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Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human Hardcover – May 26, 2009

4.5 out of 5 stars 671 ratings

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Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man, the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking. In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution. When our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity began. Once our hominid ancestors began cooking their food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain grew. Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be sued instead to hunt and to tend camp. Cooking became the basis for pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led to a sexual division of labor. Tracing the contemporary implications of our ancestors’ diets, Catching Fire sheds new light on how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. A pathbreaking new theory of human evolution, Catching Fire will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone interested in our ancient origins—or in our modern eating habits.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Contrary to the dogmas of raw-foods enthusiasts, cooked cuisine was central to the biological and social evolution of humanity, argues this fascinating study. Harvard biological anthropologist Wrangham (Demonic Males) dates the breakthrough in human evolution to a moment 1.8 million years ago, when, he conjectures, our forebears tamed fire and began cooking. Starting with Homo erectus—who should perhaps be renamed Homo gastronomicus—these innovations drove anatomical and physiological changes that make us adapted to eating cooked food the way cows are adapted to eating grass. By making food more digestible and easier to extract energy from, Wrangham reasons, cooking enabled hominids' jaws, teeth and guts to shrink, freeing up calories to fuel their expanding brains. It also gave rise to pair bonding and table manners, and liberated mankind from the drudgery of chewing (while chaining womankind to the stove). Wrangham's lucid, accessible treatise ranges across nutritional science, paleontology and studies of ape behavior and hunter-gatherer societies; the result is a tour de force of natural history and a profound analysis of cooking's role in daily life. More than that, Wrangham offers a provocative take on evolution—suggesting that, rather than humans creating civilized technology, civilized technology created us. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Publishers Weekly
“[A] fascinating study… Wrangham's lucid, accessible treatise ranges across nutritional science, Paleontology and studies of ape behavior and hunter-gatherer societies; the result is a tour de force of natural history and a profound analysis of cooking's role in daily life.”

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; 1st edition (May 26, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465013627
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465013623
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 11 and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 out of 5 stars 671 ratings

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Richard W. Wrangham
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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
671 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book well-researched and engaging, with clear writing that makes it easy to read. They appreciate the food science content, with one customer noting how it dispels raw foodist dogma, and they praise its thorough pacing. The book's premise receives mixed reactions, with some finding it interesting while others find the conclusions dissatisfying. While customers agree that cooking makes food easier to digest and provides energy more efficiently, some note that the nutritional profile is oddly lacking.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

72 customers mention "Information quality"72 positive0 negative

Customers find the book well-researched and fascinating, with original insights that present a compelling set of arguments.

"...All in all, this book makes one of the stronger arguments I've read for what drove the increase in human brain size...." Read more

"...That said, there is much to love in this book. The analysis is brilliant, it's extremely well-documented, and at the same time it's highly readable..." Read more

"...However I now think that the author actually does a very good job with his hypothesizes, trying to relate them it to reasonable verifiable facts and..." Read more

"...The reader gains insight into how family structure evolved, and at the same time is enlightened about what kinds of foods are really contributing to..." Read more

65 customers mention "Readability"65 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and thoroughly enjoyable, noting that it reads like a novel.

"...Unlike many arguments this one is strong and well argued. The author makes a good case that cooking was at least a factor in our development of big..." Read more

"...it's extremely well-documented, and at the same time it's highly readable and often amusing. Some aspects of the theory are disturbing...." Read more

"...Good book! Five star. Possibly requires two readings!" Read more

"...this is a well written and thought provoking book that should find a wide readership." Read more

24 customers mention "Writing quality"24 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the writing quality of the book, finding it clearly laid out and easy to read.

"...this is a well written and thought provoking book that should find a wide readership." Read more

"...Wrangham provides us with a well researched argument and an extremely well written and interesting book. Strongly recommended." Read more

"...It is also well written, enough so to keep the interest of the casual reader." Read more

"...It's all clearly laid out and well-developed...." Read more

22 customers mention "Food science"22 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's coverage of food science and nutritional insights, with one customer noting how it dispels raw foodist dogma.

