Re:A taste for fat may have made us human, says study
by whatabackend on Saturday February 09, 2019 @05:20AM
(#19121664)
Cooking is so straightforward that it would be astonishing if it weren't discovered. There is a fire in the jungle; hungry humans discover a cooked chicken near the perimeter and realize it was the hot fire that caused it to smell and taste so good. Next time, they go to a fire, capture it and control it to cook some meat. From here, it's monkey see monkey do and the rest is history.
Re:A taste for fat may have made us human, says study
by mrob on Saturday February 09, 2019 @05:51AM
(#19121729)
Why would it smell and taste unusually good before cooking was invented? Isn't it more likely that appreciation for the taste of cooked food evolved because cooked food is safer and more nutritious? If there's no cooked food there's no reason for this preference to evolve.
Re:A taste for fat may have made us human, says study
by koolba on Saturday February 09, 2019 @06:50AM
(#19121862)
It may be the stronger smell or the faster delivery of particulates of burnt fat through the air.
Dogs, wolves, and bears can’t cook or start fires but all of them are attracted to the smell of cooked food as well. You could argue that dogs and maybe wolves co-evolved that preference alongside ours, but that doesn’t hold up for bears.
Re:A taste for fat may have made us human, says study
by BoiledCabbage on Saturday February 09, 2019 @05:27PM
(#19125078)
Are bears attracted to the smell of cooked food? Or just attracted to the smell of food, and cooking is how most people treat food out in the wilderness?
Re:A taste for fat may have made us human, says study
by peteradio on Saturday February 09, 2019 @09:03AM
(#19122309)
Why come did bears evolve to steal my pickinickbasket them?
Re:A taste for fat may have made us human, says study
by pjc50 on Saturday February 09, 2019 @07:10AM
(#19121910)
This is the classic HN comment about how easy it was to invent something in retrospect, but applied to fire.
(If it's so easy, why do none of the other ape species do it? How long before you get an accidental cooked chicken, not an incinerated one?)
These are usually not eaten by most animals, and are available almost everywhere close to year-long, plus they can be stored for later in a dry place.
The human brain consumes a huge amount of calories, so cooking which was done millions of years before homo sapiens arrived as definitively a lot to do with becoming a modern human.
A more intriguing question is, how did cooking start, and how did apes became intelligent enough in order to know how to cook?