July 21, 2011 • 34 mins
You are what you eat, which poses an interesting conundrum for omnivores. In this episode, Robert and Julie take a fascinating look at humanity's earliest meals. How did we learn which berries could kill us? When did fire enter the picture?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
do you like to throw like dinner parties, put together
like appetizers with things you do you call yourself a foodie.
(00:24):
I am a foodie. I don't do a lot of
dinner parties anymore, per se, but I do like to
whip up a nice bal slamaic onion and feta or
goat cheese pizza. You known, just on the fly rosemary
pizza is always so good, like goat cheese pizza with
like grapes and rosemary. I love that grapes. Sorry, I
know what I'm going to add now. So these these
(00:46):
are very you know, these are modern foods. These are
you know, we we pretty much have everything in the
world at our disposal. Yeah, I was about to say,
I I should um, I should point out that the
balslama onions I use are from a grocery store chain
that are frozen, which makes me being a foodie super
easy to your point. Well, but but even you know,
there even someone, even if you're not gonna even if
(01:08):
even if you can use raw materials, you know, there's
just so many at our disposal, so so modern cuisine
just encompasses everything. But have you ever attempted to cook
with ancient methods or to to prepare ancient recipes? Have
I churned my own butter? Have I created a little
hole in the ground in my backyard and and just
filled it full of hot coals and grow up some
(01:29):
stuff to pick in there? No? I haven't. Okay, well
I I don't think I think I have either. But
it's a It is a fascinating prospect, the idea of
inviting people over or just you know, just just preparing
this nice meal, setting the table, and then it's uh,
you know like nuts and bugs, nuts and bugs and
nuts and bugs, which could be very very I mean,
(01:50):
I'm not setting this up like, oh this is gross
and the goat cheese pizza is great. The oat cheese
pizza is great, but but bugs and nuts are good too.
I mean, are you saying this is the plus to
see an era dinner party? Yeah, it's like the Pleistocene
dinner party. We're kind of trying to imagine here. It
would would be a very different affair than than what
we're used to. But but but is we try and
(02:13):
understand what people ate in the past. It is kind
of challenging because that we don't always have the best
kept records of what people ate, especially when you get back,
you know, obviously into prehistoric times. It's called prehistoric because
there's not really in a recorded history. You have to
depend on fossil records. Uh, you know, looking at the
actual teeth of our our ancestors and seeing what they
were capable of eating. Yeah, and when we looked at
(02:33):
neander faults, we actually are need it or tall as
they are called. We actually found that meat really wasn't
as present in their diet as people thought. In fact,
there's a lot more vegetable matter and so on and
so forth, And that meat as a main source of
proteins sort of a myth because it's very obvious that
bones would subsist better than vegetable matter, right, Yeah, I
(02:54):
mean you have to keep in mind catching something to
eat is kind of a challenging affair. Like if you
had to go catch an animal and eat it right now, Um,
I mean not counting pets, not counting squirrels that are
so used to the presence of humans that you could
go and grab one with your hand. Um, you know,
in an in an actual prehistoric environment where everything is
(03:15):
fearful of everything else. It's it's a lot harder to
actually go out and catch that much meat, right, I
would be toast. I think most of us would be
toast if we had to go out and actually get
except for for Mark Zuckerberg of course. Yeah. But then
also speaking of toasting, I mean that's another thing too,
since since cooking, which we'll get to in a lot
in in in a few minutes, uh, is it can
(03:36):
be used as a means of preserving meat. That's the
thing too. It's like, say you're a prehistoric tribesman, you
bring down some sort of large animal, Well get eating
because you only have so much time before that that
meat is spoiled in a warm environment, right, and hopefully
you've got a salt flat nearby, right, so you can
at least preserve some of it if you know the
methods and the methods have been taught to you. If
(03:56):
if there's enough language at this point to communicate this, Yeah,
there is the what was the movie about the kid
who who goes up into the wilderness to survive. Oh uh,
this is John cracow Um book, right, if you based
off of that, I cannot remember. Into the woods or
sometimes yeah, into the wild wild, Like there's a scene
in that where he kills a large animal and he's
(04:18):
looking to try and you know, preserve the meat as
fast as possible, and it just ends up failing because
it's it's a huge undertaking, especially if you as a
people have not developed the technology to do it yet. Yeah, well,
and let's just try to let's do a quick timeline
if if, if, if people will allow us such an
indulgence of what we're looking at when we talk about
these kinds of foods um, before we became an agrarian culture. Um,
(04:42):
we're talking actually a much longer, like twenty plus years ago.
You're really looking at food sources such as very basic water, ice, salt. Again,
if you've got salt, bed, handy fish, mushrooms, eggs, right,
so you probably creep up to a little nest and
grab some eggs, easy pickings, easy pickings, um, some grains,
(05:04):
and of course insects really important. This is called into mafaji. Right.
When you eat insects, it's a great source of protein. Yeah,
because they're everywhere. They I mean they're they're just everywhere,
and and they're so easy to catch. Generally, you're not
gonna have to fight for your life to grab, you know,
a nice juicy grub to eat. You just gotta know
what to dick and right. And if you were in
(05:26):
the West, that probably sounds weird, but obviously in in
some Eastern cultures, this is you know, straight food for people.
It still exists. Yeah. Yeah, it's still traditional food in
many parts of Asia and Africa. And you know, you
can go on the streets of Bangkok and get the
fried insects and supposedly it's delicious. Yeah, I didn't get
to try it when I was there. There was all
sorts of street food, but we didn't actually get to
(05:47):
see the the insect because I was reason to go back. Yeah,
there's totally recently yea. Um. And then you've got the
sort of post agrarian fifteen thousand years ago or so,
you've got sheep, we cherries and almonds. Is afterward, domesticating animals.
We're grown we actually have early agriculture, so we're growing
up some plants we're gonna use. We've got animals that
(06:09):
we are controlling and they're not going anywhere, and we
can kill and eat them at our at our whim. Yeah.
But still we're talking about sheep here, We're not talking
about cows or pigs or anything else. And I mean
it's still very limited. And then cheap for the first
to get pulled in right there they are, Yeah, you're
kind of dumb, sorry guys. But then all seven thousand
BC beer and wine, oh yes, yea fermentation of fruit
(06:33):
and hops. And then you start to see cattle domestication
um in a in a very real way. And then
in six thousand BC you've got maze tortillas, honey chickpeas,
five thousand BC milk yogurt, popcorn, which just you know
that was the big that was the big invention that year. Yeah, yeah,
(06:53):
and they have little carts out there and they had
a little red and white striped buckets. Yeah yep. Um.
And then and then look at this, because this is interesting.
So you've got popcorn thirty s dred BC, three thousand BC,
spices starting to be used, and then five hundred BC
skip forward sausage. And then this is interesting. Obviously this
is a highly selected list. There's a ton of stuff
(07:14):
that we could go on forever and it would be
like reading the telephone book and would be highly unpleasant.
But um, the reason I wanted to point some of
these out is because as you go, uh, as you
as you come more towards the present, you see more
and more processing of food. So ninth century coffee and
cod because they go so well together, eleventh century corn
beef insider, fifteenth century jellies, jams and preserves, and then
(07:36):
seventeen sixty nine tofuon in America eighteen twenty four, A
one steak, sauce, eighteen seventy nine sacharin, and then we've
got Crisco in nineteen eleven, vegam nine ninety seven the
healthy element of processed foods uh spam. Yeah, So what
do we see? I mean, what we're seeing here is
(07:57):
just our ability to manipulate food more more century to
the point where it becomes increasingly more like this sci
Fi idea of like enjoy some food cubes, you know,
where it just comes out and it doesn't even look
at anything like uh, like a creature or a plant,
and maybe never was a creature. No, no, But I
think it's important to sort of talk about this just
(08:18):
in the context of me, how do we get from
you know, spearing insects and uh, trying to figure out
whether or not a tuber was edible or inedible to
to getting to this spam. Yeah, because there's a basic
like one like picture yourself in the woods like I
was doing. I've been doing this a little recently as
we've been looking to these food topics, and I guess
maybe I've been outside a little more in the last year.
