3 ms·

Thousand-year eggs? Stinkheads? Casu Marzu? Hakari? I'm pretty sure all of these were a starving person digging up their old trash, looking at it and making a

Thousand-year eggs? Stinkheads? Casu Marzu? Hakari? I'm pretty sure all of these were a starving person digging up their old trash, looking at it and making a hard decision.

M_Grey 10y ago
Not even that hard a decision if you're starving, especially when it doesn't make you crap liquid and die.
- evilduck 10y ago
  The first person to discover their edibility would not have known if they were about to crap liquid until they died when they ate it, but they likely would have known that in general rotten food can make you ill, hence the hard decision, chancing survival against a potentially earlier death.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    The fact that any of us are here to have this chat leads me to believe that the basic principles of testing edibility have been handed down since antiquity. Smell it. "Oh that's rank! Yet, I am starving." Touch it to your lips. "They're not numb! Result." Touch it to your tongue. "No burning, no numbness, no tingling, good!" Eat a very little bit, "Tastes better than I'd have thought." Wait. "I'm alive, and I feel a very little bit less hungry!" Eat some more. "I'm not hungry, I don't have dysentery, and I can still see."
    - danharaj 10y ago
      Not to mention the permutations a human living in subsistence conditions would try. What if I cook it? What if I dry it? What if I soak it for a while? And so and and so forth.
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        Definitely. Especially anytime that food was likely to spoil rapidly and was incredibly valuable, like dairy. It also explains things like pemmican, which clearly evolved from a, "What if I add some berries and pound the ever loving crap out of it?" experimental lineage.
    - Zancarius 10y ago
      I'd imagine it's also influenced by our stomach acid which plays a pretty substantial part in killing off most of the nasty things that could make us ill, although most of those same nasty things have defensive mechanisms that can help them survive the initial onslaught of the acid (high protein foods seem to provide some refuge [1]). Your comment reminded me of a YouTube channel I find weirdly (perhaps morbidly) fascinating [2]. Once your body is acclimated to eating dubious quality materials, even in modern society, it seems that you're less likely to get sick provided you're still relatively careful (not that I'd recommend it). Steve1989 has gotten sick from his adventures, although surprisingly it was from a more recent Ukranian MRE contaminated with E. coli, and not from some of the more expected sources. It's worth watching a few of his videos if you can stomach it, if not for the surprise at what questionable materials he actually gets down, but for the unusual number and types of things that have survived (he's eaten a cookie from 1951, 61 year old peanut butter, and even Civil War era hardtack). I guess my memory was triggered by your mention of numb lips. As I understand it from the channel above, rancid nuts are particularly bad at causing numbness and swelling. I certainly wouldn't recommend trying anything of the sort unless you were absolutely desperate! Definitely check out his channel. It's gross, I'll warn you, but it's also fascinating. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC106573/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC106573/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA/vid...
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        That's one of the few youtube channels I find myself going back to again, I do enjoy it in a bizarre way. Many times he opens an MRE and I assume, "Well, there's no way he tastes that..." and then he does.
- mannykannot 10y ago
  Cheese is more than just tolerable: by reducing the amount of lactose present, it turns milk into a food for lactose-intolerant adults. It is thought that adult lactose intolerance was the primal state of humanity, and that cheese consumption was a step on the way to adult tolerance, in those cultures that developed it. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7433/abs/nature11698.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7433/abs/nature11...
  - hyperpallium 10y ago
    Yes, and lactose tolerance in adulthood seems to have evolved quite recently (7000 BC IIRC). Of course, human infants are already lactose tolerant (so they can suckle). I'm guessing the switch-off evolvee for involuntary weening, and had survival value. I believe bread, beer and wine pre-date cheese, and so the idea of a transformation through some agent wasn't that far-fetched. And milk obviously is nutritous. I'm not sure, but can you make sorta cheese, in the way that rotting fruit is natural fermentation, and dough can rise from wild-yeast (and unlevened bread was being eaten already). Once the idea is born, you can work to improve it. It's easy to think of primitive humans as dummies, but they were probably smarter than most of us, and once they got an idea, they would tweak it. Plus, it only takes one clever and lucky person in a network of communities to hit on an improvement, for it to spread. But there's a question of why the lactose tolerant mutation spread so widely... was there a starvation event? An outcompeting, or invasion by stronger, milk-fed warriors? But I expect cheese making eating was very wide-spread well before this event, and it was a great source of calories. Blessed are the cheese makers.
    - masklinn 10y ago
      > But there's a question of why the lactose tolerant mutation spread so widely... was there a starvation event? An outcompeting, or invasion by stronger, milk-fed warriors? It seems calorical contribution was the main factor in sub-saharan africa but in europe (the other main source of the mutation) it is mostly linked to vitamin D deficiency (the mutation spread from areas with less sun, especially inland areas with limited access to fish).
  - deleted 10y ago
bitJericho 10y ago
Not even starving. Look up ashens on YouTube. Maybe it was just for kicks.

