Hacker News Reader

Sounds like this is in the same vein as the Cooking Hypothesis? Basically that control of fire led to cooking which led to greater nutrient acquisition from foods ( because more foods can be made edible, cooking reduces the energy cost of eating raw by "pre-digesting" them, and reduces losses by allowing the creation of basic broth style foods ) in turn leading to larger brains and our own evolution

View on HN

I heard that raw foods contain the very enzymes that our body uses to digest them. Like how an apple decays on its own over time. Those enzymes get destroyed during cooking so your body has to use its existing enzymes. Not sure if this is accurate information, so I'm mentioning it in case someone knows more about this subject.

this almost sounds like you may be confusing it with natural digestive enzymes that are deactivated during cooking, like the kind that exists in pineapples to help it stave off insects ( if you eat them raw they'll digest part of your tongue and thus give you a raw tongue; heat deactivates those enzymes )

In that case, why would we develop enzymes? We just always had them?

And what about animals that eat only raw food? Does that imply that they wouldn’t be able to digest cooked food?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com