The Evolutionary Advantage to Eating Burgers

Ah, the sacrifices that lab mice made. All that perfectly seared tiny organic burger that they have to eat. You know, for science.

Here's how researchers at Harvard University subjected mice to delicious food in order to find out the evolutionary advantage to eating cooked versus raw meat:

"It came out looking like a beautiful little mini hamburger," says Rachel Carmody, a graduate student in evolutionary biology at Harvard who cooked up the mini-burgers in Petri dishes.

This feast for furry critters was all in the name of science, of course. Carmody and her colleagues served up the mini burgers as part of an experiment to determine the differences in energy provided by cooked versus raw foods.

It turns out that cooked meat delivers more energy than the raw version — which may have given ancient humans an evolutionary advantage. But the extra energy from cooked food may now translate into unwanted pounds because nutrition labels don't reflect the fact that we process cooked food more efficiently.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/11/08/142140379/cooked-meat-is-an-energy-powerhouse-for-better-and-worse


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Cooked meat delivers more energy than raw meat. Not a sexy title I agree.

But your title is probably how a large percentage of the population will remember this story if it is presented to them in this way and illustrates what's wrong with a lot of modern media because that's what they do.

I admit that I was reeled in ready to respond to what had to be some bullsh*t story, you had me. ;)
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