speaker-0: Hello and welcome to Classy as Hell. I'm David. shawn I understand that you had some recent issues about a receipt and returning merchandise.
speaker-1: I'm Shawn. Okay, so I'm in this store purchasing... Should I say the name of store?
speaker-0: You if you want, I... I probably wouldn't. Just say a store.
speaker-1: store so I'm in a store I'm waiting in line to make my purchase I get to the front the nice little cashier says to me
speaker-0: Are you a-
speaker-1: What are they a frequent? You know whatever their loyalty program is. Whatever blah blah blah. You know she's like, she's gonna look me up with my phone number. I'm like no I'm not in your system. have my phone number. I'm thinking about other stuff right? Because I just got a series of text messages that I'm thinking about. I got other stuff on my brain so I'm just standing there like waiting for her to ring up my purchase so I can pay for them.
speaker-0: Yeah, you have our loyalty card. Yeah.
speaker-1: and I realized she has stopped as well so I looked at her and I said ⁓ thanks no I'm not gonna give you my phone number go ahead and just ring it up this is when she informs me that without my phone number I won't be able to return any of the items that I've purchased.
speaker-0: You got the receipt.
speaker-1: This is my thought. So I said to her, I'm like, that's fine, whatever, I don't care. So I pay for my items and I leave. Because I'm not gonna return these items. This isn't something new I've never bought before. I'm replacing something that I already know I like. I'm not gonna take it back to the store, Not an issue. But my thought process is, I have my receipt demonstrating that I bought this item. If I try to return the item, I can provide the card I used to make the purchase. I have my photo ID of myself demonstrating that I'm this person. shouldn't that be enough to make a return? So I did a quick Google search and found that there is no federal return policy States generally don't have retail return policies. It's usually just up to the company to set their own return policy. The idea being that they don't want to be jerks because they want to, you know, bring in more business. The usually accepted practice is that if the item is not
speaker-0: Wow
speaker-1: damaged in some way, meaning I didn't break it after I returned it home and now I'm gonna take it back to him and say I wanna return this broken thing that I broke. Not that I opened the package and it's damaged in some way. It's pretty vague and unclear on those two points, the difference like I purchased an item and I found out it was flawed after I got it home or I purchased it. It makes sense to me that if I bring it perfectly sound item home and I break it myself, I shouldn't be able to. That's my... Anywho. So then I thought, alright, let me look at the actual receipt. Please retain, this is exactly how it reads. Please retain receipt for returns. Visit beep.com or ask an associate in store for more information on our return policy. Gift cards, perfect for all occasions.
speaker-0: Yeah
speaker-1: So to me that implies that if I have this paper receipt, I should be able to just return an item.
speaker-0: Yeah, if you the receipt, I-
speaker-1: kinda wanna go back there and buy something that I'm not really concerned about returning anyway. And try to return it, like that Seinfeld episode, why are you returning it? Spite! Like I just wanna test this policy.
speaker-0: I'm trying to retry can understand it, because... What they want is your number, not so they can track their inventory, but so they can track you.
speaker-1: Well absolutely! And when I told her, no I'm not in your system, go ahead and ring the items up, and then she's just pausing and I'm like, no I'm not gonna give you my phone number, and she's like, oh we don't sell your information to anybody, it's just so we can, whatever, so we can track your-
speaker-0: I'm they don't sell it to anyone. ⁓ huh. Information is power, You don't...
speaker-1: I need my phone number to track my purchase. I got the piece of paper right here. It's got your store's code on it. It's got the purchase, you know, the UPC thing, the identifier for the transaction. It's got everything on here that you would need if I needed to make a return. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever why you want my phone number. other than you just want it so you can track my information and share it with presumably other retailers or who ever
speaker-0: Yeah, because now they know what you're buying.
speaker-1: where I am. Right, they know everything.
speaker-0: where you are. Yeah. And everyone wants our information. mean, that's the whole thing behind Google and Facebook and all those is information. They're constantly finding ways to make giving up personal information harder and harder. And that's a good example. You can't return it if we don't have your information. Okay.
speaker-1: real I would go up in there and I would get loud up in that bitch I want to talk to your manager
speaker-0: And I knew you would. The personal invasion of rights or personal information that I came across recently is that Virginia has made it so you can download onto your phone a digital version of your driver's license or state ID.
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah yeah.
speaker-0: Now, it's something you can have a backup they say. So if you forgot your wall, you got your phone, and I'm thinking great now I got two things that I can forget. But then I started thinking about it. You know, okay, it could come in handy, I guess. But then I thought if I was person of color, pulled over by a police officer, knowing that they're probably going to do a fishing expedition to find out if can find anything else to pin me with other than the phony thing that they stopped me for.
speaker-1: Are you saying racial profiling is common here?
speaker-0: I'm saying it is. And you're giving them your unlocked phone to show them your ID or driver's license. And once they have that unlocked phone, they can search anything they want on your phone. Even if you have nothing to hide. I don't want anyone going through my phone.
speaker-1: Mm-hmm on your phone? You have, at that point, and again, this is just more, what you're describing is just more racial profiling. But it can happen to anybody, but yeah, let's face it, it's gonna happen to black and brown people. thing is, even if there's nothing on your phone, isn't that undue search and seizure?
speaker-0: What in the dee- My understanding is that if the phone is locked, they cannot force you to unlock it. But if it's unlocked, you don't have the right to privacy.
speaker-1: part of the Miller, right? Turn. And even without suspicion of anything, they can just go fishing.
speaker-0: Well, cops do that routinely.
speaker-1: Again, isn't this part of the Bill of Rights? Don't you have to have... Cause? To be fishing for stuff?
speaker-0: Well, nowadays even people of color, I mean they're definitely high on the list of people that would have issues with, should have issues with this. But even in today's climate, imagine if you have anti-Trump posts, or anti-ice posts, or even anti-police posts. How do think that's going to go for you?
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, not good.
speaker-0: But, you know, I think we're gonna have to delve into this, the erosion of rights and privacy as a whole separate podcast. Maybe we'll do that sometime in the future.
speaker-1: Yeah, okay.
speaker-0: Today!
speaker-1: someday and when I really want to just ball my eyes out. We'll dig into that.
speaker-0: Today we decided since we've done quite a few serious or tough issues, even our podcast on humor was somewhat serious.
speaker-1: were discussing, you know, how humor evolved in society and what purpose it served.
speaker-0: We decided we wanted to do something light for our channel.
speaker-1: a lot of really lame dad jokes though. ⁓
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. We went and did something light for a change and we are planning on doing a lighter topic from time to time. Just, and nothing else for our own sanity if not yours.
speaker-1: Right. my sanity is gone but okay let's try it.
speaker-0: So today, we're going to discuss one of our favorite topics, food. ⁓ And specifically foods that were independently discovered by different cultures without contact or knowledge of each other, sometimes separated by large distances or time, but are essentially universally shared. Sure, there might be some local differences, but the basic food is the same. Okay. And don't worry, we're not going to go all conspiracy theory and claim that ancient aliens sharing recipes around the world. is the connection.
speaker-1: grays walking around in an apron with a tray. Try these!
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, we're not going to fall into that. We've already covered conspiracies. We don't need to deal with them. You may have heard the analogy that if all knowledge of science was somehow erased from our collective memories, all of it would eventually be rediscovered. Because the problems science looks at would continue to be the same and the solutions and answers would be the same.
speaker-1: There. Alright, makes sense.
speaker-0: We might use different words in this new reality. We might rename hydrogen and oxygen something different, but combining two atoms of hydrogen, whatever we call it, and an atom of oxygen, no matter what we call it, comes up with water. Right. No matter we call it. No matter what we call it.
speaker-1: No matter how a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
speaker-0: The same is for lots of food. We all face similar problems all over the world and develop similar foods. In fact if you erased all memories of preparing food, leaving just basic animal feeding, know gathering like the animals do. And dropped us anywhere on earth Desert jungle mountains coast They would eventually invent three things a way to grind something in the flour a way to heat it in the bread and a way to forget their problems by fermenting it into alcohol
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, I'm all about number three.
speaker-0: And reason for that is simple. Humans everywhere have to solve the same problems. Hunger. Preservation. Celebration. identity. know, food becomes your cultural identity.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: Now geography may change the ingredients. Not the same ingredients are available everywhere. But not the logic behind it.
speaker-1: Okay, this is just triggering a thought for me. Being able to preserve food for times when You're not harvesting, right? You're making beer, you're making bread, you're drying and salting meats, you're doing things. What about cultures that evolved and still are in tropical regions where there isn't a particular growing season?
speaker-0: Right.
speaker-1: I mean, alcohol is gonna happen no matter where you are, but do they make a lot of bread?
speaker-0: But yeah, Central America and South America are all made of of some sort. Most of it is maize related. Tortillas.
speaker-1: Okay. the jungle though.
speaker-0: Well, I'm not necessarily in the jungle, but there's other stuff that they can convert.
speaker-1: Anyway, continue. That thought just popped into my head.
speaker-0: Yeah, I don't remember seeing anything specifically about the jungles, it's pretty much those are sort of universal. Yeah.
speaker-1: If you're living somewhere equatorial, it's not so much a harvest season and a winter. know, weather's the same all year round.
speaker-0: And you still want to want to preserve stuff because stuff will still rot True true and ferment Which is where we get the favorite one? alcohol
speaker-1: True. Mm-hmm. Yeah
speaker-0: Now I'm going to warn y'all that many of the foods and even the people making the food is sometimes difficult for me to pronounce. Even when I can hear it correctly in my head, I can't wrap my tongue around it.
speaker-1: Okay can't wait, this is gonna be awesome.
speaker-0: So I apologize in advance if I mispronounce anything in the podcast. No offense was intended. I respect your culture. I respect your food. I just can't talk. I barely do English, let alone some of these other languages. That's right.
speaker-1: speak two languages, English and bad English.
speaker-0: So two of the foods that most people recognize as being universal are... What would you say?
speaker-1: Foods that are universal. Well, I already said- Yeah, I already said bread.
speaker-0: had the two big ones.
speaker-1: You have to go with bread and dried meats.
speaker-0: Dry meat we're gonna talk about later, but the first two I was thinking about was bread and liquid bread.
speaker-1: Beer. Okay, I did say beer, but yeah, okay.
speaker-0: And we'll dive into both of those in a minute, but first let's look at the discussion over which came first. Agriculture or bread or beer?
speaker-1: Oooh, well, grain was harvested by hunter-gatherers.
speaker-0: Yeah, here's the thing. The thought originally being that people settled down and started farming and agriculture then allowed them to discover bread and beer. Which is really just liquid bread with a kick. But it's about alcohol level is about the same as a lot of our modern beers ranges from 1 to 6 percent. A little higher on some, a little lower. Daily beer was on the lower end special celebration beers on the higher end what you would expect And although they were lower in modern lagers Although they were lower in alcohol than some modern lagers. They were rich in carbohydrates and nutrients. That's why it's called liquid bread
speaker-1: Gotcha.
speaker-0: Recent discoveries in 2018 found traces of flatbread from Jordan dating back to 14,400 BCE.
speaker-1: Wow.
speaker-0: Now agriculture began somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 BCE. So this is well ahead of agriculture.
speaker-1: Yeah, everybody around the world makes some kind of flatbread.