"...This book argues that the ease of digestion and the added nutritional value available in cooked food was the key...." Read more

"...First, fire is used for cooking, as all primates find cooked food more delicious (even monkeys know to follow a forest fire to enjoy the cooked nuts)..." Read more

"...of this, Wrangham argues are legion: cooking food removes toxins and alcaloids from raw food, it slows spoilage, it makes the food easier to digest..." Read more

"...cooking, or eating, you will find this book as delectable as your favorite cooked dish!" Read more

12 customers mention "Pacing"9 positive3 negative

Customers appreciate the pacing of the book, finding it well-researched and thorough, with one customer noting it is very thoroughly footnoted.

"...written for the educated rather than academic reader, it does contain thorough and informative endnotes..." Read more

"...It's all clearly laid out and well-developed...." Read more

"...text of the book comprises just 207 widely spaced pages, yet is somewhat repetitive...." Read more

"...This book is plausible, convincing, and very thoroughly footnoted with references to recent research on virtually every point it makes...." Read more

6 customers mention "Energy efficiency"6 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's insights on energy efficiency, noting that cooked food provides more usable calories than raw food, and one customer mentions less energy required for the digestive system.

"...Less energy required for the digestive system leaves more energy for the brain...." Read more

"...They all are driven by the discovery of better and better sources of food energy, for our physical engine, and by related cultural adaptations that..." Read more

"...and softens all foods, permitting more complete digestion and energy extraction...." Read more

"...slows spoilage, it makes the food easier to digest and increases the caloric yield of food...." Read more

14 customers mention "Premise"9 positive5 negative

Customers have mixed reactions to the premise of the book, with some finding it interesting while others mention a dissatisfying denouement.

"...The Epilogue comes as a wonderful surprise and reveals that in addition to scholarly research, the book is ultimately polemic...." Read more

"...While his book is rather small and the ideas are not deeply explored, this is largely because the hypotheses that Wrangham presents are quite new...." Read more

"...It was an interesting and enlightening read, with many "aha!" moments...." Read more

"...of discovery of fire as a central point of human evolution is an interesting, and convincing, story." Read more

12 customers mention "Digestion"7 positive5 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the book's approach to digestion, with some noting that cooking makes food easier to digest, while others point out that it is oddly lacking in a nutritional profile.

"...Clearly, cooking makes food more digestible, but only humans seem to have evolved a digestive system based on the ready supply of cooked food...." Read more

"...only aspect of our modern diet that he addressed was the calorie density of our food, and flaws in how we count calories...." Read more

"...starch, denatures protein, and softens all foods, permitting more complete digestion and energy extraction...." Read more

"...toxins and alcaloids from raw food, it slows spoilage, it makes the food easier to digest and increases the caloric yield of food...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2009
    Many mechanisms have been proposed for driving the explosion of human intelligence from our chimp-like ancestors. This book argues that the ease of digestion and the added nutritional value available in cooked food was the key. Unlike many arguments this one is strong and well argued. The author makes a good case that cooking was at least a factor in our development of big brains. (Evolution tends to involve interacting factors, and even if cooking was a vital part of the mix it was probably not the only factor that mattered.)

    The author goes through the evidence that all known human societies cook food. Even in reported cases where foods we would expect to cook are eaten raw it is due to the expediency of eating on the move due to hunting or other needs to move on without starting fires; once settled or at home food is once again cooked by the hunter-gatherer societies cited.

    Wrangham explains how cooking softens food, galatinizes starch, and denaturates proteins. All of these ease digestion, and allow more energy to be extracted from food with less energy used by the digestive system. (Fire effectively starts the digestion process.)

    There is a raw food movement afoot in our society today based on the mistaken belief that cooking is unnatural. In fact, as the author shows, people on such diets can lose a lot of weight, can become malnourished, and don't appear to get the expected nutrition from the food they eat raw. Compared to, say, chimps, our digestive system has become smaller and less capable, and is tuned to a richer, easier to digest, diet; in other words, just the kind of diet cooking produces. The author also notes that many of the fruits that form a key part of the chimp diet are unpalatable to humans, and in large quantities may be toxic. Chimps don't live on the kinds of human-friendly fruits that humans have breed for their consumption, they live on fruits and rough matter that we have lost the ability to digest and process.