(08:39):
Um uh and uh. And you know, like looking around
in a wilderness situation, especially here in Georgia, you look
around and you're like, wow, what if I just suddenly
had to survive right now? Just I you know, I
just had a forage to see what I could. You know,
I would I would be dead, you know before the
end of the day probably well, but you know, as
a as a wanderer. And and that's the thing too.
(09:00):
As humans spread throughout um, through throughout the world and
and and found new homes, they had to be able
to find these things, and some some areas were more
conducive to it than others. But basically early humans, you know,
you're looking around, You're looking for berries, you're looking for nuts,
you're looking for fungus, you're looking for water sources, and
the thing is that all of these can be poisoned
(09:22):
if you don't know what you're looking for. Some berries,
they maybe ones really red and it's really good to eat.
The other's red and will kill you, know, heartbeat, Uh.
Fungus is obviously, some are gonna be delicious, some are
gonna make you see the devil, and some are going
to kill you. Dead water sources, some are gonna be
clean and wonderful, some are going to clean you out. Well,
this is what when it becomes really important, this whole
(09:44):
trial and error process and really communicating, you know, among
your tribe or or whatever. The situation is, like, hey,
do not pick this type of mushroom. Bad things happen.
It's happened to me. I survived it, or someone didn't
survive it. So you know, we take only man, it's
like you have to give me those measures, right, yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
just save this for me. But so how do you
(10:05):
how do you do trial and error when you're dealing
with potentially lethal consequences? I mean especially it's like to say,
even if it's just a thing where you get dysenterry.
Like today, dysenterry is is a lot more treatable, you know,
especially in the more modern Western civilizations. But but back then,
it's like dysentery could be uh mean, until very recently,
dysentery was a death sentence in many places, and it
(10:27):
is in many places. Yeah, well, I mean in terms
of whether or not something might be poisonous. I mean,
they're gonna be some clues right off the bat. You know,
if you if you bring it up to your lips
as it began to sting, if you put in your mouth,
does your you know, do you go into antiploxic shock,
These sort of things that might be able to sort
of head you off from death before you know you
actually get there by consuming it. So there are some
(10:48):
clues that it would give you. But again the trying
to um orally tell this information is really important. And
then later as an agree in society with domestication dogs,
it becomes a lot easier. Oh, because dogs of course
will eat anything. You will eat anything you throw them
that say, hey, check that out. Maybe you have twenty
dogs and you have one to spare. Um It's it's
(11:10):
an easy way to figure out whether or not something
is is edible or inedible? Yeah, or well it's like
a dog could eat it and not die, so it
must be good for dinner. That's that's that's setting the
bar kind of low, I think, but you know, it's
better than nothing. And and of course, uh, people end
up developing all these different myths and stories. You end
up with this oral history to share with with your people.
(11:33):
That lets you just you know, kind of like a
memorization sheet of what you can eat and what you
can't um. But not unlike the memory palace. That's thinking
instead of just trying to remember, right, this red berry
will kill you and this one is pretty delicious. You
create a story about it, and then it's it will
sink in a lot more. That's right. And I mean,
how do we teach our kids right now? You know,
(11:53):
to avoid things? We we give them scary like you
know Grimm's fairy tales, you know, watch out for the witch. Um.
I mean, you know, it's it's all a little bit,
you know, in the same manner, I suppose, But there
you go. I mean, you are foraging, You're you're giving
your food scraps to the dogs, and then on top
of that, you're probably giving them something new that you're
(12:15):
interested in finding out whether or not you want to eat. Um.
And all of this starts to evolve into, you know,
this tide of food that becomes available to us and
that we cultivate. But the big big thing here obviously
is fire. Yeah, and it's it's really difficult to to
figure out when we first began using fire deliberately. You
(12:37):
look at some of these estimates and US and you
can some people say like Asia, other estimates are in
Africa even even further in the past. Um, And it
just kind of depends on which one you go with.
And uh, you know, it's it's hard to figure out
exactly when then, you know, because obviously you're keeping a fire. Um,
you might use the fire too, obviously to keep warm
(12:58):
to scare away animals. Um. Eventually the craft tools. But
at what point do you discover, Hey, if I take
this piece of meat and uh accidentally drop it in
the fire, then when it comes back out, it has
a different taste, it has a different consistency, right. Or
if I take this potato which was inedible, and I
cook it, then all of a sudden, I have something
(13:18):
that's really nutritious. Uh, that I can now eat. So,
I mean, because that's the thing about fire, It doesn't
just I mean it has several the way it changes
the property of food. Uh, it does so in several
different ways. I mean obviously, Um, if you cook meat thoroughly,
you don't have to worry as much about like parasites,
that's just just a small thing. You don't have to
(13:38):
worry about getting sick as much from it. Um, then
the taste is going to be in many ways better.
And then also you're gonna be able to digest it easier.
It's gonna that's a huge part of that. I believe
that the digestion part. Because we're talking about this, um
a little bit that you know, back in the day,
obviously there was no plumbing. So you would not want
(14:00):
to put yourself at risk for just fooling around with
a certain food to see whether or not you could
eat it, because you know, who wants to be doubled
over in a cave with diarrhea? Right? Yeah, I mean
you will be shunned. Yeah, and there are not that
many caves. Why aren't you doing it in the cave? Yeah?
Go outside? I know it's snowing, but um, it's uh, yeah,
(14:22):
I mean it's uh, it's it's like if we suddenly
had a magic sauce that you could pour over rocks
and make them edible. You know. It's kind of like
that's the thing. It's like being able to cook things
suddenly makes things that you could not eat before edible.
It it opens up the the culinary world world a
little larger, and in that way ensures your survival a
(14:43):
little more. Yeah, and yeah, there is no question that
this gave us the upper hand as a species. And
that's the important thing to realize to about earlier. I mean,
these early societies, even monestor, that food is survival, you know.
I mean as much as you know, especially in privileged
portions of the world, we get wrapped up in food
as enjoying and food as this recreation and this thing
that we love. But it's survival, I mean, obviously. And
(15:05):
that's an outrageous overstatement of the obvious. But like most
outrageous overstatements of the obvious, we do so because you
really have to drive from a point that we often overlook.
You know, this, This was the key to so many
of the roots of modern cuisine was that we had
to figure out ways to survive. We had to figure
out ways to eat things that we couldn't eat previously
and eat things tomorrow that we would otherwise have to
(15:28):
eat to eat all of it today. Well yeah, even
until the Industrial Revolution, it was pretty much uh, touching
go when it turned when it came to getting the
right amount of food and protein and surviving right little kids.
You know, babies often would perish because they didn't have
enough food or their parents didn't have enough food, or
obviously disease um was pretty rampant as well. So anyway,
(15:51):
until we stabilize enough for society, we really didn't take
it um as we do today. Is like, Okay, I'm
just gonna sit down and have myself a meal here,
whether or not it's in a restaurant, or I just
pull something out of my freezer and it happens to
be bossonic onions, which are delicious. So you have preservation
um of food. This is this is key. Well, we
we've alluded to this earlier, like if you if you
(16:12):
heat a meat, if you if you cook it right,
it can last longer. Right. The classic example of this
is beef jerky. Uh. You know, some people may just
you know, just think, oh, beef jerkey is delicious because
I can buy it a a truck truck stop and eat
it while I'm driving, you know. And and uh, you know,
and beef turkey can be really good if if you're
into that sort of thing. But it's an example of
(16:32):
meat that's preserved. I mean it's like, yeah, it's dried out,
it can last longer. It's not gonna rot and make
you sick. Um. And we see uh, several different food
preservation techniques that were essential early on, because especially when
you're dealing with harsh winters, you've got to I mean
it's it's like the weather grasshopper in the ant, right,
(16:52):
the the ant stores is food away and is therefore
able to survive. The winner the grasshopper doesn't and dies
during the winter. So we had a learned to be
ants pretty early on, which is taking something delicious now
and save it for the winter, even if it's going
to be a little disgusting come winter. Oh yeah, you
have a really good example of that bag of disgusting nous. Yes,
(17:14):
I mean to me, not to this culture. Yeah, we
kind of. Some of these are basically their survival foods.