speaker-0: So, which essentially meant bread was made by nomadic hunter-gatherers grinding wild grains on a stone hearth. and then baking it on a hot stone.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: Bread didn't require a settled civilization. If anything, the desire for ground grain cakes may have helped motivate the shift to farming.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: A similar argument can be made for beer, which may have predated bread. The original hypothesis was that people settled down to grain and made bread, but then were able to make beer from that. But again, recently, gobecki tepe
speaker-1: Yup.
speaker-0: Which dates back 12,000 years. They found evidence of fermented barley. A beer made from barley.
speaker-1: Alright, now how do they know that it was intentionally made beer or was it somebody left a pot of green set aside? Okay.
speaker-0: I don't know how they determine it. But that's the consensus among the people. And if the motivation to cultivate grain was partly to ensure a reliable supply for men and drink, it reframes the entire agricultural revolution. However...
speaker-1: However...
speaker-0: The first food that was likely made was the category of porridges. Which included gruel and a whole bunch of other stuff.
speaker-1: Yeah And you can throw a lot of stuff in a porridge. And because you're boiling it, you're killing off the bacteria in the water.
speaker-0: At its basic form, porridge is just grain that's usually cracked or bruised, thrown into a fireproof container, which could be a hollowed rock, anything that won't burn, pottery,
speaker-1: ceramic pottery.
speaker-0: and boil until the grain becomes soft and edible. Right. So you can take moldy food or moldy grain, grain that's too hard to grind for bread and make porridge from it. It may be the single most universal food discovery in human history. It's the one grain, one dish that every grain growing culture made before any other.
speaker-1: porriage came before bread.
speaker-0: porriage came before bread. In fact, one of the theories I read was that bread mostly likely came from porridge accidentally spilling on a hot rod and turning into bread, a slight bread. Yeah.
speaker-1: sense because it's an economical way to use It's an economical way to recover the calories you invested in gathering or growing and harvesting that grain. That would otherwise be unusable and you've just wasted your effort.
speaker-0: So independently, people develop porridge. In East Asia, they make congee, which is rice. And the thing about rice that's interesting is it's boiled until the grains of rice totally dissolve. And it's a...
speaker-1: So far drink like a paste Liquid a thick liquid
speaker-0: Now it's more drinkable. it's liquid. Yeah. Okay. And if you can see grain in it, it's not done cooking.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: In Europe they made oatmeal porridge, obviously from oats. Barley porridge. And Conchini started about 7,000 BCE. Porridge and oatmeal porridge about 4,000 BCE. Parts of Europe, polenta.
speaker-1: Well that wasn't until after the Columbian exchange. Are we going to talk about the Columbian exchange? Yeah. Okay.
speaker-0: We can Probably in a later episode, we'll all into it. Yeah, no, we'll talk about the Columbia Exchange in a later episode. Okay. Because that's more a transfer of information.
speaker-1: Gotcha. But food was part of that. So polenta is maize, which came from the Americas.
speaker-0: Yeah. In West Africa they also used maize and sorghum or millet to make pap at around 93 9300 BC. America's it was Atole and grit and harmony one
speaker-1: Grits is good eatin
speaker-0: Made with Natax Nix Tamalized Maize Which is maize that's soaked in lime And what that does is... Soften it?
speaker-1: Does soften the whole?
speaker-0: Well it does, but it also changes it a little bit. Corn has niacin that is inaccessible to human digestion normally. If you do this lime treatment, becomes, it frees up the niacin from your body and also changes the flavor bit.
speaker-1: Right? of course,
speaker-0: And that's one of the few of the flat breads that actually had a specific different step to it than everyone else's. And it made it healthier for them and better. ironically, when the colonization of Central America, South America, and occurred
speaker-1: you
speaker-0: Europeans took maize back to Europe Because it was cheap you can make flatbread with it and stuff But they didn't take the process with them
speaker-1: So they're just growing corn and not processing it correctly.
speaker-0: and which leads to ⁓ me find the word ⁓ PURRY! I know I shouldn't have jumped ahead on it. It basically causes an illness that results in the four D's. Which is... diarrhea Come on! Okay.
speaker-1: you're thinking of pellagra?
speaker-0: There we go. And it swept through northern Italy, southern France, and later the American South in the 18th and 19th century, killing tens and thousands of people. All because they didn't take the knowledge that would have prevented it that sat in every Mexican grandmother's kitchen the whole time. It's the most expensive failure to transmit a food technology to culinary history. And pellagra causes dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, and death.
speaker-1: That's not good.
speaker-0: Definitely not good.
speaker-1: So where did the Americans get the lime? Did they just collect the limestone and grind it?
speaker-0: I don't know. No one mentioned it, they just said lime and... Alright.
speaker-1: I'm gonna try to not ask you about these processes. Yeah, I can't promise anything.
speaker-0: You can ask. can say I don't know. I know you are. But like I said, when I'm reading on this stuff, they don't break down where they get the line from. It's they use line to treat it.
speaker-1: DASNIT
speaker-0: So yeah, bread, especially flatbread, became really easy because all you needed was water, ground grain, and a hot stone. There you go. And what was cool about flatbread is not only was it edible and high in carbs and stuff like that, it served as your plate or bowl or utensil.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: It was easy to carry, easy to store, tended to last longer than just your regular ⁓ porriage
speaker-1: Right.
speaker-0: And you can eat it cold. And you can eat it cold.
speaker-1: don't have to start a fire and cook it you can take it with you and just eat it wherever you are.
speaker-0: Right. And yeah, it's pretty much universal. mean, I think we can all think of... Different flatbreads Naan one of our faves
speaker-1: tortillas Everybody loves pitas.
speaker-0: Pitas yeah. Tortilla, tortillas. You can go... White. lot on bread. In Europe they had flat bread made with Elkhorn wheat from 14,400 BCE. In the Middle East they made it with emerald wheat bread. South Asia, durum wheat, tortillas, maize, treated. East Africa used teff. Scandinavian used rye.
speaker-1: teff is still a good crop in East Africa.
speaker-0: What is? Teff. Teff, ⁓ Matzah and lavash is wheat. Dosa, South Asia, is rice and black lentil.
speaker-1: I'm just talking about.
speaker-0: Vanoc, which is an indigenous North America, various camas, cattail pollen, and later barley.
speaker-1: Okay. And let's not forget delicious pancakes.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's a so yeah the Black cake or pancake which really is varied by the thinness of the liquid.
speaker-1: You can make thick batter. You can make a thin liquid.
speaker-0: Yeah, you can have crepes. You can have crumpets. can do all sorts of regular pancakes. Different countries have different types of pancakes. I've looked at different breads.
speaker-1: Because once metal forging came on the scene, you didn't have to have a heavy stone. Now you can cook things on a hot piece of iron.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: You no longer are... You no longer have to... A piece of iron you can now take with you.
speaker-0: portable.
speaker-1: If you are cooking in an oven that you have to make of stone everywhere, or lined with ceramic, you know, if you have a ceramic type of vessel, which is prone to breaking, you don't want to be traveling with it, that's going to stay in place. But a piece of metal, you can travel with it, you're not going to risk breaking it like a ceramic vessel. And once you've broken the ceramic vessel,
speaker-0: You go.
speaker-1: What are you gonna do? Now you're gonna build a kiln and start pottery? are you... You know... It makes things much easier to move around.
speaker-0: Yeah. But yeah, the flat cake runs a spectrum from paper-thin crups to thick fluffy cake.
speaker-1: Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
speaker-0: And we see it in a bunch of different places, of course. ⁓ Like said, a lot of it has to do with how thin the liquid is. Crepes and dosa both have very high water ratios and no leavening. Bellini and Ninjara have fermented batter. So the natural CO2 gives it bubbles. ⁓ and it's thin and lacy, they say.
speaker-1: Because of the leavening provided by the Right. Okay.
speaker-0: And then hotek, an American pancake, use baking powder or whipped eggs to make it thicker and fluffier.
speaker-1: Alright.
speaker-0: Now, the advantages are it's faster than bread.
speaker-1: Yep.
speaker-0: Flat cake cooks in minutes on a hot surface. Bread can take hours of kneading, proving, baking. Talk more traditional bread. Daily meals. But batter on a griddle solution was inevitable wherever both grain and fire existed. And metal. But like I you could bake
speaker-1: and my
speaker-0: It probably actually started on a hot stone. Right.
speaker-1: And then later on to stringing pottery. Yeah. And then eventually on metal.
speaker-0: It transforms leftover batter. Excess soaked or ground grain mixed with water produces a pourable batter. Pouring onto a hot surface is the path of least resistance. No shaping, no kneading, no waiting. The flat cake is what happens when you apply fire to batter without further thought.
speaker-1: Okay, makes sense.
speaker-0: It makes a perfect vehicle. It's thin flexible sheet of cooked grain can wrap, scoop, or carry any topping or filling. In a simultaneously food and utensil, much like flatbread is, this dual function, the pancake as a plate makes it uniquely efficient explaining its independent appearance across so many cultures. Now I might as well go to the third one which is beer. I know, you're fave. And of course we all know Ben Franklin's thought on beer. Beers. Beers.
speaker-1: that there's a God and that he loves us.
speaker-0: That's right. Beer basically is like I said liquid bread so it's grain. Water. And time.
speaker-1: and time.
speaker-0: It's one of those ones that you just prep and then hope for the best. We have examples of beer from a long time ago. Sumerian beer which was made with barley or emery wheat. Africa which used emery wheat and barley. Also
speaker-1: What was the first beer?
speaker-0: Probably the one that... I... Gobecki Tepe ⁓ Go ahead and correct me.
speaker-1: Nope! Yours- Everybody knows what you mean and that's what matters.
speaker-0: That's probably the oldest that they know of. Which is around 9,000 BCE. Mesopotamia got there around 7,000 BCE.
speaker-1: in Mesopotamia.
speaker-0: ⁓ Europe German, Norse, barley, wheat and rye were their grains Eastern Europe ⁓ used rye bread The Americas used maize Used a grain that was common to your area You water to it? Waited for it to ferment?
speaker-1: potatoes.
speaker-0: And that's what they think probably originally how beer became found was or discovered was that someone probably wetted in their grain and then left it too long by mistake. And when they stumbled across it again, it had an interesting smell. And when they tasted it, had an interesting taste. And that's how beer came about.
speaker-1: sense to me.
speaker-0: So yeah all these countries they had grain they had water Someone left it sitting out maybe in a bag or something that ⁓ They were carrying it with got wet natural yeast in the environment Help turn it into beer. The wonderful yeast. And I know there's just so many beers. And enough beer that The Pyramid Builders were paid in beer. Zigarot Builders were paid in beer. ⁓ Lots of country use beer as a currency not only because of the alcohol content, but the nutritional value as well. Right. End.
speaker-1: And they got paid in bread as well.
speaker-0: Yeah. Now, it sounds pretty easy. But there are three completely different biochemical pathways that different cultures took to get to the same end result of a fermented grain
speaker-1: Dang it. Okay.
speaker-0: The first is the one we're most familiar with, Western Brewing Tradition. It uses Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast to convert simple sugars to alcohol.
speaker-1: Okay. Most people just call it Brewer's Yeast.
