Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

by Edward Slingerland

Another advantage of fermentation, at least when we’re talking about the transformation of grains into beer, is what the British nutritionist B. S. Platt, observing that fermenting maize into beer nearly doubles its essential micronutrient and vitamin content, called “biological ennoblement.”38 This nutritional transformation, caused by the action of yeast on fermenting grain, could have been particularly important in pre-modern agricultural societies. The archaeologist Adelheid Otto argues that, at least in Mesopotamia, the nutritional content of beer played a crucial role in rounding out people’s “depressingly bad diet,” which otherwise consisted almost entirely of starches and precious little fresh vegetables, fruit, or meat.39 Even as recently as pre-Victorian England, it is thought that beer made up a significant portion of the average person’s caloric intake.40