[HN Gopher] Ancient switch to soft food gave us overbite-the abi...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Ancient switch to soft food gave us overbite-the ability to
       pronounce 'f's,'v'
        
       Author : NoRagrets
       Score  : 118 points
       Date   : 2025-02-20 17:49 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.science.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
        
       | BJones12 wrote:
       | Just a reminder that we are in the middle of a silent epidemic of
       | small jaws [0] and that if you feed your kids hard food they will
       | grow up to be healthier and more attractive.
       | 
       | [0]] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32973408/
        
         | iwsk wrote:
         | ...so mewing is real and it is not a coincidence that it's
         | suddenly a thing now?
        
           | tkahnoski wrote:
           | Mewing is something _intended_ to address this, but evidence
           | isn 't there. Everyone wants a non-invasive solution rather
           | than jaw expanders, braces, retainers etc.. so depending on
           | where your bias, you might be against "Big-Ortho" and try
           | this, or you could invest in proven orthodontics.
        
             | fsckboy wrote:
             | > _proven_
             | 
             | Dr Mew doesn't claim that orthodontics don't work, he
             | points out they are expensive and lucrative, and he claims
             | that if we maintain a "jaw healthy" diet from childhood,
             | orthodontic problems will be much less prevalent in the
             | population (this is a related but independent claim from
             | the "mewing" regimen) He says that the evidence is found by
             | comparing modern jaws/bites with historical skulls which
             | show there has been a dramatic "20th century" emergence of
             | orthodontic problems which would indicate a developmental
             | issue rather than a genetic one.
             | 
             | I don't know if he is correct or not, but it's a claim that
             | can be independently measured/verified. Instead of using
             | and publishing such sound science, the orthodontia
             | community is using "cancellation" against him which
             | certainly matches the lucrative aspect, though doesn't
             | provide direct evidence.
        
               | hombre_fatal wrote:
               | Well, can you link us to the best scientific evidence
               | that he's not full of shit instead of just saying he's
               | being "cancelled"?
               | 
               | Please no more blog posts or journal articles.
        
               | fsckboy wrote:
               | you sound angry, science is best conducted from a neutral
               | POV
               | 
               | I've listened to his evidence, repeated it clearly here
               | for you, and am aware of no counterevidence.
               | 
               | there is nothing wrong with calling his license
               | revocation over this precise topic "cancellation";
               | cancellation is a more precise term than "full of shit"
               | which could refer to constipation.
               | 
               | You don't seem curious to learn, the hallmark of HN's
               | ethos.
        
         | moralestapia wrote:
         | What is hard food? Can you be more specific?
         | 
         | I am definitely interested in this.
        
           | NalNezumi wrote:
           | Not OP, but I remember as a kid being told to eat crispbread
           | (freely available in schools, I assume in most of
           | Scandinavia) because it was good for your teeth/jaw.
           | 
           | I guess one could also include chewy / starchy food; my Asian
           | side family had similar saying but more towards chewing thing
           | properly. (chew 100 times per food in mouth)
           | 
           | So things like crispbread, (raw) carrots, dried
           | fruits/vegetables/meat/squid, etc
        
           | bloomingkales wrote:
           | Some people chew on the bones of meat.
        
             | Vecr wrote:
             | That's too hard. Chew on raw carrots.
        
               | moralestapia wrote:
               | I chew raw carrots regularly, and they also clean your
               | mouth as well.
        
           | tosser0001 wrote:
           | Anything that requires hard chewing like nuts, raw vegetables
           | and tough meats.
           | 
           | The first I ever heard of this topic was from reading the
           | book "The Evolution of the Human Head" (2011) by Daniel E.
           | Lieberman. It's an academic book, and parts are not exactly
           | light reading targeted for the general public. I had read it
           | when it first came out, seemingly well before it because such
           | of point of discussion.
           | 
           | The problem with this topic is, if you try to look anything
           | up on line you can quickly find yourself in the "manosphere"
           | with its associated toxicity.
        