    As an interesting side note, the author provides examples of how other animals thrive on cooked food, even though it is not a natural part of their diet. Clearly, cooking makes food more digestible, but only humans seem to have evolved a digestive system based on the ready supply of cooked food.

    A key change in the human digestive system is that it takes less energy to digest the cooked food diet we rely on. (Digesting food takes a lot of energy; that's why people get tired after a large meal.) Less energy required for the digestive system leaves more energy for the brain. So there is a reasonable argument that cooking allowed for the extra energy needed for our big brains.

    The author extends his argument to explain how cooking encouraged pair bonding and the division of male and female activities. This is slightly more speculative, and an area where other factors may have played important roles. As I said earlier, I don't think a single factor drove our evolution.

    As a side note: The July 2009 issue of Scientific American, released about the same time, has a news note about how humans seem to have feature in common with juvenile chimps, perhaps relating to a delay in development know in science as neoteny. This includes such features are flatter faces and reduced jaw size, as seen in juvenile chimps compared to adults. The proposed result is that human babies have longer for their brains to develop after birth, in accordance with various past suggestions. But note that Wrangham's argument includes smaller jaws and a smaller digestive system attuned to easier to digest food. And what food is easier to digest than milk? This observation seems to fit very well with the argument of this book.

    All in all, this book makes one of the stronger arguments I've read for what drove the increase in human brain size. Unlike many such proposals, the author steps through many lines of reasoning, and addresses arguments to the contrary. A solid effort that is likely to inform future research on the development of modern humans.
    7 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2009
    I first encountered Richard Wrangham some years ago, while searching the internet for information on when humans started cooking their food. I came across a video of a talk he gave at the International Association of Culinary Professionals 2005 International Conference called "The Natural Cook: The Significance of Paleo-Gastronomy". It was electrifying. I'd never heard this theory before, and it totally made sense. I bought the talk on CD and then went searching the internet for articles he'd written. So I was excited to see this book.

    The reason I was researching whether paleolithic people cooked is because the paleolithic diet defines "good nutrition". People argue endlessly about whether we should eat cooked food or raw, meat or vegetarian, low carb or high carb, etc. The answer to all questions such as these is found in the answer to this question: "What did we evolve eating?" What we are adapted to eat is what we should eat. I talk about this - and how the processed food industry turns our instincts against us - in my own book, "Normal Eating for Normal Weight".

    There's a movement of people trying to eat according to the paleolithic diet, and quite a few books attempt to describe what this is (e.g. The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat). The touchstone for what's paleo has always been, "Can you eat it raw?" since it was assumed that cooking came later in human evolution. Wrangham turns this touchstone on its head. If humans are human BECAUSE they cook, if there is no such thing as a human who didn't cook, then there's no reason to believe that we evolved eating only those foods that could be eaten raw.

    It was my hope that "Catching Fire" would give an outline of the paleolithic diet in light of this new "cooking" perspective. But it did not, and that is my one disappointment with the book. Traditionally, the paleolithic diet was thought to exclude grain, beans, potatoes, and milk products (and, of course, anything refined or factory processed). Grain, beans, and potatoes cannot be eaten raw, and wild animals cannot be milked. Are grain, beans, and potatoes still to be considered "not paleo" in light of the cooking hypothesis? What was the nutritional profile of the paleo diet - fat, carb, protein? What was the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio? I wish he'd addressed these issues.

    Sadly, the only aspect of our modern diet that he addressed was the calorie density of our food, and flaws in how we count calories. He said nothing at all about any other aspect of our modern diet. There is a lot more to nutrition than calories! The book ended with an endorsement of Michael Pollan's recommendation to eat whole, unprocessed foods, but I already knew that. I was hoping for specifics. Maybe Wrangham will write a second book that gives more detail on the nutritional profile of the paleolithic diet, especially as compared to the modern diet. An increase in calorie-dense food is by no means the only difference!

