:54.880 to be as versatile as a human cook, but I'm 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:57.159 sure you can find tons of examples of an animal 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.280 that somebody trained to go turn on the micro wave 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:03.480 or something like that, you know, to to boop at 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.320 the oven knob with their nose until it comes on 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:09.040 or something along those lines. And then of course it's 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:13.039 the whole area of animals that are willing to benefit 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:16.360 from cooking without having done it themselves. Like I once 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:18.920 saw a seagull grab a hot dog half of off 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:21.120 of a grill at the beach. Um. You know, the 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:25.599 seagull was not itself barbecuing, but it was it was 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:28.560 more than happy to benefit from the barbecuing. Well, that 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:30.840 is a great point, and that actually feeds right into 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:32.800 the next thing that I wanted to talk about. So 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:37.120 before in this series we get into examples of animals 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:39.960 doing some kind of cooking in the broader sense, meaning 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:42.680 you know, preparing foods before they eat them in some 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:46.520 way that doesn't involve the directed, uh application of heat. 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:48.400 I do want to talk about cooked food in the 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:51.679 narrower sense, food that has been heated. And one interesting 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:53.800 place I thought to start there would be with the 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:59.359 question in general, would non human animals actually prefer cooked 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:03.120 food over the raw food stuffs that they would encounter 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:06.320 in their natural environment. And it turns out there have 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:08.840 been some studies that looked into this and in some 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:12.360 cases there is a clear answer. So I wanted to 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:15.200 start by looking at a paper published in the year 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.720 two thousand and eight in the Journal of Human Evolution 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:22.920 by Victoria Warber, Brian Hair, and Richard Wrangham called great 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:26.840 Apes Prefer Cooked Food. Now, part of the background of 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:30.400 this paper is based in the exploration of an idea 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:32.200 that's come up in passing on the show a couple 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:34.840 of times before. We've never actually devoted a full episode 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:37.600 or series to it. Maybe someday we will. But it's 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:41.760 what is known as the cooking hypothesis. And to summarize 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:46.000 it briefly, the cooking hypothesis is the proposition that the 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:51.000 advent of cooking was a major contributor to the physiological 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:55.080 evolution of the ancestors of Homo sapiens. In other words, 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:58.520 that a lot of things about the bodies of modern 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:02.720 human beings are the way they are because our primate 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:06.120 ancestors figured out how to control fire and how to 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:09.200 cook their food by applying heat to it. Now you 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:12.840 might wonder, well, how could our bodies be changed in 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:17.880 an evolutionary sense by the invention of cooking. Well, essentially, 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:21.240 it would happen by changing the pressures present in our 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:25.240 nutritional regimes. So I think proponents of the cooking hypothesis 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:29.520 usually argue that because cooked food is more nutritionally efficient, 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:32.600 again meaning that if food is cooked, you take a 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:35.480 food item you eat it raw versus you eat it cooked. 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:38.520 In the cooked version, you can get more nutrition from 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:42.360 it with less chewing, less energy spent on digestion, and 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:47.000 so forth. Um, So, if suddenly eating and absorbing nutrition 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:50.240 becomes easier and more efficient, we have to spend less 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:53.320 time chewing, we have to spend less time gathering large 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:57.040 quantities of food, The types of food we can eat 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:01.240 safely is expanded, and we have to spend less energy 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:06.559 developing large powerhouse, digestive tracts, and so forth. So perhaps 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:10.080 other adaptive pressures fill the void, including bigger brains and 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:13.040 so forth. And I think one proposed causal mechanism is 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:16.199 that once cooking is invented, we can get more nutrition 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:20.480 from the same amount of environmental material. Suddenly the carrying 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:24.439 capacity of the local environment than is larger. There can 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:27.800 be more humans per tribe, which requires bigger brains in 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:31.640 order to maintain relationships with that larger number of humans. 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:36.200 The main figure behind the cooking hypothesis is a British primatologist, 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:39.080 and I think he either is now or it was 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:42.720 at some recent point. Was it. Harvard Uh named Richard 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:45.120 rang Um, and he wrote a book laying out this 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:48.240 argument in two thousand nine called Catching Fire, How Cooking 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:50.600 Made is Human. Rang Um is also one of the 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:53.880 authors of this paper about whether apes prefer cooked food. 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.079 And I'm not going to go into all of the 0:09:57.120 --> 0:09:59.440 pros and cons the arguments for and against the cooking 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:03.439 hypothe sis. I would just say that my personal evaluation 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:05.520 at a at a cursory reading of it is that 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:07.720 it looks like it's kind of in the middle zone. 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.160 It's one of those arguments that seems to have a 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:13.240 lot of interesting things going for it, but it also 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.120 doesn't line up all that well with the best existing 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:18.880 evidence about the timeline for the control of fire by 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:22.240 human ancestors. So I don't know. I'd say it's, uh, 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:26.720 it's interesting but far from conclusive. But regardless of what 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:29.480 we think about the the evolutionary effects of cooking on 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:33.880 our direct ancestors, pointing out the theoretical background helps us 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:37.440 see why the researchers performed the experiments described in this paper. 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:42.040 So the authors of this paper begin raising a relevant question, 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:44.120 which is that if you were to walk up to 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:47.120 one of our ancestors roughly two million years ago, maybe 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.560 to a member of the species Homo erectus, and you 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:53.760 offered them cooked food, are we sure that they would 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:55.720 like it or that they would prefer it to the 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:58.680 same food in its uncooked state. You mean, like like 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:01.240 a hot pocket. If you brought a hot pocket to 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:04.280 one of our our ancestors, what would they make of it? 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:08.480 And I feel quite certain that somebody who showed up 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:10.640 with a hot pocket would be regarded as a worker 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.880 of evil magic. But anyway, I mean, I think this 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:17.920 is a worthwhile question to ask because we know that 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:20.360 there are lots of types of food that we would 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.440 probably rather eat cooked than raw. Maybe lots of you know, 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:25.920 in this very person to person, but probably most people 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:29.880 would rather eat grain, tough vegetables, most meats, and so 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:32.880 forth in their cooked state. But it's possible that's just 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:35.560 a cultural preference. So you know, we like cooked food 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.040 maybe because we're used to it. Is there any way 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:40.679 to test this out? And the authors here say, well, 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:44.880 obviously not with archaic common ins, but an interesting analog 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:48.000 would be to offer both cooked and raw versions of 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:51.040 the same food to great apes, our closest living relatives, 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:53.440 and see what their preferences are. So that's what this 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:57.120 study looked into. So experiment number one, they were like, hey, 0:11:57.200 --> 0:11:59.920 let's try some tubers. Let's let's get together some care 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:03.600 it's some sweet potatoes and some white potatoes and offer 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:07.360 them to chimpanzees in a choice task that exposes them 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:10.000 to both and then allows them to pick between the 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:14.040 cooked and raw forms. And they found in the case 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:17.920 of carrots and sweet potatoes, the chimpanzees definitely liked the 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:21.120 cooked version better. On the other hand, it was interesting 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:23.240 the white potato was more of a toss up. The 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:26.720 authors noted that many chimps seemed kind of hesitant to 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:30.760 take the initial samples of both cooked and raw white potatoes, 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:33.920 and it was it was basically there was no difference 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:37.000 in their preference between the two, which seems surprising to 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:39.920 me because like, I love raw carrots. The cooked carrots 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:42.079 are good too, but I cannot imagine wanting to eat 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:45.960 a raw potato now. But the author said, well, maybe 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:49.119 the chimpanzees are just kind of iffy on on potatoes 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:52.000 in general. Okay, well that would make sense. Now. A 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:55.320 second experiment they did had trouble really getting much of 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:58.000 an answer. But what they looked into was to the 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:01.880 extent that apes prefer cooked food overaw food. Why do 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:03.800 they like it better? Is it the taste? Is it 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:07.240 something about the texture. And so they experimented with a 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:10.520 number of different grade apes they use chimp, spinobos, gorillas, 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:15.000 and orangutans, and they offered them choices between carrots in 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:17.480 the following format. So you could have whole pieces of 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:21.600 carrot raw or cooked, grated carrot raw or cooked, and 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:25.600 mashed carrot raw or cooked. And they found that when 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:29.000 carrots were whole, apes definitely preferred the cooked pieces to 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:31.760 the raw pieces. Again that they like cooked better, But 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.959 after that things got more complicated. Apes generally did not 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:39.280 seem to like the grated carrot in any format, and 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.880 they preferred cooked whole carrots to raw, grated or cooked grated. 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:47.280 Preferences were less clear in the mashed condition, though. They 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:49.920 explained that some difference in results between the animal test 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.120 groups for this experiment could have been influenced by neophobia, 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:56.400 meaning fear of food in unfamiliar forms of course. You 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.400 know that's common among humans also, is that we typically 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:01.319 we like food. It's that we're familiar with and we're 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.520 a little uh sometimes we're a little hesitant about foods 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.440 that are unfamiliar. Yeah, like, for instance, the mashed carrot. 