           | bitwize wrote:
           | Does it go "crunch" in your mouth?
           | 
           | Even things like crackers may count, but generally hard foods
           | include raw vegetables and certain fruit like apples and
           | nuts.
        
         | gattr wrote:
         | On a related (?) note, I was taken aback by the scene from
         | "Kill Bill 2" ([1]), where Bill makes a sandwich for Bibi
         | and... cuts off the crust. And it was the soft "toast" bread
         | anyway. Doing this was not a thing when I was a kid; actually,
         | eating the crunchy heel of a (Central-European style) loaf was
         | a pleasure.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXXXIokuYGM
        
           | cafard wrote:
           | I grew up in the Wonder Bread days, and definitely remember
           | people cutting off the crusts.
        
           | saalweachter wrote:
           | This is an absurdly common request from small children.
           | 
           | If you don't do it, you may still find them eating around the
           | crusts, for instance if you cut a sandwich in half, or even
           | gnawing through a single point on the sandwich's crust and
           | then leaving behind a crust-rind when they're done.
           | 
           | As a parent, you're then left with no other choice than to
           | eat all of the grilled cheese rinds yourself, so you don't
           | tend to push too hard on the childish habit.
        
           | crazygringo wrote:
           | As a kid, I hated the crust. It tasted gross.
           | 
           | But that's because it was gross industrial bread to begin
           | with, and the crust was just drier and unpleasant.
           | 
           | But I also remember eating sourdough with its chewy crust and
           | loving that.
           | 
           | Cutting off crusts is very specific to bread that is bad to
           | begin with, I think.
        
           | niceice wrote:
           | Rich vs poor. The rich can literally chop off food and throw
           | it in the trash.
        
             | barrucadu wrote:
             | But the crust is nice, why would you throw it away just
             | because you're rich?
        
       | dpcx wrote:
       | This is discussed at length in (Breath)[0] which also discusses
       | other things about how it's caused issues with breathing.
       | 
       | [0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48890486-breath
        
         | begueradj wrote:
         | That's also why humans have maybe the weakest teeth among the
         | mammals ... and a narrow mouth which caused us to lose certain
         | teeth we no longer have nowadays.
         | 
         | In an interview with Joe Rogan, James Nestor suggested to
         | encourage our kids to eat non soft food daily.
        
           | soperj wrote:
           | Does he give some examples of non soft foods?
        
             | hombre_fatal wrote:
             | Guy sounds like a crockpot like half of Joe Rogan's guests
             | these days, but isn't it obvious which foods make you chew
             | or not? Compare yogurt to a bowl of vegetables.
        
               | triceratops wrote:
               | > Guy sounds like a crockpot
               | 
               | Ironic you can only make soft foods with those
        
             | FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
             | Pumpernickel bread... tough slices of meat?
        
               | saalweachter wrote:
               | Bones are the historical example, IIRC.
               | 
               | Obviously there are downsides to letting small children
               | chew on bones.
        
         | sxp wrote:
         | This book is amazing. Two useful bits that really helped me
         | were mastic gum and mouth tape. Both of them made it much
         | easier for me to breath through my nose at night and avoid
         | waking up with a dry mouth in the morning.
         | 
         | There are also some interesting bits on breathwork and the
         | scientific aspects of it. I was able to use those techniques to
         | temporarily lower my heart rate to 45 BPM during meditation.
        
           | soperj wrote:
           | > I was able to use those techniques to temporarily lower my
           | heart rate to 45 BPM during meditation.
           | 
           | What's your normal resting heart rate? Mine hovers around
           | 39-40, so getting to 45 isn't really an issue.
        
             | sxp wrote:
             | An average of 60-70 according to watch.
        
             | martinjacobd wrote:
             | Are you an endurance athlete?
             | 
             | I was surprised at how quickly my rhr came down after I
             | started cycling more even though I've never been very
             | active in my life.
             | 
             | It also (I think!) helped with my sleep apnea/general sleep
             | problems, and I've always assumed a good bit of that was
             | literally just being better at breathing.
        
