How did humans become the swarming, world-spanning species that we are today? A lot of reasons, sure, but one of them may very well have been the invention of cooking. This everyday scientific discipline changed the world – and may change it still more.
Food innovation is considered many things: a basic necessity, an art, an aesthetic accomplishment, or hipster foodie nonsense. What it is, and always has been, is a scientific innovation. The first person who realized that egg white, when whipped and baked, could be made into a hard shell-like substance that could be eaten, was a materials scientist. In this case, the contribution was small. But other scientific steps forward made major changes in human development. . .