““Amylase digests starchy, carbohydrate-rich foods, and helps generate glucose from them, which would provide much needed energy for the evolving and highly energetic brain. It works many times better on carbohydrates that have been cooked. We’re not sure when we began cooking; the range of evidence is wide, but food cooked on fires was definitely part of our menu by 300,000 years ago, so before we were anatomically modern. The expansions of these amylase genes, the presence of cooked food, and the massive expansion of our brains that is observed over our Paleolithic evolution point to a positive selection for eating nutrient-rich tubers.””
