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A comment on A surprising food may have been a staple of the real Paleo diet: rotten meat. Parent comment

Re:A surprising food may have been a staple of the real Pale... by Connor_Creegan1 on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @10:24AM (#35357734)
>It's obvious that at least in our very recent evolutionary history we had far higher tolerance to spoilage.

I would agree, both in terms of actual immunity and taste response, although generally-speaking eating rotten meat (especially when well-sourced) is not nearly as risky as common wisdom would make it out to be. Many folks in the deeper circles of online carnivoria dabble in "high meat" (fermented rotten meat, a method of preparing meat learned from Inuit peoples who would feed it to their dogs) and swear by it, even if the taste can be unbearable to the uninitiated.

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Re:A surprising food may have been a staple of the real Pale... by finnh on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @10:56AM (#35358191)
Where did I last read about high meat, again?

Ah yes, the Nov 22, 2010 issue of the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/11/22/natures-spoils

big h/t for "deeper circles of online carnivoria", you win phrase of the day

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Re:A surprising food may have been a staple of the real Pale... by SketchySeaBeast on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @10:57AM (#35358202)
Fermentation implies an intentional process that protects against spoilage. I don't think anyone considers sauerkraut or wine rotten food.
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Re:A surprising food may have been a staple of the real Pale... by Connor_Creegan1 on Thursday March 30, 2023 @06:56PM (#35380006)
Good point, although I think whether or not animal flesh is "spoiled" after spending weeks or months fermenting in a jar might depend on who you ask.
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Re:A surprising food may have been a staple of the real Pale... by prottog on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @11:15AM (#35358482)
> Many folks in the deeper circles of online carnivoria

The wonders of the internet!

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Re:A surprising food may have been a staple of the real Pale... by MayeulC on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @11:23AM (#35358582)
It's still done in some French cuisine/hunting practices, though much less common nowadays: "Faisandage", where small game can be left to rot in a relatively controlled way for months: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_de_la_viande#Matu...
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Re:A surprising food may have been a staple of the real Pale... by EdwardDiego on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @03:21PM (#35361966)
It used to be traditional in English gamebird hunting to "hang them by the neck until the body separated from the head" to age the meat...
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Re:A surprising food may have been a staple of the real Pale... by neonnoodle on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @03:32PM (#35362121)
Relevant quote from the TV show _Newsradio_:

Bill: In the olden days, a country squire would age his pheasants for weeks before they were deemed fit for consumption.

Lisa Miller : In the olden days, people died of ptomaine poisoning and blamed it on ghosts.

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Re:A surprising food may have been a staple of the real Pale... by atomicnumber3 on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @11:44AM (#35358890)
I suspect that a lot of our tolerance of this stuff in prehistory stems from a combination of:

- spices and seasoning was a lot less common and meat was gamey, not the well-fattened meats we're used to. So this stuff already tasted bland and not amazing as a baseline

- it was preferable to starving, and hunger is the best spice of them all

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