why do these apes prefer cooked foods over raw?

[dsc.discovery.com]

Other Apes Like a Cooked Meal, Too
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

June 4, 2008 -- Freshly cooked meals may not be an option in the wild, but an extensive taste test involving several great apes has revealed that, like humans, they seem to prefer cooked foods over raw.

The finding counters the belief that humans developed a preference for cooked chow well after we began to control fire.

Instead, it's now believed that a preference for cooked foods -- which tend to be softer and sweeter -- existed in our hominid ancestors before controlled fire emerged. Since that happened between one million and 1.6 million years ago, hominids probably began to cook their food not long thereafter, according to the new study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Human Evolution.

"Given our evidence, early hominids would have already had a preference for the taste of cooked foods, so it is more likely that cooking may have emerged soon after the control of fire," lead author Victoria Wobber told Discovery News.

Wobber, a Harvard University anthropologist, with colleagues Brian Hare and Richard Wrangham, conducted multiple food tests using captive chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla and orangutan populations from facilities in the United States, Europe and the Congo Republic.

In the first test, a group of chimps was offered a choice between raw and cooked carrots, sweet potatoes and white potatoes. The second test offered apes of each kind either cooked or raw cubed, mashed or grated carrots, since carrots came out as a chimp favorite in the first experiment.

For the third test, the apes were offered a choice between cooked or raw apple and cooked or raw beef. Finally, the researchers gave the Congo chimps, which had never eaten cooked food of any kind, a choice between cooked and raw beef.

All of the ape tasters preferred cooked over raw foods, with the exception of white potatoes and apples. In those instances, they demonstrated no preference between cooked or raw, perhaps because these items are easily chewed raw, and cooking them does not enhance their sweetness.

During the second experiment, designed to compare food textures, the apes turned their noses up to raw, grated carrots and showed that they strongly preferred the vegetable cooked and mashed.

"It is likely that the properties present in cooked foods are preferable to most mammals, as rats and cats have both been shown to prefer cooked food or cooked taste," Wobber said, adding that in the wild, chimpanzees will choose fire-toasted seeds over raw ones, a rare instance demonstrating how nature can sometimes act like a chef.

Other studies on great apes show they "tend to select foods based on nutritional content, with some indices of taste, in addition to potential visual or smell cues," she added.

For example, she explained, "wild primates will choose ripe over unripe fruit, potentially sensing that the ripe fruit is softer."

Cooking usually softens food or, at least in the case of meat, makes it easier to chew, and it also can bring out sweetness and umami, the scientists believe. Umami tends to enhance other flavors and is popularly associated with certain Asian foods such as soy sauce.

Peter Lucas, a George Washington University anthropologist, recently conducted a study on foods that two early hominids -- Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus -- consumed, based on teeth wear and carbon measurements in dental enamel.

Lucas found that these ancient human ancestors must have eaten a lot of hard, brittle foods, but that roasting tubers gradually lessened the work of chewing and, by inference, the cost of digestion. In short, roasted root veggies became the far more appealing option, particularly for later hunter-gatherer groups.

Lucas told Discovery News that the paper by Wobber's team "is intriguing, the experiments are innovative and the results seem very reasonable."

In the future, he hopes a follow-up study might more closely "check what the cooking actually does to change food properties, both chemical and physical" before making firm conclusions about what drives mammalian food preferences.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2012 02:09AM by jono.

i wonder if the chimps would prefer a veggie broth or a raw veggie juice?

Bet it would be broth. There is a harmony of flavours that happens with cooking. But again, just because we can doesn't mean we should. The body is designed to gravitate towards certains tastes because those foods (fats, sugars, salts) are scanty in nature. Evolution will not work to temper those preferences simply because fatty, salty and sweet foods have become unnaturally available. Not unless it begins to drastically alter our ability to survive as a species. It's up to us as a thinking animal to make the choices that we know to be best for us.

jono,

When comparing raw starch to cooked starch, of course the cooked starch is going to taste better to both humans or a great ape. But I wonder if a ripe banana and a cooked potato were placed side by side, which one would a great ape choose?

Prana, that would be an interesting experiment

i found also a report that mice prefered cooked foods (tuber and meat), and that the cooked food provided more energy than the raw food... which would explain why i seem to have more energy when eating cooked flesh vs raw

i would imagine the human physical aparatus' ability to recognize the cookedness of foods may relate to an adaptive trait to maximize energy intake

a few reports on the same study:

(some mice prefered cooked vs raw tubers and meat, and derivedmore energy from the cooked foods)

[news.discovery.com]

[www.organicauthority.com]

[news.harvard.edu]


"The study, conducted by Harvard researchers and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that cooked food provides more energy than raw."

