Refrigeration and the death of rot

All throughout human history until recently, if you killed an animal and harvested its organs and meat, or stumbled on a bounty of wild berries or other tree or bush fruit, or managed to squeeze some of the products of mammary glands from a ruminant like a goat, you would ferment the food to keep it from becoming inedible or poisonous. Surely the earliest humans, hungry and desperate at times, learned that many foods not consumed would ferment but remain edible. Fermentation is essentially controlled rotting: the production of lactic acid by bacteria, the production of ethanol by fungi. You could, for instance, store milk or cream in the stomach of an animal you killed and used as a portable bag, and the rennet in the stomach lining would convert it to cheese. Or you would bury the excess meat and organs, fish, vegetables, eggs or other foods in the ground, allowing it to ferment and retrieved in a few weeks or months, especially when fresh food fell into short supply. Sauerkraut, fermented cabbage, was known to last for months and became one of the foods of choice to bring along on long ocean voyages to prevent scurvy. Such fermented foods persist to this day as garum (fermented fish), natto (fermented soybeans), of course, yogurt. Then came refrigeration. Aside from the sporadic and relatively short-lived practices of saving ice from the winter (as long ago as 10,000 years ago in China) or shipping it from cold to warmer climates, large-scale refrigeration changed the way w...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: News & Updates bowel flora Fermentation lactic microbiota prebiotic probiotic Source Type: blogs