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