Thousand-year eggs? Stinkheads? Casu Marzu? Hakari? I'm pretty sure all of these were a starving person digging up their old trash, looking at it and making a hard decision.

M_Grey 10y ago

Not even that hard a decision if you're starving, especially when it doesn't make you crap liquid and die.

evilduck 10y ago
The first person to discover their edibility would not have known if they were about to crap liquid until they died when they ate it, but they likely would have known that in general rotten food can make you ill, hence the hard decision, chancing survival against a potentially earlier death.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  The fact that any of us are here to have this chat leads me to believe that the basic principles of testing edibility have been handed down since antiquity. Smell it. "Oh that's rank! Yet, I am starving." Touch it to your lips. "They're not numb! Result." Touch it to your tongue. "No burning, no numbness, no tingling, good!" Eat a very little bit, "Tastes better than I'd have thought." Wait. "I'm alive, and I feel a very little bit less hungry!" Eat some more. "I'm not hungry, I don't have dysentery, and I can still see."
  - danharaj 10y ago
    Not to mention the permutations a human living in subsistence conditions would try. What if I cook it? What if I dry it? What if I soak it for a while? And so and and so forth.
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      Definitely. Especially anytime that food was likely to spoil rapidly and was incredibly valuable, like dairy. It also explains things like pemmican, which clearly evolved from a, "What if I add some berries and pound the ever loving crap out of it?" experimental lineage.
  - Zancarius 10y ago
    I'd imagine it's also influenced by our stomach acid which plays a pretty substantial part in killing off most of the nasty things that could make us ill, although most of those same nasty things have defensive mechanisms that can help them survive the initial onslaught of the acid (high protein foods seem to provide some refuge [1]). Your comment reminded me of a YouTube channel I find weirdly (perhaps morbidly) fascinating [2]. Once your body is acclimated to eating dubious quality materials, even in modern society, it seems that you're less likely to get sick provided you're still relatively careful (not that I'd recommend it). Steve1989 has gotten sick from his adventures, although surprisingly it was from a more recent Ukranian MRE contaminated with E. coli, and not from some of the more expected sources. It's worth watching a few of his videos if you can stomach it, if not for the surprise at what questionable materials he actually gets down, but for the unusual number and types of things that have survived (he's eaten a cookie from 1951, 61 year old peanut butter, and even Civil War era hardtack). I guess my memory was triggered by your mention of numb lips. As I understand it from the channel above, rancid nuts are particularly bad at causing numbness and swelling. I certainly wouldn't recommend trying anything of the sort unless you were absolutely desperate! Definitely check out his channel. It's gross, I'll warn you, but it's also fascinating. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC106573/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC106573/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA/vid...
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      That's one of the few youtube channels I find myself going back to again, I do enjoy it in a bizarre way. Many times he opens an MRE and I assume, "Well, there's no way he tastes that..." and then he does.
mannykannot 10y ago
Cheese is more than just tolerable: by reducing the amount of lactose present, it turns milk into a food for lactose-intolerant adults. It is thought that adult lactose intolerance was the primal state of humanity, and that cheese consumption was a step on the way to adult tolerance, in those cultures that developed it. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7433/abs/nature11698.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7433/abs/nature11...
- hyperpallium 10y ago
  Yes, and lactose tolerance in adulthood seems to have evolved quite recently (7000 BC IIRC). Of course, human infants are already lactose tolerant (so they can suckle). I'm guessing the switch-off evolvee for involuntary weening, and had survival value. I believe bread, beer and wine pre-date cheese, and so the idea of a transformation through some agent wasn't that far-fetched. And milk obviously is nutritous. I'm not sure, but can you make sorta cheese, in the way that rotting fruit is natural fermentation, and dough can rise from wild-yeast (and unlevened bread was being eaten already). Once the idea is born, you can work to improve it. It's easy to think of primitive humans as dummies, but they were probably smarter than most of us, and once they got an idea, they would tweak it. Plus, it only takes one clever and lucky person in a network of communities to hit on an improvement, for it to spread. But there's a question of why the lactose tolerant mutation spread so widely... was there a starvation event? An outcompeting, or invasion by stronger, milk-fed warriors? But I expect cheese making eating was very wide-spread well before this event, and it was a great source of calories. Blessed are the cheese makers.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    > But there's a question of why the lactose tolerant mutation spread so widely... was there a starvation event? An outcompeting, or invasion by stronger, milk-fed warriors? It seems calorical contribution was the main factor in sub-saharan africa but in europe (the other main source of the mutation) it is mostly linked to vitamin D deficiency (the mutation spread from areas with less sun, especially inland areas with limited access to fish).
- deleted 10y ago

bitJericho 10y ago

Not even starving. Look up ashens on YouTube. Maybe it was just for kicks.