Hydration, sweat response and temperature

[ric]

there is currently a small thriving british wine industry ,  its said the romans grew grapes here.

[jbeegoode]

there is currently a small thriving british wine industry ,  its said the romans grew grapes here.

There is currently a small thriving Arizonan wine industry ,  its said the ancients grew agave and corn here....

...They turned much of it all into drink. Excavations in Tortolitan Fan have discovered the processing of 42,000 agave and a grand ball court.
Everywhere there is fermentation for preservation, sipping and a buzz.
Jbee

[JOhnGw]

Comment withdrawn

[jbeegoode]

Left empty, or right empty

[jbeegoode]

Even in the "traditional" Native American sweats these days, they say that it is disrespectful to do it naked. You would have a difficult time convincing me that that isn't a bunch of hand-me-down piece of adaptation of the oppressed to compensate for the so-called Christian influence on the reservation.

I'm not aware of a lack of alcohol tolerance in those Plains tribes, but it could be so. Millions died from disease that they had no immunity for. The locals around here have rampant diabetes and overweight from western diets after eating foods from the desert for centuries. The Aymara in Bolivia are adapted to high altitude and were the only people who could effectively work the silver mines. There could be something to tolerance with some nomadic plains peoples. We don't know. The locals who's ancestors used agave and corn for BEER, have horrid alcoholism rates these days. They say that about Japanese, but hey, sake is just the tip of the fermented iceberg and they are not dysfunctional.

So, about this concept of "The Reservation"....
Jbee
Jbee

[JOhnGw]

The Chinese also have a low aclohol tolerance which is attributed to their not using fermentation as a preserving technique.
Right up to the late 19th century "small beer" with a very low alcoholic content was the regular beverage of the urban lower classes, including children, as the water was often not safe to drink.

[nuduke]

Yes, I always understood that beer and whisky/gin derived from grains and potatoes were the drinks of northern climates where grapes were not plentiful.  The UK had both some vine and grain in ancient times I believe as had parts of Germany.
However as JOhn asserts, in the southern European climes where grapes (and olives) were plentiful, the drinks were and are predominantly wine and distillations thereof (and oil in cooking).


We have muddied those regional distinctions considerably in our modern ship-anything-anywhere economy and the consequent demise of seasonality in food supply.


John

[eyesup]

Left empty . .

I have often mused at the paradox implied by the page in a manual with this printed smack in the middle:

      This page intentionally left blank.

Duane

[jbeegoode]

Wine and olive oil sure were popular commerce and stored through seasonal change. Storage of grains and fermented items got them through. Not so many nomads were in Europe, just traders back and forth.

I'm surprised by the lack of fermentation in China. According to "The Art of Fermentation" Sandor Katz, they were conisours of tofu. Chinese black beans, Sechwan pickling was big, and yeast balls." Chinese alcoholic beverages seem to precede the earliest stages of Chinese civilization.[1] They include rice and grape wine, beer, and various liquors including baijiu, the most-consumed distilled spirit in the world." according to wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_alcoholic_beverages

As for lack of tolerance for drink, it could be about social norms of consumption. Also a big factor in all of these is that alcohol tolerance requires a degree of practice to overcome the status of a lightweight's consumption. I don't see the correlation of race and tolerances as being demonstrated.

Having spent years as a substance abuse counselor and decades as an avid consumer, I can go on and on that problems with alcohol as addictions, etc. are caused by early childhood abuse, family dynamics and socially sanctioned behaviors, much more than physical racial characteristics. Approximately 10% of the population drinks 90% of the alcohol in the US. Most people now and therefore most likely in "olden times" were okay with drinking in moderation. Yes, the water often sucked, so they drank safe beverages. There used to be a lot of good clean water in the Americas. It was more precious out here in the western deserts. It was gathered and stored in earthen bottles and left around strategically for the dry times. Here, the agave was and is used for sweetener, "honey water" pulque. It is sweat and carbs. It wasn't just an alcohol thing. Corn beer-like Native substances that I have experimented with, can take a barrel to get plastered. Many Bolivian Natives only consume traditional booze on special occasions.

 Plains peoples had water, they moved with the seasons, and didn't have much storage capacity when moving around. Alcohol was not a frequent thing for them, I surmise.

When you decimate culture, family, identity, pride and treat people as animals, tell them that they are lesser, they are damaged for generations. There is substance abuse and other diseases of social maladies stemming from the wholesale rotten treatment of Native Americans going back hundreds of years. With the punitive measures not recognizing this, the problem is perpetuated and just continues.

JOhn, I'm not so sure that everyone is understanding where this discussion is coming from...oh well.

Jbee