Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.j.p. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher Entagata. Got a minute?

Chimpanzees spend about half their day chewing.

You know, and for context, you know, think about how much time in a day you spend chewing.

Daniel Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University.

So how did we make that transition from spending most of our day or half of our

day chewing to spending, you know, less than 5%? Now cooking certainly tenderizes food, making it

easier to chew and digest, but evidence for human cook fires goes back only about 500,000 years,

if that. And Homo erectus had already evolved weaker jaws and

smaller teeth more than a million years before that. So Lieberman and his colleague, Catherine

Zink, began their investigation by recreating a Paleolithic dinner, yams, carrots, beets, and goat meat.

If you were to try to eat some raw goat with your teeth,

you would find that you would chew and chew and chew.

It's like bubble gum.

Lucky volunteers got to experience that by chewing the food,

either in its wild, untenderized state,

or after it was bashed or sliced with Flintstonian tools.

And as the study subjects ate, the researchers monitored the frequency and force of each chew.

...