speaker-0: breweries. The Chinese and East Asian brewing uses Q, QU, which is a mold which first sacrifice the starch breaks it into sugars and then ferments it. A double fermentation system genetically unrelated to Western East brewing and then chicha Demuko, which is from, I think, Central America, uses amylase enzymes in human saliva. ⁓
speaker-1: ⁓ They still do that and I've seen it. I've seen video of it
speaker-0: They chew the corn and spit it into a container and then let it ferment.
speaker-1: cringing just thinking about it.
speaker-0: You'd have to make a really strong alcohol. And then tell me how you made it after you got me drunk on it.
speaker-1: Yeah, no, I'm just not even gonna try that. I'm not that adventurous.
speaker-0: But like said, beer goes across nearly every tradition covered. For men and grain, drink is not about pleasure usually. It's about power, labor, and social cohesion. I said the pyramid builders in Egypt were paid in beer. Ankle road workers were paid in beer or compensated in chicha. Men and evil bishops grew wealthy taxing Groot herbs. And I'll explain Groot herbs here in a second. Are you on Groot? Pretty much. Okay. The Hop Revolution that displaced Groot after 800 CE is partly a story about Protestant reformers breaking a Catholic brewing monopoly.
speaker-1: Okay, well that's done. And I like the taste of hops, but I'm so goddamn sick of IPAs. I am so tired of people making the bitterest beer they possibly can and bragging about it like it's the most delicious thing ever.
speaker-0: So beer everywhere and always was an instrument of economic and political organization long before it was a consumer product. Now the Hop story is the Great Lake Twist. I know you're thinking on Hop you just explained it.
speaker-1: flavor of hops but just over hopping a beer until it's just undrinkable. Ugh, yuck. Stop Before hops...
speaker-0: European beer was flavored with Groot, a proprietary blend of Yarrow, Bog Myrtle, and other herbs licensed by the church. And then when Flemish Brewers began using hops in the 19th century, they discovered that hops not only flavored beer, but dramatically extended its shelf life. Hops have an antimicrobial property. This made beer exportable for the first time.
speaker-1: Mmm, yummy.
speaker-0: broke the Church's stranglehold on flavoring and eventually gave rise to the international beer trade. The global dominance of hot flavor no longer today is a direct consequence of that bio of that medieval biochemical accident.
speaker-1: All right hops are a good preservative beer can now travel around Now we have lagers everywhere.
speaker-0: And of course a similar process happened with wine and that genre because of just fruit fermentation. Right. And most likely happened by someone storing fruit and fermenting and they realized that that was good. You can actually watch wild monkeys I guess who will find fermented fruit in the jungle sitting around getting drunk on it.
speaker-1: accident at first. Elephants will ⁓ ferment fruit in their trunks.
speaker-0: Okay. Knew that trunk had to come in handy for something. So those are the three most common that most people think of immediately is bread, beer, porriages All make sense. The next one, I didn't realize how universal it was, is the dumpling. So, what's a dumpling?
speaker-1: you asking me? You take your little piece of dough, your flattened dough, before it's cooked and you can put stuff inside of it and fold it up and seal the stuff in and cook it. You can steam it, you can boil it, you can drop it in hot oil, you can bake it in a hot oven, and now you got a dumpling.
speaker-0: Very good. The dumpling is one of the most philosophically satisfying convergent discoveries in culinary history.
speaker-1: hell to the yes.
speaker-0: A shape so structurally elegant that independent cultures arrived at nearly identical engineering solutions without any contact.
speaker-1: Well, sure. It's pretty simple.
speaker-0: And there's just a gazillion of them. And basically, the dough... is the transformation of ⁓ bread ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah, it's your flatbread.
speaker-0: and just roll it out, usually in a circle, put your stuffing in the middle, fold it, and then seal it. And like I said, can steam it, boil it, fry it, deep fry it, bake it.
speaker-1: And now you have, again, small, food.
speaker-0: small portable food and one of reasons that it was so successful is if you had a filling meat, veggies, fat, whatever and you didn't want to dilute that with water but you wanted to cook it still right you could put it in this and it would
speaker-1: Right?
speaker-0: cook in the dumpling and flavor not only the meat inside or the stuff inside with their natural juices it would flavor the dumpling as well. Right.
speaker-1: now I dumplings. ⁓
speaker-0: Yeah, in East Asia, have one that's pork, cabbage, and ginger. Central Asia has manteen, lamb, or beef, onion. Our favorite, ravioli or tortellini. Which actually started pretty late. Those are 14th century CE. Pierogies.
speaker-1: Yum yum yum Yeah, pasta came to Europe later. Yum yum yum. Empanadas. Yum.
speaker-0: Meno, Samosas, Giza, Guantan Empanadas,
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. I love all of them.
speaker-0: All of it, quite simple. You have a filling, meat, fat, vegetable that you want to cook without drying it out and falling apart or losing flavor into the water. You wrap it in a dough. The dough acts as a sealed vessel. It traps moisture and steam and fat. The filling cooks in its own juices. The dough absorbs the flavor from the outside. The inevitable shape A flat sheet of dough, filled, folded, and sealed at the edge. The half moon or purse shaped
speaker-1: you
speaker-0: dough while maximizing, ⁓ minimizes dough so you're using less dough for losing and maximizing the filling to surface ratio so it was physics not culture that discovered that yeah
speaker-1: Alright, you don't have bits that you're cutting off. ⁓ yeah! Anybody's gonna land on that.
speaker-0: And yeah, it can be cooked any type of way. Boiling keeps the moisture in. Steaming cooks more gently. Pan frying creates the prized crisp bottom texture that we like. Baking produces a pastry shell. Frying samosas and some epinatas creates a shattering crispness. Each method produces a fundamentally different eating experience from identical raw ingredients.
speaker-1: you Mhm.
speaker-0: Proof that second invention, the cooking method, matters almost as much as the first.
speaker-1: Yes. And what are the resources where you live?
speaker-0: One of the interesting ones that I came across was Argentina epinatas encode their filling in the crimping pattern on the edge.
speaker-1: So like a pork dumpling is folded a certain way, a chicken dumpling is folded a certain way.
speaker-0: Yeah, each province has a traditional repasto pattern that signals what's inside before you taste it. Beef has its own pattern. Ham and cheese another. Spinach and cheese another. It's the only dumping tradition where the seal is simultaneously structured and somatic.
speaker-1: And that's where Argentina? Thank you brilliant Argentinians. That's a great idea. ⁓
speaker-0: That's what I thought when I read that. was no sitting there wondering what it is.
speaker-1: Right, because I do something, well back in the olden days when I used to cook, but that's always something that you do with your pie crust. You know, the vents that you cut in the top of your pie crust will indicate what's under it. So, yeah, why not do that in the way you fold and crimp the edges of your empanada to indicate what's inside?
speaker-0: Okay. Yeah, I found that fascinating that... They were smart enough to do both. make wonderful empanadas and then signal so that if you were selling it especially on a market people would know what they were going be getting. Right.
speaker-1: Well, it makes it easier for the seller. You're trying to get through your customers as fast as possible. Bang, bang, bang, bang, here you go.
speaker-0: All right, this next one's near and dear to your heart.
speaker-1: What is it? Yes! Yes! Cheese is what keeps me from being vegan. I don't eat meat.
speaker-0: Cheese!
speaker-1: I can... I never was a person who drank milk even when I ate meat. I was just never into drinking a glass of milk. So it wouldn't be difficult for me to give up eggs. I eat eggs, but it would be hard for me to give them up. But cheese, ugh. I've tried vegan cheese. It's not good.
speaker-0: Well, and cheese is another one where multiple processes develop independently to end up with the same type of product.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: And again, cheese all over. In the Middle East, ancient rennet cheese using animal rennet.
speaker-1: Yep, that's the gruesome part of it.
speaker-0: One of your faves, paneer, which uses an acid, lemon juice or vinegar, started around 3000 BCE. And it's unaged. Where the ancient rennet cheese of the Middle East would be fresh or aged.
speaker-1: Yup, I love paneer. Yeah, paneer is a soft, creamy, white cheese for any of you who haven't tried it. I encourage you to do so. It's delicious.
speaker-0: Corrut, Central Asia, uses a natural souring. It's dried and hardened. It has an extremely long shelf life, again around 3000 BC.
speaker-1: I do not think of cheese a great deal when I think of Southeastern Asian cuisines. Because I don't think they had many cattle. or milk giving type herds.
speaker-0: Well that's why I paneer
speaker-1: Jeez.
speaker-0: And here's the big one for Southeast Asia. Or South Asia. And part of the reason that they don't use rennet is because the Hindus and the Jain are against cruelty to animals. And of course, rennet comes from the stomach of young calves.
speaker-1: Yep, yep, yep. I'm sorry. You can go back and repeat that and I'm just gonna...
speaker-0: Rennet comes from animals. We'll leave it at that. ⁓ In fact, that's probably how that type of cheese was first discovered was someone carrying milk in a stomach pouch and the Rennet turning it into curds and whey and then eventually they figured out how to make cheese.
speaker-1: Yup.
speaker-0: West Africa, Wagachi, Unusual
speaker-1: I got a question and you might not know the answer so The Mongols lived with their horses and I know they drank an alcohol beverage made from fermented mare's milk. Did they have horse cheese?
speaker-0: I don't know, let's see.
speaker-1: I mean if you're milk and fermenting it to make an alcoholic beverage, would think cheese would also be on the menu. Your flashlight is on. ⁓
speaker-0: ⁓ Yes! Weisla's Lag is a traditional unripened Mongolian cheese made from yak or cow's milk.
speaker-1: So not for horses. Okay.
speaker-0: It's characterized by its mild creamy flavor and firm texture. It's a staple of nomadic life often pressed into squares and used for snacking or in soups and teas unlike European cheeses. It is often made without rennet using kefir to separate the curds. Yeah, I- I- I- Most of my resources all came up with Good number of them, but I'm sure that that's just the tip of the iceberg
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, that's a common...
speaker-0: Well, as we know with paneer, and a lot of the recipes involving paneer change regionally. Correct. Or you said sometimes even by family.
speaker-1: and delightfully so. My family makes it this way. No, my family does it better. We throw in this.
speaker-0: West African Wagashi uses a plant extract to make their cheese.
speaker-1: So what's the key thing? that you need to add to milk in order to make cheese.
speaker-0: something that denaturalizes it and separates the curds and whey.
speaker-1: What does denaturalizing mean?
speaker-0: break its components
speaker-1: The protein bomb?
speaker-0: Yeah, I guess.
speaker-1: Okay, you can delete that out. So it can be done with acid, can be done with reddit, it can be done with plant, some sort of plant derivative.
speaker-0: Plan. Rinat causes the milk. to curdle in the solid curds and liquid way. This is almost certainly discovered accidentally by pastoral nomads carrying milk and stomach pouches. The result is a firm, long-ageable cheese. And the origin was Middle East, Europe around 8000 BC. Acid coagulation of plant or heat adding an acid, lemon juice, vinegar, yogurt or sour whey to hot milk causes proteins to denature and clump without running. This is a completely independent discovery requiring no animal stomach. The result is a soft, fresh cheese that cannot be aged and was independently invented in India, West Africa, the Andes, and parts of South Asia.
speaker-1: What's your favorite cheese?
