Beer & Human Civilization

A history of beer in human society in a very light & loose way and its relation to western diet induced diseases of civilization because of the carb rich sugar rich fiber deficient dehydration kidney failure inducing metabolic derangement caused by the SAD or standard American diet. 

 
Grain agriculture & the need to account for stored grain was what gave rise to the first organize written record keeping, then accounting, then math, then analytics for future forecasting & planning. This is why grain agriculture often theorized in academia as the basis of the start of modern societies in antiquity. Similarly, stored barely that got wet in a clay jug thousands of years ago probably sprouted. Enzymes produced in the spouted barely enable the breakdown of complex starches into simple sugars that wild yeast can convert into CO2 & ethanol. 

Remember that beer making & bread making happened long before the optical microscope enables the discovery of yeast cells, such that yeast had to be later amended to the German Beer Purity Law governing the ingredients in beer. In this way beer been a part of human history for thousands of years, especially given that the yeast mass propagated in brewing long been given to bread bakers who then use the brewing yeast to leaven bread dough to make the dough rise before baking to improve bubble formation to make the bread less dense, and become the CO2 created by yeast fermentation also forms carbon acid in the water in the bread, carbonic acid then acts as a dough toughening agent to promote stronger gluten entanglement networks such that the bread crumb can be further enhanced with airy properties that are considered desirable while a dense dark flavorful crust can still be achieved in the dutch oven held over a fire :) 

While I do not regular imbibe alcohol as a School Bus Driver with a CDL because of the strict 0.02 BAC limitation & for health reasons because beer & wine & spirits interact with the metformin I take to treat Type 3 diabetes or pre-diabetes, I do really enjoy IPA beer styles with their piney cannabis like flavors that also remind me of turpentine, clove, chai tea, anise, coriander, black licorice, citrus essence, some perfume & cologne smell, some solvents and other liquid chemicals. 

I would describe IPA as an intensely flavored beer style that could be polarizing in terms of taste popularity given it can be a bit "Soapy" or very terpene or terpenoid sharp, sour, tangy, tart, bitter, high notes, tannin, alkaloid like & tends to be higher ABV + the sedative properties of the extra hop additions & the lupulin added thereby or similar GABA receptor agonists from the hops, especially given that hops concentrates are sold as herbal sedative supplements to help people relax, fall asleep or stay asleep longer. 

I became insulin resistant or developed Type 3 diabetes from previously abusing sugary candies for years, specifically Cocomels, salted dairy-free caramels from Amazon.com, that I would buy in a 3 pack bundle of bags then eat all of them for hours on end while reading wikipedia till late at night on my desktop computer. I stopped staying up late. I stopped buying the salted caramels. I stated exercising more & drinking more water & less beer. I started tuning my diet & lifestyle to improve my health & was desperate for change because for a long time the night sweats & frequent nighttime urination were a major problem, something that became obvious in terms of cause when I did my first blood sugar test using one of Meg's spare glucometer, when I measure a resting blood glucose of 347. I felt sick, the way a high blood sugar would make someone feel sick. 

I continued watching my blood glucose levels & immediately cut back on sugar & carbohydrates, slashed my beer intake, stoped eating candy. I stopped eating salted caramels in excess or regularly years ago, but the lasting negative health legacy is impaired glucose metabolism or insulin resistance or metabolic derangement or whatever you want to call Type 3 diabetes that responds well to 1 gram of metformin + a low carb diet that lowered my HbA1c from 8.4 to 4.5 & fasting morning blood glucose levels from over 140 to less than 90 respectively. I also do water fasting for 3 days roughly 2 times per year & regularly interval fast by skipping breakfast or dinner or both, my body weigh hovers at 160 lbs and I am around 5 ft 11 in tall with a relatively low BMI while my body mass perplexingly stable and does not vary much despite relatively intense changes in season activity levels or diet // who knows, I call it a blessing to be naturally thin & fit looking, thankfully :) 

Beer made of malted sprouted barely to get enzymes that break down starches extracted from wheat & barely grain in the mash-tun where warm water extracts soluble starches that are broken down into soluble sugars by enzymes from the malted barely during the fermentation when the brewers yeast converts sugars in the resulting wort, often with hops added for flavor, into alcohol or ethanol such that the resulting beer between 3-8% ABV, typically 4.5-7% ABV in most beer styles, though it can go higher or lower in terms of alcohol content, most beer is mostly water so the water quality of the water used to make the beer strongly influences the taste, flavor & smell of the resulting beer, especially the mineral content of the water & it the water purity or quality. 

So high quality mountain spring mineral waters tend to make really tasty beers. Roasted barely produces more dark chocolate espresso flavors & colors in stouts & brown ales, while the lighter pilsner tends to only use very light grains. Extra yeast produced during brewing sold to bakeries where the yeast used to caused dough to rise by converting sugars into CO2 bubbles in the bread. I bake bread with yeast perpetuated in a sour dough like starter that I continually feed with molasses, sugar, honey & more flower, a pinch of mineral salts, to keep the yeast happy. I use dry active yeast to get that party started, bread making in small dutch oven baked boules with nuts & seeds added for variety while salt is the major spice :) Beer making was responsible for early human society organization. So we owe the industrial revolutions to mass production of beer, yeast, and bread. 

Insulin, Insulin, Insulin

The overconsumption of beer, bread, starches & sugars the primary causal basis of most diseases associated with the SAD or standard American diet, metabolic derangement, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease & many other problems like high blood pressure, hallmarks of diseases of civilization from eating too many high glycemic index junk & fast foods & not enough fiber, not enough Omega 3 fats, too many omega 6 fats, too much refined oil, not enough fat & lard & olive oil, hexane extracted seed oils or refined cooking oils are toxic like excess sugar consumption. Its the lack of nutrients & vitamins & reduced nutritional content of processed & ultra-processed junk foods making people sick who adopt SAD or western diet dysfunctional eating patterns of too many servings eaten too often to many times per day of mostly the wrong kinds of food & not enough of the good fats, good proteins, good fiber, and so little water that there is a kidney failure epidemic so profound that there is not enough kidney dialysis capacity to keep up with demand created by the increasing rates of kidney failure from people being chronically dehydrated from not drinking enough water & eating so many carbs that the sugars in their bodies steal all the water away from the brain & other organs like the liver & kidney, causing people to urinate 10x per night, which combined with arterial light & light pollution causes sleep disorders, sleep loss, and all sorts of mistakes and accidents because people are not getting restful sleep, perturbed by sound pollution, while micro-plastics & air pollution are other stressed on the body, plus the negative psyche effects of negative media bias with tons of bad news about bad things like the War in the Ukraine that people see online & on TV and on their smartphones all the time. So much societal decay that school shootings are now a mainstream regular problem, that's has more to do with societal failures than the abundant access to firearms in America.