Cooking is venom

This is a thought I had for a while. Venomous animals inject their prey with a digestive enzyme (venom). The way venom breaks down food is it's primary property. Poisoning, paralysis and eventual death are all just side effects.

This increases the effective calories of the food. The predator doesn't need to spend so much energy digesting the food once it's consumed.

The human story sometimes is started when our ancestors began to include more meat in their diet raising their available calories. There was another increase when they domesticated fire and began cooking their food.

By breaking down food before eating more energy is available for gathering more food. More energy is available to maintain larger brains. Fire and cooking enabled the cognitive revolution.