The Amazing Multimillion-Year History of Processed Food
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INNOVATION As early as 1.8 million years ago ROASTED MEAT the amazing Fire-kissed food is easier to digest and more nutritious than raw food is. Some anthropologists argue that cooking was the essential multimillion-year step that allowed early humans to develop the big brains charac- teristic of Homo sapiens [see history of “The First Cookout,” on page 66]. 30,000 years ago BREAD Agriculture began around 12,000 years ago, but early Europeans processed were baking bread many thou- sands of years before that time. In 2010 scientists found surprising evidence of starch grains on crude mortars and pestles at sites in modern-day Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic. The starches food came from the roots of cattails It is the dark force, and ferns, which early humans pounded into fl our, mixed with we’re told, behind the water and baked into bread. Bread was portable and nutri- obesity epidemic, the ent-dense and resisted spoilage. It was also a nutritional step back- death of the family farm ward. Comparative studies show that Neolithic hunter-gatherers and Tang. But humans ate a more varied and nutritious diet than Neolithic farmers. And have been “processing” from the perspective of energy consumption, hunter-gatherers food ever since we were far more effi cient: a farmer would have to spend 10 hours to learned how to cook, grow food with the same number of calories that six hours of forag- preserve, ferment, freeze, ing could provide. Then why bother with bread dry or extract. Processed at all? Anthropologists debate why farming became dominant, food has powered the but one thing is certain: bread and agriculture were codepen- evolution of the species, dent. As societies began to rely on bread as a major foodstuff , the expansion of empires, they were also forced to expend more eff ort on agriculture (and the exploration of space. vice versa). Here are highlights By Evelyn Kim MORE TO EXPLORE The Cambridge World History of Food. Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. Cambridge University Press, 2000. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. Second edition. Edited by Andrew F. Smith. Oxford University Press, 2012. 50 Scientifi c American, September 2013 Illustration by Peter and Maria Hoey sad0913Kim3p.indd 50 7/23/13 6:12 PM feast THE FOOD ISSUE 7000 .. 5000 .. BEER CHEESE The birth of beer is hard to Take milk, place it in a ruminant’s place. The oldest physical stomach, then churn . Scholars Evelyn Kim is a writer and educator evidence comes from pottery suggest this method is probably living in Copenhagen. Her work examines shards in Iran that date back to not too far off from how cheese the intersection of the history of science, 3500 B.C., but archaeologists was invented. The earliest food and the environment. such as Patrick McGovern of evidence for cheese making the University of Pennsylvania comes from 7,000-year-old suggest that the fi rst ale may archaeological sites in Poland, have been produced as early where milk fat remains were as 7000 B.C. as a by-product of found in holed ceramic containers bread making. Early societies that could have served as rudi- quickly embraced the accident: ment ary strainers. Yet with the ancient Sumerians may have domestication of sheep and goats diverted as much as 40 percent as early as 8000 B.C. and of cattle of all grain to beer production. a millennium later, it is possible Modern-day brewers, with that cheese making has been help from archaeologists, have go ing on for longer. attempted to re-create ancient Like other formative food- brews. McGovern has partnered stuff s, cheese was most likely a with Dogfi sh Head Craft Brewery product of necessity. Cheese, to ferment ancient Egyptian and yogurt and butter could be kept Chinese beverages, whereas longer than fresh milk. Neolithic Great Lakes Brewing Company, humans also could not digest with help from researchers at the lactose—the gene for this adapta- University of Chicago, is brewing tion has spread only in the past beer based on a 3,800-year-old few thousand years. Bacteria used ode to the Sumerian beer god- in cheese making ferment the lac- dess Ninkasi. tose in milk into lactic acid, mak- ing dairy products easier to digest. 