What exactly is cooking. Why does applying heat to any food make it better to eat, both taste and health wise
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Many things can be eaten raw. But this might be a relatively modern invention since many now enjoy modern hygienic food processing and sophisticated cleaning processes.
Heat kills germs. So it makes it much less likely one will get sick from eating cooked food. More important if you have to rely on stuff you pick from the ground etc.
Cooking also helps to make foods more digestible. Things like complex starches and protein break up a bit during cooking. This in turn means you need to gather/grow/hunt less stuff in order to maintain an adequate degree of nutrition. This might not be important if you live in a fairly developed economy but for ancient humans, obtaining nutrition was likely the biggest expenditure of energy for a human person so efficiency was a matter of life and death.
Cooking also allows for better food preservation. Things like smoking, curing, jams, preserves and pickles etc allow some some foods to be stored over longer periods. Probably pretty important if you live in cold climates.
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