4 ms·

The difference is that you can make lots of swords in different ways over the years and compare. The mystery with food, especially food that kills you slowly, i

by tlb 7y ago

The difference is that you can make lots of swords in different ways over the years and compare. The mystery with food, especially food that kills you slowly, is how to do that without killing your whole village.

thechao 7y ago
Perhaps all the villages with bad cooking traditions didn’t make it? Traditions are fluid, but everyone dying ain’t.
- vanderZwan 7y ago
  It's a really funny thing, tradition: people tend to believe it represents something that has existed for ages without changing, even though we often have no real proof of that (none of us have been around for more than one lifetime after all). I suspect most traditions are more about the collective belief that a shared social ritual is rock-solid and unchanging, and people taking comfort in that, than whether or not it really is.
WalterBright 7y ago
"This simple step of adding heat to the process completely breaks down the thiaminase, making it harmless." http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2007/03/08/2041341.htm http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2007/03/08/2041341.ht... Cooking is a common way of de-toxifying food, making it taste better, making it more nutritious, etc. It's not a big stretch to discover this.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  And yet, if all you do is wash + cook Cassava, you'll die in relatively short order - since there's a good amount of cyanide in there. Wikipedia has a small section [0] on how it's prepared 'in the wild': > A safe processing method known as the "wetting method" is to mix the cassava flour with water into a thick paste and then let it stand in the shade for five hours in a thin layer spread over a basket. In that time, about 83% of the cyanogenic glycosides are broken down by the linamarase; the resulting hydrogen cyanide escapes to the atmosphere, making the flour safe for consumption the same evening. > . The traditional method used in West Africa is to peel the roots and put them into water for three days to ferment. The roots then are dried or cooked. How easy are either of those to discover? Especially since low levels of cyanide consumption doesn't have immediate health effects. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Food_preparation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Food_preparation
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    > How easy are either of those to discover? Across a thousand years, it starts becoming likely. Biff: "Didn't you know you're not supposed to eat Cassava?" Awk: "No. What's the problem? I did a couple weeks ago, and I'm fine." Biff: "It's deadly. What did you do?" Awk: "I mixed the paste with water to make dumplings, then Thag came by wanting to show me his new club. So I let it sit in the shade for the afternoon." Biff: "Interesting. Let's try that again and feed it to Grep and see what happens."
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      Ah, but you miss the point - whether you leave it to sit for an afternoon or not, as long as it's cooked you'll be fine. Unless you do it for a significant portion of your food - and Cavassa's pretty easy to grow, so it'd make for a nice staple crop - in which case you'll die after a few years. So the feedback loop isn't "weeks" it's "years" or "decades".
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        > whether you leave it to sit for an afternoon or not, as long as it's cooked you'll be fine Doesn't that directly contradict your previous post?
        DuskStar 7y ago
        "Fine" given that you eat such foods rarely and/or your time horizon is months not years. No immediately apparent health effects, but long term ones - sort of like eating fish high in mercury.

by tlb 7y ago

thechao 7y ago

Perhaps all the villages with bad cooking traditions didn’t make it? Traditions are fluid, but everyone dying ain’t.

vanderZwan 7y ago
It's a really funny thing, tradition: people tend to believe it represents something that has existed for ages without changing, even though we often have no real proof of that (none of us have been around for more than one lifetime after all). I suspect most traditions are more about the collective belief that a shared social ritual is rock-solid and unchanging, and people taking comfort in that, than whether or not it really is.

WalterBright 7y ago

"This simple step of adding heat to the process completely breaks down the thiaminase, making it harmless." http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2007/03/08/2041341.htm http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2007/03/08/2041341.ht... Cooking is a common way of de-toxifying food, making it taste better, making it more nutritious, etc. It's not a big stretch to discover this.

DuskStar 7y ago
And yet, if all you do is wash + cook Cassava, you'll die in relatively short order - since there's a good amount of cyanide in there. Wikipedia has a small section [0] on how it's prepared 'in the wild': > A safe processing method known as the "wetting method" is to mix the cassava flour with water into a thick paste and then let it stand in the shade for five hours in a thin layer spread over a basket. In that time, about 83% of the cyanogenic glycosides are broken down by the linamarase; the resulting hydrogen cyanide escapes to the atmosphere, making the flour safe for consumption the same evening. > . The traditional method used in West Africa is to peel the roots and put them into water for three days to ferment. The roots then are dried or cooked. How easy are either of those to discover? Especially since low levels of cyanide consumption doesn't have immediate health effects. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Food_preparation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Food_preparation
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > How easy are either of those to discover? Across a thousand years, it starts becoming likely. Biff: "Didn't you know you're not supposed to eat Cassava?" Awk: "No. What's the problem? I did a couple weeks ago, and I'm fine." Biff: "It's deadly. What did you do?" Awk: "I mixed the paste with water to make dumplings, then Thag came by wanting to show me his new club. So I let it sit in the shade for the afternoon." Biff: "Interesting. Let's try that again and feed it to Grep and see what happens."
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    Ah, but you miss the point - whether you leave it to sit for an afternoon or not, as long as it's cooked you'll be fine. Unless you do it for a significant portion of your food - and Cavassa's pretty easy to grow, so it'd make for a nice staple crop - in which case you'll die after a few years. So the feedback loop isn't "weeks" it's "years" or "decades".
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      > whether you leave it to sit for an afternoon or not, as long as it's cooked you'll be fine Doesn't that directly contradict your previous post?
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        "Fine" given that you eat such foods rarely and/or your time horizon is months not years. No immediately apparent health effects, but long term ones - sort of like eating fish high in mercury.