The Power of Cooking

I think modern people tend to think of cooking as it makes food taste better. But you point out that the really important part of cooking is it saves time in chewing. Can you explain that? Because that's remarkable. Both chewing and digesting. And that saves a lot of energy for the humans who are lucky enough to eat the cooked food. Of course, the energy has to come from somewhere. Part of it is from the thermal energy of the fire. The rest is from the energy of the people or animals or later on wind or water or steam which do the hard work of grinding.