A primal habit (Image: Darren Klimek/Getty)

THE French have elevated it to an art form, and even the British have got better at it – but chimps can’t cook at all. According to one controversial evolutionary theory, early humans developed a taste for cooked food around 2 million years ago, and this set in motion a series of changes that made us utterly different from any other animal.

Now the proponents of the cooked-food hypothesis are presenting fresh evidence in support of the idea – and it all comes down to how you chew.

The theory, championed by Richard Wrangham at …