Science &Technology
The American Association for the Advancement of Science

59. What's cooking?
Feb 19th 2009 | CHICAGO
From The Economist print edition

The evolutionary role of cookery

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YOU are what you eat, or so the saying goes. But Richard Wrangham, of Harvard University, believes that this is true in a more profound sense than the one implied by the old proverb. It is not just you who are what you eat, but the entire human species. And with Homo sapiens, what makes the species unique in Dr Wrangham's opinion is that its food is so often cooked.
Cooking is a human universal. No society is without it. No one other than a few faddists tries to survive on raw food alone. And the consumption of a cooked meal in the evening, usually in the company of family and friends, is normal in every known society. Moreover, without cooking, the human brain (which consumes 20-25% of the body's energy) could not keep running. Dr Wrangham thus believes that cooking and humanity are coeval.
In fact, as he outlined to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in Chicago, he thinks that cooking and other forms of preparing food are humanity's 'killer app': the evolutionary change that underpins all of the otherand subsequentchanges that have made people such unusual animals.
Humans became human, as it were, with the emergence 1.8m years ago of a species called Homo erectus. This had a skeleton much like modern man'sa big, brain-filled skull and a narrow pelvis and rib cage, which imply a small abdomen and thus a small gut. Hitherto, the explanation for this shift from the smaller skulls and wider pelvises of man's apelike ancestors has been a shift from a vegetable-based diet to a meat-based one. Meat has more calories than plant matter, the theory went. A smaller gut could therefore support a larger brain.
A. 어휘
evolutionary 進化(진화)의. cookery 요리. saying 격언, 속담. profound 깊은.
imply 뜻을 내포하다, 含蓄(함축)하다. proverb 속담, 격언. human species 인종, 인류.
unique 독특한, 類例(유례)없는. universal 보편적인 현상. faddist 일시적 열광자.
raw food 生食(생식). cf. raw 날 것의, 원료 그대로의. consumption 소비.
in the company of ...와 함께. cf. company 同伴(동반). coeval 같은 연대의.
killer app (컴퓨터) 최신 응용 소프트웨어, 등장하자마자 경쟁상품을 몰아내고 시장을 완전히 재편하는 제품이나 서비스를 일컫는 말. cf. app=application.
underpin ...을 떠받치다, ...의 토대가 되다. subsequent 다음의, 그 이후의.
emergence 출현. skeleton 해골, 골격. brain-filled 腦髓(뇌수)가 가득 채워진.
skull 頭蓋骨(두개골). pelvis 골반. rib cage 胸廓(흉곽). abdomen 腹部(복부).
gut 腸(장), 창자. shift 이동, 변경, 교대. ancestor 조상. plant matter 식물물질.

B. 구문
- It is not just you who are . . . its food is so often cooked.
cf. It is A who→It is A that= A를 강조하는 구문.
[음식(당신이 먹는 것)이 당신을 만들 뿐 아니라 전체 인류도 만든다. Homo sapiens(현생인류)에 관해서 말하자면, Wrangham 박사의 견해로는, 인간의 음식은 매우 자주 불에 의해 조리된다는 것이 현 인류를 독특하게 만드는 원인이 된다.]
- Hitherto, the explanation for this shift . . . diet to a meat-based one.
[원숭이를 닮은 인류 조상이 가졌던 보다 작은 두개골과 보다 넓은 골반이 오늘날의 모양으로 변한 이유에 대한 지금까지의 설명은 인간의 음식이 채식기반의 음식에서 육식기반의 음식으로 변환되었기 때문이라는 것이었다.

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Dr Wrangham disagrees. When you do the sums, he argues, raw meat is still insufficient to bridge the gap. He points out that even modern 'raw foodists', members of a town-dwelling, back-to-nature social movement, struggle to maintain their weightand they have access to animals and plants that have been bred for the table. Pre-agricultural man confined to raw food would have starved.

Firelight
Start cooking, however, and things change radically. Cooking alters food in three important ways. It breaks starch molecules into more digestible fragments. It 'denatures' protein molecules, so that their amino-acid chains unfold and digestive enzymes can attack them more easily. And heat physically softens food. That makes it easier to digest, so even though the stuff is no more calorific, the body uses fewer calories dealing with it.
In support of his thesis, Dr Wrangham, who is an anthropologist, has ransacked other fields and come up with an impressive array of material. Cooking increases the share of food digested in the stomach and small intestine, where it can be absorbed, from 50% to 95% according to work done on people fitted for medical reasons with collection bags at the ends of their small intestines. Previous studies had suggested raw food was digested equally well as cooked food because they looked at faeces as being the end product. These, however, have been exposed to the digestive mercies of bacteria in the large intestine, and any residual goodies have been removed from them that way.

A. 어휘
do the sums 신중하게 생각하다. raw meat 생고기. access 접근.
breed-bred-bred 양육하다. pre-agricultural 인류가 농업을 시작하기 이전의.
confine 한정하다. starve 餓死(아사)하다. radically 근본적으로, 급진적으로.
alter 변화시키다. starch 澱粉(전분). molecule 分子(분자). digestible 소화되기 쉬운.
fragment 조각, 파편. denature 성질을 바꾸다, 특성을 잃게 하다.
unfold (닫힌 물건을) 펼치다. digestive enzyme 소화효소. stuff 음식물, 재료.
calorific 열을 발생하는. thesis 命題(명제), 주제, 論題(논제). ransack 샅샅이 뒤지다.
come up with 산출하다, 제출하다. array (일정한 법칙에 의한) 배열.
stomach 위장. small intestine 小腸(소장). absorb 흡수하다. faeces=feces 배설물.
expose 노출하다. mercy 자선활동, 자비. large intestine 大腸(대장).
residual 잔류하고 있는. goodies (영양분이 될 만한)좋은 것들.

B. 구문.
- He points out that even modern . . . raw food would have starved.
cf. would have starved= did not starve.
cf. 가정법 과거완료
. 과거사실에 대한 반대의 경우를 가정 (...하였을 것이다).
. if+S+had+pp. ..., S+과거조동사(would, could, might...)+have+pp.
ex. As he did not work hard, he did not pass the exam.
→If he had worked hard, he could have passed the exam.
[도시에 거주하면서 자연으로 돌아가자는 운동을 하는 사람들인 현대의 생식주의자들도 체중을 유지하려고 애를 쓰고 있으며 또 그들은 식량을 위해 사육되고 재배된 동식물과 연결되어 있다라고 그는 지적한다. 농업시대이전의 사람들이 생식에만 한정되어 있었더라면 굶어 죽었을 것이다.]
- work done on people fitted . . . the ends of their small intestines.
[의학적인 이유로 小腸(소장)의 끝에 수집주머니를 장착한 사람들을 대상으로 한 연구]