Health
For many years, scientists have been of the opinion that cooked meat is easier to digest, and therefore more nutritious than raw meat. However, so far there has been no scientific evidence to support this claim. Recent studies have shown that cooked meat has more benefits than uncooked meat. The results of the research revealed how primitive people got more energy by cooking meat dishes, and also helped to learn more about how to increase the nutritional value of the product today.
The researchers tested foods by taking into account how they are digested by our bodies, not what they are before they are eaten.
During the experiments, scientists fed several groups of mice various organic beef or sweet potato dishes for 40 days. Different rations included raw pieces, raw/shredded food, cooked chunks, or cooked shredded food (beef or sweet potato). The mice had free access to food, and scientists monitored the activity level and weight of the rodents.
It was observed that the animals' activity level, as opposed to body weight, did not change. All mice lost weight, but those that ate cooked foods lost less weight than those that ate raw food. This meant that the mice received more energy in the first case, especially when they ate meat.
Scientists believe that several mechanisms were involved in these processes. First, cooking helps to reveal the protein in meat products, which contributes to better digestion of the product in the small intestine before intestinal bacteria take over. Moreover, after cooking, the meat fibers soften, so they are easier to chew.
It also matters in what form the meat is cooked – in pieces, crushed, twisted through a meat grinder, cut into slices, and so on. Twisted meat, as it turned out, gives more energy, but no more than cooked meat. During grinding, the fiber structure is destroyed, but this does not affect the product cells at the molecular level. The prepared product in this case has advantages. The best results are obtained by shredded and cooked products.
Anthropologists believe that primitive people began using fire to cook food about 1.8 million years ago. Although there is little archaeological evidence to support this fact, some scientists still believe it happened then and support the idea that cooking helped raise human energy capabilities, which made it possible to increase brain volume.
Cooking meat allowed it to be stored longer, and also freed the immune system from fighting certain pathogens that could enter the digestive tract along with raw product.
This small study supports the assumption that humans and mice have similar digestive systems. Like humans, rodents are omnivores, although they have a different tooth structure and a different energy balance in the body.