We assimilate into ourselves different forms of structure from each, whether biological or semiotic. Each structure, biomolecules or language, equip us to model and navigate our environment, and persist a bit longer.
Life thrives when its cellular membranes (and bodily boundaries to an extent) are awash in structural microdiversity of friendly chemicals (aka nutrients). More access to structural microdiversity means more ability to navigate complex environments, more ability to choose from the surrounding otherness and decide what gets to cross inside your boundary and become tomorrow's you, tomorrows self.
Minds thrive similarly when immersed in diversity of thought and experience. (See Alex Pentland's Social Physics book) These things aren't as different as they might seem, if you cross your eyes and look at it abstractly like a universe might.
The universe doesn't really quibble between the information that my body "knows" through its structure, and the information my mind "knows" through language. Everything is made of information, and the structures of information that best prepare us for futures will persist :)
Do we? As examined in The Little Prince, people can get nutritions from pills and powders, factually humanity has made a culture out of food, much more than just getting nutritious
I read to be moved by a story, to feel with the characters, to get a sense of a different country or time or culture, to get a sense of possible futures, a sense of what it might mean to live another life, be bound by different constraints and experiences than my own, to experience another mind viewing the same world or imagining a totally different one, seldom to retain knowledge.
