Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

This was a huge disappointment. Facts were scattered about like crumbs on the floor. After positing that cooking made our food softer, therefore
easier to digest to give us quick energy, the very last chapter, then states that a study of Japanese women who ate mostly soft food (might it be a cultural cuisine was never mentioned), gained weight around their waists which could lead to mortality. Huh? No mention of Japanese men who
imbibe hi-calorie alcohol, nor bear children; the book simply ends. Sloppy editing and weak conclusions angered me. Maybe it was ghostwritten by a student?

Well written, informative. Thought provoking theory. I have never thought about the effect of cooked foods on nutritional values and evolution. Recommended for anyone interested I how we have come to be human

... if you like Matt Ridley, Richard Dawkins, or other popular writers on evolution, or want something more substantial on cooking than "Julie and Julia." If you are female and like to cook or male and like to eat cooked food, this book provides a persuasive hypothesis why that might be.

The author illustrates, and givens compelling evidence, for his central thesis -- that cooking occurred early enough in human evolution to have an evolutionary effect on us. Indeed, it seems that people cannot survive on uncooked food alone, as their digestive systems cannot extract enough calories. The story of discovery of fire as a central point of human evolution is an interesting, and convincing, story.

Cooked food is delicious. Most people will agree with this statement. But stating we evolved into what we are today because of cooked food...Hard to believe! The theory of evolution is prevalent throughout this book. I have yet to be able to wrap my critically thinking mind around the idea that we evolved from monkeys. If this is so, why are there still monkeys? ? There’s a reason evolution is still to this day referred to as a “theory” and not a fact. Because this book agrees with the theory of evolution, I can’t agree with its message about cooked food. I don’t claim to have the answer either but I wish I did. With so much misinformation out there it’s hard to decipher the truth.

The book being reviewed is "Catching Fire" and the author is Richard Wrangham. This is a book with a theme, namely: Cooking was a major event in the evolution of man. Harvard Professor Wrangham has done a masterful job of building his case. The amount of research done to help explain his points and factually prove his assertions is impressive. Despite his academic credentials and leanings, he has written a book readable by the general public.

Between six million years ago and two and one half million years ago, Eastern Africa was populated with bipedal apes known as Australopithecines. They ate fruit and greens like their Chimpanzee cousins. They even retreated to the trees when predators threatened. Yet they were evolving a skeletal structure adapted for walking and running in an upright stance. Their brains were only about ten percent bigger than a Chimp's brain, but they were smarter and more innovative.

As woodlands thinned out due to climate change and it became harder to find food 2.5 million years ago, one line of Australopithecines survived the change by specializing in harvesting roots and other hard-to-chew foods. Over time, they grew larger teeth and massive jaws to better grind and digest these fibrous foods. About one million years ago, they went extinct. Another line of Australopithecines made meat a larger part of their diet. They learned to fashion stones into sharp-edged tools and weapons to aid them in acquiring and cutting the meat. Homo habilis is the name of this stone-tool-using species. Their brains were a little bigger than Australopithecus and their hands were more adapted to a precise grip, like our own.

Homo erectus is thought to have descended from Homo habilis and he was very likely our direct ancestor. His skeleton looked very similar to ours. His brain was a little more than half as big as ours, but it kept growing during his million-plus-years-long existence. He gave up his dependence on trees and grew longer legs, shorter arms, less hairy bodies, and smaller guts. He is thought to have been able to run down game until they stopped running due to heat exhaustion. His loss of bodily hair and his acquired ability to cool by sweating gave him an advantage. His physical and mental transformation was one of the most radical in the fossil record for human evolution.

Wrangham says it couldn't have happened without the taming of fire and the practice of cooking food. There is ample evidence that Homo erectus used fire; the closer in time to us, the better the evidence. Fire was needed to fend off night predators now that he was sleeping on the ground. Fire was needed to warm him in the night now that he was losing his hairiness and fire was needed to cook his food. Wrangham explains it all in adequate detail for you to appreciate the story of this unique ancestor of ours.

