I never heard of that before. Especially because most spices where rich-people things. Besides, you don't spice the grain that most people eat. Grain is relatively easy to store, see alcohol. If that is really the only thing that made you think that rotting food is what 50% of the harvest went to, you are far worse at assuming things then Andres. Meat (which the rich people also ate more of) tastes a lot better with spices, and their popular ways of storing food made the food even more bland then it was before. Of course they liked spices. I never heard that it had anything else to do with rotting food.
Yeah, it was a rich people thing, because it was expensive. It was expensive for many reasons, most of which was the monopoly by Italian and Turkish and blahblahblah merchants. It wasn't me assuming things; it's literally what I was told, by my history(or was it humanities? they're very similar...) teacher. *shrugs*
Also, why do you keep assuming I'm only talking about grain? Root vegetables were rather important too, and that's mostly what I'm thinking of when I'm talking rotting food.
? Yeah, it pretty much is. Fermentation has been a common food-storage since ever. Alcohol kills everything, no microbe will live in it. Its why we use rubbing alcohol. Fungus and disease can't effect alcohol, because it kills them being alchol. Its damp, because it is alchol, but that doesn't matter because it kills all microbes.
Basically, the only storage that wasn't fermenting was either drying it or throwing salt at it until it stayed good longer. It had been that way since before the Romans. Neither where as effective as fermentation was.
...Alcohol isn't a cure all panacea for illness. Don't get me wrong, it's great, but so is penicillin. Stuff can be resistant. Not what I wanted to focus on, though. Yeah, fermentation's great. Mostly good for keeping from dying because you drank water that had the death-shits in it, as far as I've been told, and according to at least one documentary it helped humanity rise up to the level of civilization it has now, but wine, beer, all that? It can go bad. Hard liquor I'm less sure about. But hard liquor ain't exactly nutritious. And more than that; peasants did starve, in the winter. And yeah, a fair bit of that was nobles takin' a bit too much in taxes, but if you don't think rats getting into the food cellars and food goin' bad before it could be eaten was an issue? Then you're a bit off the mark.
Also you can't really brew carrots
Wait, what?
You: "LITTERALLY THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IN STARVATION IS FOOD STORAGE! IGNORE ALL OTHER FACTORS!"
Me: "Really? I never heard that before. We had pretty effective means of storing food, such as alchol...
You: "NO! YOU ARE IGNORING ALL OTHER FACTORS!
What are you even trying to say with that?
When did I say the largest? Ever? Or use all caps? Hefty chunk=/=largest, hefty chunk = statistically significant. Also you made at least two typos.
There's a reason refrigeration was so nice.
And again, I'm not sure what you're trying to say with alchohol. Yeah, we can make whiskey and the like, and yeah, that was a way of utilizing crops that would otherwise go bad, but whiskey ain't exactly the same as bread or porridge in terms of staving off the chill o' winter, ya know? And soaking your barley in beer to try and have it keep longer...well...I'm afraid I can't recall us ever doing that.
Also; alcohol can go bad. Pasteurization was originally developed to aid the brewing industry, iirc.
Although I think you misinterpreted me in the first place; I was mostly thinking of the small scale peasants starving in the winter, while I think you were thinking massive famine; as food storage doesn't exactly randomly get worse to make food rot faster, such events will be necessity be caused by other things.
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