Cooked by Michael Pollan

The oldest and most raw form of cooking

There is something primal about a meat roasting on fire and I suppose some sub-conscious reaction in the ancient part of our brains makes us remember our hunter-gather days when we used to hunt and kill our food. Killing animals for food or for ritual was/is common in very many cultures across the world.

And unlike today, where there is a “… graceful distances of miles …” between the killing and the eating, killing an animal used to an emotionally and spiritually charged endeavour (not to mention physically demanding).

It did not just demand physical skill (make it good to eat) but also mental skill (make it “good to think“) so that callous act of killing was transformed into something we could digest. Philosophies and rituals that helped us believe “we kill animals not for our dining pleasure but because God demands it; that we cook their meat over a fire not to make it tastier but because the rising smoke conveys the offering to the heavens; and that we eat the prime cuts not because they’re the most succulent, but because the smoke is all the gods really want.“.

This was serious business and ancient civilisations knew this, that is why the exercise was a ritual in itself (often a solemn one), many were performed by priests and everyone knew what was going on.

Some places still preserve this old art form like the Skylight Inn in Ayden, NC, USA. Though how much is actually being “preserved” is up for debate since the input (hogs in this case) has fallen prey to industrial scale “production” (CAFOs as they’re called). The nutrition from an animal that roams free and lives a full life is much different from one who spends life in a cage and is a “much leaner and faster-growing animal, one that, thanks to genetics, modern feed, and pharmaceuticals, is ready for slaughter several months before its first birthday.“.

We’re the only ones that cook (cooking hypothesis): So really, if we stop cooking then we’re like other animals. Raw food fans will not like this section. The author extensively draws upon the book “The Raw and the Stolen” here.

Cooking allowed our ancestors a host of benefits. So many benefits in fact that not only did those lead to us becoming in the dominant species but also that there is no way we can back now.

With the emergence of Homo Erectus (1.9M years ago) something interesting happened: Their bodies got smaller but their brains got larger. There is a case for the discovery of fire and the emergence of cooking being able to explain this development.

The gut does have to work as hard when we eat cooked food: It denatures protein, gelatinises starch, kills bacteria and parasites, improves taste and texture. Cooking also increases shelf life.

It is known that a significant portion of waking hours of the majority of animals is spend eating or finding food. By cooking our food with fire we were able to give ourselves back some time – four hours per day.

What did we do with those four hours? Well, we invented culture, philosophy, science, religion, society and literally everything else we call “modern living”

Brains are energy hungry and it was cooking that provided this energy (raw meat by itself is now enough). For the first time we had a decisive advantage over other animals and an energy surplus. Bigger brains led to more and better coordination, very important because by himself Homo Erectus (or even modern Home Sapiens) are not capable of much compared to what other animals can do. Cooking FTW basically.

Fascinating how it’s not just the method and materials that change when we move from roasting to boiling (or any of the many things that involve cooking in a pot) – its a paradigm shift in philosophy about life.

Cooking with fire is done in the open (not least because of the obvious reason that people are not fans of seeing their houses burn down), its dangerous, its a spectacle, its an open invitation (or challenge depending on the way you look at it) for society and strangers to size you up. Cooking with water on the other hand is done inside the house (usually in the kitchen), within closed doors, its sort of the opposite of glamorous, its routine, its safe and it signals to the world that you’re minding your own business. It is done for the family (not strangers) and indeed the “hot, fragrant casserole” will exert a gravitational force “gathering us [family members] around it like a miniature hearth.“.

Cooking with fire is extravagant and minimising wastage is often not the prime subject. Bits of meat fall to the ground, juices and fats drip off and the entire cooing apparatus (the spit) is often destroyed or left behind without second thought. Cooking with water is economy, its about preserving even the last drop, everything remains inside the pot, fresh ingredients from this time are combined with leftovers from previous meals, even the liquid medium plays the important role of making tummies feel fuller even if the actual food content was lesser.

Cooking with fire is literally a big piece of meat over a fire. More brawn than brains. Cooking with water is so many different ingredients, sauces, stock, spices coming together in exactly the right quantities and the right time to create something that is more than the sum of its parts. More brains than brawn.

Cooking with fire is usually done by men and it is a sign manliness if a man can cook a good barbecue. Cooking with water (most often in a domestic setup) is mostly done by women and the becoming of a woman often counts being adept in the kitchen as a key requirement. In a way cooking with fire indicates wild, savage freedom, while cooking with fire indicates civility, domestication and sophistication.

It provided a way to consume plants (roots, seeds and the like) beyond just consuming fruit. Thus providing an alternate source of food when the hunting season wasn’t good.

Like fire, it allowed the breakdown of complex stuff into simpler stuff that the body could then more easily digest. Like a “second stomach” outside the body. This led to a big energy surplus that we then did a lot with.

