[HN Gopher] Did fermented foods fuel brain growth?
___________________________________________________________________
Did fermented foods fuel brain growth?
Author : jdkee
Score : 136 points
Date : 2024-02-22 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.harvard.edu)
| giantg2 wrote:
| If only this were true for my fermented drinks of choice.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| It may be, as the principle still applies. It'd interesting to
| contemplate that the "pivotal" mutation may have been something
| as subtle as a taste preference that lead to the consumption of
| the "spoiled" food caches, and the resulting surplus of energy.
| Of course, for that to be the case we'd have been caching food
| because of some previous mutation, and back and back we go...
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't think it applies at the alcohol levels of beer and
| wine. That tends to cause atrophy with enough use.
| beretguy wrote:
| Like... kefir?
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Think he meant kombucha.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Beer and wine
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Oh, what I'm drinking right now - but what negative
| effects on health could those possibly have? I feel good
| right now.
| unglaublich wrote:
| My pet theory is that our advances in brain capacity improved our
| ability to obtain, plan, prepare and preserve food, paving the
| way to further brain development. It's a positive feedback loop.
|
| So purposeful fermentation might have played a role, just like
| fire, and hunting, and gathering techniques, and farming. It
| probably wasn't a revolutionary and sudden change, but gradual
| developments.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| I wonder if there are natural limits to this... brains so smart
| that they hinder reproduction and are selected against (maybe
| we're already there)
| berkes wrote:
| That's easy: brains so smart that it eliminates all natural
| enemies causing an exponential population explosion. But not
| smart enough to overcome the challenges such an explosion
| must overcome
|
| It's easy because it's exactly where we are now. Strip mining
| natural resources, runaway climate- and ecological change.
| And no way to solve it.
| rvnx wrote:
| Wasn't it a reference to a correlation between
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence ?
| berkes wrote:
| Not intentional. But thanks for pointing to it. Gives me
| a lot of new reading material!
| NotAnEconomis23 wrote:
| Fertility and intelligence is only half of the picture.
| (an important piece, though) What about intelligence and
| life expectancy of the individual and of children? Also,
| what about other types of intelligence? IQ, EQ, etc?
| While very complicated, a multigenerational sampling with
| more information is really required. There is so much
| more to this picture, than a negative fertility
| correlation.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| There is only one intelligence, only one factor that can
| reliably predict future life outcome. It's what we meant
| by IQ. All the other BS is just a politically correct
| invention to avoid inconvenient facts. If high IQ
| individuals are becoming more and more rare as
| generations pass, the world of the future will not be a
| very pleasant, nor at least functional, place to live.
| Internet, sewage, rockets... these are not things created
| by "high EQ individuals".
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| It doesn't seem like it.
|
| First, let's say you have two brains, one has IQ 160, the
| other has IQ 60. They are the same volume, neither
| suffers any brain damage. What is the IQ 60 brain doing?
|
| Honestly, it seems like the Flynn effect has been a
| disaster upon the human race, when you look a bit better
| into history. People did live happier lives. All the
| supposed horrors seem to be a myth. There was more peace,
| love, honesty and goodness. Maybe they did know better.
| bugbuddy wrote:
| But I was also told by the smartest people that population
| declines across the world are the actual real threat. What
| should I believe?
| berkes wrote:
| A threat to what?
|
| Because it certainly is a threat to economic growth. And
| also a threat to "national" safety if you decline, but
| your neighbor grows.
|
| But it's undeniable that, on global, and millennial
| scale, exponential growth is unsustainable.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| The neighbor thing doesn't seem like a large threat any
| longer, especially with WMDs (otherwise Russia would be
| sweating having China as its neighbor in Siberia, but it
| doesn't seem like a large threat due to Russia being able
| to defend its territory)
| psd1 wrote:
| The thing about MAD is that the button only needs to be
| pushed once. We're on a tight rope until we aren't.
| tejtm wrote:
| In an exponential growth environment, every group that
| does not participate in exploding, loses sooner to any
| group that does (modulo chance).
| bitcurious wrote:
| In fact, we've got brains so smart they lead to wealthy
| societies with flat to decreasing populations. Just need to
| get past the hump.