speaker-0: Swiss or Provolone
speaker-1: Yeah, those are good. I can't come up with a favorite, of course. I love so many. With the exception of moldy cheese. I'm sorry. Blue cheese is nasty. It's only something that anybody would ever eat on a dare. It's gross. I don't like moldy cheeses. Gross. Well, I wonder, because I'm allergic to several molds, I wonder if my body just thinks the taste of mold is gross because I'm allergic to mold. People who like those cheeses think the flavor of the mold is a delicious component of why they like it.
speaker-0: That could be good care.
speaker-1: But I think mold is disgusting tasting.
speaker-0: Yeah, I'm not a big fan of them either. Not a real big fan of them really smelling cheeses either.
speaker-1: Parmesan is really smelly and you love Parmesan. There you go.
speaker-0: I do love parmesan. The lactase persistence puzzle ⁓ is a genetic footnote to the entire global cheese story. The ability to digest lactose, milk sugar, into adulthood, lactase persistence is unevenly distributed across humanity. Meaning some...
speaker-1: Most people are lactose intolerant.
speaker-0: Yeah, especially when we're older. It is most common in northern Europeans and some East African pastoral populations who evolved independently and parallel within the last 10,000 years.
speaker-1: for lactose.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's uncommon in East Asian, Southeast Asia, and some indigenous American populations. Yet cheese is naturally low in lactose. The fermentation and aging process consumes most of the lactose leaving a product that is lactose intolerant people can often eat without difficulty.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: Cheese may have been in part a solution to lactation persistence. A way to capture the nutritional value of milk into a form of digestible by people who couldn't drink fresh milk.
speaker-1: Okay, that makes sense.
speaker-0: The discovery of cheese! Therefore the discovery of cheese
speaker-1: I'm not done. I'm sorry, okay.
speaker-0: Therefore the discovery of cheese may have been in some populations driven by necessity as much as by accident.
speaker-1: because you have this nutrient, this pretty dense source of calories that you can't use so you invent a way that you can use it rather than lose those calories.
speaker-0: And I'm assuming that they discovered that partly by accident. That they came with cheese and noticed that it didn't cause the symptoms of lactose intolerance.
speaker-1: which are ⁓
speaker-0: Although I do know some people that are sensitive of cheese as well. But I... That's your own personal vision of hell, isn't it?
speaker-1: That's gotta be pitiful. Well yeah, like people who are allergic to chocolate, ⁓ you poor thing. Although I went to grade school with a girl who was not allergic to chocolate, she just didn't like it. I went, wait, what do you mean? I don't like chocolate. Huh, what? Like I could not wrap my brain.
speaker-0: I hope you didn't associate with her. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.
speaker-1: She was actually a really great person. But yeah in grade school I like I don't like I don't eat chocolate. ⁓ are you allergic? No I just don't like it.
speaker-0: Now when we talked briefly about it, smoked and salted meat, great way to preserve.
speaker-1: or just dried in the air.
speaker-0: Air dried, freeze dried. There's a whole bunch of different ways to do meats All of which... helps preserve the meat over a longer period of time so you can store it.
speaker-1: But you have to be stationary long enough to preserve it. Otherwise predators are just going to come and eat what you worked so hard for.
speaker-0: Yeah, I'll go- And there's four basic types. Wind air drying, where they take thin sliced meat hung in dry moving air and it desiccates to below 10 % moisture, where bacteria can't survive, requires no technology beyond a knife and a drying rack, and it was discovered on every continent. Smoking. Wood smoke. deposits phenols. ⁓ and organic acids on meat surfaces, are ⁓ antimicrobial, antimicrobial compounds that inhibit bacteria growth, same as with air drying, also dries the surface, adds flavor as a side effect of the preservation.
speaker-1: Microbe Mmm, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
speaker-0: Salt curing, is the one that most people are familiar with. Salt draws out the water out of cells by osmosis, lowering water activity and making the environment hostile to bacteria. Requires salt deposits or coastal access. It's the most powerful single preservative available before refrigeration.
speaker-1: You don't necessarily need coastal access. Salt is found in other areas. Natron is found in the desert.
speaker-0: Well, that's what it says. It salt deposits. Or coastal access.
speaker-1: ⁓ I'm so sorry. I clearly wasn't listening carefully.
speaker-0: Yeah, mean, salt was currency back in the Roman... That's where salary comes from. Salary...
speaker-1: Saline, saline, anything that has Sal in it, any word like that. That's where it comes from. The... I'm sorry, go ahead.
speaker-0: And then finally freeze drying at high altitude or in arctic climate. Meat freezes solid and then slowly sublimates ice converts directly to vapor in dry cold air producing the original freeze dried food discovered independently in the Andes and the Arctic. and why drying works. Bacteria, mold, yeast all require a minimum water activity to survive and reproduce. Fresh meat sits at a water activity of about .99 near maximum. Dried jerky sits at a water activity of .7 to .85. Fully dried, bit long or bolts reaches Water activity. Below the survival threshold of almost all food pathogens. Preservation is simply the removal of water. And like I said, it stumbling across by everybody. Because everyone had that same problem. You have to store your food. And of course, you mentioned jerky. Jerky's an old word in the Andes. Chalky C-H-A-R-K-I Which is Andean llama jerky And that eventually evolved into jerky Katsubushi is a Japanese fermented or food that's Japanese smoked mold fermented and dried bonito says that a unique intersection it's simultaneously smoked Mold fermented. just in the same way that they do miso and soy sauce, and then physically desiccated to below 15 % moisture. No other traditional preserved food combines all three mechanisms. The result, and this is fascinating to me, is shaved into paper-thin translucent flakes and dissolved in water. It produces dashi. invisible flavor background of Japanese cuisine. When I was learning about how to make ramen the proper way, I kept running into Dashi and did not realize that how it was made. Katsubushi is not normally eaten, it is dissolved into everything. It's a preservation technology in service of pure flavor infrastructure.
speaker-1: I prefer to eat Emperor Nimbala. He's teriyaki style!
speaker-0: And of course, the Norse discovering that Atlantic cod could be air-dried to wood hardness on Lofoten Island racks set off a chain of consequences that shaped European history for 600 years. The Catholic Church's Linton fish requirements created continent-wide demand. The Hanseatic League's stockfish trade made cities like Bergen and Lubik wealthy. Portuguese traders carried salted stockfish to Brazil, West Africa, and the Caribbean where it became embedded in local cuisines so throughout the Nigerians, Brazilians, and Portuguese all considered a native food.
speaker-1: Those places have coastline. They got fish! What the actual?
speaker-0: And that's how a fish dried on arctic racks became a global food. No other single preserved product achieved that geographical reach before the industrial era.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: because you can carry it long way.
speaker-1: But again, they got fish there. Drop a line.
speaker-0: Hahaha!
speaker-1: Toss a ⁓ gotta be easier than that ⁓
speaker-0: You would think.
speaker-1: Have you seen those Japanese fishermen who fish with cormorants? Amazing!
speaker-0: Yes! Go ahead explain that.
speaker-1: Well, they have domesticated cormorants, are fish eating birds. There's species of cormorants all around the world. And they will tie a string around the base of the cormorant's neck. The cormorant will dive down, catch a fish, and swallow it. And when they come back up, the fisherman then pulls the fish out of the cormorant or shakes them upside down. I don't know how they do it.
speaker-0: They get it back.
speaker-1: They get the fish back out of the cormorant's mouth because they can't swallow it because they've got a rope tied around their neck. It's really kind of gruesome when you think about it.
speaker-0: I hope eventually they give the poor bird a
speaker-1: Yes, they do! The birds get to eat some of the catch!
speaker-0: That always seems fair.
speaker-1: Well yeah, they're doing all the work. It seems to me though that by pulling the fish back out of the neck, wouldn't the fin bones and the scales cause irritation inside the bird's crop?
speaker-0: I don't know. I mean, they do it now in the wild, now they don't nearly spit it out.
speaker-1: swallowing the thing. It's not coming back with the sharp edges going against the force.
speaker-0: Interesting. And they still do that now, don't they?
speaker-1: Yes! It's probably not terribly common, but yeah, it's an ancient practice that's still in use.
speaker-0: Now that there's several more that we can talk about, I know another one that might interest you. am running along here. And that's tea.
speaker-1: I love tea.
speaker-0: or leaf infusion occurred across pretty much all cultures.
speaker-1: Again, you're boiling water so you're killing the microbes and the bacteria.
speaker-0: The tea plant is a source of green tea, black tea, oolong, white, has a single geographic origin in the forests of Yunnan, China, and the surrounding region. All true tea descends from one plant species discovered once. What's spread was the plant and the knowledge of it.
speaker-1: Well that and also... Tea is a plant and tea is also a beverage made of that plant. But tea is also a beverage brewed from other plants. We call it tea.
speaker-0: Right. Leaf infusion. And they call it leaf infusion here. And that's the universal concept. The concept is
speaker-1: I'd like a cup of leaf infusion, please.
speaker-0: The concept of seeping aromatic, medicinal, or flavorful leaves, flowers, bark, or roots in hot water is a completely universal independent discovery. Every culture with access to boiling water and aromatic plants invented this independently.
speaker-1: Yep, we all want to listen to your big bass. you I do fancy a cup of.
speaker-0: Now, every culture with access to boiling water, aromatic plants, invented this independently. Herbal tea was discovered hundreds of times. before the original tea plant arrived in most of the world. Now, every culture made a leaf infusion. Usually it was a medicine before it was a beverage. In almost every tradition, the first leaf infusion were medicinal, not refreshment. Hot water extracts alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, and essential oils from plant material. These compounds are biologically active. Every culture with the herbal medicine tradition independently discovered
speaker-1: Makes sense?
speaker-0: that water extracts plant compounds that can affect the body. Water safety of course. Boiling water kills pathogens. Adding flavor to boiled water makes it more palatable than plain hot water. The habit of drinking hot infused water may have been in many cultures primarily a water safety behavior that developed flavor preferences as a secondary effect. The medicine and the sanitation arrived together.
speaker-1: That makes sense.
speaker-0: The aromatic plant is everywhere. Every biome on earth contains aromatic plants. Plants whose leaves, bark, roots, or flowers produce volatile compounds when crushed or heated. Mitten Europe and in the Middle East. Robots in South Africa. Yuba in South America. Lemon grass across Asia. The raw material for leaf infusion exists on every continent. The discovery was inevitable.
speaker-1: Chamomile, Bergamot, Lavender, Sassafras.
speaker-0: I remember grandmother ⁓ had Sassafras ⁓ on the of her house so she could have Sassafras tea ⁓
speaker-1: Mmm, mmm.
speaker-0: And they're just all kinds of tea. But that pretty much sums it up. We've came across a whole bunch of independently discovered foods. And it's all based on... People needing to solve the same problems everywhere. So they came up with like-minded stuff. Porridge, bread, beer, cheese.
speaker-1: proving once again that we're more alike than we are different.
speaker-0: Absolutely. And that nothing is new under the sun.
speaker-1: Correct.
speaker-0: We continue to, if something's missing like that, we'll reinvent it.
speaker-1: Yeah, I'm sorry I got nothing.
speaker-0: Okay, well that winds us up. Thanks for listening. Come back next time to one of our normal serious issues.
speaker-1: This episode has made me hungry, now I need to go brew a cup of tea and have something delicious to eat. Thanks for listening. If you have any food related questions you want to write in or suggest, contact us at classyashell at outlook.com. Until next time, don't keep it classy.
speaker-0: There we go. Alright? Keep it real.
