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Yeast: Love and Fear, Death and Beer

You might say Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast are the house-cats of the microbial world. Although they've been domesticated at least since the Pharaohs ruled Egypt -- the earliest records show that people by then already were using the "sugar-loving" yeast to leaven bread and brew beer -- this fungus's less civilized cousins can really mess you up.

Yeast are found everywhere in the environment. The one-celled organisms -- called "yeast" from the Old English gist/gyst and Indo-European root word yes, meaning boil, foam or bubble -- don't need sunlight, do need oxygen, and are naturally drawn to sugar-rich hosts for the carbon they thrive on.

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Featured

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Articles of Interest

Is old yeast OK? The 17 rules of expiry dates – from eggs to meat to oils

Use-by dates are a food-safety matter so you should always take them seriously. Here’s a guide to where you do – and definitely don’t – have some leeway.

All of the World's Yeast Probably Originated in China

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Nutritional Yeast Is for Hippies. ‘Nooch’ Is for Everyone.

Nutritional yeast (“nooch”) has gone mainstream, as consumers look beyond its supposed health benefits and treat it as an umami-rich seasoning.

The Candida Overgrowth Problem: Too Much Yeast? No, Too Little Science

Yeast: Essential for bread, terrible for your body. That’s what a lot of alternative medicine doctors tout, and the claim has now reached fever pitch thanks to the Internet and social media. The idea goes something like this: Fungi, which include yeast such as Candida albicans, are a small but important part of our gastrointestinal flora, but they can also “overgrow.”

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The Rise Of Yeast: How Civilization Was Shaped By Sugar Fungi

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What is yeast?

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Resources

Explore Yeast

There once was a natural living micro-organism. So tiny, no one even noticed it. Egyptians claimed that its activities were the actions of gods until science revealed its magic.

BBC Good Food

Yeast is a living, single-cell organism. As the yeast grows, it converts its food (in the form of sugar or starch) into alcohol and carbon dioxide through the process of fermentation. This makes it crucial to the making of wine and beer, as well as the process of baking (which has led to the identification of two main types, brewer's and baker's yeast).

You And Yeast Have More In Common Than You Might Think

Rip open a little package of baker's yeast from the supermarket, peer inside, and you'll see your distant cousin. That's because we share a common ancestor with yeast, and a new study in the journal Science suggest that we also share hundreds of genes that haven't really changed in a billion years.