"It turns out that cooked meat delivers more energy than the raw version — which may have given ancient humans an evolutionary advantage. "

"The cooked dishes may also have tasted better. At the beginning of the experiment, half the mice preferred raw foods, while half went for cooked. At the end, all 17 mice preferred cooked."

Those sciencey scientists at Harvard!: Take non-carnivorous animals--mice--make them hungry, feed them cooked meat to test preference and voila, after a few weeks they exhibit a preference for a species inappropriate diet! Because calorie deficits require optimization of Kcal intake! Well, duh. It will be interesting to see what further extrapolations can be made from this.

That Richard Wrangham is like a bad penny, methinks.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2012 07:25PM by Tamukha.

Is it possible the cooked food had something added - like salt. Or maybe it's because cooked food is addictive.

supposedly chimps are known to chew tubers and spit out the fibers, basically turning the mouth into a juicer

Tamukha, apparently some mice are carnivorous:
[en.wikipedia.org]

I would guess other mice are opportunists, like all creatures generally are, and would probably scavange on carcases should the opportunity arise, maybe even after a wild fire has partially cooked the food

anyway, just cuz cooking might provide more energy from the food, and perhaps huamns are somewhat adapted to cooked foods, that does not necessarily make it ideal to eat cooked food

perhaps best of all worlds is to support digestive efficiency by mashing particular foods such as raw muscle fat and even adding a bit of water, thus allowing the digestive system more access to the particles to be assimilated.... it's all about finding the balance between easy digestion without giving the system a sudden overload of nourishment (as happens when i put too much food into my juicer and the juicer backs up).

KidRaw, good question, that would be a major flaw if they added salt to only one type of food and not the other... probably they didn't commit such an obvious research flaw but anything is possible

speaking of salt, i wonder if unrefined sea salt harvested from supposedly pristine french coasts are more healthful than if i were to just drink some seawater from a nearby beach

"perhaps best of all worlds is to support digestive efficiency by mashing particular foods such as raw muscle fat "

Um... ew.

I don't see any issue with this. I have thrown bread to seagulls and squirrels (I know, not good) and they went nuts and wanted more immediately. This idea of "natural" has probably been corrupted by them living with us SAD eaters. They have gotten used to the same junk due to co-existing with us.

All I see is an effort to support the notion that cooked is better than raw, and that eating flesh is also more beneficial, even for a species where flesh isn't it's natural food.

I'm with you Tam... Also, there's too much being read into these experiments. Of course they went 'ape' over this more or less 'new' food, wouldn't you???
I believe that this would have to be a longitudinal study, like at least a year or more to see if they became addicted to cooked food, and if any adverse health issues became apparent.

The thing that strikes me as odd is how little communication there is among these disciplines, jalanutan: Primatologist Robert Sapolsky has been talking for over a decade about the deleterious effects on baboon neurology and behavior from eating cooked human food out of dumpsters. These Harvard people have apparently never heard of him. Is it because he's a west coaster? LOL!

Prana Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >
> When comparing raw starch to cooked starch, of
> course the cooked starch is going to taste better
> to both humans or a great ape. But I wonder if a
> ripe banana and a cooked potato were placed side
> by side, which one would a great ape choose?

Prana....how about this one first try a ripe bananna with a "cooked?"bananna (could put some whipped cream and a marachino cherry to make it officially SAD)

next put a raw potato and a baked potato with sour cream butter and salt (official SAD again lol).

then put all four choices at the same time and make a determination after 3 experiments.

just an idea....

jj

Huh, I find the thought of a fried banana disgusting. Couldn't get me to eat fried fruit ever again. People are funny, ain't they?

Darn tootin' we are haha. Sorry Tam, but even when dipped in rice batter it's still delish LOL. I usually got them to fry it without the batter. I understand it would sound discusting, even for me now (it was almost 40yrs ago), but the flavour is something else. They mostly used the smaller but sweeter 'sugar' bananas, and it's hard to describe what the frying does. You'd have to try one to find out, cause it's not just sweeter, it's got a nutty/molasses/malty flavour too. I'd even eat one now...but only one mind you LOL