[HN Gopher] Bread, How Did They Make It? Addendum: Rice
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Bread, How Did They Make It? Addendum: Rice
Author : Kednicma
Score : 87 points
Date : 2020-09-04 11:21 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Doesn't brown rice inhibit iron uptake?
| gruez wrote:
| Source? A casual search suggests the opposite:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19919516/
| hinkley wrote:
| They tell anemics to stagger intake of certain nutrients so
| your body doesn't have to choose between iron and other
| things, such as calcium.
|
| They're also told to put ascorbic acid on all of their iron
| sources as it enhances absorption. Get some lemon juice on
| that fish.
| klipt wrote:
| Whole grains do have anti nutrients, e.g. phytic acid, which
| can inhibit uptake of some nutrients, but whether that's a
| problem or not depends heavily on the rest of your diet.
| teucris wrote:
| My favorite insight:
|
| > "[...] tenancy conditions tended to be more favorable in rice-
| farming areas than in wheat-farming ones, with a lower portion of
| the total harvest going to the landlord. Thus the irony that
| precisely because labor was so abundant, rice farming tended
| towards labor-intensive methods and solutions, which in turn
| improved returns to labor (compared to returns to capital),
| putting the small farmers, despite their abundance, in a
| marginally better bargaining position."
| xapata wrote:
| On a tangent, the author has an article in the Atlantic about the
| increasingly strained economics of universities. Combine that
| with the novelty of Patreon's fundraising and it's worth pointing
| out the author's Patreon page. He has a very reasonable "buy me a
| coffee" subscription.
|
| It's no one's fault that a chunk of society goes down the
| humanities PhD rabbit hole only to discover the adjunct professor
| job market is bonkers (some of the world's smartest [or some
| semblance of it] people competing intensely for almost no money).
| But, I think blogs and subscriptions like his are a potential way
| to remedy the situation.
|
| https://www.patreon.com/user?u=20122096
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Yeah, strongly seconded. This kind of blog is exactly what's
| great about having academic historians around.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| I've been reading him for a long time now, and I just wish
| he'd do a podcast or a video essay YouTube channel or
| something (or partner with someone skilled in these areas to
| make it happen). He's much more knowledgeable than the
| existing people doing this in these areas, yet he has a tiny
| fraction of the audience solely because of his choice of
| blogging medium. His actual content is genuinely interesting
| and obviously well-researched and I'd put him up favorably
| against any of the others.
| ksdale wrote:
| Ironically, I follow Bret's work over other, more famous
| people, because I prefer reading over listening or
| watching.
| boyband6666 wrote:
| Same. I can read quickly, and when suits me. Video I have
| to be sat at a computer paying attention which is time I
| can use for other things, and go at their speed.
| alexpetralia wrote:
| Yes, I really learned a ton from him. Please donate if you
| enjoy and are able to!
| natcombs wrote:
| A little known fact is that Germany resorted to using sawdust in
| bread when they had flour shortages during the world wars
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kommissbrot
|
| Are ther any other strange flour replacements that people have
| heard of?
| hinkley wrote:
| Somewhat tangentially, the British during WWII rediscovered
| that rose hips contain vitamin C. I don't know the degree to
| which roses were embedded into the collective consciousness
| before but they certainly earned it at that point.
|
| Rose hip tea helped with the supply constraint pressure of the
| U-Boats.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Anyone know which WWII british cookbook contained the recipe
| for "life sustaining glop"?
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| Some people did an (albeit informal) experiment trying to find
| out how much sawdust you can add to a rice krispy treat before
| people start to notice.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKDal51f5LU
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'm still fascinated by the fact that the fact that cellulose
| is mostly sugar.
| vondur wrote:
| It literally is two glucose molecules bonded via a
| condensation reaction. The linkage between the molecules is
| what makes it different from starch, and subsequently what
| makes it not useful as a food source for most animals.
| soperj wrote:
| Americans basically do the same thing with their cheese, but
| not because of shortages, it's because they don't want to shred
| it themselves.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't use a lot of shredded cheese, but grated is harder to
| avoid.
| sosborn wrote:
| "Cellulose is cellulose," regardless of if whether it comes
| from wood pulp or celery, says Michael Jacobson, executive
| director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a
| group that advocates healthier, more nutritious food. He says
| no research points to health problems related to consuming
| cellulose.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Science_in_the_Publ.
| ..
