This post references an article where some thinking class member makes an interesting argument, cooking is an essential element in Humanity.

From a personal standpoint, I can verify this. It wasn't until I started (actually re-started) cooking meals at home and rejecting the modern, suburban lifestyle of eating out all the time that I really felt "human". Now, I love to cook and cannot see any way that I could go back to the dining-out habit.

Cooking connects me with my family and with my late Mother (who loved to cook and taught me much about the art).

Isn't that a very "human" feeling and aspiration?

UPDATE:I have more thoughts on this point:

Chimpanzees, he re-emphasized, spend far more time eating than humans do and as a result don't have time or energy to expand far beyond their range. In German research studies on the effects on humans of following a raw food diet, the results show that humans eating only raw food are hungry, experience weight loss

This, I think, is why the vegetarians I know seem sickly and tired all the time. They are constantly eating, but never seem to have the energy to do much else or think about much except the next meal.

Have humans evolved to the point where raw food/vegetarianism is unhealthy?

yummm... burgers, the new health food!