I just don’t see any reason why thousands of years of cultural practice would not generate a behavior with such obvious and immediate benefits.
I disagree with this. I know of quite a lot of examples of people not using clearly beneficial methods.
One case study I have done quite extensive research on is the slaughter of a fish called pond loach, commonly consumed in China, Japan, and Korea. They are small and slimy and therefore hard to grab and handle. In most of Korea and many parts of China, pond loaches are put in buckets and then sprinkled with salt which kills or immobilizes (this method sometimes doesn’t kill all of them immediately) them by osmotic dehydration, and also deslime them a bit. This makes salt a very effective way of slaughtering pond loaches as it makes them easy to grab and handle. Another added benefit of using salt is that it is always needed in the dish anyway. But for some reasons, people in some parts of China and Japan are using some other much more dangerous and time-consuming ways of killing pond loaches. (DISCLAIMER: I am not claiming that people should use salt to kill pond loaches. In fact, I think it is one of the worst slaughters of animals in the world, and I am working on eliminating this practice.)
Another example is my experience working as a production manager in a garment factory. It took me less than 15 minutes to figure out that one of their processes can be done in a different way that saves >30% labor time, and it is literally as easy as holding a component backwards. They changed to my method and never went back (PM me if you are interested in the full details). My boss and all the previous production managers have huge incentives to optimize everything in the production line—I mean they are a business, in an extremely competitive environment! But no they didn’t figure this one out until I joined.
I disagree with this. I know of quite a lot of examples of people not using clearly beneficial methods.
One case study I have done quite extensive research on is the slaughter of a fish called pond loach, commonly consumed in China, Japan, and Korea. They are small and slimy and therefore hard to grab and handle. In most of Korea and many parts of China, pond loaches are put in buckets and then sprinkled with salt which kills or immobilizes (this method sometimes doesn’t kill all of them immediately) them by osmotic dehydration, and also deslime them a bit. This makes salt a very effective way of slaughtering pond loaches as it makes them easy to grab and handle. Another added benefit of using salt is that it is always needed in the dish anyway. But for some reasons, people in some parts of China and Japan are using some other much more dangerous and time-consuming ways of killing pond loaches. (DISCLAIMER: I am not claiming that people should use salt to kill pond loaches. In fact, I think it is one of the worst slaughters of animals in the world, and I am working on eliminating this practice.)
Another example is my experience working as a production manager in a garment factory. It took me less than 15 minutes to figure out that one of their processes can be done in a different way that saves >30% labor time, and it is literally as easy as holding a component backwards. They changed to my method and never went back (PM me if you are interested in the full details). My boss and all the previous production managers have huge incentives to optimize everything in the production line—I mean they are a business, in an extremely competitive environment! But no they didn’t figure this one out until I joined.