On 2016 Jul 17, Lise Bankir commented:

Thank you Dr Pontzer for these interesting comments.

I apologize for saying that you forgot "cooking" since you had indeed mentioned it, briefly. I may have put too much emphasis on cooking.

Actually, I was very impressed by this brillant TED conference. But I am not a specialist of metabolism and energy needs, and I probably did not appreciate well the relative importance of different factors.

On 2016 Jul 05, Herman Pontzer commented:

Thank you for the comment. We haven't forgotten about the importance of cooking: we include it among the critical human adaptations that make more energy available (reference 25, Carmody et al. 2011). In the penultimate paragraph of the main text, we write:

"...the adoption of cooking²⁵ ... effectively increase[s] the net energy gained from foraging, and may have had an essential role in the evolutionary expansion of the hominin energy budget."

However, as we discuss in the paper, increased food energy intake is necessary but not sufficient in accounting for the suite of metabolically costly human traits. To take advantage of the extra calories from cooking (or from other dietary changes that increase the mean calories/gram of food) requires evolved physiological changes to increase the metabolic rate. Previously, the prevailing view of metabolic evolution in humans (and other mammals) assumed that metabolic rates were similar across the hominoids, with no difference in calories/day (accounting for size) across humans and other apes. Our paper shows that humans have undergone an evolutionary increase in metabolic rate that accounts for the (estimated) extra caloric expenditure on brains, reproduction, etc. It will be interesting, in future analyses, to begin parsing the contributions from cooking, dietary changes, and other adaptations to the evolution of human metabolic rate.

On 2016 Jun 24, Lise Bankir commented:

In this interesting paper, the authors explore the mechanisms by which the human lineage has experienced an acceleration in metabolic rate, providing energy for larger brains. I think they forgot an important aspect of human evolution, that is the benefit of COOKING our food. This made food nutrients much more efficient and allowed a better energy supply to our body at a lesser cost. This is very well explained in a TED conference entitled "What is special in the human brain?" by Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Here is the link.

www.ted.com/talks/suzana_herculano_houzel_what_is_so_special_about_the_human_brain.html?utm_medium=on.ted.com-static&utm_campaign=&utm_content=awesm-publisher&utm_source=t.co&awesm=on.ted.com_BrainSoup

On 2016 Jun 24, Lise Bankir commented:

In this interesting paper, the authors explore the mechanisms by which the human lineage has experienced an acceleration in metabolic rate, providing energy for larger brains. I think they forgot an important aspect of human evolution, that is the benefit of COOKING our food. This made food nutrients much more efficient and allowed a better energy supply to our body at a lesser cost. This is very well explained in a TED conference entitled "What is special in the human brain?" by Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Here is the link.

www.ted.com/talks/suzana_herculano_houzel_what_is_so_special_about_the_human_brain.html?utm_medium=on.ted.com-static&utm_campaign=&utm_content=awesm-publisher&utm_source=t.co&awesm=on.ted.com_BrainSoup