Fertility rates increased. Toddlers could be weaned earlier, which then could give time to mothers to recover and conceive again.

Less time in the kitchen that has been enabled by the countless number of “solutions” offered by the food processing industry “canned meals, freeze-dried foods, dehydrated potatoes, powdered orange juice and coffee, instant and superconvenient everything.“.

Like any other endeavour, good cooking requires time. Guess what we’re short of in our busy lives?

But that did not have to mean that what got sacrificed was cooking – it has been for centuries a critical enabler of human progress. It’s harder to make scientific discoveries and invest new vaccines on an empty stomach.

As more women entered the “workforce” (as if to say that what they do at home is not work), it has naturally left less time to cook (something that traditionally women have done). But it was not something that women seemed to have complained about (cooking being a more than just a chore), they just worked harder

The author mentions a study that found working women “putting in fifteen hours more work a week than men”. Often as they balanced responsibilities at home and at work, a woman’s career progression was measurably less steep than that of a man.

What really did it in was the food processing industry that (smartly) used the feminist movement to sell their products under the guise of “women’s liberation”. When you are a working Mom and somebody promises to give back some of your time, you listen.

It was hard doing, but thanks to the marketers at food corporations Americans slowly got convinced that microwaving a TV dinner was the same as making it from scratch using raw ingredients. “… the corporate project of redefining what it means to cook and serve a meal to your family has succeeded beyond the industry’s wildest expectations. People think nothing of buying frozen peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for their children’s lunch boxes.“. Sad.

Capitalism, yeah, good thing but could definitely use some improvement.

I suppose there is no need to explain the harmful effects processed foods have on our long term health. There is no doubt that the collective reduction in the healthspan of a population will also impact the trajectory of the nation and its standing in the next century (say). Bottom line, whenever feasible, prioritise cooking homemade meals for your household.

For a long time the author talks about how he got into baking white sourdough bread. A meditative and rewarding experience though the output may not have been first-class.

“White bread?” I hear you say, “isn’t that like, not great for our health over the long term?” – Yes, yes it is. And Pollan acknowledges that in the excitement of baking an ever perfect white loaf he may have glossed over the nutrition aspect of it. And then he talks about how “our species can sometimes be too smart for its own good.“.

We’ve been processing food for a long time now, often stripping it of its nutritive value. Food processing is fine, but “processing” that leaves food worse off than before, hard to understand why it’d exist. Oh wait, the human limitation that prefers sacrificing long term benefit for short term pleasure.

According to the author, the defining moment when food processing turned bad was when we started preferring white bread somewhere in the nineteenth century.

The colour white is popularly regarded as the symbol of purity. But the actions required to make white bread strip it of the most nutritious parts of the (wheat) seed. Still this is a tough process and so white bread was usually for the rich. Then came the roller mill. Ta-da!

“Not long after roller mills became widespread in the 1880s, alarming rates of nutritional deficiency and chronic disease began cropping up in populations that relied on the new white flour.“

Well, no problem right? Let’s go back to eating whole coarse wheat. Yes, OR we could add back some of the lost nutrients from the white bread and $ell it for even more profit! How about that eh? Yes, that is what we will do. Genius.

“Here was a classic capitalist “solution.” Rather than go back to address a problem at its source—the processing of key nutrients out of wheat—the industry set about processing the product even more. This was sheer brilliance: The milling industry could now sell the problem and the solution in one neat package. But fortifying white flour with the missing vitamins represents only a partial, reductionist solution to what turns out to be a much more complex problem.“.

“But whole-grain bread seems to be recovering from its sixties revival and is currently enjoying a reversal of fortune, or at least prestige, with white bread, in a sort of carnival of traditional bread values. Now it is the well-to-do who want brown bread, while white bread is becoming déclassé. The public has gotten the news about the health benefits of whole grain.“.

Fermentation is different from the other methods of cooking because it does require an external application of (heat) energy.

Fermentation has been around for a long time and benefits foods (and its consumers) immensely by increasing shelf life, nutrition and digestibility and eliminating pathogens. List of fermented foods.

Fermented foods have lots of microbes in them which are fine to eat. These microbes make the landscape of our gut flora better. And a vibrant, optimally diverse gut microbiome is linked to a bunch of health benefits not to mention a stronger immune system.

Fermented foods (especially one’s traditional to your culture) should be part of one’s diet.

Unfortunately, diets in the developed world have progressively become devoid of live cultures. One could say that it started with when we discovered the microscopic world existed and then discovered a link between some of those microorganisms and the diseases that plagued us. In our enthusiasm we seem to have thought then that all of those microbes were bad, when in fact only some of them were.