Book 5, Question 79
Let's Cook! Why Did People Start Cooking Food?
Cooking with fire changes food, and it can make some foods softer and easier to chew. Cooked food can also be safer to eat. Archaeologists look for old hearths, or fire spots, as clues about how people lived.
From the book
Page from A Million Whys Book 5
More fun facts
- Every known human society eats cooked food.
- Cooking lets people get more energy out of the food they eat.
- In one experiment, mice fed cooked food gained 15 to 40 percent more weight than mice fed only raw food.
- Scientist Richard Wrangham thinks cooking gave early humans the extra energy to grow bigger brains.
- About three billion people around the world still cook their meals over open fires.
Sources: Scientific American, National Geographic, National Geographic
Questions kids ask
Do all people cook their food?
Yes. Every known human society eats cooked food.