Wrangham presents evidence that cooked food is easier and faster to eat, but most importantly it provides twice the energy of raw food. Moreover, the author believes and offers evidence that we humans cannot survive on raw food anymore. Our bodies have changed radically from our long history of eating cooked foods to where we only lose weight on a raw food diet, feel weak and hungry and may even perish if we don't get back to cooked foods. Consider our flat faces versus the mugginess of an ape or an Australopithecine, Our jaws have gotten smaller, our teeth have gotten smaller, our gut has gotten smaller, and we don't chew our food adequately. Apes spend a good percentage of their waking hours chewing. Unless you grind vegetable matter to a finely divided state, you can't digest it or get nutrition from it. Of course, you could cook it to make it digestible.

Home erectus was the only known hominid until then to migrate out of Africa and end up in places as remote as Indonesia, China, and Eurasia (Georgia). Wrangham thinks the acquisition of fire and cooking made the exodus possible. He would need fire to overcome the coldness of the northern climes. He would need cooking to make meat digestible as hunting was now his best source of nourishment. In fact, it was probably his tendency to follow game that led him out of Africa.

These are the high points of the book, but there is a wealth of information in it beyond this summary. I found it to be a significant book in several ways: First, you will learn more about food, cooking, and related topics than you knew before. Second, You will learn a lot about the relationship between what you eat and what kind of body you will have. Third, you will learn a lot about human evolution with particular attention to Homo erectus. I feel as though I now understand Homo erectus accurately for the first time.

Ralph D. Hermansen, October 12, 2015

Professor Wrangham presents some very interesting facts regarding the impact that cooking had on human development. He relates the development of our human physical traits to the types of food that our human ancestors began to eat and how they were prepared. Unfortunately, the writing style was tiring, and the more I read the less I wanted to read (and finish) the book. It is one of the few books of its type that I just could not force myself to finish in spite of the very interesting subject matter.

I usually read the negative reviews first since the are much more interesting. In this case, however, almost all the complaints are from raw food eaters. Translated: I have a habit that few follow but it is superior to your habits. Well, no, since few studies support the idea that raw food only leads to healthy sustainable lives. The argument that "we once all ate raw" is exactly the point. In our pre-human days we did eat raw, dirty food but something happened when our ancestors discovered fire.

The author mentions the health benefits of cooked food and for those who lived outside our tender, Western easy life, it's quite clear that heat has the power to make foods safer. Many foods cannot be consumed without being treated or cooked - olives, winter squash, foul, etc. the idea that food made us who we are socially, psychologically and mentally is not new but it has never been expressed so well. Undoubtedly fire changed social structures by encouraging bonding. To me, the ritualistic aspect was even greater than the biological advantages.

We are children of those who craved meat, organs and marrow as well as fruit. It explains our modem diet with all it's pitfalls. This is a great book for those looking for something different and original - a new take on what makes us human.

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human, by Richard Wrangham is less a book about food, as it is a book about how cooking our food accounts for our evolutionary development as human beings.

The most notable argument in the book is about when cooking developed. Traditional evolutionary thought views cooking as a late development. In particular it connects it with migration to Northern climes(10-12). Cooking had no real connection to our biological development according to this view..

Wrangham argues, that cooking began much sooner, and that cooking is what allowed us to become more efficient in digesting. In essence cooking our food allowed the energy in to be released and made available to us faster than before.

After offering his hypothesis, Wrangham goes on to examine the case for adopting a raw food diet. There are two things of note here. One, that a raw food diet would work against fertility rates increasing, in which case our population would have died off. Two, that even people who follow raw food diets need periodic binges of cooked food.

As a result of needing less time and energy to digest our food, we had more time to focus on other activities. Among them, we could hunt longer, because food could be prepared and eaten by firelight. This resulted in more efficient hunters.

