4 — Traditional Methods of Food Preparation

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Episode Transcript

This is the Eat Ancestral Podcast number four. Today I wanted to talk about some traditional methods of food preparation. Seems like few cultures now prepare food as it should be, as it ought to be. And since the Industrial Revolution, it seems like the collective knowledge base on the topic has largely eroded. But this is critical information for us to remember. Because in order to render our food safer to eat, more digestible, more nutritious, we need to prepare it properly, like our ancestors did. There are a handful of food preparation methods that we could talk about. I'm going to speak of three today. They are soaking, fermenting, and cooking. And while you don't necessarily need to employ these for some foods, like fruits and honey, which are best eaten raw, many foods are not best eaten raw and will cause humans problems if we try. Now cooking is a pretty well known quantity. microwaving does not count by the way. Another topic for another day. But soaking and fermenting are not so much well known, so that's what I'll mainly be speaking about today, the importance of soaking in fermentation. So some foods like grains that are destined to become bread, for example, should be prepared using a combination of all three of those; soaking, fermenting and then cooking, in order to minimise the risk and maximise the reward. Most people when they make bread and most companies will skip the first two stages and just go straight for the cooking process. But, you know soaking and fermentation, they might seem complicated or that they require too much effort. But it's mostly a question of planning and patience and understanding the value of doing so rather than it is hard labour without any additional gain. So as noted food corporations tend to skip as many of these time intensive stages as possible, as they significantly increase production times and thus reduce profit margins. And why bother really if your consumers don't know any better? The advantages, however, are numerous. So let's talk about those now. Proper food preparation enables humans to render foods safer to eat, improve digestibility and reduce damage to the gastrointestinal tract, which is quite delicate. It also allows us to extract more energy and nutrients from some foods, it can allow for long term storage of surplus food and increase our enjoyment of food. So all of those things I think are good things. Let's take let's take a look at a few notable examples here of traditionally-prepared foods.  First one, olives, which are an example of soaking. Eaten straight from the tree olives are actually toxic to humans, so don't try that one at home. Oives require the step of soaking or brining for at least a month before turning into edible, nutritious human food. Now, olives are fruit. Fruits do not contain as many problematic plant compounds that are found in lots of vegetables and seeds and beans and legumes and grains, many of which require more extensive preparation than olives do. So after soaking and brining, olives don't require any further preparation, which makes them one of the simplest plant foods to prepare, and once prepared, pretty nutritious and well tolerated by most of us. They are also easily stored for a long time. So that's an example of soaking.  Next one up is an example of fermentation. A very well known and revered cheese, called Parmigiano Reggiano. I hope I pronounced that well; I don't speak Italian, i'm sorry. But anyway, excess milk, which usually sours within days can be turned into cheese with the help of fermentation. And now we can't pasteurise it because that will kill all of the enzymes and microorganisms that will enable the fermentation. So, classic Parmesan Reggiano is actually made from raw milk, as are many cheeses, most cheeses, especially the traditionally-made ones, and it enables the fermentation process. So if we follow this correctly, some cheeses can then be stored safely for many years, even without refrigeration, that's pretty cool. So, cheese making is a kind of ancient food technology that enables us a way to preserve food that would otherwise go off. Instead, we can save it for times of food scarcity, like the winter. It's also a method for transforming one food (milk) into another (cheese), which fundamentally changes the flavours, nutritional profiles and culinary uses. Also quite cool. And it's also a way of improving the digestibility. So, fermented, raw, milk aged cheese's tend to be better tolerated amongst humans. This is partly because the lactose which is the milk sugar is broken down and gobbled up over time by the microorganisms and is no longer there after a certain amount of time. So people who are lactose intolerant can actually eat some dairy products without having any GI issues. So that's an example of fermentation; cheese.  Okay, one last example here, which is an example of soaking, fermenting, and cooking is sourdough. So in the modern era, most bread is made rapidly by combining flour and water, and then adding yeast. We let it rise for a little while and voilà, you've got something that looks like bread but is fundamentally different to the stuff your ancestors ate. The bread that French culture considers standard is what we call sourdough. And sourdough just designates that the bread has been made traditionally, which is a lengthy process could take a couple of days to make a loaf of sourdough, including various stages of soaking and fermentation before finally being cooked. Now the soaking and fermenting of grains before cooking them, improves the flavour digestibility nutrient availability and reduces damage to the gut. So most people are familiar with the issues surrounding the plant protein we call gluten. But gluten is just one of many, many plant compounds that cause digestive issues in humans, especially if we don't prepare them properly and we're not aware of them. So sourdough may look and even function similar to the white supermarket bread you probably grew up eating like me, but it's not the same thing. It's not even close. So that is an example of soaking, fermenting and cooking all in one; sourdough.  Now, this is a good point to point out that a lot of ready-made, supermarket, factory 'food' is problematic because it's not usually prepared by using these traditional means or at least as extensively. So from the 1950s roughly, we've outsourced much of the work of our home cooking and food preparation to corporations. And it was supposed to 'save us time' and to help you know 'free women from the kitchen' and these kinds of things. Maybe it did just that but in leaving our nutritional fate in their hands, we've caused ourselves many other problems and the overconsumption of these poor quality, addictive, nutrient deficient 'foods' that haven't been prepared probably has led to a lot of chronic disease, gut issues and nutritional deficiencies. So corperations skip any unnecessary or impractical steps. You say bye bye to fermentation. They also use the cheapest ingredients possible, so bye bye to food quality, and safety. They also hire food scientists and engineers to actually build flavour and texture combinations that literally create physiological addiction in their consumers and sort of circumvent the appetite and satiety mechanisms in the brain, the neuroregulation of appetite. So they're pretty nasty things. I bet they are hoping that you don't read the label where you'll find all the additives and other nasty shit that you can't pronounce and probably won't ever find in a home pantry. Anyway, all this to say don't leave your food preparation, and thus your health, in the hands of a corporation. Their objectives are not aligned with yours. They want profit, not necessarily, you know to help you on your health journey. And just think that the ultra processed junk made by food conglomerates, serves basically only as calories and fake mouth pleasure and furthers disease progression, so yeah, don't eat that stuff. That's pretty much it for me, I think. The last thing I want to say is that we really need to regain an understanding of, and respect for, the art and science of food preparation. It's not all about sterile calories and macros. You know, if you learn to incorporate some of these traditional methods into your home cooking repertoire, or at least source foods from smaller scale producers who are preparing them using these traditional means, you'll find that you will probably improve your gut health, you'll increase your nutritional intake, you'll feel better, you'll help ensure your long-term health status. And you will also be a part of a group of humans who are protecting preserving and passing along these ancient food technologies that are sorely missed in the modern world, and at risk of being forgotten about by most people. So I think that's pretty important. Okay, so that's it for me today. This has been Traditional Methods of Food Preparation. I'm Ben. I hope you got some value out of that. And I'll see you in the next one. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai