Between cutting, thinking about blending or seasoning ... Cooking is an art, an ancestral discipline which has participated in the evolution of our civilizations.
Alexandre Stern, author of "Le Singe Cuisinier", discusses the impact of cooking on our society in Laurent Mariotte's program: "La Table des Bons Vivants".
"We are monkeys who know how to cook", declares Laurent Mariotte in reference to the book by his guest of the day, Alexandre Stern, author of
Le Singe Cuisinier
(Ed. Odile Jacob).
"We are the only animal that knows how to cook," insists Alexandre Stern.
"You have to see that in the animal world, nobody transforms food, except us. And that gave birth to civilization. Without cooking, our brain would be twice as small and we would still be in the savannah in the process of pick up roots and leaves. "
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Fire, agriculture and socialization through cooking
Undeniably, mastering fire has changed a lot of things in our evolution, especially in our physical development and our relationship to food.
"The kitchen is extremely functional at the start. The fire was used to transform food. You have to see it as a pre-digestion", explains the specialist.
"It had a huge impact. Particularly on the size of the brain."
Fire is not the only factor in our evolution.
Spices also played a big role: the size of the intestine was halved, and the size of the brain was doubled.
Agriculture also… "With the breeding, with the saltings, the fermentations, all that one could learn in an empirical way over time", notes Laurent Mariotte.
Finally, if nowadays we all agree to say with more or less banality that cooking brings together, just like in the past ... We are forced to note that this action, innocuous now, marks a real turning point for our ancestors, that of socialization.
Once again proof that cooking makes you smarter.
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A declining intelligence?
Going home after a grueling day of work and ordering food or reheating a prepared dish… If this seems to us the peak of the development of our civilization on an evening of great laziness, it would also mark our decline.
"With the prepared meals, these ultra-processed products. We are on the wrong track", deplores Alexandre Stern.
"Firstly because it is starting to have a real impact on health. With obesity and the increase in overweight, diabetes but also on the cultural level, we are losing know-how. Today, people do not are more capable of making their own preserves, for example. "
An ease of life that therefore avoids us racking our brains.