speaker-1: my best cold clothes I could come up with.
speaker-1: I'm Shawn. Okay, so I'm in this store purchasing... Should I say the name of store?
speaker-0: You if you want, I... I probably wouldn't. Just say a store.
speaker-1: store so I'm in a store I'm waiting in line to make my purchase I get to the front the nice little cashier says to me
speaker-0: Are you a-
speaker-1: What are they a frequent? You know whatever their loyalty program is. Whatever blah blah blah. You know she's like, she's gonna look me up with my phone number. I'm like no I'm not in your system. have my phone number. I'm thinking about other stuff right? Because I just got a series of text messages that I'm thinking about. I got other stuff on my brain so I'm just standing there like waiting for her to ring up my purchase so I can pay for them.
speaker-0: Yeah, you have our loyalty card. Yeah.
speaker-1: and I realized she has stopped as well so I looked at her and I said ⁓ thanks no I'm not gonna give you my phone number go ahead and just ring it up this is when she informs me that without my phone number I won't be able to return any of the items that I've purchased.
speaker-0: You got the receipt.
speaker-1: This is my thought. So I said to her, I'm like, that's fine, whatever, I don't care. So I pay for my items and I leave. Because I'm not gonna return these items. This isn't something new I've never bought before. I'm replacing something that I already know I like. I'm not gonna take it back to the store, Not an issue. But my thought process is, I have my receipt demonstrating that I bought this item. If I try to return the item, I can provide the card I used to make the purchase. I have my photo ID of myself demonstrating that I'm this person. shouldn't that be enough to make a return? So I did a quick Google search and found that there is no federal return policy States generally don't have retail return policies. It's usually just up to the company to set their own return policy. The idea being that they don't want to be jerks because they want to, you know, bring in more business. The usually accepted practice is that if the item is not
speaker-0: Wow
speaker-1: damaged in some way, meaning I didn't break it after I returned it home and now I'm gonna take it back to him and say I wanna return this broken thing that I broke. Not that I opened the package and it's damaged in some way. It's pretty vague and unclear on those two points, the difference like I purchased an item and I found out it was flawed after I got it home or I purchased it. It makes sense to me that if I bring it perfectly sound item home and I break it myself, I shouldn't be able to. That's my... Anywho. So then I thought, alright, let me look at the actual receipt. Please retain, this is exactly how it reads. Please retain receipt for returns. Visit beep.com or ask an associate in store for more information on our return policy. Gift cards, perfect for all occasions.
speaker-0: Yeah
speaker-1: So to me that implies that if I have this paper receipt, I should be able to just return an item.
speaker-0: Yeah, if you the receipt, I-
speaker-1: kinda wanna go back there and buy something that I'm not really concerned about returning anyway. And try to return it, like that Seinfeld episode, why are you returning it? Spite! Like I just wanna test this policy.
speaker-0: I'm trying to retry can understand it, because... What they want is your number, not so they can track their inventory, but so they can track you.
speaker-1: Well absolutely! And when I told her, no I'm not in your system, go ahead and ring the items up, and then she's just pausing and I'm like, no I'm not gonna give you my phone number, and she's like, oh we don't sell your information to anybody, it's just so we can, whatever, so we can track your-
speaker-0: I'm they don't sell it to anyone. ⁓ huh. Information is power, You don't...
speaker-1: I need my phone number to track my purchase. I got the piece of paper right here. It's got your store's code on it. It's got the purchase, you know, the UPC thing, the identifier for the transaction. It's got everything on here that you would need if I needed to make a return. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever why you want my phone number. other than you just want it so you can track my information and share it with presumably other retailers or who ever
speaker-0: Yeah, because now they know what you're buying.
speaker-1: where I am. Right, they know everything.
speaker-0: where you are. Yeah. And everyone wants our information. mean, that's the whole thing behind Google and Facebook and all those is information. They're constantly finding ways to make giving up personal information harder and harder. And that's a good example. You can't return it if we don't have your information. Okay.
speaker-1: real I would go up in there and I would get loud up in that bitch I want to talk to your manager
speaker-0: And I knew you would. The personal invasion of rights or personal information that I came across recently is that Virginia has made it so you can download onto your phone a digital version of your driver's license or state ID.
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah yeah.
speaker-0: Now, it's something you can have a backup they say. So if you forgot your wall, you got your phone, and I'm thinking great now I got two things that I can forget. But then I started thinking about it. You know, okay, it could come in handy, I guess. But then I thought if I was person of color, pulled over by a police officer, knowing that they're probably going to do a fishing expedition to find out if can find anything else to pin me with other than the phony thing that they stopped me for.
speaker-1: Are you saying racial profiling is common here?
speaker-0: I'm saying it is. And you're giving them your unlocked phone to show them your ID or driver's license. And once they have that unlocked phone, they can search anything they want on your phone. Even if you have nothing to hide. I don't want anyone going through my phone.
speaker-1: Mm-hmm on your phone? You have, at that point, and again, this is just more, what you're describing is just more racial profiling. But it can happen to anybody, but yeah, let's face it, it's gonna happen to black and brown people. thing is, even if there's nothing on your phone, isn't that undue search and seizure?
speaker-0: What in the dee- My understanding is that if the phone is locked, they cannot force you to unlock it. But if it's unlocked, you don't have the right to privacy.
speaker-1: part of the Miller, right? Turn. And even without suspicion of anything, they can just go fishing.
speaker-0: Well, cops do that routinely.
speaker-1: Again, isn't this part of the Bill of Rights? Don't you have to have... Cause? To be fishing for stuff?
speaker-0: Well, nowadays even people of color, I mean they're definitely high on the list of people that would have issues with, should have issues with this. But even in today's climate, imagine if you have anti-Trump posts, or anti-ice posts, or even anti-police posts. How do think that's going to go for you?
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, not good.
speaker-0: But, you know, I think we're gonna have to delve into this, the erosion of rights and privacy as a whole separate podcast. Maybe we'll do that sometime in the future.
speaker-1: Yeah, okay.
speaker-0: Today!
speaker-1: someday and when I really want to just ball my eyes out. We'll dig into that.
speaker-0: Today we decided since we've done quite a few serious or tough issues, even our podcast on humor was somewhat serious.
speaker-1: were discussing, you know, how humor evolved in society and what purpose it served.
speaker-0: We decided we wanted to do something light for our channel.
speaker-1: a lot of really lame dad jokes though. ⁓
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. We went and did something light for a change and we are planning on doing a lighter topic from time to time. Just, and nothing else for our own sanity if not yours.
speaker-1: Right. my sanity is gone but okay let's try it.
speaker-0: So today, we're going to discuss one of our favorite topics, food. ⁓ And specifically foods that were independently discovered by different cultures without contact or knowledge of each other, sometimes separated by large distances or time, but are essentially universally shared. Sure, there might be some local differences, but the basic food is the same. Okay. And don't worry, we're not going to go all conspiracy theory and claim that ancient aliens sharing recipes around the world. is the connection.
speaker-1: grays walking around in an apron with a tray. Try these!
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, we're not going to fall into that. We've already covered conspiracies. We don't need to deal with them. You may have heard the analogy that if all knowledge of science was somehow erased from our collective memories, all of it would eventually be rediscovered. Because the problems science looks at would continue to be the same and the solutions and answers would be the same.
speaker-1: There. Alright, makes sense.
speaker-0: We might use different words in this new reality. We might rename hydrogen and oxygen something different, but combining two atoms of hydrogen, whatever we call it, and an atom of oxygen, no matter what we call it, comes up with water. Right. No matter we call it. No matter what we call it.
speaker-1: No matter how a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
speaker-0: The same is for lots of food. We all face similar problems all over the world and develop similar foods. In fact if you erased all memories of preparing food, leaving just basic animal feeding, know gathering like the animals do. And dropped us anywhere on earth Desert jungle mountains coast They would eventually invent three things a way to grind something in the flour a way to heat it in the bread and a way to forget their problems by fermenting it into alcohol
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, I'm all about number three.
speaker-0: And reason for that is simple. Humans everywhere have to solve the same problems. Hunger. Preservation. Celebration. identity. know, food becomes your cultural identity.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: Now geography may change the ingredients. Not the same ingredients are available everywhere. But not the logic behind it.
speaker-1: Okay, this is just triggering a thought for me. Being able to preserve food for times when You're not harvesting, right? You're making beer, you're making bread, you're drying and salting meats, you're doing things. What about cultures that evolved and still are in tropical regions where there isn't a particular growing season?
speaker-0: Right.
speaker-1: I mean, alcohol is gonna happen no matter where you are, but do they make a lot of bread?
speaker-0: But yeah, Central America and South America are all made of of some sort. Most of it is maize related. Tortillas.
speaker-1: Okay. the jungle though.
speaker-0: Well, I'm not necessarily in the jungle, but there's other stuff that they can convert.
speaker-1: Anyway, continue. That thought just popped into my head.
speaker-0: Yeah, I don't remember seeing anything specifically about the jungles, it's pretty much those are sort of universal. Yeah.
speaker-1: If you're living somewhere equatorial, it's not so much a harvest season and a winter. know, weather's the same all year round.
speaker-0: And you still want to want to preserve stuff because stuff will still rot True true and ferment Which is where we get the favorite one? alcohol
speaker-1: True. Mm-hmm. Yeah
speaker-0: Now I'm going to warn y'all that many of the foods and even the people making the food is sometimes difficult for me to pronounce. Even when I can hear it correctly in my head, I can't wrap my tongue around it.
speaker-1: Okay can't wait, this is gonna be awesome.
speaker-0: So I apologize in advance if I mispronounce anything in the podcast. No offense was intended. I respect your culture. I respect your food. I just can't talk. I barely do English, let alone some of these other languages. That's right.
speaker-1: speak two languages, English and bad English.
speaker-0: So two of the foods that most people recognize as being universal are... What would you say?
speaker-1: Foods that are universal. Well, I already said- Yeah, I already said bread.
speaker-0: had the two big ones.
speaker-1: You have to go with bread and dried meats.
speaker-0: Dry meat we're gonna talk about later, but the first two I was thinking about was bread and liquid bread.
speaker-1: Beer. Okay, I did say beer, but yeah, okay.
speaker-0: And we'll dive into both of those in a minute, but first let's look at the discussion over which came first. Agriculture or bread or beer?
speaker-1: Oooh, well, grain was harvested by hunter-gatherers.
speaker-0: Yeah, here's the thing. The thought originally being that people settled down and started farming and agriculture then allowed them to discover bread and beer. Which is really just liquid bread with a kick. But it's about alcohol level is about the same as a lot of our modern beers ranges from 1 to 6 percent. A little higher on some, a little lower. Daily beer was on the lower end special celebration beers on the higher end what you would expect And although they were lower in modern lagers Although they were lower in alcohol than some modern lagers. They were rich in carbohydrates and nutrients. That's why it's called liquid bread
speaker-1: Gotcha.
speaker-0: Recent discoveries in 2018 found traces of flatbread from Jordan dating back to 14,400 BCE.
speaker-1: Wow.
speaker-0: Now agriculture began somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 BCE. So this is well ahead of agriculture.
speaker-1: Yeah, everybody around the world makes some kind of flatbread.
