WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Beast Wore an Apron, Part 1 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:08.039 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:11.240 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:14.120 Time for an episode from the Vault. This one originally 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:18.120 published March twenty second, twenty twenty two, and it's called 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:21.200 The Beast War in Apron Part one. This was the 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:25.960 first entry in a series on non human animals doing 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:29.080 things analogous to cooking or otherwise kind of doing a 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:33.080 meal prep in some way. Yeah, do animals cook? Well, 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:35.680 the answer is probably not no, because we talked about 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:42.080 it for two hours, So join in on the fun. 0:00:42.320 --> 0:00:52.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:54.320 welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:58.240 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:01.520 to be starting on as that has to do with 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:08.200 animal feeding behaviors, but specifically what comes before the feeding itself. 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:11.160 I got into this topic by wondering about a simple question, 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:15.000 and it was are there any animals other than humans 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:18.520 that cook their food? Because if you look at the 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:21.959 relationship that humans have with food versus the at least 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:24.640 obvious relationships that we can see on the surface level 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.840 between most wild animals and their food, there were some 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:31.920 pretty stark differences. So you know, you watch like a 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:37.200 grazing herbivore mammal that's eating grass or eating leaves, it 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:41.320 doesn't seem like they're putting the vegetation through any kind 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.920 of external processing. It's just there in the environment. They 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:48.120 bite it, they chew it, and they swallow it. Though 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:50.080 once they swallow it. Of course, if you're talking about 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.880 like you know, ruminant mammals or something, plenty of interesting 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:57.640 things happen to the food after it has been processed, 0:01:57.680 --> 0:01:59.680 say by the teeth in the mouth, there might be 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:04.520 multiple different interesting stages of digestion. But in that first stage, 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:07.720 before the food reaches the mouth, there's not really anything 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:11.080 complex going on that There's just some material in the 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:15.880 environment that has nutritional value. The animal comes within reach 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.280 of that food, they bite it, they chew it up, 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:21.040 they swallow it, they just eat it. And if you 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:25.840 compared that to all of the sometimes mind bogglingly complex 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:31.600 stages of manipulation, combination, and alteration of raw plant and 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:35.600 animal materials that go into making a standard human meal, 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:37.920 even meals that we would perceive as kind of simple like, 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.320 if you think about all of the preprocessing and alteration 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:45.240 that goes into the foods that make a cheeseburger, the 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.440 difference is overwhelming. Oh yeah, I mean even if you're 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:50.720 I mean, you can go even simpler than that. I 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:52.880 guess if even if you just you don't even take 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:56.880 into accounts they meat, because meat processing, especially something like 0:02:56.919 --> 0:03:00.680 a hamburger, there's a lot of the lot of grotesque 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:03.120 details that go into that. But so just like thinking 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:07.320 about yeah, like the bread, you know, the vegetables, even 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:09.960 you know, being prepared, the various sauces, I mean, all 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.160 the things that go into it. It's it's it's quite 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:14.760 a lot. And yeah, coming back to what you said 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:18.200 earlier that we think about animals, we think about purely 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:25.880 internal food processing and human cuisine. Human cooking is the 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:31.920 externalization of various processes things that that we tend to 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:35.240 imagine generally only take place within the bodies of animals. 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:39.080 We found ways to do them externally to give our 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:42.920 internal digestion a break, as well as to make things 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:46.280 that are otherwise inedible edible exactly right. And of course, 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:49.120 the central idea, the thing that most people think about 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.720 when you say the word cooking is the narrow sense 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:56.280 of cooking, meaning causing chemical and structural changes to food 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:00.680 by the application of heat, specifically heating. This is one 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:03.240 of the most common ways of processing food before we 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:05.760 eat it. And this does exactly the things you're talking about. 