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Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

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Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#71

Post by EdwardDiego »

MayeulC wrote: post #36
Connor_Creegan1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's obvious that at least in our very recent evolutionary history we had far higher tolerance to spoilage. I would agree, both in terms of actual immunity and taste response, although generally-speaking eating rotten meat (especially when well-sourced) is not nearly as risky as common wisdom would make it out to be. Many folks in the deeper circles of online carnivoria dabble in "high meat" (fermented rotten meat,…

It's still done in some French cuisine/hunting practices, though much less common nowadays: "Faisandage", where small game can be left to rot in a relatively controlled way for months: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_de_la_viande#Matu...

It used to be traditional in English gamebird hunting to "hang them by the neck until the body separated from the head" to age the meat...

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#72

Post by klyrs »

AlbertCory wrote: post #61
zikduruqe wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look up the Hadza tribe's gut microbiome. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36238714/ https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4654 That's probably as close as you are going to get to truly paleo diets... not paleo-bros that eat only bacon, butter and meats.

I was going to post about "paleo" diets, but you beat me to it. The Paleo Cafe would get closed down by the Health Department real fast if it actually served paleo foods.

I'm picturing a guy hauling a roadkill deer in, tossing it on a table and yelling "meat's up!" I mean, sure, they didn't have cars back then, but it's better than letting trash-eating deer meat go to waste.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#74

Post by AlbertCory »

klyrs wrote: post #72
AlbertCory wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to post about "paleo" diets, but you beat me to it. The Paleo Cafe would get closed down by the Health Department real fast if it actually served paleo foods.

I'm picturing a guy hauling a roadkill deer in, tossing it on a table and yelling "meat's up!" I mean, sure, they didn't have cars back then, but it's better than letting trash-eating deer meat go to waste.

I dimly recall a New Yorker article about people who eat roadkill. They do have their limits though. It has to be fresh roadkill :)

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#75

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

protastus wrote: post #70
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, all the pets I've had throw up way more than I do. I think we're ignoring the very real possibility that ancient people were constantly living with some level of gastrointestinal problems.

Pets have diet sensitivities too, which can upset their stomachs. My cat used to occasionally throw up but with her current food she has gone for more than a year without any events. By eating spoiled and contaminated food, ancient people were certainly getting internal parasites too (also something that a big fraction of pets have).

Oh, I'm sure if you wait long enough someone is going to argue that the parasites were a good thing too.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#76

Post by logicalmonster »

Retric wrote: post #11
vuln wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's obvious that at most in our very recent evolutionary history we had far higher tolerance to spoilage. I wonder what effect that’s had on a humans immune system. I’d imagine eating spoiled meat containing bacteria, etc was giving their immune system a run for its money until a tolerance was built.

The major issue isn’t the bacteria but their byproducts. Ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulism This is why you can’t render rotten meat safe by simply cooking it. That said, people still age meat. Small birds for will get left for 4-9 days in a cool space before being butchered etc. https://magazine.outdoornebraska.gov/2014/01/hanging-pheasan...

1) Is this what was referred to in the movie "The Menu" where they were taking the tour in the beginning and talking about the 152 day aging process for meat, but the 153rd day would bring chaos?

2) Why is there such a precise known number for that issue? Don't bacteria grow differently? It just seems odd that 152 days would definitely be ok and 153 days would definitely kill.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#77

Post by neonnoodle »

MayeulC wrote: post #36
Connor_Creegan1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's obvious that at least in our very recent evolutionary history we had far higher tolerance to spoilage. I would agree, both in terms of actual immunity and taste response, although generally-speaking eating rotten meat (especially when well-sourced) is not nearly as risky as common wisdom would make it out to be. Many folks in the deeper circles of online carnivoria dabble in "high meat" (fermented rotten meat,…

It's still done in some French cuisine/hunting practices, though much less common nowadays: "Faisandage", where small game can be left to rot in a relatively controlled way for months: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_de_la_viande#Matu...

Relevant quote from the TV show _Newsradio_:

Bill: In the olden days, a country squire would age his pheasants for weeks before they were deemed fit for consumption.

Lisa Miller : In the olden days, people died of ptomaine poisoning and blamed it on ghosts.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#78

Post by mhb »

walkhour wrote: post #26
ravenstine wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why subscribe to the endurance running hypothesis, though? There are no contemporary examples of humans hunting that way, and hominids were already making tools by the time they had developed to subsist on meat. The endurance/persistence hypothesis doesn't even make sense without tools like spears, knives, or arrows, because humans don't kill their prey by biting into them. If they had access to primitive weaponry, w…

> There are no contemporary examples of humans hunting that way. There are some examples [0], although admittedly they are isolated cases. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

Running After Antelope: Scott Carrier's story of trying for twelve years to chase down and catch an antelope by foot.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35362140

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#79

Post by FrustratedMonky »

senko wrote: post #63
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Good GPT.

Yes. Know it is rude (is it impolite to use GPT?), but I've been playing with GPT and thought I'd give it a shot to see if anyone noticed, or if HN had any detection.
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