It also meant that there was more time for other activities. Over time this resulted in the growth of our brains. The human brain, as a percentage of body weight, being very large in comparison with other animals.

Wrangham also suggests that cooking relationships, rather than sexual relationships were at the core of household formation. At the same time Wrangham realizes that while this was beneficial for everyone, men certainly received a far greater benefit out of this arrangement. (177)

While Wrangham speaks out in favour of the act of cooking our food, he doesn't fail to see the dangers that cooking brings to our diet. At the conclusion of Catching Fire, he states:

The big problem of diet was once how to get enough cooked food, just as it is still for millions of people around the world. But for those of us lucky enough to live with plenty, the challenge has changed. We must find ways to make our ancient dependence on cooked food healthier. (207)

Whether you find yourself in agreement with what he says, or not, Catching Fire will present you with a lot of food for thought.

"Catching Fire" is the first book by Richard Wrangham that I have read. I picked up by chance due to the novel and interesting theorum stated on its cover, i.e. that cooking food led to the evolutionary changes that made our primate ancestors into modern humans. I was not disappointed.

The book's main thesis is that cooking food provided an evolutionary advantage due to the overall increased nutrient absorption and digestibility resulting from cooking. Many social and behavioral changes resulted due to the consumption of cooked food, such as male-female pair bondings to hunt, obtain and prepare meat, communities developing around the hunt, and consumption of nutritious tubers and organs that are undigestible when raw leading to more stamina and intelligence.

Wrangham provides ample evidence for his theory. However, he repeatedly presents many of the same ideas in support of this theory. The book frankly became tiring after a certain point due to this repetition. I also do not understand why no pictures were included. For example, comparisons of the different hominid teeth, pictures of the digestion process, fossils, etc. would have been interesting.

But overall the book was a fairly good read, and I would recommend it to anyone seriously interested in human evolution, physical anthropology, or prehistorical cooking.

Author and Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham takes a fresh look at what makes us human, and he comes to a conclusion that is both original and in hindsight obvious - cooking. Our capture of fire not only helped us to keep warm and scare off predators, but allowed us to turn difficult to digest and bland edible fare into such mouthwatering delectables as Sacher tortes, cassoulet and 8 treasures rice. More importantly than satisfying our gourmet (or gourmand) instincts, cooking has had profound impact on both our biology and our society. Wrangham skillfully weaves together a number of different lines of evidence, e.g., comparative anatomy, archaeology, biochemistry, anthropology, and sociology, to demonstrate that it is by this simple heating of food we have literally become human. No other animal cooks their food. Even our closest relatives - the primates - have not only very different behaviors around food, but even their taste and anatomy (geared for long hours of chewing and long times and alimentary tracks for processing the food) are quite divergent from hours. Cooking not only improves the flavor, but increases the accessibility to the protein and nutrients. Because we are able to more efficiently extract nutrients from cooked food, in essence our guts could shrink and our brains to grow. Alas, the American diet of late has been effecting the reverse, but that is another series of books. Wrangham extensively documents and cites the research that supports his hypotheses and findings. These notes are fortunately in the end of the book, so they do not distract from the reading. If there is a weakness, it is his repetitive style of writing. The book is divided into chapters that each support one major point in his hypothesis. However, he often repeats the same set of arguments 2 or 3 times within the chapter. This gets tiresome. However, the novelty of his arguments and clarity of his discussion make this book well worth reading.

The story of hominid evolution to homo sapiens sapiens is primarily the story of brains increasing both in size and computing power.

Today the human brain typically comprises two and a half percent of the average person's body weight yet consumes twenty percent of the typical person's energy.

It's a pretty costly little device and this book presents the startling hypothesis that the original brain food was cooked food because cooking eases the digestability of food products and makes it easier for the body to convert them to other uses.

Viewed against the backdrop of the antiquity of other human activities or artifacts, cooking truly becomes perhaps the "world's oldest profession." Writing and record keeping are obviously most recent dating only to ancient Sumeria some five thousand years ago. Farming dates back perhaps another five or ten thousand years before that. The domestication of dogs coincides with farming also about fifteen thousand years ago. The use of ornamental jewelry and burial artifacts dates back to about fifty thousand years ago.

