You're listening to Cool Facts of the Day, part of the Human Upgrade podcast with Dave Asprey.

This cool fact is about ancient feces, actually ancient paleophysies, which makes it way cooler.

Turns out that ancient fecal samples, which are called paleophysies,

reveal that about 2700 years ago, people living in what we now call Austria or lockdown central,

they drank beer and they ate blue cheese. And that's a surprise researchers because they were exploring

an iron age salt mine and they realized that human feces doesn't usually stick around for 2700 years,

but it does in caves. They used analytic techniques to get down to business with the poop,

and they looked at the microbes, the DNA, and the proteins that were present in the ancient

paleophysies. It gives a whole new meaning to the word paleo diet, doesn't it? They came across two

different fungal species that are usually used in blue cheese and beer production and said,

well, let's put two and two together, these guys were eating their blue cheese and getting drunk on

beer. That means that prehistoric diet and cooking practices were a little bit more sophisticated

than we really believed, and that techniques like fermentation have always played a major role in

food history. What does that mean for you? Well, it means that you probably were wired to eat some

fermented foods already in that by removing bacteria from your life by spraying soil with glyphosate

by giving antibiotics, whether taking them directly or putting them in the meat that you eat,

and then over-saleizing everything by pretty much marinating in hand sanitizer,

perhaps you're trashing your health. That also doesn't mean that everything fermented is good for

either, but it does mean you shouldn't be afraid of fermented foods. Personally, I don't think

blue cheese is the best one, and I don't think beer is the best one, but if that's all you've got

because you work in an iron age mine, move for it. It is abundantly obvious that certain people

have the ability to influence other people at a distance. I don't like it that this is true.

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