02/24/2026
To understand where your health is going, you have to see where it started. 🦴🔥
To understand the human body and digestion, it is worth going back to the beginning. These are two excellent books that help me to understand how important and old our relationship with food is.
🔥 Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham
This book argues that the most pivotal moment in human evolution wasn’t just walking upright—it was the control of fire. Wrangham explains how cooking our food allowed for smaller guts and larger brains, essentially "outsourcing" our digestion to the flame and creating the complex social structures we have today.
🥦 The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz
If fire was our first culinary revolution, fermentation was our second. Sandor Katz treats fermentation as a co-evolutionary process between us and microbes. It’s not just a recipe book; it’s a guide to how bacteria enhance flavor, nutrition, and digestibility. It’s a beautiful reminder of our ancient connection to the microbial world.
Learning about these "old" ways makes me appreciate every bite of sauerkraut and every home-cooked meal even more. We aren't just eating; we are participating in an ancient biological tradition.