Deeper in time, bacteria adapted to clothing date to about one million years ago.

But cooking, according to this book, takes us back to the very beginning: nearly two million years ago (also perhaps not coincidentally with the first use of stone tools).

What emerges then is a picture of hominids as much influenced by their activities as they were influenced by them. In this way, Harvard's Wrangham has produced an amazing and thought provoking book that describes what it really took to make us what we are.

Fascinating, you learn so many facts from reading this book that you can share at a cocktail party or with your significant other. The thing is, that the facts all make perfect sense. It is a pleasure when you can learn something at the same time as enjoying the content. This book scientifically expands your mind in a simple way that is accessible to the shallowest mind out there!

This was our book group selection for 27 March 2011. While much of the thesis struck us as "Well Duh!" it was also amazing to discover that, apart from several references to earlier works in the book this was generally unrealized - that is that eating cooked foods enabled about half the work of digestion to be accomplished externally enabling us to have more time and more energy for other things. That cooking food enable our bodies to transform - so that eating raw foods alone a person can essentially starve to death - explains a lot with regard to diets and so forth, but especially satisfies our curiosity concerning how we - homo sapiens - became sapiens. Lots of intriguing insights fill the book and it was a great discussion much of which filled with enthusiasm and personal experiences that went along with the various topics in the book. But there was the hope that a follow up book might go on to discuss some contemporary issues not covered in this one. For example, what is the effect of microwave foods, preservatives, new genetically enhanced foods, fast foods, chocolate! Your readers want to know.

There have been many hypotheses about what separated early humans from our other ape ancestors. Was it living close to water, was it language, was it running? In what is one of the most compelling arguments, "Catching Fire" shows that cooking was pivotal in our development and shapes our lives in many ways even today. If fire didn't make us human, after reading this book you will see how fire was at least one of the key elements.

It is more than just a book about evolution, it also talks about how our food influences us today, how other animals deal with food and how it guides their societies. He puts forth a strong argument that without cooking we could never have adopted persistence hunting, planting, and root gathering of our ancestors. Like this chimps, we would be forced to spend most of our day eating and there wouldn't be enough time in the day to develop the culture and tool-use that are important today.

But more than just putting forth a good argument, the book is engaging and well-written. He presents the mysteries and challengers researchers face and bring us into the search for answers. In my view, the good writing style and important topic makes this one of the best science books of the year.

When I used to to Benihana's Japanese restaurant, I used to think those big grills with all of that fire was just for show. Apparently not. According to Richard Wrangham, cooking doesn't just make raw meat taste better, but also has enabled many of the most important advances in human evolution.

There are several key points in Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. First, cooking food softens it, enabling humans to spend less time chewing and digesting food - and thus more time pursuing other activities. Second, less difficulty digesting food means the human body can dedicate less energy to the gut and more to brains (human brains are abnormally large, and human guts abnormally small). Finally, cooking had social impacts that reduced the time for gathering food, leading to a division of labor and gender inequality.

I found Wrangham's arguments fascinating, but never felt like he "proved" his hypothesis. Much of his evidence is anecdotal. The one thing I still didn't understand is whether he thought cooking or the biological changes in humans evolved first (the chicken and egg problem). I suspect the former, but the exact sequence is unclear. However, the thesis seems to suggest that cooking led to larger brains. This implies that humanity mastered fire before evolving human brains. If this is true, then why have other animals not harness fire?

Some of these sequencing issues left me a bit uncertain about whether cooking really was THE trait that made us human. Nonetheless, the issues discussed in Catching Fire are fascinating and will change the way you look at dinner.