| berkes wrote:
| I truly hope we will. But the more I learn about it, the
| more I get convinced "we" (human civilization) won't make
| it through.
|
| It doesn't seem like "a hump" but more like a fundamental
| law of nature: exponential growth will collapse. And do
| so violently and with chaos.
|
| I'm not talking about "the next 25 years" but more
| hundreds of years. Though even the timeline makes me
| anxious lately. I might see parts of civilization
| collapse due to exponential growth hitting a roof.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| The invention of effective, as in ~100% effective, means of
| contraception marks the beginning of the Idiocracy era, the
| Idiocracene. Up until 60 or so years ago, even if you could
| foresee the risks of an unwanted pregnancy, most likely than
| not you would eventually end up having a child or two during
| your lifetime. Not anymore. You can see it clearly when you
| compare the average IQ of a given country's population and
| the demographics tendency over time. This graph could be
| swapped with average children per woman and it would look
| basically the same:
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/average-i...
|
| The future belongs to the individuals, on any species, that
| are best adapted towards reproducing. Human beings are just
| another animal subjected to natural selection pressures. It
| seems that, usually, if you have too high of an IQ you simply
| refuse to have kids.
| tsol wrote:
| To be fair that last part was probably always true. The
| future belongs to the next generation, and not everyone
| values having kids. Probably why most major faiths
| encourage having kids. The people who were too smart to
| have kids died out along with their ideas. It's like
| survival of the fittest, but with ideas. I have a theory
| that long in our past we've went through periods of
| secularization like our current modern age. It's just a
| phase that dies out when the people who believe it do.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| Even so, high IQ was a trait that was transmitted through
| the eons, ergo high IQ individuals in the past used to
| still have children. I don't think your theory reflects
| the differences between the past and today's
| contraception technology tools.
|
| Think of a high IQ man in the late 1700. He can see that
| having children incurs enormous costs, both financially,
| emotionally, in terms of time, freedom etc. He can choose
| to never marry, and just keep being a womanizer. He may
| have LOTS of unrecognized offspring, that are very hard
| to be attributed to him, and so pass his genes along. He
| just want to have sex, reproducing is not at all in his
| mind. Sex is good and he likes it, so he does it. That's
| the trick nature plays in order to make 1700 man to pass
| his genes.
|
| Now in the 21st century, basically no high IQ man would
| go around having unprotected sex, since the costs
| associated nowadays are still enormous, probably even
| more so than 300 years ago, and today those costs are
| easily enforceable through the judicial system. So 21st
| century high IQ man, on average, will have a LOT less
| children than he used to have in the past. Sex is still
| good, and he will have a lot of it. But now nature's
| trick stopped working. The sex drive per se is not
| effective anymore when coupled with a high capacity brain
| that wants to avoid the costs of having to care for
| another human beings. So, this trait, high IQ, will be
| selected out of the gene pool over time.
|
| In the case of high IQ women it's the same story. In the
| past, with a lot less effective and readily available
| contraceptive methods, smart women were probably a lot
| more at risk of having unexpected pregnancies. Nowadays,
| unexpected pregnancies are basically an IQ test for
| women.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| Maybe high IQ has a drawback.
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| If your model were accurate it would imply high IQ and
| psychopathy would co-select wouldn't it? I know
| psychopaths tend to think they're smarter than anyone
| with ethics but doesn't the opposite correlation tend to
| hold?
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, a high percentage of psycopaths have
| high IQs. It's one of the classic profile traits used to
| represent the stereotipical psycho.
|
| edit: I searched a little bit on this and it seems that
| it was just a myth propagated by movies and a few very
| famous cases, i.e. Ted Bundy. But anyway, I do not see
| how you can make an argument from I wrote on the original
| post implying a correlation between psycopathy and high
| IQ. Is it the avoiding of having children, since it's an
| effective burden on the prospective father? It's just a
| fact, sexual drive was enough to make a man reproduce in
| the past. Not anymore. Natural selection wins again, the
| rules of the game changed, so you're out.
| icandoit wrote:
| If high IQ jobs offered in-building day care as a perk this
| trend would completely reverse.