There are things that and you see a lot of
these in UM in more extreme environments such as UM
such as Greenland, where we have this thing called Kiddiak,
which we're gonna get to right after this quick break.
(17:36):
This presentation is brought to you by Intel sponsors of tomorrow.
All right, kak laid on me? Yeah, okay, so halves
in Greenland. All right, So every year these little birds,
baby birds, cute, very cute little guys. Uh. You know,
(17:56):
they're they're all out, They're all just swarming all over
the place. This is a great time to eat little
birds because they're everywhere, right, and they have this great
way of catching them. They developed this it's like this
big sort of slingshot net, like like a picture of
like a giant butterfly net. And I was thinking, like
Dr Susie and net. It's very Sousian and they sling
that thing around. And if you've there's a the Discovery
(18:17):
BBC co production Human Planet has some excellent footage of
this in their episode about the Arctic. But they sling
this this net around and they catch these birds and
like in a day, they'll just catch hundreds of these
things and they'll they'll catch them and they'll snap their
little necks, put them in a bag, and then they'll
take them back back home. Now what are they doing
when they get home? Do they fry them up? No?
(18:38):
Because this is not food for now. This is because
now is a great what are you gonna yeah, yeah, yeah,
you can't eat them. You can't eat them all now,
it's impossible and you are worrying about surviving later. But
you also can't just uh pile them in you know,
a corner of your house, so they're gonna rot other
things they're getta eat there. They're not gonna be food
come winter. So they actually take a page for on
(19:00):
the the book of the Arctic Fox, which will we're
up pretty much all foxes will do this. This is
why they you know, they talk about like a fox
getting into a inhouse, so will just kill all the
chickens because the fox's ways to like, well, there's all
this food now, I'm gonna kill it all and I'm
gonna bury it. I'm gonna hide it and then I'll
come back and eat it when it's nice and nasty
later on during the winter. So it's the same principle
(19:21):
um they but but instead of just bearing it under
a rock. They take the birds and they stuff them
again by the hundreds into a big seal skin and
then they they and then they seal it no pun intended,
and then they jump on it get all the air
out of it. They literally are jumping on this right
after and they've sown the top right yeah, and uh,
(19:41):
and they put I think it's like like seal fat
on it to help keep the seal, keep it sealed
and to keep flies away from it. Then they put
some big rocks over it to keep anything from digging
it up and and to get the rest of the
air out of it. And then they leave it for months.
And then when they come back to it once food
is a little more scarce and they need to start
getting into the survival food. Uh. All these little birds
(20:03):
a fermented all right. Yeah, so it's they say that
the aromas like uh, like a really pungent cheese. Yeah,
And it was it Richard Attinborough who like, huh okay,
totally different voices. Um, but I think I remember saying
that it's ready when when it stings the nostrils, which
(20:25):
I thought, well, wow, that that is something I want
to eat right there. Yeah, when when I was watching
this episode with my wife for the first time. We
were like, oh my goodness, there, you know, watching them
get these happen, We're like, please cook those birds, Please
cook those birds. And they don't. They eat it. They
just tear into them. And it's and it's a delicacy.
And I don't want to I don't really want to
focus too much. I'm like, oh, this is gross food,
because this this is what's gross to someone else's is
(20:47):
great to someone Yeah, and it's a delicacy to these two,
to these guys and uh, and it could easily be
a delicacy to us if we had developed a taste
for it. Um. So that being said, I do I
find it really interesting because I love a survival food
aspect of it, but I'm also really intrigued by its
kind of grossness and uh and what it really tells
us about food preservation, about how important it is. There
(21:09):
are a few other really cool examples of survival food
from U believe, Iceland and uh. Uh. Guy I know
by the name of Andy works for a gaming company
that's headquartered in Iceland, and he had had a chance
to try several the so I asked him, I shot
him and he almost like, hey, what was the what
was some of the more interesting survival foods? Uh, that
(21:31):
you've got to try because in Iceland now you don't
need to eat these things, but they're part of the
culture and they're they're they're they're something you kind of celebrate.
He said that there is a there is a shark
called the it's a p shark and it's uh, it's
fer minute. It's called a hack ral, So it's kind
of like the same, you know, the same principle. Uh,
but it's uh, it's he said, it's not that bad
(21:53):
if you you take it with a with a shot
of of of liquor. See, that's the whole point right there,
I think. Yeah, And then he said that he said
that the worst though, was a cold sour ram testical
loaf called the Springer and uh, he says it's worse
than it sounds, and it sounds terrible. Ram Testical looks.
He said the fish jerky was very good, and uh
(22:15):
he said that the pickled whale blubber was actually fairly
good too. So so some of these things sound kind
of kind of kind of gross, but apparently they're not
that bad. Some of them are sound kind of gross
in our kind of gross, at least in the Western Palette.
But but again these are harsh, harsh environments, harsh winters.
So you gotta take what you have, you got stored
away and uh and then be able to get it
(22:36):
out and eat it when times get rough. Well, And
I thought this was interesting. This is from Cooking and
Ancient Civilations by Civilizations by Kathy Kaufman, and she says, quote,
for thousands of years, the survival and power of a
tribe or country dependent on its stock and grain harvesting,
processing and storing greenstocks was of huge importance, and war
(22:56):
was declared only after harvest um. And one of the
earliest records of large scale food preserving was in ancient Egypt.
As we know, what was really important to have an
adiquette adequate stock of dried grain um. And as you
know that the Nile would flood seasonally, so they have
these big silos where they would store it. And records
(23:16):
from show that the annual flooding of the Nile produced
surplaces of grain that were stored and kept to feed.
Builders of irrigation schemes and pyramid tombs, the Great Pyramid
of Cheops that Giza was built around twenty BC by
slaves fed with stores of grain and chickpeas, onions and garlic. Yeah,
it's I mean, it's the it's the ultimate in a way,
(23:37):
it's the ultimate survival food because it's it's grain. It
can it can be kept and then it can be
turned into bread or porridge or what have you later on. Um,
and it becomes in early society, but really modern societies too,
like grain is power, grain is is survival and and
and and bread is essential, especially in an urban environment.
(23:57):
I mean it becomes almost a currency. Yeah. I think
it's very telling that, you know, war would sort of
take a break during harvest because you know, why would
you why would you, you know, disturb one of the
most plentiful, bountious times of food available to you, and
you would be wiping out your civilization. Yeah. And I've
also there are there are different arguments of course about
(24:19):
like how war really got got started in human civilization,
But there's there is the the argument that you really
didn't have war per se until we had reached the point,
as as an agin in culture where we could have
the silos of grain, where we could have where something
was worth taking. Yeah, we had a surplus of essential
materials in the form of grain. It's interesting to you,
(24:40):
just on a side note, that Costa Rica doesn't have
any sort of army. And what I love about that
is there their whole thing is, well, if you don't,
if we don't have something some sort of central government
that has you know, munitions and this power structure here,
then nobody really wants to take us over. Yeah. I mean, yeah,
if you wanted to take over coast to Rea, I
(25:00):
guess the main it's like we really like uh, you
know jungles. Yeah, you want to take over our sloths.
They're high maintenance. Yeah but no, Yeah, that's but that's
one really cool thing about Costa Rica for sure. Yeah.