Having just finished listening to Mr. Wrangham's book, I'm a little puzzled at the reactions of some of the raw foodists reviewing it. I never got the impression Mr. Wrangham took issue with raw foodist claims of superiority in diet, only with the claim that humans are perfectly adapted to living on raw food. I came away convinced of two things: if we hadn't started cooking food, we'd still be naked, furry and fighting the other apes for fruit and tree leaves; and that for the modern, sedentary human raw food is likely the better choice for achieving and maintaining a healthy weight. Discussions of bone structure, digestive tract, blood chemistry and even the tendency to overheat after exercise appear to support his thesis that homo sapiens and a few of its ancestors definitely traded fur and a few feet of gut for a bigger brain that results from a dependence on fire to maintain body temperature and cook food.

I've never read any of Mr. Wrangham's other work so cannot speak to other reviewers' charges of misandry. How women came to be cooks makes sense for the early period of time humanity regularly worked with fire, but I'm not getting the connection on why that would have continued much past the agicultural revolution and urbanization. Almost every other norm of human interaction has changed in some way since then; why not the bone-deep perception of who does the cooking? Is it really misandrism to look askance at men?

Interesting book for a wide range of readership, but would probably recommend it more to the academically inclined (but not limited to). If you like anthropology, evolution, and technology this may be an interesting read. I instruct Engineering students in research and report writing classes and we often discuss the impact of technologies and we love to reflect on David Nye's 10 "Questions to think about" (see link below).

I like book as we are forced to think in a new way, a new "spark" to contemplate. The domestication of fire and its impact not only on our digestive track, but all the way to the spark plugs the allow our cars to get any distance, we have tamed nature in specific encapsulated rols that human living became quite different from our ancestors.

Great Read

Technology Matters: Questions to Live With

The author makes an extremely convincing and logical argument for his theory that cooking food (as well as meat eating) helped make us who we are.

Eating raw vegetables makes me feel terrible and has a huge metabolic cost. They just sit in my stomach like a rock - while properly cooked meat and vegetables are digested well. Nuts and seeds are better digested when soaked and then dried as well. I am tired of reading that raw vegetables contain all the enzymes we need to digest them easily, and that raw vegetables are far easier on the digestion than cooked ones. My own experience and that of many people I know, and books on the SCD diet, the GAPS diet and also books on nutrition such as 'Eat Fat, Lose Fat' and books by Dr Sherry Rogers and others just don't bear this out at all.

Cooked vegetables are what you very often need, especially if you are very weak and ill and have digestive and/or metabolic issues. Cooked food is also much nicer to eat, easier to eat and tastes better. Don't believe the raw food hype! Especially don't believe the vegan or almost vegan raw food hype!

Persevering with such an unnatural eating plan despite feeling awful on it just because you've been convinced (wrongly) that it is the healthiest possible way to eat for all of us, is not a good idea.

Having said that, foods very high in enzymes (far more so than raw vegetables) such as sauerkraut and apple cider vinegar are very effective digestive aids, as are properly made enzyme supplements - which do survive the acid stomach environment. Fresh vegetables juices also digest very easily. So while raw vegetables may be low in enzymes as the author states, I disagree with the author that the right sort of enzymes can't make a big difference to digestion and that all enzymes are destroyed by the acid stomach.

Just to be picky... I also disagree that some peoples have been very healthy eating 100% plant based diets and some on 100% meat based diets as the author states in the conclusion. (For more information on the lack of any truly vegan peoples, and the importance of animal products such as eggs to health and so on, see the Weston A. Price Foundation website.) The idea that we can be healthy on any type of macro-nutrient ratio we happen to prefer is just not correct. (See 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' and other books on fats and oils and the problems with very high carbohydrate diets and why high calorie intakes alone are not the cause of obesity as the author suggests.)

I also disagree that animals can all do well on cooked food diets. (What about the research on calves being fed pasteurised and homogenised milk, and dying from it, or the Pottenger's cat experiments which showed that cats need raw foods?) Confusingly the author says animal don't and DO do well on cooked food diets.

