If early humans found out that if they cooked meat it was better for them, why did it take thousands of years for us to find out about germs?
In: Biology
Humans have understood that uncooked foods and unclean foods can make us sick for thousands of years.
It’s just that we didn’t understand the mechanism for those foods making us sick.
Kosher laws for example likely developed as a means of healthy eating before the advent of refrigeration. Keeping dairy and meat products separate, and forbidding the eating of pork and shellfish which ‘live in filth’ and are prone to bacteria and parasites.
Another example is food preservation in general. Humans have pickled, salted, smoked, and dried food to preserve it since antiquity. They understood this made food last longer and prevented rot, but they didn’t understand that this killed bacteria.
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