But yeah, so you have to you know, you have
these things, like you said, You've got these stockpiles that
all of a sudden become very interesting to to other
(25:20):
tribes or cultures to take over. Yeah. It's interesting thinking
about like grain is survival food, and grain is the
thing you store away now for for food later. Um.
I feel like in the office here and how stuff works,
I think everybody kind of has like a survival food
stored in their desks. Like today I managed to leave
without bringing my lunch with me. So I've got I've
got a like noodle bowl in my desk, which is like,
(25:42):
you know, a little plastic bowl with stuff that looks
like dust in the bottom of it, and then you
add water and water. That's funny. I have that, and
I have mac and cheese, and then I have some
cocoa from when it was cold, cold for like four
days in the winter. Yeah, and I was cool. Yeah.
You people pulling out oatmeal packs too, Yes, yeah, that's
the that's a big thing throughout the day to not
just for breakfast, not enough pickled fish year where is it? Um?
(26:07):
But but yeah, back to uh to food preservation for
just a moment. Other techniques include pickling, uh you know,
preserving it in a in a vinegar or you know,
some sort of a harsh flood. Um. And and then
eventually we get to the point where we can bottle
things and canned things, but that really comes much later. Um.
(26:28):
The technology for that actually during um Napoleonic times really
gets uh gets interesting. Right, This was for French troops, right,
in an effort to try to preserve food. Right, there
was a man by the name of effort a P
P E R T. And uh, I just have to
share this bit from James Burke's Connections. James Burke is uh. Uh,
(26:49):
He's covered a lot about the history of science, and
he's big on like comparing, like you know, sort of
like uh these different little paths through technology that leads
from something um simple to something highly advanced and earth shattering. Um.
But he says here um Appert's idea was to preserve food.
The container for his first attempts was the champagne bottle.
(27:11):
He had handled these bottles often during his earlier years,
and as he said, the form of the champagne bottle
is most convenient. It is the handsomest as well as
this strongest, and is of the best shape for packing up.
So he placed the food. He placed the food to
be preserved in the bottles, and he sealed it with
the cork. And uh, as they were in the wine
(27:32):
business by wire cages. So eventually we're, you know, we
we learned how to to do this little better with cans.
But I've actually seen footage of one of these bottles
and it looks kind of gross because it's like ancient soup. Yeah,
why is that so un appetizing. I don't know, but
this guy was a big you know, he was like,
this is the perfect way he was envisioning the future,
(27:52):
where like, anytime you wanted to have dinner and you
didn't have anything preparable, you go under the wine cellar,
you get yourself a bottle of wine, a bottle of soup,
and uh you come up and uh have have something. Well, yeah, okay,
that's not bad. Bottle of wine, a bottle of soup.
That was a really bad billy. Sorry. Um. And then
you have pasteurization, to which starts in late eighteen hundreds,
(28:14):
which again helps us to um, you know, pat rites,
milk juices, so on and so forth, makes us a
much more portable society as well, and freeze drawing space missions,
right exactly. Yeah, even more techniques where we can take
the food of today and make it available for consumption
later on. Yeah, and then don't forget nitrates and cured meats,
(28:37):
talking hot dogs. Oh yeah, so yeah, this is uh,
this kind of a smorgese board, if you will, a
buffet table of of some ancient up patter, a poopoo
platter of of ancient and not so ancient food techniques
about the evolution of few food and some of the
science of food, um, which we're going to get into
more detail in some upcoming episodes. Um. I mean it's
(29:00):
really fascinating, cause, like I said, the story of food
is the story of humans. It's the story of of
of science and technology and uh, and so it's kind
of neat to sort of go back and sort of
lay the groundwork and and briefly discuss some of the
trends in the evolution of food. Yeah, like how we
went from eating insects for basic survival to paying five
for a hamburger and you know one of the toniest
(29:22):
restaurants in New York City. Yeah, like hidding, isn't really
like a five hamburger? Yeah yeah, maybe Yeah. It's kind
of a gimmick at some place. Yeah yeah. And when
you actually order the hamburger, they have to like send
a guy out to get the materials for it. Yeah yeah,
I don't know. All right, we've got some listeners, males. Yeah,
(29:43):
let's get out of food and let's get into Matt.
We uh recently did math music in Mayhem, another one
of our math related episodes, and we had a listener
by the name of Graham from Scotland, and he wrote
in and said is a pH de candidate in physics.
I was delighted to see a recent math related podcast.
(30:04):
Whilst these were very interesting, I found your attitudes in
the introduction disappointing for some reason, however, and then I'm
skipped just a bit for some reason. However, it is
acceptable to admit to being bad at maths, and I
believe that your comments serve only to reinforce that this
idea is acceptable. I don't expect everyone to have enthusiasm
for every topic, but I can't say I've ever heard
you confess to disliking a subject in the preface to
(30:26):
another podcast. Uh So I was so saddened by this
because I thought, oh my gosh, that's definitely not what
we're trying to put out there. I think, if anything,
we were sort of being apologetic in our our lack
of math leatness. Um. Yeah, yeah, so, Graham, I hope
that you understand that, um, that we absolutely worship at
the at the math Altar. If anything, we wish we
(30:48):
were a lot better. But unfortunately there are a lot
of people who, um, you know, with journalism degrees or
English degrees like ourselves that are in the same boat. Um,
and we certainly have dedicated time to math related subjects
because we think it's so interesting. Yeah, yeah, I guess.
I guess we were sort of trying to disarm the
non math listeners in a way to say, like, hey,
(31:09):
don't run, don't run, We're not going to really get
heavy in the math because we're not really heavy math people.
But math is still really amazing and let's show you why. Yeah. Yeah, personally,
it's a tragedy, the great tragedy of my life that
I didn't have more of it, The greatest tragedy of
my life. Yeah. But where would you be if you've
(31:29):
been warning you'd be ruling this place by now? Oh yeah,
I would just I would eat the other. But but anyway,
I think still think Graham makes a valid comment here,
and I'm happy that we could. Yeah, and I'm happy
that we could. Uh, we could we could mention this
um in the podcast, sort of address this just in
case anyone else was wondering. It's like, why do they
not like math all that much? Now? We we we
(31:51):
like math, but we we do realize our our limitations
and uh and his dirty Harry Setiman has got to
know his limitation. That's the truth. So thing you Graham
from Scotland. And since we just did a food podcast,
I would love to recite oh to a Haggis, but
I don't know it by heart. Who's that by Robert Burns?
To please? Really? Oh? I guess I have heard of dogs?
(32:14):
All right? Well, here's another one related to math. This
is from listener Paul. Paul writes and it says, greetings,
just got done listening to math music and Mayhem. You
mentioned Brian May's physics background and it reminded me that
another of my favorite bands is also very mathematical. Tool
One great example of this is the song later Alice,
which makes a lot of use of Fibonacci, the Fibonacci sequence.
(32:36):
Here is a link to the video that explains it
needs and this one can actually just put this up
on Facebook. Of course it will be buried by the
time this comes. Well yeah, well you can look it up.
Just look at tool in fibonacci and we have we
actually have an article on how stuff works about Fibonacci numbers.
If you're not really sure what they written about you,
it's quite low. Yes, I think it was written money
but so long ago that I've forgotten every most of
the things about it. But yeah, this is the second
(32:58):
listener who's mentioned tool. I used to listen to an
awful lot and I never really tied into main connections
with most of the the the number stuff, but apparently
there's you know, now that I think about it, there
are a number of tracks that allude to equations, if
you will, so all right, but we've received a lot
of good feedback from people based on that podcast with
(33:20):
other UM musicians that are also mathematicians or have some
sort of math or science background, so it was really interesting.
Uh uh. There were a few that I was not
aware to get confirmed our suspicions anecdotally, at least the
connection there. So if you have anything you would like
to share with us UM, you can check out that
Facebook and Twitter page that I alluded to. We're Blow
(33:41):
the Mind on both of those, and you can send
us an email at Blow the Mind at how Stuff
Works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow. The WORL
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
do you like to throw like dinner parties, put together
like appetizers with things you do you call yourself a foodie.
