you have to wonder how much of these habits we see as strange now are just artifacts of 1) a lack of refrigeration (eg fruits rotting produce a much stronger o

you have to wonder how much of these habits we see as strange now are just artifacts of 1) a lack of refrigeration (eg fruits rotting produce a much stronger odor than vegetables esp if concentrated under a fruiting tree) and 2) the revolutions we've had in agriculture wrt breeding for taste and nutrition, and the scale at which this is done now. I'm thinking specifically about the ability to quantify, isolate, and breed out the genes that result in high concentrations of phytotoxins (and the accordant pesticides that must be applied now that the natural defenses are gone) undercooked beans contain high levels of phytotoxins, for example, and lead to gastrointestinal distress and sometimes even death. if all plants/vegetables/etc in the past had comparably elevated levels of these toxins, it's not hard to imagine that people in the past were doing their best to pattern recognize and thus avoid things they had little-to-no systemic understanding of which then are extrapolated and grown into popular consciousness by word-of-mouth the obsession with 'health' as measured by the four humors is definitely silly from an empirical POV but the innate drive to not want to shit your guts out after your morning porridge seems like a very normal and valid motivator