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:11.880 How did it get mashed? But you know, if you 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:15.559 were to encounter a mashed carrot in the wild, um, 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:20.000 you know, they're the possibilities are not all that appetizing. Yeah, Okay. 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:22.840 Experiment three or four, uh, and this one the author 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:25.960 is right quote. This experiment provided great apes with choices 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:29.040 between raw and cooked meat and raw and cooked apple 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:33.520 malice domestica. We controlled for neophobia in this experiment because 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:36.120 one of these items was familiar in its raw form 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:40.400 apple and the other was familiar in its cooked form meat. Thus, 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.000 this juxtaposed preference is determined by taste, slash, texture, and 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:47.360 those which would be determined by familiarity with the test items. 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:51.680 And in this test, the apes definitely preferred cooked beef 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:54.479 over raw beef, but they did not show a significant 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:58.240 preference one way or the other about the apple. Um. Again, 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:00.440 it's funny thinking about how much this does or does 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:04.200 not overlap with with our own preferences, though again, you 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:06.520 know human preferences you always have to wonder about being 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:10.000 a product of cultural familiarity. But they say the shows 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:13.600 that neophobia is not the only factor affecting preferences because 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:17.800 the apes were previously familiar only with raw apple, not cooked, 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:20.400 and in this experiment, while they did not prefer the 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:24.360 cooked apple, they basically showed no difference in preference between 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:27.240 the two. Now, I mean, in all of this, we 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:30.640 have the saying about comparing apples and oranges, in here 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:34.360 we're comparing apples and meat. Uh So, I don't know, 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:36.800 it feels I mean not that there's really a way 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:38.760 to improve on this. I'm not. I don't mean to 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:40.920 criticize the study, but it's like they're there are certain 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.200 limitations in place with some of these comparisons. I feel, 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:46.760 what do you mean that in that they're they're documenting 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:50.080 different preferences by types of food like well, like, for 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:52.880 for instance, to say, well we control for neophobia because 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:56.600 the raw form apple will still looks like an apple, 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:00.400 and the and the cooked meat still looks like the meat. Um, 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:03.440 I don't know. I find that kind of a confusing rationale. 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:06.280 Oh no, no, I think you're misunderstanding what they were doing. 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:10.240 That they the neophobia thing was that they were familiar 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:12.960 with cooked meat and with raw apple, but not with 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:16.080 cooked apple or raw meat. And so they were trying 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:18.920 to see, um, does this make any like does it 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:21.680 just conform to in both cases? Do they prefer whatever 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:26.000 they're previously familiar with. In the case of meat, they did. 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:28.560 In the case of apple not so much. But they 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:31.720 did another test. Uh. The fourth experiment was a test 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:34.760 for novelty. Uh. They said, quote, we tested chimpanzees that 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:37.120 were not given meat as a regular part of their 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:39.760 diet and as far as was known, had never eaten 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:43.040 cooked meat. And so they're offered raw and cooked beef, 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:46.240 and again they definitely preferred the cooked beef better than 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:49.160 the raw. So in the final discussion they say, yeah, 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:52.640 on average, and the foods they tested here apes liked 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:55.800 cooked food better than raw food. With some exceptions, they 0:16:55.840 --> 0:17:00.280 definitely prefer cooked beef, carrots, and sweet potatoes. They don't 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:02.760 seem to have much of a preference on average between 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:06.240 the cooked and raw forms of apple and white potato. 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:08.640 And it seems like in general just didn't really love 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:11.879 white potato. Uh. And then so they said neophobia might 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:14.280 be a contributing factor to some of these results, but 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:17.240 in experiments that tried to control for it, the ape 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:20.359 still on average thought we're pretty cool with the cooked 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:24.639 versions of food. But finally that this experiment had difficulty 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:29.479 determining which characteristics of cooked foods the apes were responding to, 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:32.479 you know, was it taste, was a texture, and so forth. 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:35.560 And I do think that's an interesting question, like if 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:39.280 if animals other than humans also prefer cooked food in 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:42.800 most cases, why is it, like does it taste better 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:45.160 to them? Is it like because it's softer to chew? 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:47.800 I don't know. Maybe maybe we can come back to that. 