Ingredients: Yeast with Nicholas P Money

Botanist Nicholas P Money believes that to understand yeast is to understand life.

He draws on his book The Rise of Yeast: How the Sugar Fungus Shaped Civilisation to reveal how significant this microorganism has been in shaping not just our food, but our way of life.

We knew what yeast did as an invisible brewer and baker long before we had a clue about the existence of microbes. 10,000 years ago, our ancestors abandoned bush meat and wild fruit in favour of farming animals and cultivating grain. Leaving the forests and grasslands, our desire for beer and wine produced by the fungus was a major stimulus for agricultural settlement. It takes a village to run a brewery or tend a vineyard. We domesticated wild yeast and yeast domesticated us.