Implications of Fermented Beverages on Society

Implications of Fermented Beverages on Society
Throughout the ages social attitudes toward fermented beverages – especially wine – have taken two distinctly divergent forms.

The first view holds that moderate use of alcoholic beverages enlivens the human spirit, arouses creativity and enhances social and personal behavior.

Alternatively, fermented beverages have also been seen as something evil, where overindulgence and repeated intoxication lead to illness social disgrace and early death.

Expectedly , wine has been called the food with two faces. Attempts to address these divergent views in the United States led to the Temperance Movement, the Volstead Act of 1919, and a temporary ban on alcohol sales.

Athenaeus, the third century Geek social commentator born in the Egyptian delta city of Naucratis, provided numerous positive examples whereby moderate use of fermented beverages improves the human condition.

Athenaeus wrote that wine possessed the power to forge friendships and that drinking wine warmed and fused the human soul.

He also noted that wine drinking improved creativity, whereby poets received their muse, and if writers wished to produce anything of quality they – by definition- should drink wine and should, likewise, avoid drinking water.

The dark side of wine used, drinking to intoxicating and resulting alcoholism, can also be traced to remote antiquity.

Egyptian tomb art depicts elegantly dressed, bejeweled beautiful women turning their heads to vomit because of excessive drinking, whereas tombs also depicts other guests who have passed out of intoxicating and show the drunkards being carried out of the banquet halls, borne on the shoulders of their comrades.
Implications of Fermented Beverages on Society