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.640 It takes foods that would not otherwise be edible to 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:11.800 humans and makes them edible, or makes them safe to eat, 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:16.679 or increases the availability of nutrition from the same starting 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:19.599 quantities of food. So you take a mass of raw food, 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.840 you cook it, you can usually increase its nutritional efficiency, 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:25.720 you can get more nutrition out of it. And so 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:28.040 to come back to the question of are there animals 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.080 that cook, I would say, based on my research, if 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:34.320 you're talking about on their own in the wild, it 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:38.000 appears that the answer is no. In that narrow sense 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:40.440 of cooking, meaning cooking by applying heat, it seems that 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:43.400 humans are the only animals that do that in a 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:45.880 consistent way. That we can talk about a few interesting 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.680 wrinkles to that generalization in a minute. But when it 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:52.480 comes to the broader sense of cooking, which is you 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:55.799 would imagine anything that people would do in a restaurant 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:58.480 kitchen or in a home kitchen any way, that people 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:03.880 manipulate food, food or prepare meals other than by applying heat. 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:07.160 It turns out non human animals do all kinds of 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:11.840 fascinating things to their food before consuming it along these lines, 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:14.159 And so that's what I wanted to talk about in 0:05:14.200 --> 0:05:17.520 this series. What do animals do that could be construed 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:20.560 as cooking in one way or another, even accepting that 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:23.080 no animals in the wild cook their food with heat, 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:27.960 while with the exception of the ratitu, a phenomenon by 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:33.080 which a rat, once exposed to culinary traditions in an 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:38.440 urban environment, will then begin to cook itself, to actually 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:41.680 copy the various recipes that are around it, improve upon 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:45.040 those recipes, and sometimes crawl on type of a man's 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:48.240 head and pull his hair to use said human as 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:51.480 a puppet to move around the kitchen and prepare you know, 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:58.800 fine works of French cuisine or yes, I can't recall it. Okay, yeah, yes, 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:01.720 the ratitui itself. Yes, but it begs the question is 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:03.560 this is this do we see this only with French 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:10.120 cuisine or does the ratitui phenomenon repeat itself in various 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:14.040 other cultures. Animals can only be trained to make sauces 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.040 that are heavy and dairy. So yeah, it is a 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:19.400 French thing, okay, But no, that's a good point because actually, 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.520 by raising ratitui, you point out that I think you 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:26.360 could quite clearly find plenty of examples of animals that 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:30.680 have been trained in some sense to cook. Now, they're 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.520 probably never going to be as versatile as a human cook, 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:35.839 but I'm sure you can find tons of examples of 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:38.880 an animal that somebody trained to go turn on the 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:42.760 microwave or something like that, you know, to boop at 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:45.560 the oven knob with their nose until it comes on 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.320 or something along those lines. And then of course there's 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:52.320 the whole area of animals that are willing to benefit 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:55.640 from cooking without having done it themselves. Like I once 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:58.200 saw a seagull grab a hot dog half of off 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.359 of a grill at the beach. You know, the seagull 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:05.599 was not itself barbecuing, but it was more than happy 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:08.680 to benefit from the barbecuing. Well, that is a great point, 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:10.880 and that actually feeds right into the next thing that 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:13.520 I wanted to talk about. So before in this series 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:17.440 we get into examples of animals doing some kind of 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.680 cooking in the broader sense, meaning you know, preparing foods 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.240 before they eat them in some way that doesn't involve 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.760 the directed application of heat. I do want to talk 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.040 about cooked food in the narrower sense, food that has 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:32.200 been heated, and one interesting place I thought to start 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:35.720 there would be with the question in general, would non 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:41.080 human animals actually prefer cooked food over the raw food 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:44.679 stuffs that they would encounter in their natural environment. And 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:46.960 it turns out there have been some studies that looked 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:50.280 into this, and in some cases there is a clear answer. 