speaker-0: So, which essentially meant bread was made by nomadic hunter-gatherers grinding wild grains on a stone hearth. and then baking it on a hot stone.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: Bread didn't require a settled civilization. If anything, the desire for ground grain cakes may have helped motivate the shift to farming.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: A similar argument can be made for beer, which may have predated bread. The original hypothesis was that people settled down to grain and made bread, but then were able to make beer from that. But again, recently, gobecki tepe
speaker-1: Yup.
speaker-0: Which dates back 12,000 years. They found evidence of fermented barley. A beer made from barley.
speaker-1: Alright, now how do they know that it was intentionally made beer or was it somebody left a pot of green set aside? Okay.
speaker-0: I don't know how they determine it. But that's the consensus among the people. And if the motivation to cultivate grain was partly to ensure a reliable supply for men and drink, it reframes the entire agricultural revolution. However...
speaker-1: However...
speaker-0: The first food that was likely made was the category of porridges. Which included gruel and a whole bunch of other stuff.
speaker-1: Yeah And you can throw a lot of stuff in a porridge. And because you're boiling it, you're killing off the bacteria in the water.
speaker-0: At its basic form, porridge is just grain that's usually cracked or bruised, thrown into a fireproof container, which could be a hollowed rock, anything that won't burn, pottery,
speaker-1: ceramic pottery.
speaker-0: and boil until the grain becomes soft and edible. Right. So you can take moldy food or moldy grain, grain that's too hard to grind for bread and make porridge from it. It may be the single most universal food discovery in human history. It's the one grain, one dish that every grain growing culture made before any other.
speaker-1: porriage came before bread.
speaker-0: porriage came before bread. In fact, one of the theories I read was that bread mostly likely came from porridge accidentally spilling on a hot rod and turning into bread, a slight bread. Yeah.
speaker-1: sense because it's an economical way to use It's an economical way to recover the calories you invested in gathering or growing and harvesting that grain. That would otherwise be unusable and you've just wasted your effort.
speaker-0: So independently, people develop porridge. In East Asia, they make congee, which is rice. And the thing about rice that's interesting is it's boiled until the grains of rice totally dissolve. And it's a...
speaker-1: So far drink like a paste Liquid a thick liquid
speaker-0: Now it's more drinkable. it's liquid. Yeah. Okay. And if you can see grain in it, it's not done cooking.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: In Europe they made oatmeal porridge, obviously from oats. Barley porridge. And Conchini started about 7,000 BCE. Porridge and oatmeal porridge about 4,000 BCE. Parts of Europe, polenta.
speaker-1: Well that wasn't until after the Columbian exchange. Are we going to talk about the Columbian exchange? Yeah. Okay.
speaker-0: We can Probably in a later episode, we'll all into it. Yeah, no, we'll talk about the Columbia Exchange in a later episode. Okay. Because that's more a transfer of information.
speaker-1: Gotcha. But food was part of that. So polenta is maize, which came from the Americas.
speaker-0: Yeah. In West Africa they also used maize and sorghum or millet to make pap at around 93 9300 BC. America's it was Atole and grit and harmony one
speaker-1: Grits is good eatin
speaker-0: Made with Natax Nix Tamalized Maize Which is maize that's soaked in lime And what that does is... Soften it?
speaker-1: Does soften the whole?
speaker-0: Well it does, but it also changes it a little bit. Corn has niacin that is inaccessible to human digestion normally. If you do this lime treatment, becomes, it frees up the niacin from your body and also changes the flavor bit.
speaker-1: Right? of course,
speaker-0: And that's one of the few of the flat breads that actually had a specific different step to it than everyone else's. And it made it healthier for them and better. ironically, when the colonization of Central America, South America, and occurred
speaker-1: you
speaker-0: Europeans took maize back to Europe Because it was cheap you can make flatbread with it and stuff But they didn't take the process with them
speaker-1: So they're just growing corn and not processing it correctly.
speaker-0: and which leads to ⁓ me find the word ⁓ PURRY! I know I shouldn't have jumped ahead on it. It basically causes an illness that results in the four D's. Which is... diarrhea Come on! Okay.
speaker-1: you're thinking of pellagra?
speaker-0: There we go. And it swept through northern Italy, southern France, and later the American South in the 18th and 19th century, killing tens and thousands of people. All because they didn't take the knowledge that would have prevented it that sat in every Mexican grandmother's kitchen the whole time. It's the most expensive failure to transmit a food technology to culinary history. And pellagra causes dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, and death.
speaker-1: That's not good.
speaker-0: Definitely not good.
speaker-1: So where did the Americans get the lime? Did they just collect the limestone and grind it?
speaker-0: I don't know. No one mentioned it, they just said lime and... Alright.
speaker-1: I'm gonna try to not ask you about these processes. Yeah, I can't promise anything.
speaker-0: You can ask. can say I don't know. I know you are. But like I said, when I'm reading on this stuff, they don't break down where they get the line from. It's they use line to treat it.
speaker-1: DASNIT
speaker-0: So yeah, bread, especially flatbread, became really easy because all you needed was water, ground grain, and a hot stone. There you go. And what was cool about flatbread is not only was it edible and high in carbs and stuff like that, it served as your plate or bowl or utensil.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: It was easy to carry, easy to store, tended to last longer than just your regular ⁓ porriage
speaker-1: Right.
speaker-0: And you can eat it cold. And you can eat it cold.
speaker-1: don't have to start a fire and cook it you can take it with you and just eat it wherever you are.
speaker-0: Right. And yeah, it's pretty much universal. mean, I think we can all think of... Different flatbreads Naan one of our faves
speaker-1: tortillas Everybody loves pitas.
speaker-0: Pitas yeah. Tortilla, tortillas. You can go... White. lot on bread. In Europe they had flat bread made with Elkhorn wheat from 14,400 BCE. In the Middle East they made it with emerald wheat bread. South Asia, durum wheat, tortillas, maize, treated. East Africa used teff. Scandinavian used rye.
speaker-1: teff is still a good crop in East Africa.
speaker-0: What is? Teff. Teff, ⁓ Matzah and lavash is wheat. Dosa, South Asia, is rice and black lentil.
speaker-1: I'm just talking about.
speaker-0: Vanoc, which is an indigenous North America, various camas, cattail pollen, and later barley.
speaker-1: Okay. And let's not forget delicious pancakes.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's a so yeah the Black cake or pancake which really is varied by the thinness of the liquid.
speaker-1: You can make thick batter. You can make a thin liquid.
speaker-0: Yeah, you can have crepes. You can have crumpets. can do all sorts of regular pancakes. Different countries have different types of pancakes. I've looked at different breads.
speaker-1: Because once metal forging came on the scene, you didn't have to have a heavy stone. Now you can cook things on a hot piece of iron.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: You no longer are... You no longer have to... A piece of iron you can now take with you.
speaker-0: portable.
speaker-1: If you are cooking in an oven that you have to make of stone everywhere, or lined with ceramic, you know, if you have a ceramic type of vessel, which is prone to breaking, you don't want to be traveling with it, that's going to stay in place. But a piece of metal, you can travel with it, you're not going to risk breaking it like a ceramic vessel. And once you've broken the ceramic vessel,
speaker-0: You go.
speaker-1: What are you gonna do? Now you're gonna build a kiln and start pottery? are you... You know... It makes things much easier to move around.
speaker-0: Yeah. But yeah, the flat cake runs a spectrum from paper-thin crups to thick fluffy cake.
speaker-1: Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
speaker-0: And we see it in a bunch of different places, of course. ⁓ Like said, a lot of it has to do with how thin the liquid is. Crepes and dosa both have very high water ratios and no leavening. Bellini and Ninjara have fermented batter. So the natural CO2 gives it bubbles. ⁓ and it's thin and lacy, they say.
speaker-1: Because of the leavening provided by the Right. Okay.
speaker-0: And then hotek, an American pancake, use baking powder or whipped eggs to make it thicker and fluffier.
speaker-1: Alright.
speaker-0: Now, the advantages are it's faster than bread.
speaker-1: Yep.
speaker-0: Flat cake cooks in minutes on a hot surface. Bread can take hours of kneading, proving, baking. Talk more traditional bread. Daily meals. But batter on a griddle solution was inevitable wherever both grain and fire existed. And metal. But like I you could bake
speaker-1: and my
speaker-0: It probably actually started on a hot stone. Right.
speaker-1: And then later on to stringing pottery. Yeah. And then eventually on metal.
speaker-0: It transforms leftover batter. Excess soaked or ground grain mixed with water produces a pourable batter. Pouring onto a hot surface is the path of least resistance. No shaping, no kneading, no waiting. The flat cake is what happens when you apply fire to batter without further thought.
speaker-1: Okay, makes sense.
speaker-0: It makes a perfect vehicle. It's thin flexible sheet of cooked grain can wrap, scoop, or carry any topping or filling. In a simultaneously food and utensil, much like flatbread is, this dual function, the pancake as a plate makes it uniquely efficient explaining its independent appearance across so many cultures. Now I might as well go to the third one which is beer. I know, you're fave. And of course we all know Ben Franklin's thought on beer. Beers. Beers.
speaker-1: that there's a God and that he loves us.
speaker-0: That's right. Beer basically is like I said liquid bread so it's grain. Water. And time.
speaker-1: and time.
speaker-0: It's one of those ones that you just prep and then hope for the best. We have examples of beer from a long time ago. Sumerian beer which was made with barley or emery wheat. Africa which used emery wheat and barley. Also
speaker-1: What was the first beer?
speaker-0: Probably the one that... I... Gobecki Tepe ⁓ Go ahead and correct me.
speaker-1: Nope! Yours- Everybody knows what you mean and that's what matters.
speaker-0: That's probably the oldest that they know of. Which is around 9,000 BCE. Mesopotamia got there around 7,000 BCE.
speaker-1: in Mesopotamia.
speaker-0: ⁓ Europe German, Norse, barley, wheat and rye were their grains Eastern Europe ⁓ used rye bread The Americas used maize Used a grain that was common to your area You water to it? Waited for it to ferment?
speaker-1: potatoes.
speaker-0: And that's what they think probably originally how beer became found was or discovered was that someone probably wetted in their grain and then left it too long by mistake. And when they stumbled across it again, it had an interesting smell. And when they tasted it, had an interesting taste. And that's how beer came about.
speaker-1: sense to me.
speaker-0: So yeah all these countries they had grain they had water Someone left it sitting out maybe in a bag or something that ⁓ They were carrying it with got wet natural yeast in the environment Help turn it into beer. The wonderful yeast. And I know there's just so many beers. And enough beer that The Pyramid Builders were paid in beer. Zigarot Builders were paid in beer. ⁓ Lots of country use beer as a currency not only because of the alcohol content, but the nutritional value as well. Right. End.
speaker-1: And they got paid in bread as well.
speaker-0: Yeah. Now, it sounds pretty easy. But there are three completely different biochemical pathways that different cultures took to get to the same end result of a fermented grain
speaker-1: Dang it. Okay.
speaker-0: The first is the one we're most familiar with, Western Brewing Tradition. It uses Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast to convert simple sugars to alcohol.
speaker-1: Okay. Most people just call it Brewer's Yeast.
speaker-0: breweries. The Chinese and East Asian brewing uses Q, QU, which is a mold which first sacrifice the starch breaks it into sugars and then ferments it. A double fermentation system genetically unrelated to Western East brewing and then chicha Demuko, which is from, I think, Central America, uses amylase enzymes in human saliva. ⁓
speaker-1: ⁓ They still do that and I've seen it. I've seen video of it
speaker-0: They chew the corn and spit it into a container and then let it ferment.