The book was very easy to read and quite brief, which I appreciated. I would much prefer a solid but short book than a longer one with huge amounts of padding.

This book makes a very good case for eating real food and cooking your meats, eggs and vegetables.

I agree with some other reviewers that the final chapter could have been a bit better but overall this book is a very good one and well worth reading. I'd recommend it, especially the first 4 chapters.

Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for M.E. (HFME) and Health, Healing & Hummingbirds (HHH)

Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham offers a very interesting hypothesis addressing the evolution of big brains and the ability to process foods, particularly cooking. His proposals are both plausible and far-reaching. Also to his credit, the author successfully sidelines the bulk of new age, dietary meanderings endemic to popular culture. The problem with Catching Fire is that little hard evidence is presented to support the ideas worth pursuing. The author instead resorts to multiple first-person observations and informal experiments. He seems to be constructing a tower of notions that, while not exactly a product of cherry-picking, leaves an impression of what Stephen Jay Gould referred to as "just so stories." The bibliography is sufficiently thorough, but does not jibe well with the text, thus leaving the reader uncertain of which references are being alluded to in the narrative. Finally, the book does not contain a single illustration, graph, or table to assist the in elucidation. Wrangham's hypotheses deserve a better treatment.

This review also appears at my Science Shelf book review archive.

What makes humans different from apes?

To hear Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham tell it in Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, "...the transformative moment that gave rise to the genus Homo, one of the great transitions in the history of life, stemmed from the control of fire and the advent of cooked meals" [p. 2] almost two million years ago.

Dr. Wrangham looks at the advantages of cooked food from an evolutionary perspective. As a new, brainier species evolves, its body has to reallocate to the brain some of the nutrition and energy consumed by other body parts. For that species to thrive without losing other capabilities, it must extract more net resources from its food.

Cooking makes that possible by transforming food into a form that the body digests more efficiently. The same amount of cooked food can supply not only the nutrition to support the same body that the raw food could, but it can also feed a larger brain.

Dr. Wrangham argues that cooking launched early hominids onto an evolutionary path that changed not only brains but also bodies and social lives. Their jaws and digestive systems became smaller, paving the way for the evolution of still larger brains.

At some point, hominid bodies morphed into modern human form, and cooking morphed from an advantageous technology into one that our species could not live without. We became "the cooking apes, the creatures of the flame." [p. 14]

For those readers who argue that we could survive on raw food alone, Dr. Wrangham describes the tribulations of people throughout history who have temporarily survived on uncooked or dried foods.

Even today, when top quality produce is readily available, "raw-foodists" are chronically undernourished. The most extensive research is the Giessen (Germany) Raw Food study of 513 individuals who ate between 70 and 100 percent raw diets. Writes Dr. Wrangham, "The scientists' conclusion was unambiguous: 'a strict raw food diet cannot guarantee an adequate energy supply.'" The energy shortage "is biologically significant.... Among women eating totally raw diets, about 50 percent entirely ceased to menstruate." [pp. 18-19]

Many of Dr. Wrangham's conclusions are bound to be controversial. He devotes two chapters to the social order, including arguments that cooking has led to a sexual division of labor and a degree of male dominance bordering on the abusive.

The epilogue recommends changes in the standard method of computing the caloric content of cooked food. Modern living, including the technology of cooking, has evolved faster than our bodies. His conclusion: "We must find ways to make our ancient dependence on cooked food healthier." [p.207]

Fred Bortz is the author of numerous science books for young readers, including, most recently, Astrobiology (Cool Science).

Well researched and documented, the bibliography alone is thirty pages long, it is also an engaging read. The book itself begs to be read in a group format. While reading, I kept wanting to discuss passages with the author or fellow readers. Astonishingly, no other writer has previously advocated the importance of how cooking effected the nutritional quality of food; therefore, enabling human beings to evolve.

A fascinating and quite compelling argument that the eating of cooked food triggered the evolution of humans' large brains, by providing more usable energy per unit chew. We are accustomed to the notion that our physical evolution has affected our culture, but this is the first strong argument I've seen that the reverse is true as well.