    That said, there is much to love in this book. The analysis is brilliant, it's extremely well-documented, and at the same time it's highly readable and often amusing. Some aspects of the theory are disturbing. He gives a very strong argument for how cooking led to a patriarchal social system where women serve men by performing the cooking and all other domestic tasks - a social system that persists to this day.

    This is a brilliant book and a great read. It's just oddly lacking in a nutritional profile of the paleolithic diet. I hope he follows up with a second volume.
    34 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Persis Gretna
    5.0 out of 5 stars Catching Fire
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2009
    This is a very interesting book. Cooking certainly made us human. I haven't read it all yet as it's a non fiction but dip into from time to time. I like to read a synopsis of all books before I buy expecially if it is an author I'm not familiar with and the write up on this one was good. I also take note of write ups in papers which lead me to review the book on amazon in the first place. Would recommend this one as a must read to everybody.
  • Carlos Mainero
    4.0 out of 5 stars Catching Fire: How cooking made us human
    Reviewed in Mexico on December 15, 2016
    Scientific description of the effects of cooking in our existence as a species different from other apes. While very interesting, some chapters are difficult to follow for a lay person in biology or chemistry.
  • E.C.A. Croonenberg
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!
    Reviewed in the Netherlands on August 31, 2019
    This book will forever change your idea how humans evolved. It shows how our intimid relationship with fire fully shaped us.
  • JAW
    5.0 out of 5 stars Qu'est ce qui différencie l'homme de l'animal ?
    Reviewed in France on March 16, 2020
    Je lis en moyenne deux livres par semaine, mais cela fait longtemps que je n'avais pas lu un livre qui m'ait autant appris. Avec une science profonde et une culture très large, Richard Wrangham nous démontre que c'est la maîtrise du feu et partant la cuisine qui a modifié le corps et surtout le cerveau de notre ancêtre Homo erectus qui a colonisé toute la terre. La cuisine et non le langage qui existe chez nombre d'animaux, alors qu'aucun ne sache cuisiner.
    J'ai toujours pensé que la cuisine était le principal pilier de toute culture, car l'homme dépense beaucoup d'énergie pour se nourrir mais reste attaché à ses habitudes alimentaires. La cuisine fait vivre l'agriculture, le commerce et maintenant l'industrie agro-alimentaire. Les religions primitives y étaient toutes très attachées avec leurs tabous et leurs sacrifices et la religion juive y consacre des pages et des pages du Talmud. Les religions musulmane et chrétienne qui en dérivent y sont également sensibles et l' hindouisme y est très sensible. Chaque bouchée que nous avalons est le fruit de millénaires de traditions.
    Mais ce que je pensais n'avait pas la solidité du travail de Wrangham et je fus émerveillé d'apprendre que j'avais raison. Je dois dire que je partage les points de vue de l'auteur sur nombre de sujets et d'auteurs comme Darwin (sur lequel j'ai écrit un livre) ou Claude Lévy-Strauss. Son épilogue sur les calories m'a fait sauter de joie.
    Dr Julien Wyplosz
    Report
  • Mina
    5.0 out of 5 stars 目からウロコ
    Reviewed in Japan on October 11, 2010
    「加熱した食物が、人間を作った。」この本の内容を、一言でいうとこうなります。人間が、生の食物だけでは
    生きていけないということを、初めて知りました。また、結婚の起源が調理にあるというのも、目からウロコでした。
    女が調理した食べ物を男に力づくで奪われないために、特定の男のために調理をする代わりに保護してもらう契約が
    結婚である、というのが著者の主張です。確かに結婚の本質かもしれません。
    とすると、女が法律で守られ、男が調理済みの食物を簡単に手に入れられる社会では、結婚の必要性は低いという
    事になります。結婚しない人間が増えるのも必然かもしれません。