         | 42772827 wrote:
         | Great book. I'm still working on breathing because of it.
         | Here's a bookshop.org ebook link for it:
         | https://bookshop.org/p/books/breath-the-new-science-of-a-los...
        
       | deadbabe wrote:
       | What sounds can we only pronounce with underbites?
        
         | tboyd47 wrote:
         | There's a sound you can make like an /f/ by pressing your lower
         | row of teeth against your top lip and blowing. That one. (It
         | sounds basically the same as /f/).
        
           | peterfirefly wrote:
           | I can easily make it when pushing my lower jaw forward (to
           | give myself an underbite). Pretty sure everybody else can
           | too. The kids I met with an underbite (when I myself was a
           | kid) had no trouble making that sound.
        
         | pineaux wrote:
         | I really dont buy the premisse of this piece. I can easily make
         | the same sounds with an underbite
        
           | tlb wrote:
           | But is it comfortable to talk that way for hours? Can you
           | shout and whisper and sing that way? If not, people would've
           | gradually shifted to easier sounds.
        
             | tiltowait wrote:
             | Speaking as someone with an underbite: yes. Easily.
        
       | turtlemir wrote:
       | I feel there are so many health issues plaguing our modern
       | population.
       | 
       | -Bad conditions for eyes leads to growing amounts of glasses
       | wearers, glasses make an active healthy lifestyle harder, early
       | health development seems really important (playing physically as
       | a kid) putting glasses on kids seems a terrible thing, and worse,
       | people act like this is normal.
       | 
       | -The types of food we eat, and our bad breathing habits (maybe
       | from posture or air pollution), maybe even our tongue posture,
       | leave us with poor jawlines, poor facial structure.
       | 
       | -Our disconnect from the natural world leaves us unwhole.
       | 
       | -The extreme of either sedentary lifestyles (office worker) or
       | too repetitively physical (warehouse worker) breaks people down.
       | 
       | Its really sad, most people I see today seem really unhealthy.
       | Fat or flabby, aching body, bad posture, stressed out. I fell
       | into the trap too, had to loose 50 pounds recently. Cleaned up
       | diet, working on posture, flexibility, strength, proper muscle
       | activation, knowing ones body. And that is hard to do, maybe only
       | possible because a WFH job lends towards healthy living. Most are
       | not so fortunate. Also having no family or responsibility beside
       | myself really helps. But neglecting such things are not
       | sustainable for society.
       | 
       | We need a society where being healthy is easier, and better
       | rewarded.
       | 
       | I am sorry if this rant is not acceptable to Hacker News, but I
       | wish as a society our focus was "what makes us healthy".
       | Literally that should be a primary principle in guiding our
       | politics. Compared to the rest of history, we are living in a
       | special time, at least in developed countries. We have the means
       | to be creating healthy, beautiful, smart, well rounded, well
       | adjusted individuals. But I feel the opposite is happening, and
       | it seems like the majority of people don't care
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | > putting glasses on kids seems a terrible thing, and worse,
         | people act like this is normal
         | 
         | I'm not following on this one - is it because this may make
         | them less physically active?
         | 
         | You should be asking what kind of vision problems they may
         | have, that got them the glasses in the first place. For
         | example, I have astigmatism, have crossed eyes without glasses,
         | and +8 power correction. I had to have surgery when I was 3
         | years old _just to be able_ to get glasses in the future. Not
         | having glasses is a great way to make me miserable and unable
         | to see or read _anything_.
        
           | the__alchemist wrote:
           | The intent is to reduce the likelihood of these conditions
           | developing by encouraging exposure to sunlight and far
           | distances as a child.
        
             | gjsman-1000 wrote:
             | In my case, I'm farsighted; and while screen time and lack
             | of sunlight can make myopia worse, there's already a
             | genetic tendency that is being aggravated.
             | 
             | Farsighted though is awfully convenient for staring at
             | screens with a good prescription - at worst, my vision
             | _improves_ over time. :)
        
             | bluGill wrote:
             | There are plenty of people who got exposure to sunlight and
             | far distances as a child who need glasses anyway.
             | 
             | My dad grew up on a farm, and rarely spent much time
             | inside, still needed strong glasses all his life to see.
        
