Recipe for accelerated evolution of the human race may lie in a cooking pot

New research shows meat and potatoes provide more accessible energy roasted than when eaten raw.

The discovery suggests cooking helped humans to progress beyond the level of small-brained, ape-like creatures with no mastery of fire.

Early human ancestors included meat in their diet as long as 2.5 million years ago but ate it raw after pounding with stone tools.

Then around 1.9 million years ago, human evolution underwent a sudden change. The bodies of early humans grew larger, their brains increased in size and complexity, and they became adapted for long-distance running.

This transformation was no coincidence, say researchers. It probably occurred because of the invention of cooking.

Scientists fed two groups of mice a series of diets consisting of diced beef or sweet potato that was either raw or cooked. Sometimes the food was provided whole and sometimes pounded. Energy yield was tracked by measuring changes in the animals’ body mass, and watching how often they used an exercise wheel.

The findings appear today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Whether meat or vegetable, cooked food was found to deliver more energy to the body, leading to bigger, more active mice. The benefits of cooking were greater than those of pounding.

Lead researcher Rachel Carmody, from Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, said: “The results of this paper are equally relevant to human evolution and to the way we think about food today.

“It is astonishing that we don’t understand the fundamental properties of the food we eat. All the effort we put into cooking food and presenting it – mashing it up, or cutting it, or slicing or pounding it – we don’t understand what effect that has on the energy we extract from food, and energy is the primary reason we eat in the first place.”

Earlier theories suggested human evolution was spurred by an increase in the quantity of meat in the diet.

Co-author Professor Richard Wrangham, also from Harvard University, who originated the cooking hypothesis, said cooking food was important because it provided people with increased energy “and life is all about energy.”