Digestibility Of Food

Throughout the history of humanity, a top priority of its populace has been to obtain enough food to stay alive. According to historians and scientists, this urge for consumption has since led to major changes in the human race. One such reshaping occurred from 2.5 to 1.9 million years ago with the invention of cooked food. The second was the domestication of the three main cereal grains, wheat, rice, and maize, which happened approximately 10,500 to 5,500 years ago. Each of these alterations to our diet led to paramount shifts in the human race. The first of these dietetic movements, the invention of cooked food, has evidently led to larger brains, but at a cost. The earliest humans ate little more than what they could find …show more content…
One such test was conducted by a team of Belgian gastrointestinal physiologists on the digestion of eggs. “They discovered… that when you cook your eggs, then almost all of the protein is digested. So it 's digested to the point of about 94 percent, whereas if it is eaten raw, then only 55 to 64 percent of it is digested and the rest is lost.” While this experiment is proof that cooking allows for the digestion of more nutrients, another involving rats displays that ease of digestion allows for accelerated growth. “...rats were given their regular chow pellets in two different forms. One was the ordinary pellet, and the other was with air added. They were puffed up. It 's as if you took a grain of wheat and then puffed it off into puffed wheat.” The rats with the softer pellets expended less effort in digesting their food and grew much larger than their counterparts. It is based on these experiments and discoveries, along with others, that scientists and historians have concluded that the invention has had a permanent impact on the human race, specifically their cerebral capacity and potential for bodily superiority. While the invention of cooking food had a massive impact on the human race by doubling their brain size, another event changed the way humans have lived ever …show more content…
Because they now possessed a reliable and sufficient means of sustenance, these humans no longer had to live as nomads and travel with their food sources. “By providing a more dependable and plentiful food supply, farming provided the basis for new lifestyles and far more complex societies.” Because the work of one farmer could feed multiple people, humans no longer had to spend all of their time finding food and could provide for the advancement of society, such as inventing tools or becoming a skilled craftsperson. Therefore, the domestication of the three cereal grains had a significant impact on the human race, because it triggered the introduction of civilization as we know