Why didn't I know this?
Browsing through Quora, ran into this question:

What is the meaning of the phrase “drinking straws”?

I was getting ready to provide a snarky answer about consuming fermented hay. I googled fermented hay to see if there was a well-known alcoholic drink.

Instead I found SILAGE. Silage is 'pickled pasture', carefully fermented to preserve leftover hay so horses can eat in the winter.

I grew up in wheat country, and I'd seen and felt and smelled silage, but I never knew or bothered to think of it as a USEFUL fermented product.

Even worse, in the '70s I worked for a company that installed systems to PREVENT grain from fermenting, and still didn't know that fermented hay was a useful product.

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A broader question: Fermentation is THE basis of human civilization. Fermentation made year-round living possible. Schools pay very little attention to fermentation. We learned that beer and cheese and bread and pickles are products of fermentation, but we never did an EXPERIMENT in fermentation.

Crude oil is a complex fermented plant-based food product like wine. Before modern tech, oil geologists smelled and tasted oil to determine its vintage and terroir.

If this fact was more broadly understood, we wouldn't have environmental idiots protesting pipelines. (Well, I'm sure idiots would still protest, but at least non-idiots would have a clearer view of the idiocy.)

Considering its ABSOLUTE DOMINANCE of civilization and technology, both ancient and modern, why is fermentation so completely neglected in education?

Is this a leftover of Prohibition? Is fermentation covered better in non-Prohibition countries?

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Random sidenote: Geologists testing oil by taste is an old Okie story. I tried to check its authenticity in old books and couldn't find it. I did find an interesting example of superior Russian petroleum in 1915, just before we invaded and occupied Russia. This paragraph is discussing white oil, now called mineral oil, still used as a laxative:

The question of the taste of the oil, while it may have no relation to its purity, is an important one, because consumers will not buy an oil which carries a petroleum taste. Chemists state the Russian oils are the only ones which approach a state which might be described as tasteless, and that many American oils, being marketed as tasteless, in reality carry a disagreeable flavor which must be removed before the oil can be sold extensively. The chemists have a method of testing white oils for taste by placing a few drops on a bit of bread and then eating it. They say the Russian oils are the only ones which will bear this test without disclosing a petroleum taste.

This leads to an interesting pattern. Three times in 'living memory' we had friendly relations with Russia, then Deepstate cut off the friendship to make war. We were obviously trading openly in 1915, then we invaded and occupied in 1918. We opened up again in the '20s and '30s, with industrial connections (eg Ford) and 'cultural relations'. During WW2 we worked together against both Krauts and Japs. Just after WW2 Deepstate created the Iron Curtain and slammed it shut. The third time was in the early '60s. Again we had 'cultural exchanges and imported some Soviet products. LBJ slammed the door in '68 by going into Vietnam. We never really opened it again. Reagan may have been trying at Rejkjavik, but he wasn't going to push back against Deepstate after Deepstate had shot him.

Labels: asked and worth asking again, NOW I SEE

  ¶ 11:54 PM