|
| Convert the parking garage in the basement into a day care
| and you'll have phd-level employees for life. Changing jobs
| for even double the pay would be completely unaffordable.
|
| The negative correlation between education and family size
| is a function of the cost of raising children in a city. If
| the cost is reduced then the correlation becomes nuetral or
| even positive. There is no such correlation in a rural
| setting. This is a bottleneck in the talent pipeline.
|
| Consider this paper (from Indonesia) in which concluded
| that the relationship can change over time, as a function
| of policy:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831397/
| drakonka wrote:
| I do not think just adding a daycare will make having
| children suddenly make sense to many people - at least
| not enough to warrant such a blanket statement about it.
| Aside from simply not wanting any, there are so many
| reasons to not have children aside from daycare, plenty
| of them not negatable by policies or financial
| incentives.
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| Eh, it's a worrying scenario but I think it would be taken
| care of by intertribal competition. The people of Idiocracy
| would be easy pickings for a group of raiders that prized
| intelligence highly.
|
| Really, the only two countries that are combining a
| knowledge economy with an expanding population are Israel
| and India, both of which essentially have a tech-worker
| economy subsidizing and intermarrying with a bronze-age
| economy. That seems like the likely actual solve, a few
| ivory tower cities surrounded by amish country. Every now
| and then an Amish tests into the cities or a city-zen
| absconds to a simpler life, but the net flow is generally
| intellectual country types moving into the tech hubs.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| There was a documentary that explored this: Idiocracy.
| Bjartr wrote:
| Brains take a _lot_ of energy, having a brain bigger than
| life demands can be a liability and less fit than a dumber,
| but more energy efficient, variant.
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| We're probably already at a point where we can't just make
| them larger - human births are horrifically dangerous
| compared to other animals, likely because the heads are so
| big.
|
| Greater neuron density is probably still possible though.
| Just need to evolve to normalize the greater nutrient
| requirements.
| saalweachter wrote:
| It's important to remember that there's not a "make brain
| smarter" slider that evolution is slowly sliding to the
| right.
|
| Our genes code for proteins which are expressed in different
| quantities and have different effects on multiple parts of
| our biology and growth that lead to operational differences
| in our brains that lead to patterns that might be considered
| "smarter" in some circumstances and is beneficial in some
| environments.
|
| Take, for example, something near and dear to many of us on
| HN, hyperfocus.
|
| Is being prone to hyperfocus on subjects that interest us
| making us "smarter"? Is it "beneficial"?
|
| Well, sometimes, in some ways, in some environments. If you
| can hyperfocus on something that has economic value in a safe
| environment, you can make a lot of money and be very
| successful. If the things you want to hyperfocus on aren't
| particularly useful or you end up neglecting your actual job
| or relationships because of it, or if you're a caveman who
| was supposed to be keeping an eye out for lions and not
| counting how many leaves are on different kinds of plants,
| you'll be less successful.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| I find it rather unlikely, considering that bears can consume
| bascally any other living thing, with the brain size below any
| homo species.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Probably true. I have always also wondered if the use of
| natural vessels contributed to our knowledge of fermentation -
| early humans made extensive use of Gourds and animal products
| to make vessels for holding food and water. Definitely possible
| that natural yeasts and bacteria could have came with these
| natural vessels (or early humans could have even found ways to
| add them in a way that meshed well with the interior wall).
| alangibson wrote:
| You dont even need to take it that far. Leave anything with
| sugars out for a few days and you'll get fermentation. I'd
| bet that humans developed intentional alcohol production
| before language. Leave foraged fruit in a depression in a
| rock and you'll have wine in a few weeks.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wonder if the main attractors are not eating, breathing,
| balancing.. any effort toward this has infinite budget in your
| decision center.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Related: _A surprising food may have been a staple of the real
| Paleo diet: rotten meat_ -
| https://www.sciencenews.org/article/meat-rotten-putrid-paleo...
|
| Is the process of rotting also part fermentation?
|
| (God, I hope this doesn't start a new fad of eating rotting meat,
| among the Paleo dieters).
| mlhpdx wrote:
| Well, rotting increases the accessible carbs, which sounds
| antithetical to the neo-paleo diet. Hopefully we're safe from
| the new "unpreserved meat" fad.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Well. Aged beef is a thing. And aged poultry has been a thing
| for a long time.