I am intrinsically suspicious of single-causation arguments, but this one is thoroughly researched and very well presented. The only real weakness of the idea is that it's hard to see how anyone could falsify it; in spots (e.g. the discussion of when fire was discovered) the book can't avoid a descent into mere speculation. Quite likely Wrangham hasn't gotten hold of the whole story, but I'm willing to believe he's found an important piece of it.

Well written, well researched but the whole book could be, and should be reduced to one chapter. The thesis is excellent, but way to much detail in supporting it, at least for me. Too academic by far.

Well researched, well reasoned, and well-told. Great synthesis of years of academic research for a lay audience ( like myself) without dumbing down or glossing over the difficult things. And so much interesting material to think about.

Ethan writes: Catching Fire is the second book of the Hunger Games series. I rate this book 5 stars because it's packed with action and reveals secrets that you always wanted to know. If you liked the first book, you'll like this book. Katniss has to go to the Hunger Games again for the Quarter Quell. She has to try to protect Peeta even if it means sacrificing herself. Haymitch says she should team up. That's the only way to keep Peeta alive. Will Peeta win or will he die in the games? Will Katniss even live? Read the book to find out about Katniss's wild adventure in Catching Fire. I recommend this book to 5th and up because there were some parts I had to read over so I could picture what's happening in the arena and I am in fifth grade.

Happy Hunger Games, and May the odds ever be in you favor!

there aren't that many new ideas kicking around, but this book is an exception. how exciting to have 'catching fire' so wonderfully lay out the simple and clear theory that cooking is at the bottom of everything. but this is no dry science read. from homo hablis to the mongols, 'catching fire' is an adventurous read that is sure to capture the imagination. true stories are often the best. 5 stars!!!

This is a brilliant, convincing and thoroughly entertaining exploration of how we evolved into erect, social, and (relatively) brainy human beings. Professor Wangham draws on a multiplicity of disciplines and experiences to examine what seems like an obvious evolutionary change, but one with unexpectedly profound effects on our pre-human ancestors. So much about how we became human becomes clear in this accessible, engaging book. If you read one non-fiction book this year, Catching Fire should be it.

From the professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University, as well as the co-author of Demonic Males and co-editor of Primate Societies, comes Catching Fire, a thoroughly researching book on the importance of the discovery of fire and how it changed Homo sapiens sapiens forever.

While initially thinking Catching Fire would be a in depth foray into our ancestral humanity, looking at different hominids and what it was that led to the discovery of fire and going on from there, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a book more in the style of Michael Pollan's Omnivores Dilemma. While the origin of fire and cooking are certainly discussed in this book, the true story here is how humanity has benefited from cooking, and how it has aided us on the evolutionary path to making us the dominant species on the planet. Wrangham boils it down (pun intended!) to energy and how when foods (especially meats) are cooked, more energy is generated from consuming them. The author scientifically breaks this down by analyzing the energy gained from raw meats as opposed to cooked, as well as vegetables, revealing the problems that some vegetarians and vegans can have in needing to make sure they get enough energy from the foods they consume.

Reading Catching Fire will educate you in a number of ways: you will learn the importance of our ancestors learning to cook foods and further are evolutionary development, but you will also learn why it is we cook foods - on a biological level - and how it can change how we grow and develop, both physically and intellectually.

[...]

The premise of this book seemed very interesting, and I had been looking forward to reading it for several months. But after a couple of chapters, I started skimming; after a few more, I gave it up.

The book is about as dry of a tome as one could write. Chapter after chapter does nothing more than quote and review studies and reports. Had the author woven the facts into an interesting story of man's evolution, he could have had a very readable book. Instead, I felt all of the drudgery of grading a college research report.