speaker-1: cringing just thinking about it.
speaker-0: You'd have to make a really strong alcohol. And then tell me how you made it after you got me drunk on it.
speaker-1: Yeah, no, I'm just not even gonna try that. I'm not that adventurous.
speaker-0: But like said, beer goes across nearly every tradition covered. For men and grain, drink is not about pleasure usually. It's about power, labor, and social cohesion. I said the pyramid builders in Egypt were paid in beer. Ankle road workers were paid in beer or compensated in chicha. Men and evil bishops grew wealthy taxing Groot herbs. And I'll explain Groot herbs here in a second. Are you on Groot? Pretty much. Okay. The Hop Revolution that displaced Groot after 800 CE is partly a story about Protestant reformers breaking a Catholic brewing monopoly.
speaker-1: Okay, well that's done. And I like the taste of hops, but I'm so goddamn sick of IPAs. I am so tired of people making the bitterest beer they possibly can and bragging about it like it's the most delicious thing ever.
speaker-0: So beer everywhere and always was an instrument of economic and political organization long before it was a consumer product. Now the Hop story is the Great Lake Twist. I know you're thinking on Hop you just explained it.
speaker-1: flavor of hops but just over hopping a beer until it's just undrinkable. Ugh, yuck. Stop Before hops...
speaker-0: European beer was flavored with Groot, a proprietary blend of Yarrow, Bog Myrtle, and other herbs licensed by the church. And then when Flemish Brewers began using hops in the 19th century, they discovered that hops not only flavored beer, but dramatically extended its shelf life. Hops have an antimicrobial property. This made beer exportable for the first time.
speaker-1: Mmm, yummy.
speaker-0: broke the Church's stranglehold on flavoring and eventually gave rise to the international beer trade. The global dominance of hot flavor no longer today is a direct consequence of that bio of that medieval biochemical accident.
speaker-1: All right hops are a good preservative beer can now travel around Now we have lagers everywhere.
speaker-0: And of course a similar process happened with wine and that genre because of just fruit fermentation. Right. And most likely happened by someone storing fruit and fermenting and they realized that that was good. You can actually watch wild monkeys I guess who will find fermented fruit in the jungle sitting around getting drunk on it.
speaker-1: accident at first. Elephants will ⁓ ferment fruit in their trunks.
speaker-0: Okay. Knew that trunk had to come in handy for something. So those are the three most common that most people think of immediately is bread, beer, porriages All make sense. The next one, I didn't realize how universal it was, is the dumpling. So, what's a dumpling?
speaker-1: you asking me? You take your little piece of dough, your flattened dough, before it's cooked and you can put stuff inside of it and fold it up and seal the stuff in and cook it. You can steam it, you can boil it, you can drop it in hot oil, you can bake it in a hot oven, and now you got a dumpling.
speaker-0: Very good. The dumpling is one of the most philosophically satisfying convergent discoveries in culinary history.
speaker-1: hell to the yes.
speaker-0: A shape so structurally elegant that independent cultures arrived at nearly identical engineering solutions without any contact.
speaker-1: Well, sure. It's pretty simple.
speaker-0: And there's just a gazillion of them. And basically, the dough... is the transformation of ⁓ bread ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah, it's your flatbread.
speaker-0: and just roll it out, usually in a circle, put your stuffing in the middle, fold it, and then seal it. And like I said, can steam it, boil it, fry it, deep fry it, bake it.
speaker-1: And now you have, again, small, food.
speaker-0: small portable food and one of reasons that it was so successful is if you had a filling meat, veggies, fat, whatever and you didn't want to dilute that with water but you wanted to cook it still right you could put it in this and it would
speaker-1: Right?
speaker-0: cook in the dumpling and flavor not only the meat inside or the stuff inside with their natural juices it would flavor the dumpling as well. Right.
speaker-1: now I dumplings. ⁓
speaker-0: Yeah, in East Asia, have one that's pork, cabbage, and ginger. Central Asia has manteen, lamb, or beef, onion. Our favorite, ravioli or tortellini. Which actually started pretty late. Those are 14th century CE. Pierogies.
speaker-1: Yum yum yum Yeah, pasta came to Europe later. Yum yum yum. Empanadas. Yum.
speaker-0: Meno, Samosas, Giza, Guantan Empanadas,
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. I love all of them.
speaker-0: All of it, quite simple. You have a filling, meat, fat, vegetable that you want to cook without drying it out and falling apart or losing flavor into the water. You wrap it in a dough. The dough acts as a sealed vessel. It traps moisture and steam and fat. The filling cooks in its own juices. The dough absorbs the flavor from the outside. The inevitable shape A flat sheet of dough, filled, folded, and sealed at the edge. The half moon or purse shaped
speaker-1: you
speaker-0: dough while maximizing, ⁓ minimizes dough so you're using less dough for losing and maximizing the filling to surface ratio so it was physics not culture that discovered that yeah
speaker-1: Alright, you don't have bits that you're cutting off. ⁓ yeah! Anybody's gonna land on that.
speaker-0: And yeah, it can be cooked any type of way. Boiling keeps the moisture in. Steaming cooks more gently. Pan frying creates the prized crisp bottom texture that we like. Baking produces a pastry shell. Frying samosas and some epinatas creates a shattering crispness. Each method produces a fundamentally different eating experience from identical raw ingredients.
speaker-1: you Mhm.
speaker-0: Proof that second invention, the cooking method, matters almost as much as the first.
speaker-1: Yes. And what are the resources where you live?
speaker-0: One of the interesting ones that I came across was Argentina epinatas encode their filling in the crimping pattern on the edge.
speaker-1: So like a pork dumpling is folded a certain way, a chicken dumpling is folded a certain way.
speaker-0: Yeah, each province has a traditional repasto pattern that signals what's inside before you taste it. Beef has its own pattern. Ham and cheese another. Spinach and cheese another. It's the only dumping tradition where the seal is simultaneously structured and somatic.
speaker-1: And that's where Argentina? Thank you brilliant Argentinians. That's a great idea. ⁓
speaker-0: That's what I thought when I read that. was no sitting there wondering what it is.
speaker-1: Right, because I do something, well back in the olden days when I used to cook, but that's always something that you do with your pie crust. You know, the vents that you cut in the top of your pie crust will indicate what's under it. So, yeah, why not do that in the way you fold and crimp the edges of your empanada to indicate what's inside?
speaker-0: Okay. Yeah, I found that fascinating that... They were smart enough to do both. make wonderful empanadas and then signal so that if you were selling it especially on a market people would know what they were going be getting. Right.
speaker-1: Well, it makes it easier for the seller. You're trying to get through your customers as fast as possible. Bang, bang, bang, bang, here you go.
speaker-0: All right, this next one's near and dear to your heart.
speaker-1: What is it? Yes! Yes! Cheese is what keeps me from being vegan. I don't eat meat.
speaker-0: Cheese!
speaker-1: I can... I never was a person who drank milk even when I ate meat. I was just never into drinking a glass of milk. So it wouldn't be difficult for me to give up eggs. I eat eggs, but it would be hard for me to give them up. But cheese, ugh. I've tried vegan cheese. It's not good.
speaker-0: Well, and cheese is another one where multiple processes develop independently to end up with the same type of product.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: And again, cheese all over. In the Middle East, ancient rennet cheese using animal rennet.
speaker-1: Yep, that's the gruesome part of it.
speaker-0: One of your faves, paneer, which uses an acid, lemon juice or vinegar, started around 3000 BCE. And it's unaged. Where the ancient rennet cheese of the Middle East would be fresh or aged.
speaker-1: Yup, I love paneer. Yeah, paneer is a soft, creamy, white cheese for any of you who haven't tried it. I encourage you to do so. It's delicious.
speaker-0: Corrut, Central Asia, uses a natural souring. It's dried and hardened. It has an extremely long shelf life, again around 3000 BC.
speaker-1: I do not think of cheese a great deal when I think of Southeastern Asian cuisines. Because I don't think they had many cattle. or milk giving type herds.
speaker-0: Well that's why I paneer
speaker-1: Jeez.
speaker-0: And here's the big one for Southeast Asia. Or South Asia. And part of the reason that they don't use rennet is because the Hindus and the Jain are against cruelty to animals. And of course, rennet comes from the stomach of young calves.
speaker-1: Yep, yep, yep. I'm sorry. You can go back and repeat that and I'm just gonna...
speaker-0: Rennet comes from animals. We'll leave it at that. ⁓ In fact, that's probably how that type of cheese was first discovered was someone carrying milk in a stomach pouch and the Rennet turning it into curds and whey and then eventually they figured out how to make cheese.
speaker-1: Yup.
speaker-0: West Africa, Wagachi, Unusual
speaker-1: I got a question and you might not know the answer so The Mongols lived with their horses and I know they drank an alcohol beverage made from fermented mare's milk. Did they have horse cheese?
speaker-0: I don't know, let's see.
speaker-1: I mean if you're milk and fermenting it to make an alcoholic beverage, would think cheese would also be on the menu. Your flashlight is on. ⁓
speaker-0: ⁓ Yes! Weisla's Lag is a traditional unripened Mongolian cheese made from yak or cow's milk.
speaker-1: So not for horses. Okay.
speaker-0: It's characterized by its mild creamy flavor and firm texture. It's a staple of nomadic life often pressed into squares and used for snacking or in soups and teas unlike European cheeses. It is often made without rennet using kefir to separate the curds. Yeah, I- I- I- Most of my resources all came up with Good number of them, but I'm sure that that's just the tip of the iceberg
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, that's a common...
speaker-0: Well, as we know with paneer, and a lot of the recipes involving paneer change regionally. Correct. Or you said sometimes even by family.
speaker-1: and delightfully so. My family makes it this way. No, my family does it better. We throw in this.
speaker-0: West African Wagashi uses a plant extract to make their cheese.
speaker-1: So what's the key thing? that you need to add to milk in order to make cheese.
speaker-0: something that denaturalizes it and separates the curds and whey.
speaker-1: What does denaturalizing mean?
speaker-0: break its components
speaker-1: The protein bomb?
speaker-0: Yeah, I guess.
speaker-1: Okay, you can delete that out. So it can be done with acid, can be done with reddit, it can be done with plant, some sort of plant derivative.
speaker-0: Plan. Rinat causes the milk. to curdle in the solid curds and liquid way. This is almost certainly discovered accidentally by pastoral nomads carrying milk and stomach pouches. The result is a firm, long-ageable cheese. And the origin was Middle East, Europe around 8000 BC. Acid coagulation of plant or heat adding an acid, lemon juice, vinegar, yogurt or sour whey to hot milk causes proteins to denature and clump without running. This is a completely independent discovery requiring no animal stomach. The result is a soft, fresh cheese that cannot be aged and was independently invented in India, West Africa, the Andes, and parts of South Asia.
speaker-1: What's your favorite cheese?
speaker-0: Swiss or Provolone
speaker-1: Yeah, those are good. I can't come up with a favorite, of course. I love so many. With the exception of moldy cheese. I'm sorry. Blue cheese is nasty. It's only something that anybody would ever eat on a dare. It's gross. I don't like moldy cheeses. Gross. Well, I wonder, because I'm allergic to several molds, I wonder if my body just thinks the taste of mold is gross because I'm allergic to mold. People who like those cheeses think the flavor of the mold is a delicious component of why they like it.