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:53.360 So I wanted to start by looking at a paper 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:55.600 published in the year two thousand and eight in the 0:07:55.720 --> 0:08:00.040 Journal of Human Evolution by Victoria Wobber, Brian Hare, and 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:05.360 Richard Rangum called Great Apes Prefer Cooked Food. Now, part 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:08.320 of the background of this paper is based in the 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:10.840 exploration of an idea that's come up in passing on 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:13.040 the show a couple of times before. We've never actually 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:15.600 devoted a full episode or series to it. Maybe someday 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.760 we will, but it's what is known as the cooking hypothesis, 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:24.080 And to summarize it briefly, the cooking hypothesis is the 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:29.000 proposition that the advent of cooking was a major contributor 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:33.599 to the physiological evolution of the ancestors of Homo sapiens. 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:36.680 In other words, that a lot of things about the 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:40.080 bodies of modern human beings are the way they are 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:44.440 because our primate ancestors figured out how to control fire 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:47.880 and how to cook their food by applying heat to it. 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.959 Now you might wonder how could our bodies be changed 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:56.600 in an evolutionary sense by the invention of cooking. Well, 0:08:56.720 --> 0:09:00.560 essentially it would happen by changing the pressures in our 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:04.520 nutritional regimes. So I think proponents of the cooking hypothesis 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:08.800 usually argue that because cooked food is more nutritionally efficient, 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:11.880 again meaning that if food is cooked, you take a 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:14.720 food item you eat it raw versus you eat it cooked. 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.760 In the cooked version, you can get more nutrition from 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:21.600 it with less chewing, less energy spent on digestion, and 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:26.800 so forth. So if suddenly eating and absorbing nutrition becomes 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:30.160 easier and more efficient, we have to spend less time chewing, 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:33.760 we have to spend less time gathering large quantities of food. 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:37.920 The types of food we can eat safely is expanded, 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:42.840 and we have to spend less energy developing large powerhouse 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:47.200 digestive tracts, and so forth. So perhaps other adaptive pressures 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:49.960 fill the void, including bigger brains and so forth. And 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:53.480 I think one proposed causal mechanism is that once cooking 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:56.160 is invented, we can get more nutrition from the same 0:09:56.200 --> 0:10:01.160 amount of environmental material. Suddenly the carrying pacity of the 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:04.680 local environment than is larger. There can be more humans 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:08.440 per tribe, which requires bigger brains in order to maintain 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:12.440 relationships with that larger number of humans. The main figure 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:16.440 behind the cooking hypothesis is a British primatologist. I think 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.000 he either is now or it was at some recent point. 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:23.600 Was it Harvard named Richard Rangum, and he wrote a 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:25.720 book laying out this argument in two thousand and nine 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:29.240 called Catching Fire, How Cooking Made Us Human. Rangum is 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:31.800 also one of the authors of this paper about whether 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:34.720 apes prefer cooked food. And I'm not going to go 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:38.040 into all of the pros and cons the arguments foreign 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.240 against the cooking hypothesis. I would just say that my 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:44.800 personal evaluation at a cursory reading of it is that 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:47.000 it looks like it's kind of in the middle zone. 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:49.440 It's one of those arguments that seems to have a 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.520 lot of interesting things going for it, but it also 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:55.400 doesn't line up all that well with the best existing 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.200 evidence about the timeline for the control of fire by 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:02.880 human ancestors. So I don't know. I'd say it's interesting 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:06.319 but far from conclusive. But regardless of what we think 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:10.120 about the evolutionary effects of cooking on our direct ancestors, 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:13.760 pointing out the theoretical background helps us see why the 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:17.720 researchers performed the experiments described in this paper. So the 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:21.640 authors of this paper begin raising a relevant question, which 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:23.880 is that if you were to walk up to one 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:26.480 of our ancestors roughly two million years ago, maybe to 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:30.320 a member of the species Homo erectus, and you offered 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:33.120 them cooked food, are we sure that they would like 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:35.280 it or that they would prefer it to the same 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:38.040 food in its uncooked state. You mean, like like a 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.040 hot pocket. If you brought a hot pocket to one 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.240 of our ancestors, what would they make of it? And well, 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.319 let me react, I feel quite certain that somebody who 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:49.440 showed up with a hot pocket would be regarded as 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:53.840 a worker of evil magic. But anyway, I mean, I 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:56.800 