6700 .. We can’t say for sure what TORTILLAS the fi rst types of cheese were, but No written records predate geohistorical backtracking yields the arrival of Spanish explorers some clues. Populations in hot in the Americas, but the earliest regions such as the Middle East archaeological evidence for and South Asia would most likely have used a lot of salt to help maize domestication dates back 4500 .. around 8,700 years. Early Amer- preserve their cheese, a practice icans would soak kernels in a lime still seen today in the feta and OLIVE OIL solution to create masa, releasing fetalike cheeses of the Middle A raw olive is inedible in its bitter- nutrients in the process. East, Greece and Southwest Asia. ness, but farmers in the eastern Cooler climates require less salt Mediterranean have been ferment- for preservation, making way ing olives in lye and press ing 5400 .. for the growth of local microbes them for oil for thousands of years. WINE that add the characteristic fl avors The earliest evidence of wine of such famous cheeses as 3000 .. making has been found in the Roque fort, Swiss and Brie. Zagros Mountains in Iran. Seafar- PALM OIL ing Phoenicians then spread the Oil made from palm berries— practice westward from Lebanon a shelf-stable and cheap staple to Egypt and the Mediterranean. of modern-day processed food— has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs. 2400 .. PICKLES Ancient Mesopotamians were the fi rst to pack vegetables in vinegar to preserve them for out-of-season consumption. 2000 .. NOODLES The fi rst evidence of this popular dish comes from preserved millet-based noodles in an earthenware bowl in north- western China. The wheat variety, commonly associated with pasta, arose in China 2,000 years ago and spread west from there. September 2013,2013, Scientifi cAmerican.com 51 sad0913Kim3p.indd 51 7/23/13 6:12 PM feast THE FOOD ISSUE 1900 .. CHOCOLATE Pre-Olmec civilizations in Central America ground the beans of cacao pods, mixed the powder with water and shook the mixture, producing a foamy drink. More than 3,400 years later Hernando Cortés brought the beans to Spain, where sugar was added for the fi rst time. .. BACON Chinese cooks were the fi rst to salt pork bellies not only as an early form of preservation but also as a way to bring out the fl avor of the meat. 1000 .. JIANG Jiang was the precursor of fl avor- ings such as miso and soy sauce that are used across East Asia today. According to the ancient Chinese text Zhou li (Rites of Zhou ), jiang was made by mixing meat or fi sh with salt and liang qu (a fermentation starter) and .. 700 leaving the mixture to mature 500 .. .. 400 KIMCHI for 100 days. Like many other SUGAR MUSTARD The fi rst kimchi was pretty tame: fermented foods, its discovery According to Sanskrit texts, cooks One of the fi rst mustard recipes, cabbage fermented with salt. was probably accidental, but in India processed sugarcane into collected in the Roman cookbook Once the Japanese invaded Korea jiang’ s dissemination across East giant crystals through boiling and De Re Coquinaria, called for a in the 16th century, taking with Asia was anything but. The rise cooling extracted sugarcane juice. mixture of ground mustard seed, them red chilies that Portuguese of Buddhism across Asia in the Nearly a millennium later Indians pepper, caraway, lovage, roasted missionaries had brought to fi rst to seventh centuries A.D. invented easy-to-transport granu- coriander seeds, dill, celery, Japan from the New World, most likely brought jiang to both lated sugar, which launched the thyme, oregano, onion, honey, Koreans started incorporating Korea and Japan. global sugar trade. vinegar, fi sh sauce and oil. fi ery elements into the dish. 52 Scientifi c American, September 2013 sad0913Kim3p.indd 52 7/23/13 6:12 PM 10th century SALT COD Although dried cod had been feeding the Vikings since the ninth century, salt changed it from a local foodstuff to a global phenomenon. Salt allowed for cod to be readily dried and preserved even in wet, humid or warm environments, such as a fi shing boat. The change began when Basque sailors met Viking fi shers and their vast supplies of cod near the Faroe Islands during the 10th century. By fi g- uring out how to preserve the fi sh onboard, the Basques found their piscine cash cow. Catholic edict at the time dictated a meatless meal on Friday, which drove salt cod’s popularity. Soon the Portu- guese, the French and the British began to fi sh for cod. Over the next few centuries salt cod sus- tained the long journeys to ex - plore the New World. The rest, as they say, is history. Too bad .. 700 the fi sh that brought them there SUSHI .. is almost history, too. Sushi started as a means of fi sh preservation in Southeast Asia, where TOFU salted fi sh was covered in boiled rice and left to ferment for months. Tofu’s origins are mysterious, 15th century The rotting rice was then scraped off and discarded (because of the but the fi rst written record appears PEANUT BUTTER waste, sushi has always been a dish for the wealthy) and the soured fi sh in the stories of Chinese writer Contrary to what your second consumed.