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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

#111

Post by spacecadet »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #94
wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah not sure I understand the entire idea behind correctly. To stick with other primates for now. Gorilla's have an obscene amount of muscles; adults need 8000 calories per day, compared to 2000-3000 calories for an adult human. Somewhere, even though they eat low bioavailable food, even though they had to eat all day the heave muscle guys & girls had better chances of survival. Why do we think the brain's need are…

More probably the idea behind is some dill preserves company donated for the research.

Ah yes big pickle mucking with research...

Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth

#112

Post by Tor3 »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #107
Tor3 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans (since Erectus) _can't_ eat more. We don't have a big enough ingestion system for that. Our guts are tiny compared to other great apes. We're completely unable to survive on what chimpanzees eat, not to mention gorillas. The fire/cooked food hypothesis (and now this speculative one about fermented food) is that it made it possible to greatly reduce the guts, as well as chewing muscles. More calories and better…

but we can, you can perfectly fine live on raw meat (pork back fat) nuts etc. And Guts also shrank because they could. It sounds to me like this part mostly came after we learned to cook, then the body didn't need to waste energy on large complex guts. Hugely complicated brains such as Elephants & Whales do just fine on raw food diets.

Erectus are about 2 million years old, and they already had "our" body shape.. i.e. small guts. The question has always been - did they already know how to cook? It's somewhat early for fire control. But it is one of the arguments for the idea that fire/cooking came much earlier than we have physical evidence for. This study/idea about fermented food is exactly about this - if there wasn't fire that early, could it have been fermentation?

Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth

#113

Post by spacecadet »

berkes wrote: post #83
toxik wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, the great apes are better adapted to plant diets, humans are better adapted for eating meat. Gorillas eat leaves and pith, and A LOT of it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964658/

Yes. But the parent commentor asked "why". As in: why can a gorilla sustain it's immense needs to build muscles by eating a lot, but humans cannot do this to build a large brain? To ask that question differently: why would humans need to change to meat/fermentation/cooking in order to grow brains, if they could "just" eat more, as other primates do?

Spoken like you expect an answer when this is just incremental understanding. This is not a video game where we discover some tech tree humans followed and can then replicate that in say apes. Maybe Im reading too much into this? by seems like a-lot of screaming for why.

Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth

#114

Post by giantg2 »

LeonB wrote: post #109
giantg2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, but knowing how to safely ferment foods would seem indicate that one has an advanced brain. Are there any examples of other primates fermenting thier food (lacto, not alcohol - alcohol shrinks brains)?

Nature causes various food sources to ferment which is exploited by many animals.

Like what? Usually lacto fermenting requires a specific salt level. I know fruit tends to ferment, but that produces alcohol, which is a negative factor for brains.

Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth

#115

Post by pwillia7 »

Tade0 wrote: post #104

> "Reduced gut sizes could only evolve if our ancestors were able to exploit a more nutrient-dense and easily digestible food source,” I've been eating more fermented, marinated and pickled stuff lately and while it's nutritious, it's not very calorie-dense - hard to imagine something like this supplying enough energy to power a large brain.

It keeps too -- I think you would always waste some/have extra food unless you're starving. If you can turn that into non rotten calories, now I don't have to work on calorie getting tomorrow as much and we can try to figure out fire, pottery, whatever.

Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth

#116

Post by goalieca »

taejavu wrote: post #3

From 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…

Cooked food, including meat, is hypothesized as the reason for a smaller digestive track. Of course, this needs fire.

Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth

#117

Post by pwillia7 »

noduerme wrote: post #18

Fermentation 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.

Me too -- Think about what a boon stored calories would be vs all your food rotting every few days and having to worry about getting more would be.

Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth

#118

Post by bsima »

depressedpanda wrote: post #68
taejavu wrote: post #3

From 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…

Yes, meat being the driver is the more common (and simpler) explanation for our smaller intestines and larger brains. I guess plantbasednews.org just accidentally left this alternative explanation out. That said, fermented foods could very well have played a part in it.

It could be both: Fermented meat from scavenging. Sounds gross but actually many cultures still have fermented meat products in their cuisine

Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth

#119

Post by GuB-42 »

morgengold wrote: post #98
depressedpanda wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, meat being the driver is the more common (and simpler) explanation for our smaller intestines and larger brains. I guess plantbasednews.org just accidentally left this alternative explanation out. That said, fermented foods could very well have played a part in it.

Actually the big evolutionary advantage of humans is that they can thrive on a wide range different diets. Unlike other animals we can almost eat everything.

We are not the only omnivores, but I think it is an underappreciated trait of humans.

I believe that a lot is written about what is a healthy diet, but in reality, as long as there is no obvious excess or deficiency, and you don't have a specific disease, then any diet can be healthy. Vegan, carnivore, paleo, keto, kosher, whatever... even junk food. The human digestive system is very good at working with anything you throw at it.

The only thing is the less varied the diet, the more you need to care about potential deficiencies. Usually, there is a way, but unlike with a varied diet where you can rely on random sampling, you may need to be more explicit.

The psychological side is quite a bit more complex though. While a healthy diet is almost always possible from the point of view of our guts, we may not want to, because our natural incentives may not align with what modern society offers. What used to be rare is now abundant and easily accessible.

Re: Study puts fermented foods, not fire, as pivotal moment in human brain growth

#120

Post by ergonaught »

taejavu wrote: post #3

From 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…

Why not just read the actual study, to which the article links, and discuss that?

"One such proposed dietary change is increased meat eating, which has been argued to have been central to human evolution"

Behold the long comment train on a tangent unrelated to the study.

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