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Some of our favorite foods are closer to THIS than THIS.
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That's because coffee, bread, cheese, beer, even chocolate are all home to millions of microbes.
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In fact, these foods only acquire the tastes, smells, and textures we love because of tiny bacteria and fungi.
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The vast majority of microbes, about 99 percent, are actually quite harmless to humans.
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But the other 1 percent are nasty enough that our ancestors and the ancestors of various other mammals and birds, evolved a natural repulsion to stuff that might harbor nasty germs.
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In general, we think rotten stuff looks and smells disgusting, which, considering what's at stake, isn't overly cautious.
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Fortunately, if friendly microbes get to our food first, they can keep the bad guys at bay.
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Meat left out on the counter provides the perfect conditions for pathogens to flourish.
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It's warm, moist and protein-rich, just like our bodies.
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But with some micro-management, adding lots of salt, for instance, we can help harmless, salt-tolerant microbes out-compete their dangerous but salt-sensitive relatives.
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A few unrefrigerated months later, we get salami, rather than Salmonella!
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Our ancestors stumbled on this kind of controlled spoilage thousands of years ago, either by lucky accidents or out of serious desperation.
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And we humans have been intentionally spoiling food ever since.
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Not only to keep our food safe to eat, but also because the microbes we culture can transform it, almost magically, into awesome deliciousness.
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Yeast, for example, gorge on the sugary starch in bread dough, then burp out carbon dioxide that helps give loaves their lift.
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In a more exotic transformation, bacteria and fungi take turns munching on piles of cacao, mellowing out better polyphenols and helping create the complex and delicious taste of chocolate.
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And deep in cheese caves, mold spores populate small holes and cracks in soon to be blue cheese, digesting big protein and fat molecules into a host of smaller aromatic and flavor compounds that give the final product its smoothness and rich, funky flavor.
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But to some, stinky cheese is about as appetizing as licking someone's toes.
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Which isn't that far off since the bacteria that make some cheeses super-stinky are the same ones that cause foot odor. Yum?
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Even so, these flavors tend to grow on us, not just literally but also figuratively.
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The more we were exposed to particular microbial funks, which can even start in the womb, the more we tend to like them.
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As a result, people around the world have some very different ideas about how to microbe-ify foods.
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But every culinary culture involves fermentation in one way or another.
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If we didn't let food spoiled just a little bit, we have no sauerkraut, soy sauce, pickles, or prosciutto.
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Not to mention Kefir, Kimchi, Kombucha, Koumiss, Katsuobushi, and plenty of other delicacies that don't start with K.
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What's more, spoiled food may well have changed far more than our tastes.
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Historical evidence suggests that when our ancestors gave up their wandering ways and settled down to grow grain, it was likely for love of either bread or beer.
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Whatever the case, one thing is clear: Without the help of friendly fermenting microbes, we humans would be terribly uncultured.
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This episode of Minute Earth is supported in part by tab for a cause.
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One of our subscribers on Subbable and also a browser extension that gives money to charity each time you open a new tab in your web browser.
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And it doesn't cost you a thing! Click the link in the description to start raising the money for great charities simply by surfing the web.