Michael Brooks

Here comes the science bit

Cooking is the root of all evil

If we hadn’t learned to roast meat, many of society's ills would never have happened.

By Michael Brooks Published 13 July 2012 14:03

From global warming to extinction: modern problems come down to meat. Photograph: Getty Images

The evil that chefs do lives after them. Until his death on 24 June, the Galapagos turtle known as Lonesome George was the rarest creature in the world, his forebears hunted to oblivion by hungry sailors.

Then there is the deadening legacy of the Rio+20 summit – an “epic failure”, as Greenpeace put it. We might not be eating rare species to the brink of extinction any longer but, as a result of our activities, climate change will drive many species to their doom. And it is clear that the chefs are to blame for this, too.

To see why, we have to take a closer look at the human brain. In order to harness resources that ensure our survival, human beings have learned a range of skills that makes us uniquely dangerous. We learned how to domesticate animals, tame wild land for agriculture, build cities and design and construct machines for rapid travel over vast distances.

It takes extraordinary cognitive abilities to pull all this off. Which makes it all the more remarkable that the human brain is not particularly unusual. An analysis published in the 25 June edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America shows that a human being’s brain is just a scaled-up version of the generic primate brain.

The human brain has about 85 billion of the glial cells that provide a scaffold for the information-processing neuron cells – of which there are roughly 86 billion. This is the same ratio of processing cells to support cells as found in other primate brains. The common report of ten (sometimes 50) times as many neurons as support cells is false.

Then there is the claim that the human cerebral cortex, the outer covering of grey matter, is particularly rich in neurons. It is not: the ratio of normal, cerebellar neurons to cortical neurons is the same in human beings as in every other mammal, adjusting for how the density of neurons varies with brain size.

Brain size does differ wildly across nature. But many creatures have large brains only because they have large neurons; a tenfold increase in the number of neurons in a rodent cortex results in a fiftyfold increase in brain size. Primates, on the other hand, pack small neurons: ten times as many neurons give a brain only ten times bigger.

Basically, our advanced cognitive abilities arose because we have packed the largest number of neurons into one network. Our brain size seems to have crossed a threshold, a tipping point that switches on the kind of innovative thinking that launches technological development on a scale that can change a planet.

Meat is murder

The thing is that those extra neurons use up a lot of calories, calories to which the great apes can’t get access. Neither could the earliest human beings. But somewhere in early human evolution, we managed to find the extra few hundred kilocalories a day necessary for our brain expansion. How did we do it? By harnessing fire. Put simply, cooked food yields much more energy than raw.

So, it was the first chefs who created the modern human – and all the devastation its brain has unleashed. The cooking of Galapagos turtles was only the final act of the chefs; without the first of their kind, Lonesome George would not have been lonesome at all. If we hadn’t learned to cook, we would never have been able to come up with the means of global travel, prompting us to look for food in far-off places.

Without roasted meat, there would have been no Industrial Revolution, no devastation of swaths of Planet Earth’s animal and plant species, no catastrophic climate change. The politicians are off the hook – bring me the head of Jamie Oliver.

Michael Brooks’s “Free Radicals: the Secret Anarchy of Science” is published by Profile Books (£12.99)

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16 comments

Sun, 2012-07-22 20:29 — Trenchant1 (not verified)

What a pathetic article. "Oh for the days before civilization!" You would never have learned to write. You would have lived in a cave and probably died very young. In fact, you would almost certainly never have been born. Grow up.

Wed, 2012-08-22 17:03 — Charlie B (not verified)

Get a sense of humour. Do you think the author really means that he longs for a time gone by, or do you think perhaps the article is slightly tongue in cheek?

Thu, 2012-07-19 12:39 — Judi Sutherland (not verified)

Just how does cooking food put more calories into it? My huge and complex brain can't work that out.

Sun, 2012-07-22 20:31 — Trenchant1 (not verified)

It doesn't put more calories in but it does make them more digestible.

Thu, 2012-07-19 12:22 — Jackthedinosaur (not verified)

With no technological development, you wouldn't have the internet to complain about the level of development and the destruction that man wreaks on the world. To blame our ancestors for being innovative and finding solutions to their problems at the time is pointless, you can't change that; how about we focus on what we can do to make the world better today, you know, using our brains to solve problems..

Tue, 2012-07-17 08:08 — Rahuk sharma (not verified)

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Sun, 2012-07-15 13:03 — Barrie J (not verified)

The trouble started when societies gave up hunter gathering and settled down to farm.
With less time spent masticating roots and chasing aardvarks there was more time on their hands for mischief making.
Whether growing larger brains, writing 50 shades of grey, putting men on the moon or devising a method of perfect roast pork with crackling.
Or even devising more productive methods of reproducing!

Sat, 2012-07-14 14:59 — Keir

Wrong Oliver.

Oliver Cromwell murdered fellow Englishmen who would have seen economic development based on equity, not exploitation. It there is one great culprit, it is he.

Sat, 2012-07-14 13:22 — James R. Greer (not verified)

I think you've got the facts reversed here; It was our advanced cognitive abilities that enabled us to develop strategies and tools to hunt for, and cook meat. Not the other way around. Your article did give some food for thought though!
Get rid of bed bugs yourself

Sat, 2012-07-14 11:41 — karthick (not verified)

I like the first line, but the cooking is indirect to the social problems. tha'ts why people doesn't regconized that. I like roated meat very much. This does not mean I am one of the factor to social illness.
cooking blog

Fri, 2012-07-13 22:06 — ClaireL (not verified)

Bring me the head of Robert Stevenson, or the person who invented the first loom, or whoever started the Industrial Revolution, thereby creating consumerism, which is the scourge of modern day living. The years just before the steam railways, in England, were community living at it's very best.

Sat, 2012-07-14 09:47 — Fordy1968 (not verified)

You'll lead the way in ridding your household of a computer then?

Fri, 2012-07-13 19:41 — eracings

"Without roasted meat, there would have been no Industrial Revolution, no devastation of swaths of Planet Earth’s animal and plant species, no catastrophic climate change." Is this an invitation to become Vegetarian?

eRacings

Fri, 2012-07-13 18:41 — DSC (not verified)

...or this substandard article for that matter. Actually maybe that 'brain expansion' wasn't needed for this to exist.

Fri, 2012-07-13 17:18 — simonfbarnes

"But many creatures have large brains only because they have large neurons; a tenfold increase in the number of neurons in a rodent cortex results in a fiftyfold increase in brain size. "

what utter tosh! 10X is 10X however big the neurons unless adding more makes them grow too!