               | Clamchop wrote:
               | Anecdotally, I grew up playing outdoors on a farm, not
               | much computer time until I was 11 or 12 or so, which is
               | also around the time I had to get glasses with almost the
               | same prescription strength as my father.
               | 
               | Either computers are quick to ruin eyesight or it was
               | genetic.
        
               | WithinReason wrote:
               | Hence GP's use of the word _reduce_ instead of
               | _eliminate_
        
             | bigstrat2003 wrote:
             | I got plenty of both of those things as a child (grew up on
             | a farm). I still needed glasses from the age of 9 to see
             | far away things clearly. Some people get cursed with bad
             | genes.
        
             | amluto wrote:
             | Not wearing glasses is a poor solution, to say the least.
             | I, personally, would much rather have myopia as an adult
             | than be unable to see or read well for years as a kid.
             | 
             | There's an interesting middle ground that's being studied:
             | "peripheral defocus" lenses. The idea, as I understand it,
             | is to give sharp central vision, but to blur the peripheral
             | vision in a way that encourages the eyes to grow
             | appropriately.
        
         | master-lincoln wrote:
         | Health is just a means to an end. Eating healthy and exercising
         | comes at a cost. There is no benefit I see for me in having
         | different jaw lines or facial structure. I don't need to live
         | as long as possible. I just want to maximize the enjoyment
         | while I am here. So I just do enough so I have the body to do
         | my favorite hobbies.
        
           | garbageman wrote:
           | Some hobbies also happen to be exercise and can be done
           | nearly daily. Just do more of them and now there's a much
           | lower 'cost' to exercise. Whether or not you find these types
           | of hobbies enjoyable is another story.
        
         | oh_sigh wrote:
         | I'm glad you're getting healthier, but what are the odds that
         | all of your theories have any basis in reality, after spending
         | , I'm guessing, years or decades living an unhealthy lifestyle.
         | 
         | Like, do you really think your tongue position is affecting
         | your facial and jaw structure? I'm guessing you believe in
         | "mewing", and every before/after image I have seen has just
         | been a joke.
        
           | undersuit wrote:
           | I'm waiting for them to drop mouth-breather as some kind of
           | slur.
        
         | flarzzarp wrote:
         | Your comment makes me feel mixed feelings. First, I think
         | generally speaking, we do live in a time and society where
         | people can be and are healthier than ever before. I agree with
         | you, that it should be a priority to further improve that
         | situation. Some of your points however (e.g. glasses, jawline,
         | beatiful, well rounded) sound like you are confusing modern
         | beauty standards with good health. As someone who really enjoys
         | wearing glasses, I am also a tiny bit offended by your view :)
         | And kids seeing well with glasses vs not seeing sharp is an
         | absolute no brainer to me... There are glasses for doing sports
         | too. The main driver of poor health today, imo is inequality.
         | Being healthy is a privilege. While, generally speaking,
         | illness does not care about your net worth, treatment options
         | do. Eating healthy is expensive in terms of money and time. So
         | are healthy hobbies, physio therapists and so on. Living a
         | healthy lifestyle should not be better rewarded but more
         | accessible.
        
         | SirHumphrey wrote:
         | "Our disconnect from the natural world" makes us not die at 40
         | from a broken leg.
        