|
| https://www.thekitchn.com/cellulose-the-wood-pulp-in-
| you-146...
| r00fus wrote:
| So glad I ditched pre-packaged shredded cheese - it only
| takes like 5 min to shred a large cheese block and that lasts
| for weeks in my fridge (and the cheese block lasts for even
| longer so I always have shredded cheese and a few blocks
| waiting to be shredded).
|
| Note: means without cheese are difficult if you have kids.
| protomyth wrote:
| Adding sawdust to nutmeg gave nutmeg dealers a poor reputation
| resulting in an insult in the 1860 election of Stephen Douglas
| calling Abraham Lincoln a nutmeg dealer (he threw in some other
| insults in the same line).
|
| _horrid looking wretch, sooty and scoundrelly (sic) in aspect,
| a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper and the
| night man_
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Also during the (US) Civil War, acorns, peas, and all kinds of
| other things were used as coffee additives or substitutes.
|
| https://scholarworks.uttyler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...
| hinkley wrote:
| Someone once put it to me that cooking is a process of
| converting inedible calories (combustibles) into edible ones.
| Mostly by cooking difficult to digest food, but also increasing
| longevity of other foods (eg, smoked meat).
| gnud wrote:
| In Scandinavia, before potatoes, people sometimes used the
| inner layer of bark from trees as a supplement to grains when
| there was a shortage.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_bread#Bark_bread_as_food
| hinkley wrote:
| Survival books still sometimes refer to it.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this layer also contain
| minerals and some of the sap? So it would have some value as
| a supplement and not just a filler.
|
| My favorite in this category is separating the minerals from
| grass by chewing (not swallowing) or boiling it in a tea. Not
| much calorie value, but it'll prevent deficiencies while you
| find a staple food or burn body fat. And you can do the
| former while doing other survival chores (time seems to be
| the dominant resource you have to manage).
| Aromasin wrote:
| In Scandinavia they reguarly added inner bark to flour during
| famine. In Russia, nettle and orache were used. There a good
| article which goes through what many cultures eat during famine
| below [1]. Some of it is pretty horrific:
|
| > "...I have no idea how I managed to survive and stay alive.
| In 1933 we tried to survive the best we could. We collected
| grass, goose-foot, burdocks, rotten potatoes and made pancakes,
| soups from putrid beans or nettles.
|
| > Collected clay from the trees and ate it, ate sparrows,
| pigeons, cats, dead and live dogs."
|
| It goes further into mentions of infanticide canabilism which I
| won't quote directly here but is worth reading.
|
| Birch inner bark flour seems to be "common" as far as obscure
| flour goes. Apparently it wasn't even a famine food as such,
| and just a normal part of their diet. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.askaprepper.com/ingenious-foods-people-made-
| fami...
|
| [2] https://practicalselfreliance.com/birch-bark-flour/
| GordonS wrote:
| How the hell do you eat a live dog?
| s5300 wrote:
| Err... to give you a genuine answer - by experiencing real
| starvation.
|
| Have you never seen any cartel execution/torture videos?
| Those people are literally just doing it because a higher
| up told them, they're making money, and stimmed out of
| their minds on a daily basis.
|
| Eating a dog alive is really nothing to a human that's
| actually facing death from starvation. Please don't forget
| we're just animals.
| joseluis wrote:
| I believe what that means is they found the dog alive,
| killed it themselves, cooked it (I hope) and ate it. In
| contrast with finding it already dead, like a road kill,
| which they eat also...
| packet_nerd wrote:
| I lived with Karen people in Easter Burma for several years.
| One year the combination of poor timing for the rains[1] and
| fighting with the Burmese[2] left food scarce for many,
| including the village I lived in. We ate thin rice soup with
| bamboo shoots (bamboo is all fiber and water, very little if
| any nutrients) and greens for the first few months, and then
| fresh or fermented bamboo soup.
|
| Normally the village elders have strict rules on where and
| how much fishing they allow to keep it sustainable, but that
| year people were so desperate they fished the river clean.
| You couldn't catch even the smallest fish, and it took
| several years to recover.
|
| [1] There was too much rain and the slash-and-burn farms
| never had a chance to dry out. Slash-and-burn farms are very
| dependent on an old forest (usually 10 to 20 years or more)
| and a dry period in which to burn it off and expose the rich
| soil underneath.
|
| [2] The Karen would try to hide their rice silos in the
| forest so the Burmese troops would be able to find it. If the
| soldiers did find them they'd take what they wanted and burn
| the rest.
| natcombs wrote:
| I wasn't familiar with the Karen people until your comment,
| thanks for sharing your story. What led you to live with
| them for several years?
