Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations suggested over 200 years ago that what makes us human was the fact that we exchange. Dogs do not. Well, today we know that sometimes animals do exchange according to an article in a recent issue of the Economist Magazine (February 21, 2009 p. 80).
In a recent book, Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist at Harvard University believes that what makes homo sapiens unique is that their food is so often cooked. In a new book Catching Fire he explains that what makes us truly human is cooking food. We are the only species that cooks food. But what is really interesting is that cooking, especially meat, is what led to our big brains. Without cooking the human brain, which consumes 20-25 percent of the body’s energy, could not keep running. Without cooking, raw food cannot feed the brain. Cooking softens food and makes it easier to digest so even the tough stuff is easy to use. Cooking also increases the food digested in the small intestine from 50 percent to 95 percent.
What is really interesting is do we have a connection between cooking and the creative class? Most creative cities and regions we know have lots of gays, bohemians, and immigrants. But what role does cooking play in all of this? Do we not find that most of the creative places also have great eating places? Is this the immigrant connection? I do not mean the simple fast food restaurants, but really good cooking and good food. What is the connection between these two activities?
Does culture and therefore cooking and food also act as a part of the social capital that drives creativity and the creative class? Give me a good bowl of pasta, a nice bottle of wine, and the creative juices will start to flow because we are feeding the brain. Give us bad food and obesity develops, the brain does not develop, and we have no creative class.
Food for thought.
March 11th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
A study that I published a few years ago did find a strong association between the presence of characteristics of the creative class in a city and the presence of what I called ‘urbane type’ restaurants: fine dining, ethnic restaurants, and coffee shops. The text is available at: http://www2.uic.edu/~zneal2/neal-culinary.pdf
The next step is to recollect this data and try to pull apart the causal order, which seems very ambiguous. Certainly it’s bi-directional, but which direction has the greater influence?
March 11th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I think creative places attract creative people, including chefs and those willing to experiment with new types of cooking and food. So, yes, it works both ways.
March 11th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
For ethnic restaurants, I think you need a large enough immigrant community to support real ethnic cooking before it attracts the creative class or anyone else looking for variety. If the cooks can’t find authentic ingredients, or need to cook solely for old-fashioned American tastes, you get the ubiquitous “Chinese-American” or “Mexican-American” restaurants of yesteryear. I try to find ethnic restaurants that are being patronized by the group whose cooking it is (pardon that sentence).
For fine dining, you probably need a population who has traveled enough to be open to new flavorings and different cooking styles. Increasingly you find local food on the menu, implying diners who recognize and value freshness. This may require a creative class and of course some affluence.
Gays are another question. I haven’t noticed that gay people have noticeably different food tastes than anyone else. Gay males may be over-represented among fine dining waiters, but that has little relation to the food.
We recently went to the funeral of our son-in-law’s father in Western Idaho. He was a Basque sheep farmer (lots of them there — actually the immigrant shepherds now are Peruvian, but that’s another story). Anyway, the restaurant food in the small towns was Midwestern awful. But the funeral potluck by the Catholic Women’s Association was fabulous, Basque beans and even the standard American homemade food was great. So the local food was much better than the restaurants implied.
I wonder what Wrangham says about vegetarians?
March 21st, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Steven Mithen in his “Prehistory of the Mind” deals with the evolution toward rich diets to support the growing energy requirements of the evolving brain. While he didn’t specifically address the cooking process, he talked about the need to utilize rich foods like meat to satisfy such a demanding organ.
While pasta and wine (technically a poison) may entertain the spirit and spices make things more interesting for the “creative class”, probably a meat rich stew would help the functioning of the brain more. alex
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:56 am
ACtually, the pasta is better, as the brain runs almost entirely on glucose.
April 20th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
I would interested to see whether or not there is a correlation between not only the number of creative class individuals and the number of great restaurants but also whether or not a diverse culinary offering makes a difference. For instance, how do cities with only a handful of different cuisines rank on a list of places with “really good cooking and good food?”
I wonder if epicurean celebrations such as Winterlicious and Dine Out Vancouver have any effect on this as well. Perhaps the celebration of cooking also makes a difference in creating more social capital.
November 2nd, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Very interesting post, does it mean that people who eat raw food most of the time will be dumb?
The type of food is of primary importance, absorption by the body and brain is another. Cooking increases absorption, however there are many heat soluble nutrients that get lost when heated. We simply have to balance our intakes, cooked food for food that requires cooking and raw for food that should not be heated. Am I right?