       | AndrewKemendo wrote:
       | "By means of some 90 models of Eskimo teeth, Dr. Adelbert
       | Fernald, Curator of the Harvard Dental School Museum, has proved
       | that eating a strictly meat diet is the ideal way in which to
       | keep the human mouth in a healthy condition, and that it is due
       | to the fact that civilized people do not eat enough meat that
       | they as a rule have decayed teeth." - Harvard Crimson (1929) [1]*
       | 
       | The neolithic flip completely upended the world of Homo-Sapiens
       | such that majority of modern humans come from the bottlnecked
       | group of 10-100k sapiens that left Africa, interbred with
       | Neanderthal and developed the structural heirarchical systems
       | that dominate the world now.
       | 
       | Almost no humans today eat, cohabitate, socialize, "work" or play
       | in a way that is coherent with our biology.
       | 
       | *Notable that the student newspaper from 1929 is better science
       | reporting than any news outlet today
       | 
       | [1] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1929/1/29/esquimo-
       | teeth-p...
        
         | hombre_fatal wrote:
         | Someone's claim in a 1929 blog satisfies your epistemic
         | standards?
         | 
         | Most ancient mummies also have atherosclerosis.
         | 
         | Fortunately we can run the test today to see what causes these
         | things, not regress to story-telling about what might be true
         | because we want to believe it.
         | 
         | "Coherent with our biology" is just going to cash out into yet
         | more story-telling over evidence.
        
         | Daishiman wrote:
         | > Almost no humans today eat, cohabitate, socialize, "work" or
         | play in a way that is coherent with our biology.
         | 
         | We have adaptations for lactose tolerance that emerged in the
         | fast few thousand years. Our extremely energy-intensive brains
         | can only be fed because we pre-digest our meals through fire.
         | 
         | We are, in fact, quite well adapted to the society that we've
         | built, certainly much more so than peoples who had to spend a
         | good chunk of their life just looking for food and not dying of
         | mosquito-borne diseases.
        
           | dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
           | >Our extremely energy-intensive brains can only be fed
           | because we pre-digest our meals through fire.
           | 
           | The exception being animal derived foods. ( eggs, meat, fish,
           | milk etc.). These food can be raw, and will still reliably
           | fuel the brain.
        
             | adrian_b wrote:
             | This is correct.
             | 
             | Heat treatment of animal food has benefits, like killing
             | parasites, softening meat enough for weak human teeth,
             | extracting proteins from bones through boiling, or
             | denaturating harmful proteins, like those from egg whites,
             | but it has little importance for digestibility.
             | 
             | In general, heat treatment is not useful for fatty
             | substances and it is seldom useful for proteins. Heat
             | treatment is important mainly for making starch digestible
             | and for releasing various components of vegetable cells
             | that would otherwise require much more chewing or much more
             | fermentation time in the guts than possible for humans.
        
       | reverendsteveii wrote:
       | Not me trying to pronounce those with an underbite just to be
       | contrarian
        
         | ryanmcbride wrote:
         | I was able to!
        
         | tiltowait wrote:
         | I have an underbite and pronounce those sounds just fine, so
         | I'm a little suspicious of the assertion.
        
       | perthmad wrote:
       | It reminds me of this weird theory about proto-Castillan.
       | According to some scholars, the change from initial /f/ in Latin
       | to /h/ in Spanish could have been caused by the bad teeth of the
       | speakers of lore, a phenomenon ultimately due to the water
       | quality in some areas.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetic_change_%22f_%E2%86%92...
       | 
       | Needless to say I've always found this hypothesis doesn't really
       | hold water...
        
         | elnatro wrote:
         | All speakers of old Spanish had bad teeth? And from all zones?
         | Doesn't make sense.
        
           | ysavir wrote:
           | I don't know anything about Spanish language changes, but a
           | change needn't have the entire population afflicted in order
           | to occur-just enough people for it to become fashionable. And
           | as modern trends constantly demonstrate, fashionable trends
           | can come from anywhere, no matter how small a section of of a
           | population, nor how silly the trend seems to be to the
           | population at large, even as the population at large is
           | overtaken by the fashion.
        
