I make fermented fizzy enzyme drinks at home all the time, no soft drinks anymore. It has to be all the time as it is a perpetual drink. You buy on of those fancy hipster live enzyme drinks, but you never finish it. Just and juice, sugar, jam - whatever what bacteria like and it continues fermentation. At room temperature. Every two days it is ready again, drink it, feed it. If it is too active, put it in a fridge. I try to spread it as people have forgotten this.
Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth
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Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth
#12I wish the article lingered a bit more on how people might've been fermenting foods in the past as well as exploring what fermentable food options were available. It would be interesting to run some experiments storing various foods in different ecosystems over long periods of time. How falsifiable is their hypothesis? This would've been mostly in the African continent, right? I'd imagine it would be hard to get cons…
The excellent book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (Harold McGee) has sections on major food groups, along with some incredible stories of how those foods have been preserved in the past — many of which involve some sort of fermentation. I recall one story about birds being encased inside a dead seal, which was then buried for a time (looking that up now, I think it's Inuit 'kiviak'). It's a great book all around, if you're interested in how food works.
Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth
#13It used to be meat, and then that was corrected to be starch (potatoes are easy to farm and store)
Potatoes are native to the Americas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato But there are other starches too.
When it comes to the "Columbian Exchange" [0] there are quite a lot of animals and plants the people today will (wrongly) assume have existed somewhere since antiquity. (Italian tomatoes, Irish potatoes, wild horses in the American midwest, etc.)
Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth
#14Fermented foods, especially yogurt, kefir, buttermilk are vital for good health. People buy probiotic pills etc. But all it takes is to buy a tub/can of Greek yogurt. The best snack there is. Medicine is food, food is medicine.
That really depends on the country. Some yogurts are very much dead where as in Switzerland they must be alive . Same thing with so many other items.
Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth
#15I make fermented fizzy enzyme drinks at home all the time, no soft drinks anymore. It has to be all the time as it is a perpetual drink. You buy on of those fancy hipster live enzyme drinks, but you never finish it. Just and juice, sugar, jam - whatever what bacteria like and it continues fermentation. At room temperature. Every two days it is ready again, drink it, feed it. If it is too active, put it in a fridge. I…
In the Netherlands it's called water and kefir. Good stuff indeed, especially during summer and basically free at the cost tapwater. No plastic packaging either! Those hipster might actually be onto something ;)
Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth
#16From the article: "Backing up this hypothesis is the fact that humans have relatively smaller large intestines than other primates. This indicates that our ancestors were eating food that was already partly broken down by fermentation." IIRC another interpretation of the smaller large intestine is that early humans were eating more bioavailable food (i.e. meat) than other primates, which doesn't need to be broken dow…
Were finding evidence of ... "milling for food dates back to the transitional period between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens."
From: https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2023/06/19/the-old...
I just don't buy that fermentation from random food piles is a driver for evolution...
Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth
#17Fermented foods, especially yogurt, kefir, buttermilk are vital for good health. People buy probiotic pills etc. But all it takes is to buy a tub/can of Greek yogurt. The best snack there is. Medicine is food, food is medicine.
That really depends on the country. Some yogurts are very much dead where as in Switzerland they must be alive . Same thing with so many other items.
I keep hearing about this "dead" yogurt. What does this mean?
Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth
#18Fermentation is just one kind of preservation. It seems to me that preserving food has a larger impact on individual survival by promoting group survival, than does any speculative benefit to individual gut health specifically tied to fermentation.
Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth
#19Here is the original research paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05517-3
Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth
#20I wish the article lingered a bit more on how people might've been fermenting foods in the past as well as exploring what fermentable food options were available. It would be interesting to run some experiments storing various foods in different ecosystems over long periods of time. How falsifiable is their hypothesis? This would've been mostly in the African continent, right? I'd imagine it would be hard to get cons…
Iru, fermented locust beans, come from Africa. Tempeh comes from Indonesia. Seems like most fermented foods prefer somewhat warm temperatures