think this is a worthwhile question to ask because we 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:58.720 know that there are lots of types of food that 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:02.280 we would probably rather eat cooked than raw. Maybe lots 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:04.200 of you know, in this very person to person, but 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:08.880 probably most people would rather eat grain, tough vegetables, most meats, 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.840 and so forth in their cooked state. But it's possible 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:14.080 that's just a cultural preference. So, you know, we like 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:16.960 cooked food maybe because we're used to it. Is there 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.000 any way to test this out? And the authors here say, well, 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:24.600 obviously not with archaic commonens, but an interesting analog would 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.400 be to offer both cooked and raw versions of the 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:30.679 same food to great apes, our closest living relatives, and 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.080 see what their preferences are. So that's what this study 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:36.439 looked into. So experiment number one, they were like, hey, 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:39.800 let's try some tubers. Let's get together some carrots, some 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:43.240 sweet potatoes, and some white potatoes and offer them to 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:47.040 chimpanzees in a choice task that exposes them to both 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:49.800 and then allows them to pick between the cooked and 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:54.000 raw forms. And they found in the case of carrots 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:58.280 and sweet potatoes, the chimpanzees definitely liked the cooked version better. 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:01.280 On the other hand, it was interesting the white potato 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:03.520 was more of a toss up. The authors noted that 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:07.000 many chimps seemed kind of hesitant to take the initial 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:10.880 samples of both cooked and raw white potatoes, and it 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:14.320 was basically there was no difference in their preference between 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.200 the two, which seems surprising to me because like, I 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:19.840 love raw carrots, the cooked carrots are good too, but 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:23.559 I cannot imagine wanting to eat a raw potato now. 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:26.559 But the authors said, well, maybe the chimpanzees are just 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:30.000 kind of iffy on potatoes in general. Okay, well that 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.360 would make sense now. A second experiment they did had 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:35.520 trouble really getting much of an answer. But what they 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:39.160 looked into was to the extent that apes prefer cooked 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:41.920 food over raw food. Why do they like it better? 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:44.240 Is it the taste? Is it something about the texture. 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:47.560 And so they experimented with a number of different grade 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:52.120 apes they use chimp, spinobos, gorillas, and orangutans, and they 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:55.520 offered them choices between carrots in the following format, so 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:58.120 you could have whole pieces of carrot raw or cooked, 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:02.880 grated carrot raw or cooked, and mashed carrot raw or cooked. 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:06.960 And they found that when carrots were whole, apes definitely 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:09.880 preferred the cooked pieces to the raw pieces. Again, they 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:13.720 like cooked better, But after that things got more complicated 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:17.000 apes generally did not seem to like the graded carrot 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:20.200 in any format, and they preferred cooked whole carrots to 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:24.320 raw graded or cooked. Graded. Preferences were less clear in 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:27.760 the mashed condition, though. They explained that some difference in 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:30.560 results between the animal test groups for this experiment could 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:33.840 have been influenced by neophobia, meaning fear of food in 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:37.320 unfamiliar forms. Of course, you know, it's common among humans also, 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:40.240 is that we typically we like foods that we're familiar with, 0:14:40.320 --> 0:14:43.440 and we're a little sometimes we're a little hesitant about 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:46.720 foods that are unfamiliar. Yeah, like, for instance, the mashed carrot. 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:50.480 How did he get mashed? Like? Yeah, but you know, 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:53.720 if you were to encounter a mashed carrot in the wild, 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:59.280 you know, the possibilities are not all that appetizing. Yeah, Okay. 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.480 Experiments three of four and this one, the authors write, 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:05.880 quote this experiment provided great apes with choices between raw 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:09.840 and cooked meat and raw and cooked apple malice domestica. 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:13.120 We controlled for neophobia in this experiment because one of 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:16.440 these items was familiar in its raw form apple and 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:19.720 the other was familiar in its cooked form meat. Thus, 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:23.240 this juxtaposed preference is determined by taste, slash, texture, and 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:26.640 those which would be determined by familiarity with the test items. 