(00:24):
I am a foodie. I don't do a lot of
dinner parties anymore, per se, but I do like to
whip up a nice bal slamaic onion and feta or
goat cheese pizza. You known, just on the fly rosemary
pizza is always so good, like goat cheese pizza with
like grapes and rosemary. I love that grapes. Sorry, I
know what I'm going to add now. So these these
(00:46):
are very you know, these are modern foods. These are
you know, we we pretty much have everything in the
world at our disposal. Yeah, I was about to say,
I I should um, I should point out that the
balslama onions I use are from a grocery store chain
that are frozen, which makes me being a foodie super
easy to your point. Well, but but even you know,
there even someone, even if you're not gonna even if
(01:08):
even if you can use raw materials, you know, there's
just so many at our disposal, so so modern cuisine
just encompasses everything. But have you ever attempted to cook
with ancient methods or to to prepare ancient recipes? Have
I churned my own butter? Have I created a little
hole in the ground in my backyard and and just
filled it full of hot coals and grow up some
(01:29):
stuff to pick in there? No? I haven't. Okay, well
I I don't think I think I have either. But
it's a It is a fascinating prospect, the idea of
inviting people over or just you know, just just preparing
this nice meal, setting the table, and then it's uh,
you know like nuts and bugs, nuts and bugs and
nuts and bugs, which could be very very I mean,
(01:50):
I'm not setting this up like, oh this is gross
and the goat cheese pizza is great. The oat cheese
pizza is great, but but bugs and nuts are good too.
I mean, are you saying this is the plus to
see an era dinner party? Yeah, it's like the Pleistocene
dinner party. We're kind of trying to imagine here. It
would would be a very different affair than than what
we're used to. But but but is we try and
(02:13):
understand what people ate in the past. It is kind
of challenging because that we don't always have the best
kept records of what people ate, especially when you get back,
you know, obviously into prehistoric times. It's called prehistoric because
there's not really in a recorded history. You have to
depend on fossil records. Uh, you know, looking at the
actual teeth of our our ancestors and seeing what they
were capable of eating. Yeah, and when we looked at
(02:33):
neander faults, we actually are need it or tall as
they are called. We actually found that meat really wasn't
as present in their diet as people thought. In fact,
there's a lot more vegetable matter and so on and
so forth, And that meat as a main source of
proteins sort of a myth because it's very obvious that
bones would subsist better than vegetable matter, right, Yeah, I
(02:54):
mean you have to keep in mind catching something to
eat is kind of a challenging affair. Like if you
had to go catch an animal and eat it right now, Um,
I mean not counting pets, not counting squirrels that are
so used to the presence of humans that you could
go and grab one with your hand. Um, you know,
in an in an actual prehistoric environment where everything is
(03:15):
fearful of everything else. It's it's a lot harder to
actually go out and catch that much meat, right, I
would be toast. I think most of us would be
toast if we had to go out and actually get
except for for Mark Zuckerberg of course. Yeah. But then
also speaking of toasting, I mean that's another thing too,
since since cooking, which we'll get to in a lot
in in in a few minutes, uh, is it can
(03:36):
be used as a means of preserving meat. That's the
thing too. It's like, say you're a prehistoric tribesman, you
bring down some sort of large animal, Well get eating
because you only have so much time before that that
meat is spoiled in a warm environment, right, and hopefully
you've got a salt flat nearby, right, so you can
at least preserve some of it if you know the
methods and the methods have been taught to you. If
(03:56):
if there's enough language at this point to communicate this, Yeah,
there is the what was the movie about the kid
who who goes up into the wilderness to survive. Oh uh,
this is John cracow Um book, right, if you based
off of that, I cannot remember. Into the woods or
sometimes yeah, into the wild wild, Like there's a scene
in that where he kills a large animal and he's
(04:18):
looking to try and you know, preserve the meat as
fast as possible, and it just ends up failing because
it's it's a huge undertaking, especially if you as a
people have not developed the technology to do it yet. Yeah, well,
and let's just try to let's do a quick timeline
if if, if, if people will allow us such an
indulgence of what we're looking at when we talk about
these kinds of foods um, before we became an agrarian culture. Um,
(04:42):
we're talking actually a much longer, like twenty plus years ago.
You're really looking at food sources such as very basic water, ice, salt. Again,
if you've got salt, bed, handy fish, mushrooms, eggs, right,
so you probably creep up to a little nest and
grab some eggs, easy pickings, easy pickings, um, some grains,
(05:04):
and of course insects really important. This is called into mafaji. Right.
When you eat insects, it's a great source of protein. Yeah,
because they're everywhere. They I mean they're they're just everywhere,
and and they're so easy to catch. Generally, you're not
gonna have to fight for your life to grab, you know,
a nice juicy grub to eat. You just gotta know
what to dick and right. And if you were in
(05:26):
the West, that probably sounds weird, but obviously in in
some Eastern cultures, this is you know, straight food for people.
It still exists. Yeah. Yeah, it's still traditional food in
many parts of Asia and Africa. And you know, you
can go on the streets of Bangkok and get the
fried insects and supposedly it's delicious. Yeah, I didn't get
to try it when I was there. There was all
sorts of street food, but we didn't actually get to
(05:47):
see the the insect because I was reason to go back. Yeah,
there's totally recently yea. Um. And then you've got the
sort of post agrarian fifteen thousand years ago or so,
you've got sheep, we cherries and almonds. Is afterward, domesticating animals.
We're grown we actually have early agriculture, so we're growing
up some plants we're gonna use. We've got animals that
(06:09):
we are controlling and they're not going anywhere, and we
can kill and eat them at our at our whim. Yeah.
But still we're talking about sheep here, We're not talking
about cows or pigs or anything else. And I mean
it's still very limited. And then cheap for the first
to get pulled in right there they are, Yeah, you're
kind of dumb, sorry guys. But then all seven thousand
BC beer and wine, oh yes, yea fermentation of fruit
(06:33):
and hops. And then you start to see cattle domestication
um in a in a very real way. And then
in six thousand BC you've got maze tortillas, honey chickpeas,
five thousand BC milk yogurt, popcorn, which just you know
that was the big that was the big invention that year. Yeah, yeah,
(06:53):
and they have little carts out there and they had
a little red and white striped buckets. Yeah yep. Um.
And then and then look at this, because this is interesting.
So you've got popcorn thirty s dred BC, three thousand BC,
spices starting to be used, and then five hundred BC
skip forward sausage. And then this is interesting. Obviously this
is a highly selected list. There's a ton of stuff
(07:14):
that we could go on forever and it would be
like reading the telephone book and would be highly unpleasant.
But um, the reason I wanted to point some of
these out is because as you go, uh, as you
as you come more towards the present, you see more
and more processing of food. So ninth century coffee and
cod because they go so well together, eleventh century corn
beef insider, fifteenth century jellies, jams and preserves, and then
(07:36):
seventeen sixty nine tofuon in America eighteen twenty four, A
one steak, sauce, eighteen seventy nine sacharin, and then we've
got Crisco in nineteen eleven, vegam nine ninety seven the
healthy element of processed foods uh spam. Yeah, So what
do we see? I mean, what we're seeing here is
(07:57):
just our ability to manipulate food more more century to
the point where it becomes increasingly more like this sci
Fi idea of like enjoy some food cubes, you know,
where it just comes out and it doesn't even look
at anything like uh, like a creature or a plant,
and maybe never was a creature. No, no, But I
think it's important to sort of talk about this just
(08:18):
in the context of me, how do we get from
you know, spearing insects and uh, trying to figure out
whether or not a tuber was edible or inedible to
to getting to this spam. Yeah, because there's a basic
like one like picture yourself in the woods like I
was doing. I've been doing this a little recently as
we've been looking to these food topics, and I guess
maybe I've been outside a little more in the last year.
