Cavemen Knew It: Cooked Meat Offers More Energy, Harvard University Study

Cooked meat provides more energy than raw meat and may have helped drive human evolution, according to a new study. The finding that cooking increases the energy we derive from meat also raises questions about the way modern humans eat, said Rachel Carmody, a student in the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. In her study, she fed two groups of mice different diets of meat or sweet potatoes over 40 days. The food was prepared four ways: raw and whole; raw and pounded; cooked and whole; and cooked and pounded.