THE ROASTED AND THE BOILED - FOOD COMPOSITION AND HEAT-TREATMENT WITHSPECIAL EMPHASIS ON PIT-HEARTH COOKING

Heat treatment is one of the major ways humans change the composition and chemistry of food tissues, making them more digestible, less toxic , and more durable. This paper reviews salient features of food chemis try and food composition and how heat treatment, especially pit-hearth cooking, affects that composition. Ethnographic accounts of cooking i ndicate that traditional populations relied on pit-hearth cooking espe cially to alter the composition of foods high in either lipids or comp lex carbohydrates. Historically, pit hearths were also used to process large quantities of food. Various kinds of pit hearths figure promine ntly in the archaeological deposits of the American Great Plains and e lsewhere. The implications of this recurring phenomenon are discussed in terms of the coevolution of diet, cooking systems, and the appearan ce of Neel's ''thrifty'' genotype. (C) 1997 Academic Press.