       | crazygringo wrote:
       | How reliable is this finding?
       | 
       | It's hard to believe that we gained an overbite over a few
       | thousand years. Evolution doesn't generally happen that fast, nor
       | will it happen worldwide at the same time. And the idea that
       | someone born today will develop an overbite vs edge-to-edge bite
       | based on diet is generally _not_ accepted by scientists, correct?
       | 
       | And trying to prove how ancient peoples _pronounced_ words seems
       | virtually impossible. It 's one thing to find a change in
       | writing, but it's another thing to assume you know how the given
       | consonants were actually pronounced. Even today, there can be
       | gigantic variation in pronunciation between dialects of the same
       | language, including consonants.
       | 
       | So this finding seems _extremely_ hypothetical at best, unless I
       | 'm missing something?
        
         | tsimionescu wrote:
         | This is not about a genetic, evolutionary change from an
         | underbite/edge-to-edge mastication back to overbite/up-down
         | mastication. The theory is that this happens in individual
         | humans based on their diet growing up: if you were to take a
         | hunter gatherer child and raise them with a modern diet, they
         | would have the modern overbite; and conversely, if you raised
         | your child with a hunter-gatherer diet, they would develop an
         | underbite.
         | 
         | And while the exact cause may be debatable, as is the impact on
         | language, the fact that this change happened over the last few
         | thousand years is established fact, easily visible in human
         | skeletons.
        
           | metalman wrote:
           | Hunter gatherer is not a monolithic term, and it is completly
           | obvious that humans have adapted to inumerable diets in
           | countless ecological nieches. We have always been omnivores
           | and semi nomadic and in the vast majority of cases have
           | utilised dramaticaly diffrent food sources, based on seasonal
           | availibility, and chance oportunity. Cant see any plausable
           | reason to make the conection that is bieng made with
           | language.
        
           | crazygringo wrote:
           | > _and conversely, if you raised your child with a hunter-
           | gatherer diet, they would develop an underbite._
           | 
           | I.e. an edge-to-edge bite?
           | 
           | I understand this is the idea behind "mewing", but I thought
           | there was no actual evidence for that, and that it is not the
           | consensus scientific position? Or has something changed?
        
           | quanto wrote:
           | Indeed. In fact, as a tongue-in-cheek example in real life,
           | you can see the subtle facial structure difference between
           | Asians (say, southern Han Chinese in Fujian) versus 3rd
           | generation Chinese Americans from the same region (with no
           | mixed ancestry). Diet, language, facial muscle behaviors
           | (e.g. frowning), and surrounding beauty standards may have
           | contributed to differences in the mandibular (and elsewhere)
           | structure. Western diet tends to be a bit more chewy and
           | meaty than, say, softer carb-heavy southern Chinese diet.
        
         | Zenbit_UX wrote:
         | It's not evolution, just look at your mouth breather friend as
         | an example. Recessed jaw, poor intake of breath due to a
         | constricted airway, sleep apnea, gerd, bruxism, cavities...
         | it's all related.
        
         | jerf wrote:
         | It's the opposite of evolution. The environment changed, the
         | genetics didn't. It's not that the genes changed, it's
         | precisely that they _didn 't_.
        
       | ComputerGuru wrote:
       | Can someone help me find this amazing site that was once featured
       | on HN that had basically a cut-out anatomical view of the human
       | mouth and throat and then you could pick any sound to see how the
       | body forms it with an animation in-sync with the audio (iirc)?
        
         | jszymborski wrote:
         | https://dood.al/pinktrombone/
        
           | newfocogi wrote:
           | That was wild
        
         | yorwba wrote:
         | https://seeingspeech.ac.uk/ipa-charts/
        
       | justinko wrote:
       | It also gave us sleep apnea.
       | 
       | Agriculture was without a doubt the worst thing to ever happen to
       | us.
        
         | Zenbit_UX wrote:
         | Na, the worst thing to ever happen to us was hyperbole.
        
         | theultdev wrote:
         | Nothing stopping you from reversing the trend and start hunting
         | if your sleep apnea is so bad.
        
           | marssaxman wrote:
           | Nothing but the fact that agriculturally-based civilization
           | has already claimed the land, cleared the forests, farmed the
           | grasslands, and killed off the wild animals, so you'd spend
           | your time starving to death and hiding from game wardens: but
           | at least you'd get better sleep, maybe.
        