speaker-0: That could be good care.
speaker-1: But I think mold is disgusting tasting.
speaker-0: Yeah, I'm not a big fan of them either. Not a real big fan of them really smelling cheeses either.
speaker-1: Parmesan is really smelly and you love Parmesan. There you go.
speaker-0: I do love parmesan. The lactase persistence puzzle ⁓ is a genetic footnote to the entire global cheese story. The ability to digest lactose, milk sugar, into adulthood, lactase persistence is unevenly distributed across humanity. Meaning some...
speaker-1: Most people are lactose intolerant.
speaker-0: Yeah, especially when we're older. It is most common in northern Europeans and some East African pastoral populations who evolved independently and parallel within the last 10,000 years.
speaker-1: for lactose.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's uncommon in East Asian, Southeast Asia, and some indigenous American populations. Yet cheese is naturally low in lactose. The fermentation and aging process consumes most of the lactose leaving a product that is lactose intolerant people can often eat without difficulty.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: Cheese may have been in part a solution to lactation persistence. A way to capture the nutritional value of milk into a form of digestible by people who couldn't drink fresh milk.
speaker-1: Okay, that makes sense.
speaker-0: The discovery of cheese! Therefore the discovery of cheese
speaker-1: I'm not done. I'm sorry, okay.
speaker-0: Therefore the discovery of cheese may have been in some populations driven by necessity as much as by accident.
speaker-1: because you have this nutrient, this pretty dense source of calories that you can't use so you invent a way that you can use it rather than lose those calories.
speaker-0: And I'm assuming that they discovered that partly by accident. That they came with cheese and noticed that it didn't cause the symptoms of lactose intolerance.
speaker-1: which are ⁓
speaker-0: Although I do know some people that are sensitive of cheese as well. But I... That's your own personal vision of hell, isn't it?
speaker-1: That's gotta be pitiful. Well yeah, like people who are allergic to chocolate, ⁓ you poor thing. Although I went to grade school with a girl who was not allergic to chocolate, she just didn't like it. I went, wait, what do you mean? I don't like chocolate. Huh, what? Like I could not wrap my brain.
speaker-0: I hope you didn't associate with her. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.
speaker-1: She was actually a really great person. But yeah in grade school I like I don't like I don't eat chocolate. ⁓ are you allergic? No I just don't like it.
speaker-0: Now when we talked briefly about it, smoked and salted meat, great way to preserve.
speaker-1: or just dried in the air.
speaker-0: Air dried, freeze dried. There's a whole bunch of different ways to do meats All of which... helps preserve the meat over a longer period of time so you can store it.
speaker-1: But you have to be stationary long enough to preserve it. Otherwise predators are just going to come and eat what you worked so hard for.
speaker-0: Yeah, I'll go- And there's four basic types. Wind air drying, where they take thin sliced meat hung in dry moving air and it desiccates to below 10 % moisture, where bacteria can't survive, requires no technology beyond a knife and a drying rack, and it was discovered on every continent. Smoking. Wood smoke. deposits phenols. ⁓ and organic acids on meat surfaces, are ⁓ antimicrobial, antimicrobial compounds that inhibit bacteria growth, same as with air drying, also dries the surface, adds flavor as a side effect of the preservation.
speaker-1: Microbe Mmm, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
speaker-0: Salt curing, is the one that most people are familiar with. Salt draws out the water out of cells by osmosis, lowering water activity and making the environment hostile to bacteria. Requires salt deposits or coastal access. It's the most powerful single preservative available before refrigeration.
speaker-1: You don't necessarily need coastal access. Salt is found in other areas. Natron is found in the desert.
speaker-0: Well, that's what it says. It salt deposits. Or coastal access.
speaker-1: ⁓ I'm so sorry. I clearly wasn't listening carefully.
speaker-0: Yeah, mean, salt was currency back in the Roman... That's where salary comes from. Salary...
speaker-1: Saline, saline, anything that has Sal in it, any word like that. That's where it comes from. The... I'm sorry, go ahead.
speaker-0: And then finally freeze drying at high altitude or in arctic climate. Meat freezes solid and then slowly sublimates ice converts directly to vapor in dry cold air producing the original freeze dried food discovered independently in the Andes and the Arctic. and why drying works. Bacteria, mold, yeast all require a minimum water activity to survive and reproduce. Fresh meat sits at a water activity of about .99 near maximum. Dried jerky sits at a water activity of .7 to .85. Fully dried, bit long or bolts reaches Water activity. Below the survival threshold of almost all food pathogens. Preservation is simply the removal of water. And like I said, it stumbling across by everybody. Because everyone had that same problem. You have to store your food. And of course, you mentioned jerky. Jerky's an old word in the Andes. Chalky C-H-A-R-K-I Which is Andean llama jerky And that eventually evolved into jerky Katsubushi is a Japanese fermented or food that's Japanese smoked mold fermented and dried bonito says that a unique intersection it's simultaneously smoked Mold fermented. just in the same way that they do miso and soy sauce, and then physically desiccated to below 15 % moisture. No other traditional preserved food combines all three mechanisms. The result, and this is fascinating to me, is shaved into paper-thin translucent flakes and dissolved in water. It produces dashi. invisible flavor background of Japanese cuisine. When I was learning about how to make ramen the proper way, I kept running into Dashi and did not realize that how it was made. Katsubushi is not normally eaten, it is dissolved into everything. It's a preservation technology in service of pure flavor infrastructure.
speaker-1: I prefer to eat Emperor Nimbala. He's teriyaki style!
speaker-0: And of course, the Norse discovering that Atlantic cod could be air-dried to wood hardness on Lofoten Island racks set off a chain of consequences that shaped European history for 600 years. The Catholic Church's Linton fish requirements created continent-wide demand. The Hanseatic League's stockfish trade made cities like Bergen and Lubik wealthy. Portuguese traders carried salted stockfish to Brazil, West Africa, and the Caribbean where it became embedded in local cuisines so throughout the Nigerians, Brazilians, and Portuguese all considered a native food.
speaker-1: Those places have coastline. They got fish! What the actual?
speaker-0: And that's how a fish dried on arctic racks became a global food. No other single preserved product achieved that geographical reach before the industrial era.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: because you can carry it long way.
speaker-1: But again, they got fish there. Drop a line.
speaker-0: Hahaha!
speaker-1: Toss a ⁓ gotta be easier than that ⁓
speaker-0: You would think.
speaker-1: Have you seen those Japanese fishermen who fish with cormorants? Amazing!
speaker-0: Yes! Go ahead explain that.
speaker-1: Well, they have domesticated cormorants, are fish eating birds. There's species of cormorants all around the world. And they will tie a string around the base of the cormorant's neck. The cormorant will dive down, catch a fish, and swallow it. And when they come back up, the fisherman then pulls the fish out of the cormorant or shakes them upside down. I don't know how they do it.
speaker-0: They get it back.
speaker-1: They get the fish back out of the cormorant's mouth because they can't swallow it because they've got a rope tied around their neck. It's really kind of gruesome when you think about it.
speaker-0: I hope eventually they give the poor bird a
speaker-1: Yes, they do! The birds get to eat some of the catch!
speaker-0: That always seems fair.
speaker-1: Well yeah, they're doing all the work. It seems to me though that by pulling the fish back out of the neck, wouldn't the fin bones and the scales cause irritation inside the bird's crop?
speaker-0: I don't know. I mean, they do it now in the wild, now they don't nearly spit it out.
speaker-1: swallowing the thing. It's not coming back with the sharp edges going against the force.
speaker-0: Interesting. And they still do that now, don't they?
speaker-1: Yes! It's probably not terribly common, but yeah, it's an ancient practice that's still in use.
speaker-0: Now that there's several more that we can talk about, I know another one that might interest you. am running along here. And that's tea.
speaker-1: I love tea.
speaker-0: or leaf infusion occurred across pretty much all cultures.
speaker-1: Again, you're boiling water so you're killing the microbes and the bacteria.
speaker-0: The tea plant is a source of green tea, black tea, oolong, white, has a single geographic origin in the forests of Yunnan, China, and the surrounding region. All true tea descends from one plant species discovered once. What's spread was the plant and the knowledge of it.
speaker-1: Well that and also... Tea is a plant and tea is also a beverage made of that plant. But tea is also a beverage brewed from other plants. We call it tea.
speaker-0: Right. Leaf infusion. And they call it leaf infusion here. And that's the universal concept. The concept is
speaker-1: I'd like a cup of leaf infusion, please.
speaker-0: The concept of seeping aromatic, medicinal, or flavorful leaves, flowers, bark, or roots in hot water is a completely universal independent discovery. Every culture with access to boiling water and aromatic plants invented this independently.
speaker-1: Yep, we all want to listen to your big bass. you I do fancy a cup of.
speaker-0: Now, every culture with access to boiling water, aromatic plants, invented this independently. Herbal tea was discovered hundreds of times. before the original tea plant arrived in most of the world. Now, every culture made a leaf infusion. Usually it was a medicine before it was a beverage. In almost every tradition, the first leaf infusion were medicinal, not refreshment. Hot water extracts alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, and essential oils from plant material. These compounds are biologically active. Every culture with the herbal medicine tradition independently discovered
speaker-1: Makes sense?
speaker-0: that water extracts plant compounds that can affect the body. Water safety of course. Boiling water kills pathogens. Adding flavor to boiled water makes it more palatable than plain hot water. The habit of drinking hot infused water may have been in many cultures primarily a water safety behavior that developed flavor preferences as a secondary effect. The medicine and the sanitation arrived together.
speaker-1: That makes sense.
speaker-0: The aromatic plant is everywhere. Every biome on earth contains aromatic plants. Plants whose leaves, bark, roots, or flowers produce volatile compounds when crushed or heated. Mitten Europe and in the Middle East. Robots in South Africa. Yuba in South America. Lemon grass across Asia. The raw material for leaf infusion exists on every continent. The discovery was inevitable.
speaker-1: Chamomile, Bergamot, Lavender, Sassafras.
speaker-0: I remember grandmother ⁓ had Sassafras ⁓ on the of her house so she could have Sassafras tea ⁓
speaker-1: Mmm, mmm.
speaker-0: And they're just all kinds of tea. But that pretty much sums it up. We've came across a whole bunch of independently discovered foods. And it's all based on... People needing to solve the same problems everywhere. So they came up with like-minded stuff. Porridge, bread, beer, cheese.
speaker-1: proving once again that we're more alike than we are different.
speaker-0: Absolutely. And that nothing is new under the sun.
speaker-1: Correct.
speaker-0: We continue to, if something's missing like that, we'll reinvent it.
speaker-1: Yeah, I'm sorry I got nothing.
speaker-0: Okay, well that winds us up. Thanks for listening. Come back next time to one of our normal serious issues.
speaker-1: This episode has made me hungry, now I need to go brew a cup of tea and have something delicious to eat. Thanks for listening. If you have any food related questions you want to write in or suggest, contact us at classyashell at outlook.com. Until next time, don't keep it classy.
speaker-0: There we go. Alright? Keep it real.
speaker-1: my best cold clothes I could come up with.
