Fire Tamed You

You are the only animal on Earth that cannot live on raw food. Not "prefers not to" — cannot. Two million years ago something started digesting our food before it reached our mouths. In exchange, our jaw shrank, our teeth shrank, and roughly forty percent of our intestine disappeared. What replaced it was a brain that burns a fifth of everything we eat. We were told we conquered fire. The bones say otherwise. This video covers: — the two skulls that make no sense until you know what fire does — Richard Wrangham's cooking hypothesis — the Giessen study: 500 people on raw diets, and what happened to their bodies — the broken gene that let the human skull grow — Kevin Hall's 2019 experiment, and why processed food doesn't stop you Sources and further reading: Wrangham, R. — Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (2009) Aiello, L. & Wheeler, P. — The Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis (1995) Koebnick, C. et al. — Consequences of a long-term raw food diet, Giessen (1999) Stedman, H. et al. — Myosin gene mutation and human lineage (2004) Hall, K. et al. — Ultra-processed diets cause excess calorie intake, NIH (2019) New investigation every week. 0:00 The box in your kitchen 0:34 The story you were told 1:05 Two skulls 2:01 What Wrangham noticed 2:52 The organ you gave up 3:32 The Giessen experiment 4:15 Who owns the fire now 4:51 The deal