|
| And if you ask the northern people and some in Africa, aged
| fish is a delicacy.
|
| Aged means controlled rot. Pretty much like fermentation for
| cabbage etc.
| collyw wrote:
| Fermentation is generally considered anaerobic (without oxygen)
| breakdown of food. I assume rotting usually involves oxygen.
| (Maybe someone can nitpick that definition).
| Melatonic wrote:
| Not always true - there is also aerobic fermentation. You are
| right in that many ferments require anaerobic conditions
| however it really just depends on the desired result and
| bacteria involved.
|
| Kombucha, for example, requires oxygen and is mostly an
| aerobic fermentation. In order to carbonate, however, it goes
| through a short anaerobic step at the end (which also causes
| it to switch from producing organic acids to producing
| alcohol). This is usually done during the bottling process
| since the bottle is sealed.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| That's the microbiological definition that a scientist would
| use. In food it is less well defined and usually just means
| something close to "intentional use of microorganisms in food
| production". Yeast does both aerobic and anaerobic metabolism
| but both are considered fermentation by bakers & brewers.
| Acetobacter is aerobic and vinegar making is considered
| fermentation. Koji is even farther out and usually still
| considered fermentation by fermenters.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| That already happened, they use the euphemism "high meat" for
| it.
|
| But, it really is almost impossible to draw a clear line around
| fermentation that doesn't include something someone considers
| rot. "Controlled spoilage" is definitely a useful way to think
| about fermentation and it is still spoilage.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| "High meat" is a thing for some, due to the effect that
| consuming the massive amount of B vitamins generated can have.
| In particular fermented liver comes to mind.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| There is no real effect from B vitamins unless there's a
| deficiency. And the niacin form of b3 can have some negative
| side effects in high doses. But mostly excess B vitamins are
| just excreted in urine without doing anything at all.
| notamy wrote:
| B6 is also quite toxic in large amounts.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Garums are one type of fermentation with origins in rotting
| fish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum
| porphyra wrote:
| There's also an ancient type of sushi:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funazushi
|
| I recently had Vietnamese fermented pork:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nem_chua
| kyllo wrote:
| Ever had a dry-aged steak?
| 1270018080 wrote:
| The steaks where they cut off all of the rotten parts so
| you're not eating rotten meat? Yeah.
| xutopia wrote:
| A fermentation process occurs deep within the meat tissue.
| The outside parts are usually moldy but not rotten if done
| correctly.
| jjulius wrote:
| Right. The entire steak ages and changes, not just the
| exterior. Even so, some places, like Flannery Beef, will
| blend some of the ends into their "adventurous" burger
| blend.
| xenonite wrote:
| Sausages are fermented meat :)
| retrac wrote:
| One thing I rarely see noted in these discussions is that no
| other animal treats or processes their food like humans, even
| without fire or fermentation. We effectively pre-chew our meals
| with our hands, breaking everything into a nice bite-sized
| pieces, with mashing or grinding of what would otherwise be too
| hard to eat. We will sort through thousands of tiny berries
| carefully, to make sure we don't eat something unpleasant. We
| will go hungry even when edible food is around, because we know
| it will be even more ripe later.
| Melatonic wrote:
| We also eat a huge variety of food (probably more than any
| other animal) so it makes sense that we need to be more picky.
| NewJazz wrote:
| .... Pretty sure there are plenty of animals that store food
| for winter, or mash and grind nuts, or sort through berries.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| plenty of species delay gratification, and with food, in the
| ways you described and other ways
|
| do you need examples of that? do you have a GPT4 subscription?
| DarkNova6 wrote:
| There are ant colonies that grow their own fungi.
| NewJazz wrote:
| I knew about aphid farming, did not know some ants grow
| fungi!
|
| https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know/farmer-
| ants-a...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungus-growing_ants
| someuser2345 wrote:
| > We effectively pre-chew our meals with our hands, breaking
| everything into a nice bite-sized pieces, with mashing or
| grinding of what would otherwise be too hard to eat
|
| Crows use cars to break open nuts they would otherwise not be
| able to eat; eagles drop turtles to break their shell.