(08:39):
Um uh and uh. And you know, like looking around
in a wilderness situation, especially here in Georgia, you look
around and you're like, wow, what if I just suddenly
had to survive right now? Just I you know, I
just had a forage to see what I could. You know,
I would I would be dead, you know before the
end of the day probably well, but you know, as
a as a wanderer. And and that's the thing too.
(09:00):
As humans spread throughout um, through throughout the world and
and and found new homes, they had to be able
to find these things, and some some areas were more
conducive to it than others. But basically early humans, you know,
you're looking around, You're looking for berries, you're looking for nuts,
you're looking for fungus, you're looking for water sources, and
the thing is that all of these can be poisoned
(09:22):
if you don't know what you're looking for. Some berries,
they maybe ones really red and it's really good to eat.
The other's red and will kill you, know, heartbeat, Uh.
Fungus is obviously, some are gonna be delicious, some are
gonna make you see the devil, and some are going
to kill you. Dead water sources, some are gonna be
clean and wonderful, some are going to clean you out. Well,
this is what when it becomes really important, this whole
(09:44):
trial and error process and really communicating, you know, among
your tribe or or whatever. The situation is, like, hey,
do not pick this type of mushroom. Bad things happen.
It's happened to me. I survived it, or someone didn't
survive it. So you know, we take only man, it's
like you have to give me those measures, right, yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
just save this for me. But so how do you
(10:05):
how do you do trial and error when you're dealing
with potentially lethal consequences? I mean especially it's like to say,
even if it's just a thing where you get dysenterry.
Like today, dysenterry is is a lot more treatable, you know,
especially in the more modern Western civilizations. But but back then,
it's like dysentery could be uh mean, until very recently,
dysentery was a death sentence in many places, and it
(10:27):
is in many places. Yeah, well, I mean in terms
of whether or not something might be poisonous. I mean,
they're gonna be some clues right off the bat. You know,
if you if you bring it up to your lips
as it began to sting, if you put in your mouth,
does your you know, do you go into antiploxic shock,
These sort of things that might be able to sort
of head you off from death before you know you
actually get there by consuming it. So there are some
(10:48):
clues that it would give you. But again the trying
to um orally tell this information is really important. And
then later as an agree in society with domestication dogs,
it becomes a lot easier. Oh, because dogs of course
will eat anything. You will eat anything you throw them
that say, hey, check that out. Maybe you have twenty
dogs and you have one to spare. Um It's it's
(11:10):
an easy way to figure out whether or not something
is is edible or inedible? Yeah, or well it's like
a dog could eat it and not die, so it
must be good for dinner. That's that's that's setting the
bar kind of low, I think, but you know, it's
better than nothing. And and of course, uh, people end
up developing all these different myths and stories. You end
up with this oral history to share with with your people.
(11:33):
That lets you just you know, kind of like a
memorization sheet of what you can eat and what you
can't um. But not unlike the memory palace. That's thinking
instead of just trying to remember, right, this red berry
will kill you and this one is pretty delicious. You
create a story about it, and then it's it will
sink in a lot more. That's right. And I mean,
how do we teach our kids right now? You know,
(11:53):
to avoid things? We we give them scary like you
know Grimm's fairy tales, you know, watch out for the witch. Um.
I mean, you know, it's it's all a little bit,
you know, in the same manner, I suppose, But there
you go. I mean, you are foraging, You're you're giving
your food scraps to the dogs, and then on top
of that, you're probably giving them something new that you're
(12:15):
interested in finding out whether or not you want to eat. Um.
And all of this starts to evolve into, you know,
this tide of food that becomes available to us and
that we cultivate. But the big big thing here obviously
is fire. Yeah, and it's it's really difficult to to
figure out when we first began using fire deliberately. You
(12:37):
look at some of these estimates and US and you
can some people say like Asia, other estimates are in
Africa even even further in the past. Um, And it
just kind of depends on which one you go with.
And uh, you know, it's it's hard to figure out
exactly when then, you know, because obviously you're keeping a fire. Um,
you might use the fire too, obviously to keep warm
(12:58):
to scare away animals. Um. Eventually the craft tools. But
at what point do you discover, Hey, if I take
this piece of meat and uh accidentally drop it in
the fire, then when it comes back out, it has
a different taste, it has a different consistency, right. Or
if I take this potato which was inedible, and I
cook it, then all of a sudden, I have something
(13:18):
that's really nutritious. Uh, that I can now eat. So,
I mean, because that's the thing about fire, It doesn't
just I mean it has several the way it changes
the property of food. Uh, it does so in several
different ways. I mean obviously, Um, if you cook meat thoroughly,
you don't have to worry as much about like parasites,
that's just just a small thing. You don't have to
(13:38):
worry about getting sick as much from it. Um, then
the taste is going to be in many ways better.
And then also you're gonna be able to digest it easier.
It's gonna that's a huge part of that. I believe
that the digestion part. Because we're talking about this, um
a little bit that you know, back in the day,
obviously there was no plumbing. So you would not want
(14:00):
to put yourself at risk for just fooling around with
a certain food to see whether or not you could
eat it, because you know, who wants to be doubled
over in a cave with diarrhea? Right? Yeah, I mean
you will be shunned. Yeah, and there are not that
many caves. Why aren't you doing it in the cave? Yeah?
Go outside? I know it's snowing, but um, it's uh, yeah,
(14:22):
I mean it's uh, it's it's like if we suddenly
had a magic sauce that you could pour over rocks
and make them edible. You know. It's kind of like
that's the thing. It's like being able to cook things
suddenly makes things that you could not eat before edible.
It it opens up the the culinary world world a
little larger, and in that way ensures your survival a
(14:43):
little more. Yeah, and yeah, there is no question that
this gave us the upper hand as a species. And
that's the important thing to realize to about earlier. I mean,
these early societies, even monestor, that food is survival, you know.
I mean as much as you know, especially in privileged
portions of the world, we get wrapped up in food
as enjoying and food as this recreation and this thing
that we love. But it's survival, I mean, obviously. And
(15:05):
that's an outrageous overstatement of the obvious. But like most
outrageous overstatements of the obvious, we do so because you
really have to drive from a point that we often overlook.
You know, this, This was the key to so many
of the roots of modern cuisine was that we had
to figure out ways to survive. We had to figure
out ways to eat things that we couldn't eat previously
and eat things tomorrow that we would otherwise have to
(15:28):
eat to eat all of it today. Well yeah, even
until the Industrial Revolution, it was pretty much uh, touching
go when it turned when it came to getting the
right amount of food and protein and surviving right little kids.
You know, babies often would perish because they didn't have
enough food or their parents didn't have enough food, or
obviously disease um was pretty rampant as well. So anyway,
(15:51):
until we stabilize enough for society, we really didn't take
it um as we do today. Is like, Okay, I'm
just gonna sit down and have myself a meal here,
whether or not it's in a restaurant, or I just
pull something out of my freezer and it happens to
be bossonic onions, which are delicious. So you have preservation
um of food. This is this is key. Well, we
we've alluded to this earlier, like if you if you
(16:12):
heat a meat, if you if you cook it right,
it can last longer. Right. The classic example of this
is beef jerky. Uh. You know, some people may just
you know, just think, oh, beef jerkey is delicious because
I can buy it a a truck truck stop and eat
it while I'm driving, you know. And and uh, you know,
and beef turkey can be really good if if you're
into that sort of thing. But it's an example of
(16:32):
meat that's preserved. I mean it's like, yeah, it's dried out,
it can last longer. It's not gonna rot and make
you sick. Um. And we see uh, several different food
preservation techniques that were essential early on, because especially when
you're dealing with harsh winters, you've got to I mean
it's it's like the weather grasshopper in the ant, right,
(16:52):
the the ant stores is food away and is therefore
able to survive. The winner the grasshopper doesn't and dies
during the winter. So we had a learned to be
ants pretty early on, which is taking something delicious now
and save it for the winter, even if it's going
to be a little disgusting come winter. Oh yeah, you
have a really good example of that bag of disgusting nous. Yes,
(17:14):
I mean to me, not to this culture. Yeah, we
kind of. Some of these are basically their survival foods.
