Many years ago, in a rowboat on a Swedish lake, I heard the following joke:
Q. Why is American beer like making love in a rowboat?
A. Because it’s f–ing near water!
Having had lots of homemade yogurt recently, I now feel the same way about store-bought yogurt, a pale imitation of homemade: Who are you kidding!
Seth, speaking of beer, I’ve been wondering, does your theory of fermentation extend to alcohol and tobacco? Do you think that the studies showing that moderate alcohol consumption is healthy are a reflection, at least in part, to ingesting the fermented grains (or grape juice)? What about fermented chewing tobacco (Skoal, Copenhagen, etc. are all fermented, as opposed to the swedish chewing tobacco, i.e., “snus”)?
An old joke that makes less and less sense these days! I’d say the median American beer is much more flavorful than the median English or German beer, although probably less flavorful than the median Belgian. The craft brew movement has made the USA into a wonderful place to be a beer drinker.
Dan, yes, I think that the fermented portion of wine and beer is likely to be the portion that causes the health benefits. I don’t know of any studies of the health effects of fermented chewing tobacco.
Mark, yes an old joke that doesn’t make much sense any more. There was a whole booth at Slow Food Nation with about a hundred American microbrews.
Well, you likely won’t find studies on chewing tobacco. As a side note, I’ve read (I think it was in the WSJ a couple years back) that chewing tobacco actually is several orders of magnitude safer than smoking, and that tobacco companies are fully aware of this (they funded the studies), but that they’re hamstrung by the FDA and trial lawyers from making the studies known. Basically, they can’t even hint that chewing tobacco is either a safer alternative to smoking or a means to ween oneself off of cigarettes, for fear of lawsuits, despite the fact that it’s far, far safer.