|
| > We will sort through thousands of tiny berries carefully, to
| make sure we don't eat something unpleasant
|
| When orkas kill sharks, they only eat the liver of the shark
| and leave the rest alone. Wild civets also choose only the best
| coffee berries, which is part of why we make coffee from their
| poop.
|
| > We will go hungry even when edible food is around, because we
| know it will be even more ripe later.
|
| I don't think we go hungry, we just look for better food
| elsewhere until that edible food is fully ripened.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I do not have any expertise specifically in fermented food and
| brain health however I always found it super interesting that
| pretty much every culture (both independent of one another and
| sharing with cultures close by) came up with their own unique
| sets of fermented foods. Unfortunately most of these are now
| forgotten (mainly with the advent of refrigeration and mass
| farming).
|
| Everyone knows about standard types of yogurt and pickles and
| whatnot - there is a whole world of legume ferments (mainly
| beans) that use much more 'advanced' types of microorganisms.
| Examples would be things like Natto from Japan mentioned in the
| article (using Bacillus Subtilis). Unlike the simple yeasts that
| break down milk sugars in yogurt and produce various organic
| acids (like acetic acid for example) the bacteria in Natto can
| consume the resistant starch in beans and produce short chain
| fatty acids like Butyrate (very beneficial for health) AND can
| break down the complete protein in soybeans into their
| constituent amino acids. I believe Natto originally came about
| because cooked and cooled soybeans were then wrapped in rice
| leaves for transport and Bacillus Subtilis happens to naturally
| live on those leaves.
|
| It is also really unfortunate that in the west we miss out on
| tons of fungi based foods (not talking about anything psychedelic
| here) as many mushrooms contain tons of prebiotic fiber like
| substances that feed the probiotics already found in our gut.
| wil421 wrote:
| They came up with fermentation because they needed a way to
| keep foods from spoiling. Same with salting, smoking, or dying
| out.
|
| The interesting part to me is the first person who tried the
| fermented food or the animal meat that fell into the ocean and
| brined.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| They were probably really, really hungry. That expands your
| horizons for what's edible.
| someuser2345 wrote:
| They might also have just been bored.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Eh, maybe their rowdy teens, but being bored enough to
| eat something that may actively harm you is a luxury that
| I don't think a lot of early hominids had. Living off the
| land with primitive tools is a lot of work even when it's
| going well.
| buovjaga wrote:
| It's not only about avoiding spoiling, but making some plants
| edible in the first place [1] or making them more digestible
| [2].
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Preparation
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization
| excitom wrote:
| Another example: Olives
| pyrale wrote:
| > It is also really unfortunate that in the west we miss out on
| tons of fungi based foods
|
| Speaking of what I know, there are plenty of fungi-based dishes
| in Europe. Mushrooms are a staple of many traditional recipes.
| Mushrooms that can't be conveniently farmed are rare in cities,
| but they are certainly not rare "in the west".
| piva00 wrote:
| Yeah, I go pick mushrooms every year in Sweden, have even
| found my own little secret spot to get prized Chanterelle
| every season.
| pradn wrote:
| > It is also really unfortunate that in the west we miss out on
| tons of fungi based foods (not talking about anything
| psychedelic here) as many mushrooms contain tons of prebiotic
| fiber like substances that feed the probiotics already found in
| our gut.
|
| You're right that we get far fewer varieties of fermented
| foods. It's notable how certain cultures go very far in some
| directions, like how many types of lentils/legumes are used
| commonly in India, and how many types of chilis are used in
| single dishes in Mexico. Japan's in that direction for
| fermentation, perhaps.
|
| French cuisine deeply relies on mushrooms for umami and
| richness. There's a rich mushroom culture in France - a bunch
| of varietals are used.
|
| I think we're going to eventually come to a point where we
| consider fermentation a sort of "food group". Many cultures had
| cheese, yogurt, kimchi pretty much every day - the probiotic
| benefits are great.
|
| At the very least, being able to eat a variety of (fermented)
| foods in winter must have reduced the monotonous dreariness of
| the season - and helped improve nutrition, too.
| philip1209 wrote:
| This previous thread about "Homemade Sriracha" had some fun
| discussion about basic at-home lacto-fermentation, if that
| interests you:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37469590
| jiocrag wrote:
| Questionable. Plenty of animals cache, and therefore "ferment,"
| their food. Why have they not developed hominid brains?