There are things that and you see a lot of
these in UM in more extreme environments such as UM
such as Greenland, where we have this thing called Kiddiak,
which we're gonna get to right after this quick break.
(17:36):
This presentation is brought to you by Intel sponsors of tomorrow.
All right, kak laid on me? Yeah, okay, so halves
in Greenland. All right, So every year these little birds,
baby birds, cute, very cute little guys. Uh. You know,
(17:56):
they're they're all out, They're all just swarming all over
the place. This is a great time to eat little
birds because they're everywhere, right, and they have this great
way of catching them. They developed this it's like this
big sort of slingshot net, like like a picture of
like a giant butterfly net. And I was thinking, like
Dr Susie and net. It's very Sousian and they sling
that thing around. And if you've there's a the Discovery
(18:17):
BBC co production Human Planet has some excellent footage of
this in their episode about the Arctic. But they sling
this this net around and they catch these birds and
like in a day, they'll just catch hundreds of these
things and they'll they'll catch them and they'll snap their
little necks, put them in a bag, and then they'll
take them back back home. Now what are they doing
when they get home? Do they fry them up? No?
(18:38):
Because this is not food for now. This is because
now is a great what are you gonna yeah, yeah, yeah,
you can't eat them. You can't eat them all now,
it's impossible and you are worrying about surviving later. But
you also can't just uh pile them in you know,
a corner of your house, so they're gonna rot other
things they're getta eat there. They're not gonna be food
come winter. So they actually take a page for on
(19:00):
the the book of the Arctic Fox, which will we're
up pretty much all foxes will do this. This is
why they you know, they talk about like a fox
getting into a inhouse, so will just kill all the
chickens because the fox's ways to like, well, there's all
this food now, I'm gonna kill it all and I'm
gonna bury it. I'm gonna hide it and then I'll
come back and eat it when it's nice and nasty
later on during the winter. So it's the same principle
(19:21):
um they but but instead of just bearing it under
a rock. They take the birds and they stuff them
again by the hundreds into a big seal skin and
then they they and then they seal it no pun intended,
and then they jump on it get all the air
out of it. They literally are jumping on this right
after and they've sown the top right yeah, and uh,
(19:41):
and they put I think it's like like seal fat
on it to help keep the seal, keep it sealed
and to keep flies away from it. Then they put
some big rocks over it to keep anything from digging
it up and and to get the rest of the
air out of it. And then they leave it for months.
And then when they come back to it once food
is a little more scarce and they need to start
getting into the survival food. Uh. All these little birds
(20:03):
a fermented all right. Yeah, so it's they say that
the aromas like uh, like a really pungent cheese. Yeah,
And it was it Richard Attinborough who like, huh okay,
totally different voices. Um, but I think I remember saying
that it's ready when when it stings the nostrils, which
(20:25):
I thought, well, wow, that that is something I want
to eat right there. Yeah, when when I was watching
this episode with my wife for the first time. We
were like, oh my goodness, there, you know, watching them
get these happen, We're like, please cook those birds, Please
cook those birds. And they don't. They eat it. They
just tear into them. And it's and it's a delicacy.
And I don't want to I don't really want to
focus too much. I'm like, oh, this is gross food,
because this this is what's gross to someone else's is
(20:47):
great to someone Yeah, and it's a delicacy to these two,
to these guys and uh, and it could easily be
a delicacy to us if we had developed a taste
for it. Um. So that being said, I do I
find it really interesting because I love a survival food
aspect of it, but I'm also really intrigued by its
kind of grossness and uh and what it really tells
us about food preservation, about how important it is. There
(21:09):
are a few other really cool examples of survival food
from U believe, Iceland and uh. Uh. Guy I know
by the name of Andy works for a gaming company
that's headquartered in Iceland, and he had had a chance
to try several the so I asked him, I shot
him and he almost like, hey, what was the what
was some of the more interesting survival foods? Uh, that
(21:31):
you've got to try because in Iceland now you don't
need to eat these things, but they're part of the
culture and they're they're they're they're something you kind of celebrate.
He said that there is a there is a shark
called the it's a p shark and it's uh, it's
fer minute. It's called a hack ral, So it's kind
of like the same, you know, the same principle. Uh,
but it's uh, it's he said, it's not that bad
(21:53):
if you you take it with a with a shot
of of of liquor. See, that's the whole point right there,
I think. Yeah, And then he said that he said
that the worst though, was a cold sour ram testical
loaf called the Springer and uh, he says it's worse
than it sounds, and it sounds terrible. Ram Testical looks.
He said the fish jerky was very good, and uh
(22:15):
he said that the pickled whale blubber was actually fairly
good too. So so some of these things sound kind
of kind of kind of gross, but apparently they're not
that bad. Some of them are sound kind of gross
in our kind of gross, at least in the Western Palette.
But but again these are harsh, harsh environments, harsh winters.
So you gotta take what you have, you got stored
away and uh and then be able to get it
(22:36):
out and eat it when times get rough. Well, And
I thought this was interesting. This is from Cooking and
Ancient Civilations by Civilizations by Kathy Kaufman, and she says, quote,
for thousands of years, the survival and power of a
tribe or country dependent on its stock and grain harvesting,
processing and storing greenstocks was of huge importance, and war
(22:56):
was declared only after harvest um. And one of the
earliest records of large scale food preserving was in ancient Egypt.
As we know, what was really important to have an
adiquette adequate stock of dried grain um. And as you
know that the Nile would flood seasonally, so they have
these big silos where they would store it. And records
(23:16):
from show that the annual flooding of the Nile produced
surplaces of grain that were stored and kept to feed.
Builders of irrigation schemes and pyramid tombs, the Great Pyramid
of Cheops that Giza was built around twenty BC by
slaves fed with stores of grain and chickpeas, onions and garlic. Yeah,
it's I mean, it's the it's the ultimate in a way,
(23:37):
it's the ultimate survival food because it's it's grain. It
can it can be kept and then it can be
turned into bread or porridge or what have you later on. Um,
and it becomes in early society, but really modern societies too,
like grain is power, grain is is survival and and
and and bread is essential, especially in an urban environment.
(23:57):
I mean it becomes almost a currency. Yeah. I think
it's very telling that, you know, war would sort of
take a break during harvest because you know, why would
you why would you, you know, disturb one of the
most plentiful, bountious times of food available to you, and
you would be wiping out your civilization. Yeah. And I've
also there are there are different arguments of course about
(24:19):
like how war really got got started in human civilization,
But there's there is the the argument that you really
didn't have war per se until we had reached the point,
as as an agin in culture where we could have
the silos of grain, where we could have where something
was worth taking. Yeah, we had a surplus of essential
materials in the form of grain. It's interesting to you,
(24:40):
just on a side note, that Costa Rica doesn't have
any sort of army. And what I love about that
is there their whole thing is, well, if you don't,
if we don't have something some sort of central government
that has you know, munitions and this power structure here,
then nobody really wants to take us over. Yeah. I mean, yeah,
if you wanted to take over coast to Rea, I
(25:00):
guess the main it's like we really like uh, you
know jungles. Yeah, you want to take over our sloths.
They're high maintenance. Yeah but no, Yeah, that's but that's
one really cool thing about Costa Rica for sure. Yeah.
But yeah, so you have to you know, you have
these things, like you said, You've got these stockpiles that
all of a sudden become very interesting to to other
(25:20):
tribes or cultures to take over. Yeah. It's interesting thinking
about like grain is survival food, and grain is the
thing you store away now for for food later. Um.