As an analogy, imagine a dry but appealing apple whose second half is rotten. Dr. Wrangham once again ruins his work with terrible anti-male bias that no doubt sets well with the p.c. harpies at Harvard, where he is employed, but has been a thorn in this reader's side ever since buying and reading his earlier book "Demonic Males." This text has eight chapters. The first five are well worth the read as Wrangham is obviously quite intelligent, well read, well traveled and experienced. His credentials as a primatologist are outstanding. One sees him every once in a while on television, standing in a jungle, chewing on gorilla fodder, spitting it out and saying how bad it tastes. His idea that cooked food shortened the human gut, reduced human teeth, and enlarged the human brain, and therefore explains periods of major changes in human evolution, is an excellent insight. He writes in a terse manner, economical of words. His logic is generally well reasoned--although not always. If one reads carefully there are genuine non-sequiturs involving obtuse examples that have only vague connections to a subject under discussion, as well as post-hoc errors of logic which really don't prove anything. Dr. Wrangham also relies too much on examples to prove his points, ignoring others that don't. An argument based only on selected examples is faulty. By the second half of his book Wrangham moves much into speculation: "it might have been that" and "maybe" and "perhaps," etc. The second half is also repetitive; Wrangham made his points well in the first half of his book and should have quit there. Finally, the doc couldn't resist inserting two chapters full of misandrism, and by so doing throws his scientific objectivity out the window. Beginning in chapters six and seven ("How Cooking Frees Men" and "The Married Cook") the doc gets up to his old tricks of man-bashing. He should see another type of doctor, who would help him probe hidden childhood memories.

This was a compelling book that will make any raw food eater question the merits of that practice. The author doesn't cite enough scientific studies for my taste, but he makes a convincing case for man evolving by fire quite well.

If you like reading about man's journey starting from australopethecine to homo erectus to present, you'll enjoy this book.

Cooked food is delicious. Most people will agree with this statement. But stating we evolved into what we are today because of cooked food...Hard to believe! The theory of evolution is prevalent throughout this book. I have yet to be able to wrap my critically thinking mind around the idea that we evolved from monkeys. If this is so, why are there still monkeys? ? There’s a reason evolution is still to this day referred to as a “theory” and not a fact. Because this book agrees with the theory of evolution, I can’t agree with its message about cooked food. I don’t claim to have the answer either but I wish I did. With so much misinformation out there it’s hard to decipher the truth.

Author and Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham takes a fresh look at what makes us human, and he comes to a conclusion that is both original and in hindsight obvious - cooking. Our capture of fire not only helped us to keep warm and scare off predators, but allowed us to turn difficult to digest and bland edible fare into such mouthwatering delectables as Sacher tortes, cassoulet and 8 treasures rice. More importantly than satisfying our gourmet (or gourmand) instincts, cooking has had profound impact on both our biology and our society. Wrangham skillfully weaves together a number of different lines of evidence, e.g., comparative anatomy, archaeology, biochemistry, anthropology, and sociology, to demonstrate that it is by this simple heating of food we have literally become human. No other animal cooks their food. Even our closest relatives - the primates - have not only very different behaviors around food, but even their taste and anatomy (geared for long hours of chewing and long times and alimentary tracks for processing the food) are quite divergent from hours. Cooking not only improves the flavor, but increases the accessibility to the protein and nutrients. Because we are able to more efficiently extract nutrients from cooked food, in essence our guts could shrink and our brains to grow. Alas, the American diet of late has been effecting the reverse, but that is another series of books. Wrangham extensively documents and cites the research that supports his hypotheses and findings. These notes are fortunately in the end of the book, so they do not distract from the reading. If there is a weakness, it is his repetitive style of writing. The book is divided into chapters that each support one major point in his hypothesis. However, he often repeats the same set of arguments 2 or 3 times within the chapter. This gets tiresome. However, the novelty of his arguments and clarity of his discussion make this book well worth reading.

I love that the author explores all the different possible explanations and why they do or don't make sense. The explanation of how women became subordinate to men because of depending on cooked food blew my mind.