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Hunting probably helped a lot. The ability for a tribe to eat
| large animals is something that likely helped humans benefit from
| the different tradeoff of brain size/guts size.
|
| I am not convinced that fermented food helped as much as meat.
| timeon wrote:
| Maybe you could publish a paper.
| sph wrote:
| Keep in mind that Harvard dietary research is notoriously anti-
| meat, due to having a large number of Seventh-Day Adventist on
| board.
|
| It makes absolutely no chronological sense to assume fermented
| foods to have been in our diet before meat, and has been
| theorized already that our brain size was only possible thanks
| to eating highly caloric fat and protein from animals. Imagine
| how much time we'd have wasted just feeding on grass and roots
| just to have enough energy to maintain our massive brain.
|
| Though it's hard to say in evolution whether the chicken or the
| egg came first, it's pretty simple: scavenge meat left from
| predators, enormous amount of caloric surplus, which
| concurrently enables expanded brain and a lot of "free time"
| not spent thinking about food, time that could be spent
| creating tools to make feeding even easier. The rest is
| history.
|
| This is also the reason human babies are so helpless: our
| brains are so large and energy-intensive that it takes years
| after birth for it to finally develop.
| account-5 wrote:
| > Though it's hard to say in evolution whether the chicken or
| the egg came first...
|
| I thought it was obvious the egg came before the chicken
| because: dinosaurs. ;)
| saalweachter wrote:
| It's worth noting that most animals, even animals you think
| of as herbivores, will opportunistically eat meat.
|
| A video of a deer catching and eating a bird went around a
| while back.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| The question is fermentation vs cooking, not fermentation vs
| meat. Still a little unusual, but not as ridiculous as you're
| making it out to be.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| That's a common opinion, but it's rather whatever was there, in
| cold climates large animals, in hotter climates there was
| plenty vegetables
|
| What really helped humans I think is more their morphology,
| their incredibly precise hands
| rspoerri wrote:
| How cooking might have influenced brain development, from tedx:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_7_XH1CBzGw
| philip1209 wrote:
| For people interested in eating at fermentation-focused modern
| restaurants -
|
| - Noma is the obvious (expensive) choice and the author of an
| eponymous fermentation book.
|
| - Silo in London is a lesser-known restaurant that does a lot of
| in-house lacto fermentation and garums
|
| If you have any other to add, please to comment.
|
| (I specify "modern" because a lot of traditional cuisines
| incorporate fermentation, such as kimchi, sauerkraut or even koji
| in soy sauce)
| 2024throwaway wrote:
| Noma is closing at the end of this year unfortunately.
| https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/1/14/23553765/noma-r...
| philip1209 wrote:
| When I was there in November, they talked about it more as a
| "reinvention". I think it will move away from fine dining and
| toward D2C products with pop-ups, but it won't completely go
| away El Bulli-style.
|
| Noma has gone through multiple "Versions", and with every
| major version change they publish a book. So, we can at least
| hope for a cool book in 2025.
| ggpsv wrote:
| For anyone interested in fermenting foods themselves, look into
| Sandor Katz.
|
| I found one of his books [0] more accessible or beginner
| friendly than the Noma book.
|
| [0]: https://search.worldcat.org/title/1108679733
| stainablesteel wrote:
| the fermentation idea sounds interesting, and i can buy it to
| some degree, there's never one magic switch when it comes to
| evolution, there's always multitudes.
|
| > The problem with this theory is that the earliest evidence
| places the use of fire at approximately 1.5 million years ago --
| significantly later than the development of the hominid brain.
|
| but this, isn't really a problem. evidence != truth, its always
| pushed back upon new findings, and its sensible to assume we will
| never know the true date, but we will definitely know it was
| earlier than our best evidence.
|
| nonetheless, that million year difference is a whammy. that's a
| lot of time for divergence and development of just a single
| organ.
| languagehacker wrote:
| Fermented foods have probiotic benefits, and your gut is often
| called the second brain, so why the heck not
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