Cooking is the act of preparing food for eating by the application of heat. It encompasses a vast range of methods, tools and combinations of ingredients to alter the flavor or digestibility of food. It is the process of selecting, measuring and combining of ingredients in an ordered procedure in an effort to achieve the desired result. Factors affecting the final outcome include the variability of ingredients, ambient conditions, tools, and the skill of the individual doing the actual cooking .The diversity of cooking worldwide is a reflection of the myriad nutritional, aesthetic, agricultural, economic, cultural, social and religious considerations that impact upon it.Applying heat to a food usually, though not always, chemically transforms it, thus changing its flavor, texture, consistency, appearance, and nutritional properties. There is archaeological evidence of roasted foodstuffs, both animal and vegetable, in human (Homo erectus) campsites dating from the earliest known use of fire, some 800,000 years ago. Other methods of cooking that involve the boiling of liquid in a receptacle have been practiced at least since the 10th millennium BC, with the introduction of pottery.

Researchers around the world, have attributed nutritional choice as one of the leading causes to various adverse health conditions and diseases happening to our pets during the last decade. They also discovered that animals brought up with unprocessed and raw pet food, experience aging symptoms less quickly than those animals raised on cooked food.

Raw food restaurants have increased in number over the past 10 years, as more people seek healthier diets and lifestyles. Raw food restaurants serve no cooked foods. Instead, they serve an assortment of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouted grains—including raw desserts, raw pizza, raw “lasagna..

Cooking also alters the chemistry of foods, often making them harder to digest.

Since the 1970s interest in health and diet have grown exponentially to their current high plateau. Every type of food is scrutinized and evaluated for its potential nutritional impact. One of the offshoots of that movement is an advocacy of something called, appropriately enough, raw food. This is simply food not cooked above a certain temperature

Paul Nison, raw food expert, answers questions such as: I feel good eating cooked foods. Why is eating raw foods so important? What is so bad about cooked or processed foods? Is there any scientific evidence that the raw food diet is as good as you claim? Is a raw-food diet too hard for people to follow in today's society?