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:31.000 And in this test, the apes definitely preferred cooked beef 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:33.760 over raw beef, but they did not show a significant 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:37.520 preference one way or the other about the apple. Again, 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:39.720 it's funny thinking about how much this does or does 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:43.520 not overlap with our own preferences. Though again, you know, 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:45.920 human preferences you always have to wonder about being a 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:49.360 product of cultural familiarity. But they say this shows that 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:53.000 neophobia is not the only factor affecting preferences, because the 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:57.080 apes were previously familiar only with raw apple, not cooked, 0:15:57.280 --> 0:15:59.640 and in this experiment, while they did not prefer the 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:03.600 cook apple, they basically showed no difference in preference between 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:06.520 the two. Now, I mean, in all of this, we 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:09.920 have the saying about comparing apples and oranges, and here 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:13.640 we're comparing apples and meat. Uh So, I don't know, 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:16.120 it feels, I mean, not that there's really a way 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:18.040 to improve on this. I'm not I don't mean to 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:20.200 criticize the study, but it's like they're there are certain 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.480 limitations in place with some of these comparisons. I feel, 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:26.040 what do you mean that in that they're they're documenting 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:29.360 different preferences by types of food like well like, for 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:32.160 for instance, to say, well, we control for neophobia because 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:35.880 the raw form apple will still looks like an apple, 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:39.360 and the and the cooked meat still looks like the meat. Um, 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:42.680 I don't know. I find that kind of a confusing rationale. 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:45.560 Oh no, no, I think you're misunderstanding what they were doing. 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:49.480 That they the neophobia thing was that they were familiar 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:52.240 with cooked meat and with raw apple, but not with 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:55.360 cooked apple or raw meat, and so they were trying 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.240 to see, um, does this make any like, does it 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:01.240 just conform to in both cases they prefer whatever they're 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:05.280 previously familiar with. Okay, in the case of meat they did. 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:07.880 In the case of apple not so much. But they 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:11.720 did another test. The fourth experiment was a test for novelty. 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:14.960 They said, quote, we tested chimpanzees that were not given 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:17.400 meat as a regular part of their diet and as 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:20.159 far as was known, had never eaten cooked meat. And 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:23.240 so they're offered raw and cooked beef. And again they 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:26.879 definitely preferred the cooked beef better than the raw. So 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:29.080 in the final discussion they say, yeah, on average, and 0:17:29.119 --> 0:17:32.920 the foods they tested here, apes liked cooked food better 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:37.520 than raw food. With some exceptions. They definitely prefer cooked beef, carrots, 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:40.399 and sweet potatoes. They don't seem to have much of 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:43.439 a preference on average between the cooked and raw forms 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:46.480 of apple and white potato, And it seemed like in 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:50.119 general just didn't really love white potato. And so they 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:52.720 said neophobia might be a contributing factor to some of 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.800 these results, But in experiments that tried to control for it, 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:59.200 the ape still on average thought were pretty cool with 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:03.320 the cooked version of food. But finally, this experiment had 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:08.120 difficulty determining which characteristics of cooked foods the apes were 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:11.000 responding to, you know, was it taste, was a texture, 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:14.040 and so forth. And I do think that's an interesting question, 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:18.480 like if animals other than humans also prefer cooked food 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:21.800 in most cases, why is it like does it taste 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.440 better to them? Is it like because it's softer to chew? 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:27.080 I don't know. Maybe maybe we can come back to that, 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:29.560 but anyway, the authors, you know, I mean, it's difficult 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:31.919 too because we have to stop and realize, like when 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:33.879 they're talking about the difference between a cooked and a 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:36.960 raw white potato, the cooked white potato in this experiment 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:40.200 is also not buttered and salted and you know, and 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:42.439 prepared in these other ways. Like we're just stripping it 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:47.040 down to the basics of what cooking does to this 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:52.199 particular substance. So yeah, like if I were to you know, 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.040 trying to set aside as much a you know, human 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:58.000 complexity as possible, if I were presented with just a 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:01.600 plain white potato and a raw potato, I mean, I'd 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:04.880 like to think I would still prefer the pick potato 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:08.560 to the raw potato, but without anything added to it, 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:12.160 it's still not a very attractive offer. Like the potato 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:16.120 is is something that is best um consumed when there 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.760 are other things done to it, other seasonings, other styles 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:23.720 of preparation, etc. The human mind cannot comprehend the depths 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:28.240 of blandness of a of an unseasoned potato. Yeah. The 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:30.800 carrot is really the one that that throws me the most, 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:34.639 you know, like because it part of me would guess 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:39.439 that there's nothing quite like the raw crispness of the carrot. 