             | tlb wrote:
             | There are lots of places you can still hunt (or trap) and
             | gather. The actual problem most people would face is (a)
             | they're not very good at it and (b) it's extremely tedious.
        
               | marssaxman wrote:
               | You can still hunt and trap a little, sure, but I took
               | the previous commenter to be suggesting that one could
               | trade agricultural civilization for a hunter-gatherer
               | lifestyle, and I can't see how a person could get enough
               | calories to survive that way without egregiously
               | violating bag limits. Maybe up in Alaska or the Yukon you
               | could still get away with it, but here in Washington, a
               | little quick math suggests that hunting all the deer and
               | game birds you're allowed in a year would only keep you
               | fed for 6-8 weeks.
        
       | amriksohata wrote:
       | _When humans switched to processed foods after the spread of
       | agriculture, they put less wear and tear on their teeth. _
       | 
       | What? When were foods processed thousands of years ago? Also
       | Carrots and fruit are not "soft"
        
         | ivanbakel wrote:
         | Humans have been processing foods for a long time. Milling,
         | threshing, malting, fermentation are all traditional processing
         | techniques which often make food easier and more nutritious to
         | consume.
         | 
         | And while cultivated fruits and veggies are not pap-soft, they
         | are significantly less fibrous than seeds, stalks, husks etc
         | that you would get from foraged, unprocessed food. Especially
         | our farmed leaves are much softer than grass, leaves etc, that
         | animals eat.
        
         | nkrisc wrote:
         | Various breads, cheeses, and alcoholic drinks have been
         | produced for thousands of years. Grains were domesticated well
         | over 10,000 years ago, cheese has been produced for at least
         | 7,000 years, and alcoholic drinks probably as long as grains
         | have been farmed, if not longer. Likewise, humans have been
         | curing and preserving meats and other food for thousands of
         | years as well.
         | 
         | "Processed" doesn't just mean Doritos.
        
         | tlb wrote:
         | In the Levant and Europe, they ground up wheat to make flour
         | and baked it into bread. You can eat raw wheat but it's a lot
         | of work.
         | 
         | In the Americas they ground up corn instead. In Africa, millet.
         | 
         | In New Guinea they still harvest sago palms. They chop up the
         | insides, extract the starch through several washing cycles, and
         | make a sort of pancake out of it. The palm itself is inedible.
         | Harvesting a palm takes several people all day. In the end they
         | have a portable, storable, easily digestible food.
         | 
         | Around the Pacific, taro has to be cooked and mashed before
         | eating. It's toxic if you don't cook it and discard the water.
         | A lot of greens need to be cooked too due to calcium oxalate.
        
           | adrian_b wrote:
           | Once the inedible husks are removed from wheat grains, they
           | can be eaten with minimal work, actually less work than when
           | grounding them into floor.
           | 
           | Wheat grains (without husks) or any other cereal grains, can
           | be eaten easily just by adding an appropriate amount of water
           | (e.g. 4 times their weight) and boiling them, exactly like
           | one would make cooked rice from rice grains.
           | 
           | Making flour and bread (initially unleavened, then leavened)
           | has required considerably more work, not less work, but it
           | has become the preferred way to eat wheat because it was
           | considered much more tasty than boiled grains or porridge.
           | 
           | The varieties of wheat that were available before
           | domestication had seeds from which it was difficult to remove
           | the hulls, so milling them into coarse floor and boiling that
           | into a porridge was actually easier than removing just the
           | husks and boiling the whole grains.
           | 
           | Even in this case, when some kind of flour has been used
           | since the beginning, instead of whole grains, the evolution
           | from coarse floor and porridge to fine floor and bread has
           | increased the amount of work required for eating wheat.
        
       | hello_computer wrote:
       | Leaning on the biological and evolutionary conclusions of
       | linguists... New talk-show "science" to replace the old talk-show
       | "science".
        
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