Cooking our food is so evident that we don’t ask ourselves why we do it most of the time.

• The heat destroys harmful bacteria.
• Some foods (mushrooms, potatoes, runner beans...) are not eatable or may even be poisonous before heating!
• Cooking changes ("denatures") the proteins in the food. Because of this change, we are able to digest the food more easily and therefore gain more energy out of it.

Fried foods are more likely to burn, as the heat comes from the bottom only. Boiling in water has the advantage that the food is equally heated from all sides.

In a pressure-cooking pot, the water only starts to boil at 116-130 °C because of the higher pressure. As a result, food can be prepared faster and more gently.

By heating our food, we can digest it better and gain more energy out of it. That is one of the reasons why the world’s population was able to increase so much (as the existing food was utilised much better due to cooking).

Cooking not only has advantages, though. Heating destroys many vitamins or leaches them into the boiling water. For this reason, it is also healthy to eat raw vegetables and fruits, which have not been cooked and in this way, take in a lot of vitamins! Many people eat raw food to loose weight. Since it is harder for the body to utilise raw food, you don’t put on weight.