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:43.040 Like the carrot is crisp, we identify that with with freshness. 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:46.760 The carrot is sweet. Um, Like what is changed in 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:50.280 cooking the carrot that that would that would make it 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:53.440 more preferable, like, is it just it's just softer? Is 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.800 it therefore seem riper in that sense? And then how 0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:58.920 does that affect the sweetness of it? Would the sweetness 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:01.240 be in any way enhanced by the cooking? I think 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:03.879 in general, I can't speak to carrots in particular. But 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:07.280 the authors actually address this, They say so they talk 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:11.840 about hypothesizing reasons that non human animals would prefer cooked 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:16.240 food over raw food. And so one of the avenues 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:19.720 they talk about is that cooking tends to cause chemical 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:24.720 changes that increase the availability of flavor compounds that animals 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:28.040 of all kinds seem to like. And so the two 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:32.720 main examples they offer are available sugars and available glutamates. 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:36.000 Now sugars, that's I'm pretty clear to understand, and we 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:38.960 can know that from experience. I don't know about carrots. 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:40.919 It probably conforms to this and carrots, but I think 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:43.880 about like onions, like eating a raw onion versus eating 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:47.480 a cooked onion. The cooked onion is so much sweeter 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.400 like the you know, the amount of sugar you can 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:53.199 taste in it is I don't know, it feels like 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:56.600 it's exponential above a raw onion. And yeah, and that's 0:20:56.680 --> 0:20:59.040 that's a case too, where by cooking the onion your 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:03.160 kind of blunting it's um it's effects like the chemical 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:06.480 weaponry if the onion is diluted. Yeah, the sulfur compounds 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:10.480 and stuff. Yeah, so that's sugars. Apparently lots of foods 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:14.360 have more available sugars when you cook them, so they 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:17.879 taste sweeter. Tons of different animals can differentiate the levels 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:21.119 of sugar and a food they're eating, and obviously prefer 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:23.080 the thing that tastes like it's got more sugar in 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:26.200 it because it is probably going to be more nutritionally dense, 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:30.040 it has more calories per same amount of food. The 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:34.840 other thing is the available glutamates. Glutamates are you know, 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:37.320 does that ring a bell? Maybe it's in the phrase 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:42.760 monosodium glutamate, the msg flavor, the umami flavor. Glutamates are 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:47.680 are largely responsible for savory flavors that we associate with 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:51.920 meat and h and also things like tomatoes and hard 0:21:52.000 --> 0:21:56.159 cheeses like parmesan and soy sauce. Those those glutamates or 0:21:56.240 --> 0:22:00.320 that delicious savory umami feeling and that's not just for 0:22:00.400 --> 0:22:02.960 humans either. It turns out tons of animals. I think 0:22:03.000 --> 0:22:07.920 even some invertebrates can detect umami flavor through the presence 0:22:07.920 --> 0:22:12.040 of free glutamates, which are increased by cooking. And while 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:14.080 I was reading about this, I did get really amused 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:16.200 by the idea of like invert I don't know which 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:20.440 invertebrates exactly, but like with lobsters really love soy sauce, 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:23.040 would like there be centipedes who are going nuts for 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:34.040 parmesan cheese anyway. Okay, So cooking often increases the availability 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:37.720 of sugars and glutamates, So that's a favor increasing flavors 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:41.119 that broadly lots of animals seem to like. And cooking 0:22:41.160 --> 0:22:43.840 tends to change the texture of food, usually by making 0:22:43.880 --> 0:22:46.639 it softer and easier to chew, and of course that 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:50.440 appeals to the natural laziness present in all kinds of animals, 0:22:50.440 --> 0:22:53.520 not just us. So I think you could possibly argue 0:22:53.680 --> 0:22:58.720 that in a way, cooking, by massively increasing the presence 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:01.679 of taste and texture qualities that our bodies and brains 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:05.840 are already naturally on the look for, cooking could be 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:09.399 viewed as a sort of ancient form of supernormal stimuli, 0:23:09.640 --> 0:23:13.720