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:50.280 But anyway, the authors, you know, I mean it's difficult 0:17:50.280 --> 0:17:52.639 too because we have to stop and realize, like when 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:54.600 they're talking about the difference between a cooked and a 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:57.680 raw white potato, the cooked white potato in this experiment 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:01.000 is also not buttered and salted and you know, and 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:03.040 and prepared in these other ways. Like we're just stripping 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:06.320 it down to um, to the basics of what cooking 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:11.399 does to uh, this particular substance. Um. So, yeah, like 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:14.560 if I were, you know, trying to set aside as 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:17.479 much a you know human complexity as possible. If I 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.399 were presented with just a plain white potato and a 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:23.200 raw potato, I mean, I'd like to think I would 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.600 still prefer the piked potato to the to the raw potato, 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:30.000 but without anything added to it, it's still not a 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:33.800 very attractive offer. Like the potato is is something that 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:38.160 is best um consumed when there are other things done 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:41.919 to it, other seasonings, other styles of preparation, etcetera. The 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:45.480 human mind cannot comprehend the depths of blindness of a 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:49.919 of an unseasoned potato. Yeah, the carrot is really the 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.320 one that that throws me the most, you know, like 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:56.520 because it part of me would guess that there's nothing 0:18:56.600 --> 0:19:00.439 quite like the raw crispness of the right like the 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:04.159 carrot is crisp, we identify that with with freshness. The 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:07.879 carrot is sweet. Um, Like what is changed in cooking 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:11.000 the carrot that that that would that would make it 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:14.159 more preferable, Like is it just it's just softer? Is 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:17.520 it therefore seem riper in that sense? And then how 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:19.639 does that affect the sweetness of it? With the sweetness 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:21.960 be in any way enhanced by the cooking, I think 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:24.600 in general, I can't speak to carrots in particular, but 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:27.720 the authors actually address this. They say, um so, they 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:32.080 talk about hypothesizing reasons that non human animals would prefer 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:36.400 cooked food overall food, and uh so, one of the 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:39.920 avenues they talk about is that cooking tends to cause 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:44.879 chemical changes that increase the availability of flavor compounds that 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.359 animals of all kinds seem to like. And so that 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:52.040 the two main examples they offer are available sugars and 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:56.480 available glutamates. Now sugars, that's I'm pretty clear to understand, 0:19:56.520 --> 0:19:58.520 and we can know that from experience. I don't know 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:01.399 about carrots. It probab conforms to this and carrots, But 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:03.919 I think about like onions, like eating a raw onion 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:07.280 versus eating a cooked onion. The cooked onion is so 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:10.560 much sweeter, like the you know, the amount of sugar 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:13.000 you can taste in it is, I don't know, it 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:17.000 feels like it's exponential above a raw onion. And yeah, 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:19.239 and that's that's the case to where by cooking the 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:23.320 onion you're kind of blunting it's um it's effects like 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:26.200 the chemical weaponry if the onion is diluted. Yeah, the 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:30.280 sulfur compounds and stuff, so so that's sugars. Apparently lots 0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:34.600 of foods have more available sugars when you cook them, 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:37.960 so they taste sweeter. Tons of different animals can differentiate 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:40.439 the levels of sugar and a food they're eating, and 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:43.320 obviously prefer the thing that tastes like it's got more 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:45.639 sugar in it because it is probably going to be 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:49.040 more nutritionally dense, it has more calories per amount of 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:51.639 the same amount of food. Uh. The other thing is 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:56.040 the available glutamates. Glutamates are uh you know, does that 0:20:56.119 --> 0:20:59.240 ring a bell? Maybe it's in the phrase monose sodium 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:04.680 glutamate MSG flavor, the umami flavor. Glutamates are are largely 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:09.480 responsible for savory flavors that we associate with meat and 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:13.240 and uh and also things like tomatoes and hard cheeses 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:16.919 like parmesan and soy sauce and those those glutamates or 0:21:16.960 --> 0:21:21.000 that delicious savory umami feeling. And that's not just for 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:23.680 humans either. It turns out tons of animals, I think 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:28.640 even some invertebrates can detect umami flavor through the presence 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:32.760 of free glutamates, which are increased by cooking. And while 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:34.800 I was reading about this, I did get really amused 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:36.880 by the idea of like inverted. I don't know which 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:41.160 invertebrates exactly, but like do with lobsters really love soy sauce, 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:43.760 would like there'll be centipedes who are going nuts for 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:53.919 parmesan cheese. Thank anyway, Okay, So cooking often increases the 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:57.840 availability of sugars and glutamates. So that's a flavor increasing 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:00.760 flavors that broadly lots of an almost seem to like. 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:04.040 And cooking tends to change the texture of food, usually 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:06.960 by making it softer and easier to chew, and of 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:10.280 course that appeals to the natural laziness present in all 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:12.960 kinds of animals, not just us. So I think you 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:18.119 could possibly argue that in a way, cooking, by massively 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:21.480 increasing the presence of taste and texture qualities that our 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:24.800 bodies and brains are already naturally on the look for, 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:28.560 cooking could be viewed as a sort of ancient form 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:33.160 of supernormal stimuli, like evolution shaped animal appetites to seek 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:36.560