There is nothing new about people drinking, and drinking too much, beer. In ancient Sumeria beer was consumed 4,500 years ago and it is widely known that the nobles of the ruling classes were concerned because their slaves would often drink too much beer and be impaired for their next day of labor. By 1,750 BC beer houses, similar to modern day bars, had grown so much in popularity that the author of the Code of Hammurabi devoted an entire section to condemning some places for their "under-strength, over-priced beer". Even though nearly everybody in those days agreed that drinking beer to excess was socially unacceptable, Egyptian doctors generally agreed that cooking with beer was good for health. Many ancient texts even suggest that cooking with beer was an excellent way to add flavor to bland food that was eaten back in those days. The history of cooking with beer goes way back. Germanic tribes learned that marinating rancid meat in beer would hide its bad smell and taste. This was convenient for the wintertime when war was being waged, when it was difficult to get fresh food to soldiers out in the battlefield. Some unethical Roman fish dealers would pickle their fish in beer to hide the fact that they had caught their fish in the part of the Tiber river that stank because sewage would be emptied into it; and many Chinese cooks in recorded history cooked in beer to mask the "beef" they were serving that was actually rat meat. Cooking with beer eventually became respectable, however, in England when cooks learned that batters with beer added a good flavor to the taste of fried vegetables. Marinating even the finest beef in beer added a pleasant taste to the finished prepared dishes. There are some that say the English have not added much to the culinary repertoire of the world, but they did make batters, breads, sauces and marinades based on beer. Later, the Germans learned to use it in soup, the Americans came up with a method for preparing chicken with a canned beer, and the Japanese showed us how to use it with fish and seafood. To this day many restaurants still use beer as an ingredient to their dishes.