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I am not sure what to make of "collected clay from trees" -
| sap? Lichens? Seems like a problem with the translation.
| ljf wrote:
| I assumed sap too. As a kid we had a load of sycamore trees
| - a close relative of the maple. My dad saw a documentary
| about tapping maple trees and he set out to tap the
| sycamore - it tasted vile.
| bane wrote:
| In some ways that's not terribly different than one of the
| traditional starch sources in Papau New Guinea, sago.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sago
| boudewijnrempt wrote:
| Most bread in England in Victorian times was adulterated with
| plaster of paris.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think one of the British history shows mentioned gypsum,
| which is just a name for Plaster of Paris that sounds less
| like something you should keep out of your mouth.
| [deleted]
| SECProto wrote:
| > A little known fact is that Germany resorted to using sawdust
| in bread when they had flour shortages during the world wars
|
| That wiki article suggests the use of sawdust in bread during
| WWI, but for a reference uses another encyclopedia-like source
| [1] (which does not cite any reference, and whose about page
| suggests it was written by a single individual). While it may
| be true, I'd be very hesitant to accept it without seeing a
| better source (and preferably one made before the wiki-
| circular-citation thing started).
|
| [1] http://www.zum.de/whkmla/economy/period/warecwwi.html
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > But it also goes to the difficulty many Chinese states
| experienced in maintaining large and effective cavalry arms
| without becoming reliant on Steppe peoples for horses. Unlike
| Europe or the Near East, where there are spots of good horse
| country here and there, often less suited to intensive wheat
| cultivation, most horse-pasturage in the rice-farming zone could
| have - and was - turned over to far more productive rice
| cultivation.
|
| The bigger reason why China did not produce horses for cavalry
| was they couldn't. Soil in China is deficient in selenium, which
| is required by horses to produce strong muscles.
|
| From
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#Initiation_in_China_...
|
| "The soil in China lacked Selenium, a deficiency which
| contributed to muscular weakness and reduced growth in
| horses.[40] Consequently, horses in China were too frail to
| support the weight of a Chinese soldier.[41]"
| xapata wrote:
| > The bigger reason
|
| It's a tricky thing estimating coefficients for non-repeatable
| experiments like much of history. I'd prefer to phrase it as
| "another significant factor."
| jbay808 wrote:
| China is an enormous country. Surely this wasn't universally
| true?
| yorwba wrote:
| The reference cited on Wikipedia is available on Google Books
| and has a map of selenium in China on page 51 https://books.g
| oogle.de/books?id=IaQeC5fxYlQC&q=Selenium+eco...
|
| The area with low selenium content is quite large and
| encompasses much of central China, where Chang'an, the
| capital of the Han dynasty at the time of the War of the
| Heavenly Horses (fought over horses) was located. (The modern
| city of Xi'an in the same place is marked on the selenium
| map.)
|
| So the theory that selenium deficiency led to difficulty
| maintaining cavalry without importing horses from elsewhere
| seems plausible.
| hinkley wrote:
| Where Egypt allowed seasonal flooding to deposit silt into
| the Delta passively, my understanding is that China had a
| more active process for silt harvesting[1]. But in either
| case, silt only travels so far from the river, even less if
| carried in a bucket. And although the head waters might be
| in a mineral rich area, your tributary might not.
|
| I don't remember enough of geography in China to overlay
| the rivers onto that selenium map, but I'm guessing the
| horses didn't get fed from the best fields at any rate.
|
| [1] Farmers of Forty Centuries, F. H. King, out of
| copyright
| yorwba wrote:
| > I don't remember enough of geography in China to
| overlay the rivers onto that selenium map
|
| The map includes two black lines corresponding to the
| Yangtze (ending near Shanghai) and the Yellow River
| (ending north of Jinan). Of course the rivers changed
| their course by a lot over the centuries, but I don't
| think that makes much of a difference in terms of
| selenium transport.
| InfiniteRand wrote:
| It's worth noting that China is not universally a rice-
| growing area. If I recall correctly (and I might not be)
| most of the area of China that historically grew rice is in
| the part of that map which is in the moderate selenium
| territory. So the OP's theory might explain the relatively
| low amount of cavalry there.
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