Why am I fascinated by cooking? Honestly, over the years I’ve developed a deep-rooted appreciation for the practice itself as I witnessed its power in bringing people together. It’s overwhelming living in a modern world divided by differences. Choosing to focus on eating a universal commonality made me happier. I agree, we do all have powerful memories being cooked for. That act of generosity and love I received from my family did leave a mark on me. I want to explore that sentiment deeper with the help of this show called Cooked.
Michael Pollan wrote a book called Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation and Netflix made a documentary about it. It’s a four-part mini-series, focusing on the great transformations of cooking. The chapters correspond to the four classical elements; fire, water, air, and earth. Each element has evolutionary relationships between food and society. The show raised a lot of questions like how exactly the practice of eating created and shaped cultures around the world as it separated us from other animals and made us human? A primatologist named Richard Wrangham who developed the cooking hypothesis says the answer is chewing. Being able to cook our meals relieved us from chewing. Half of the primate’s waking hour is spent chewing and it was cooking that led to us becoming human. Homo erectus as the first human evolved when an ape learned to cook. Meaning, cooking is in our nature.
Fire
“When we learned to cook is when we became truly human.”
Michael Pollan
We are starting with fire because that’s where cooking begins. Some communities like the Martu in Australia still practice ancestral methods of cooking by hunting using open fire. Cooking directly over the fire and sharing that meal with a community of people is how our ancestors ate in the olden days. Creating and controlling fire nurtured people to evolve into our modern selves. Around that fire, stories were told about the land and through the cautionary tales about dangers and the beauty of fire, communities were formed.
After watching the scenes in Australia, I was left with many questions. I need to take the fact that this is a Netflix documentary with a grain of salt and asses for a minute. As we were thinking about the evolution of the human species and Homo sapiens differentiation from primates, was it Eurocentric to cut to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People’s hunting and cooking practices? Should we consider Orientalism here with the lack of subtitles during some dialogues and added atmospheric music in mind? Is cooking over a fire an inherent masculine practice? Is meat consumption crucial to the male identity?
It was a debatable and thought-provoking segment. At the end of the day, the intention is what I value here. The fact that it made me ask questions was valuable to me. I don’t know. We should talk about it. Leave your thoughts.
How is barbecuing different than daily home cooking which has been associated with women? Outdoors? Can it be that simple? How did cooking over a fire become ritually so important to men? Many anthropologists say that men are tied to hunting and a part of that killing is cooking. Henry Fielding even refers to The Odyssey as “Homer’s book about eating”. In the Odyssey, these great heroes, the most prestigious people in their community are out there butchering and cooking and serving food with a lot of care. It doesn’t diminish their prestige because it is ritualistically so important. The high-risk high-value hunt creates an occasion for their community. A feast. The abundance of food shared around a fire creates a memory.
In time, memories turn into the lore of the barbecue. A story told using fire as its medium. Humans are taught to be halfway between the gods and the animals. Because the animals can’t cook and the gods love sacrifice. When humans are wielding that fire and sending that sacrifice up to the gods in the form of smoke, it’s a declaration of their elevation above the animals who don’t know how to cook. That is why the idea of a man in front of a fire, as the leader of the community, who’s dispensing the goods to his community is so strong. There is a great meaning attached to meat consumption, helpful in understanding today’s dietary conflicts.
Interesting how a sight or a smell of barbecued meat can make us salivate. I know we’re drawn to certain foods by our co-evolution. Fruits in particular. Meat cooked in certain ways picks up some of the same chemical compounds that we are hardwired to like in fruit. The flavors we tend to prefer in smoked meat come from hardwoods. And woods carry the same flavor compounds that make their way into fruits. Also, when we cook using hardwoods, it’s not the wood itself that is burning. It’s the gases inside the wood that actually burns and it volatilizes a variety of compounds into the meat as it cooks. While the meat is cooking, The Maillard Reaction occurs when amino acids and sugars form new molecules. When new chemical compounds are formed it creates more complexity and complexity means more flavor. The flavor we get comes from fat in the meat melting and dripping down and then catching fire on the burning wood and coals. That in turn gives us aroma. Honestly, I am salivating right now writing about this.
“Live in the present, savor the past and be excited about the future.”
Eliza MacLean
Now we have arrived at the heart of this narrative. Livestock farming. The much-debated argument over grass-fed organic farming vs. factory farming. A consumer’s dilemma. Again, an idea is being pitched to us. Essentially the question is, where should we choose to spend our money? But it’s asked subtler than that. Where should your meat come from? Should you choose to care about it? What difference does your choice make? Who’s interests are being served by consumer decisions?
Well. Before I begin, I should say that I would very much rather become one with nature. I don’t enjoy being a human being sometimes. This must be the price of having a consciousness. Unfortunate. Let’s dive in
I understand humanity is curious, competitive, greedy for resources, expansionist, and with this quality our ancestors were successful in building civilizations. A measurable metric for civilization’s progress is their energy use. How much energy we extract from our environment and with it how many usable things we produce define our civilization’s progress. Altering the planet must be the price of being civilized. How does all this relate to meat production?
Through film language, the show is forming emotional connections with grass-fed livestock farming. We see open spaces, sunshine, happy animals in an organic farm, and torture, pain, and misery in a factory farm. The enemy is clear here. And I don’t enjoy being emotionally manipulated. We should all be able to make informed rational decisions based on facts. When you pay close attention you can see that we’re not being presented by many facts here, but rather we are being presented with a choice.
I don’t think individuals can stand in the way of progress. Progress is profitable. People love having gains. Nature has always been an obstacle to overcome in the civilization-building game. Earth becoming uninhabitable is price humanity is willing to pay in the name of progress. Capitalism may love individualizing global issues, but your choices do not matter here. It may ease your conscience to choose, but it will not make a difference.
Joy. Kittens. Puppies. Hugs.
I brought you down. Now, it’s time to go back up.
Moving on.
“People are at their best, when they realize they are connected.”
Ed Mitchell
Traditions survive because they are adaptive. They are a result of a cultural selection. They exist to keep people healthy and happy and connected. A meal is the simplest thing that we can share together. I do think having active daily participation in cooking is crucial for our well-being. Even in our busy post-modern daily routines, we can keep cooking for ourselves. Though outsourcing makes life easier, letting corporations cook for us renders us into passive consumers. There is a certain amount of pleasure around food and cooking. It’s a set of skills that allows us to be a maker of things, a producer, a provider. That is essential for our survival. The disappearance of fire from our lives is a story of progress. But civilizations do begin around that cook fire. Even today fire draws us together.
egOnto 