I try to eat some every day. Often, I have enough food to eat more than once a day. That witty creator of smooth easy-to-take language, Hannah Holmes, in her book "The Well-Dressed Ape", compares many sides of humans with parallel aspects of other animals. I have written with admiration about the book "Catching Fire" by Prof. Richard Wrangham. That book has the same title as one of the volumes of the Hunger Games but it more rewarding, I think. http://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2015/12/food-fire-and-how-late-it-is-getting.html Wrangham emphasized that cooking has changed humans in many ways.
I read that the lip area around the mouth in apes is much stronger than in humans and that without cooking to soften food, that lip area in apes is used to continuously stress and soften food, along with chewing.
Hannah Holmes has this to say about the subject of food and cooking:
If you're under the impression that cooking makes meat tougher, then you've never tried to eat a raw steak. I have, just to see for myself. It slithers between the teeth, crushing a little, but then squirting free. To reduce it to pulp demands minutes, not seconds, of chewing. And that was the flesh of a sedentary cow. Wild animals, who exercise their muscles all day, are tougher. The white-tailed deer Mom shot one fall when I was a kid comes to mind: The meat was dark, pungent, and as tender as automotive rubber. And that was cooked. Had I tried it raw, I expect I'd still have shreds of Mom's deer between my teeth today.
Holmes, Hannah. The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself (Kindle Locations 2553-2558). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Wrangham has similar comments. Prof. Marlene Zuk in "Paleofantasy" emphasized that we are not constructed as were Neanderthals and we don't have access to the food that earlier hominids ate. The plants have evolved and so have we.
We need our kitchens and our stoves. They serve us well.
