Humans are the only species on Earth to understand cooking food. Cooking has played a key role in human evolution. Once humans learned this vital skill, it allowed them to advance into other important areas instead of spending all their time searching for food to survive. Furthermore, it also provided an opportunity for humans to connect with each other as they gathered to eat cooked meals. Today's society has undoubtedly seen a decrease in traditional meals cooked from scratch; however, people are bound to change. Cooking will always be part of human culture, even if it is not an everyday task in every modern home. In the article The Cooking Animal, author Micheal Pollan points out that learning to cook food allowed humans to spend more time creating a civilization. Some might argue that other advances in human history, such as tool-making, the creation of fire, or language, also played an important role in evolution. Of course these things have a lot to do with the evolution of humans, but Micheal Pollan believes that when human ancestors discovered cooking, it provided a diet that was easier to digest and had more energy. This gave the human brain the opportunity to grow larger allowing the stomach to digest food faster. Thus, giving humans more time to create a culture rather than spending their days gathering food and the many hours required to chew and digest raw meats (581). Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss states that "many cultures had a similar view, viewing cooking as a symbolic way to distinguish ourselves from animals" (581). Pollan's point of view on how cooking has influenced humanity makes a lot of sense. While cooking isn't the only reason humans evolved... middle of paper... this means cooking will soon be a skill you rarely hear about. To conclude, Pollen makes some very solid points in The Kitchen Animal. Cuisine has had a strong influence on the human race and plays a prominent role in every culture. If cooking had never been discovered, it is probable that man would never have made this evolutionary leap. It gave humans the opportunity to become warm and friendly to each other and the chance to develop advanced civilizations around the world. However, Pollen's claim that cuisine is disappearing from the world is not valid. Many people take great pride in cooking. Priorities have changed over the years in society; therefore, people will consume processed foods because they are a convenient alternative, but they will always be treated as an art in every culture because they are the foundation of the world everyone lives in today.