I feel like in the office here and how stuff works,
I think everybody kind of has like a survival food
stored in their desks. Like today I managed to leave
without bringing my lunch with me. So I've got I've
got a like noodle bowl in my desk, which is like,
(25:42):
you know, a little plastic bowl with stuff that looks
like dust in the bottom of it, and then you
add water and water. That's funny. I have that, and
I have mac and cheese, and then I have some
cocoa from when it was cold, cold for like four
days in the winter. Yeah, and I was cool. Yeah.
You people pulling out oatmeal packs too, Yes, yeah, that's
the that's a big thing throughout the day to not
just for breakfast, not enough pickled fish year where is it? Um?
(26:07):
But but yeah, back to uh to food preservation for
just a moment. Other techniques include pickling, uh you know,
preserving it in a in a vinegar or you know,
some sort of a harsh flood. Um. And and then
eventually we get to the point where we can bottle
things and canned things, but that really comes much later. Um.
(26:28):
The technology for that actually during um Napoleonic times really
gets uh gets interesting. Right, This was for French troops, right,
in an effort to try to preserve food. Right, there
was a man by the name of effort a P
P E R T. And uh, I just have to
share this bit from James Burke's Connections. James Burke is uh. Uh,
(26:49):
He's covered a lot about the history of science, and
he's big on like comparing, like you know, sort of
like uh these different little paths through technology that leads
from something um simple to something highly advanced and earth shattering. Um.
But he says here um Appert's idea was to preserve food.
The container for his first attempts was the champagne bottle.
(27:11):
He had handled these bottles often during his earlier years,
and as he said, the form of the champagne bottle
is most convenient. It is the handsomest as well as
this strongest, and is of the best shape for packing up.
So he placed the food. He placed the food to
be preserved in the bottles, and he sealed it with
the cork. And uh, as they were in the wine
(27:32):
business by wire cages. So eventually we're, you know, we
we learned how to to do this little better with cans.
But I've actually seen footage of one of these bottles
and it looks kind of gross because it's like ancient soup. Yeah,
why is that so un appetizing. I don't know, but
this guy was a big you know, he was like,
this is the perfect way he was envisioning the future,
(27:52):
where like, anytime you wanted to have dinner and you
didn't have anything preparable, you go under the wine cellar,
you get yourself a bottle of wine, a bottle of soup,
and uh you come up and uh have have something. Well, yeah, okay,
that's not bad. Bottle of wine, a bottle of soup.
That was a really bad billy. Sorry. Um. And then
you have pasteurization, to which starts in late eighteen hundreds,
(28:14):
which again helps us to um, you know, pat rites,
milk juices, so on and so forth, makes us a
much more portable society as well, and freeze drawing space missions,
right exactly. Yeah, even more techniques where we can take
the food of today and make it available for consumption
later on. Yeah, and then don't forget nitrates and cured meats,
(28:37):
talking hot dogs. Oh yeah, so yeah, this is uh,
this kind of a smorgese board, if you will, a
buffet table of of some ancient up patter, a poopoo
platter of of ancient and not so ancient food techniques
about the evolution of few food and some of the
science of food, um, which we're going to get into
more detail in some upcoming episodes. Um. I mean it's
(29:00):
really fascinating, cause, like I said, the story of food
is the story of humans. It's the story of of
of science and technology and uh, and so it's kind
of neat to sort of go back and sort of
lay the groundwork and and briefly discuss some of the
trends in the evolution of food. Yeah, like how we
went from eating insects for basic survival to paying five
for a hamburger and you know one of the toniest
(29:22):
restaurants in New York City. Yeah, like hidding, isn't really
like a five hamburger? Yeah yeah, maybe Yeah. It's kind
of a gimmick at some place. Yeah yeah. And when
you actually order the hamburger, they have to like send
a guy out to get the materials for it. Yeah yeah,
I don't know. All right, we've got some listeners, males. Yeah,
(29:43):
let's get out of food and let's get into Matt.
We uh recently did math music in Mayhem, another one
of our math related episodes, and we had a listener
by the name of Graham from Scotland, and he wrote
in and said is a pH de candidate in physics.
I was delighted to see a recent math related podcast.
(30:04):
Whilst these were very interesting, I found your attitudes in
the introduction disappointing for some reason, however, and then I'm
skipped just a bit for some reason. However, it is
acceptable to admit to being bad at maths, and I
believe that your comments serve only to reinforce that this
idea is acceptable. I don't expect everyone to have enthusiasm
for every topic, but I can't say I've ever heard
you confess to disliking a subject in the preface to
(30:26):
another podcast. Uh So I was so saddened by this
because I thought, oh my gosh, that's definitely not what
we're trying to put out there. I think, if anything,
we were sort of being apologetic in our our lack
of math leatness. Um. Yeah, yeah, so, Graham, I hope
that you understand that, um, that we absolutely worship at
the at the math Altar. If anything, we wish we
(30:48):
were a lot better. But unfortunately there are a lot
of people who, um, you know, with journalism degrees or
English degrees like ourselves that are in the same boat. Um,
and we certainly have dedicated time to math related subjects
because we think it's so interesting. Yeah, yeah, I guess.
I guess we were sort of trying to disarm the
non math listeners in a way to say, like, hey,
(31:09):
don't run, don't run, We're not going to really get
heavy in the math because we're not really heavy math people.
But math is still really amazing and let's show you why. Yeah. Yeah, personally,
it's a tragedy, the great tragedy of my life that
I didn't have more of it, The greatest tragedy of
my life. Yeah. But where would you be if you've
(31:29):
been warning you'd be ruling this place by now? Oh yeah,
I would just I would eat the other. But but anyway,
I think still think Graham makes a valid comment here,
and I'm happy that we could. Yeah, and I'm happy
that we could. Uh, we could we could mention this
um in the podcast, sort of address this just in
case anyone else was wondering. It's like, why do they
not like math all that much? Now? We we we
(31:51):
like math, but we we do realize our our limitations
and uh and his dirty Harry Setiman has got to
know his limitation. That's the truth. So thing you Graham
from Scotland. And since we just did a food podcast,
I would love to recite oh to a Haggis, but
I don't know it by heart. Who's that by Robert Burns?
To please? Really? Oh? I guess I have heard of dogs?
(32:14):
All right? Well, here's another one related to math. This
is from listener Paul. Paul writes and it says, greetings,
just got done listening to math music and Mayhem. You
mentioned Brian May's physics background and it reminded me that
another of my favorite bands is also very mathematical. Tool
One great example of this is the song later Alice,
which makes a lot of use of Fibonacci, the Fibonacci sequence.
(32:36):
Here is a link to the video that explains it
needs and this one can actually just put this up
on Facebook. Of course it will be buried by the
time this comes. Well yeah, well you can look it up.
Just look at tool in fibonacci and we have we
actually have an article on how stuff works about Fibonacci numbers.
If you're not really sure what they written about you,
it's quite low. Yes, I think it was written money
but so long ago that I've forgotten every most of
the things about it. But yeah, this is the second
(32:58):
listener who's mentioned tool. I used to listen to an
awful lot and I never really tied into main connections
with most of the the the number stuff, but apparently
there's you know, now that I think about it, there
are a number of tracks that allude to equations, if
you will, so all right, but we've received a lot
of good feedback from people based on that podcast with
(33:20):
other UM musicians that are also mathematicians or have some
sort of math or science background, so it was really interesting.
Uh uh. There were a few that I was not
aware to get confirmed our suspicions anecdotally, at least the
connection there. So if you have anything you would like
to share with us UM, you can check out that
Facebook and Twitter page that I alluded to. We're Blow
(33:41):
the Mind on both of those, and you can send
us an email at Blow the Mind at how Stuff
Works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow. The WORL
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.