Sweetbreads

[Bux]

Today's NY Times has an article on the risks of eating raw alfalfa sprouts, among other raw sprouts. Salmonella is the prime concern. The article notes with some sarcasm that among the sufferers of at least one outbreak are those who were eating the sprouts for what they thought were the health benefits. However, if you are neither very young nor very old and your immune system is in good shape, salmonella is unlikely to kill you.

I don't have so much a problem with governmental bans as I do with the substitution of bans for action that could help eliminate or  at least reduce the risk at the source. Some locales here in the US have banned the serving of runny eggs rather than insisting that egg farmers clean up their end of the business.

[Stone]

I have a good friend who's a professor of pharmacology, and her advice is this:  "Do you really get enough pleasure out of eating brains to risk the disease?  Don't do it."  There was also a special recently on Discovery channel (or something like it) on one the last remaining "cannibal" tribes.  The tribes ate the brains of their dead.  Over the past few decades, however, the tribe has been devasted by Jacob Cruzfelts (I'm not even going to try to spell it) disease, the human equivalent of BSE.

[Wilfrid]

Quote: from Dstone001 on 12:40 pm on Jan. 15, 2002

I have a good friend who's a professor of pharmacology, and her advice is this:  "Do you really get enough pleasure out of eating brains to risk the disease?  Don't do it."  

Well, I certainly get enough pleasure out of beef products to risk the disease.  I am unsatisfied with that kind of analysis.  We run risks every minute of the day.  The question is whether the risks are of any significant magnitude.  I mean, I know I have to cross the street every day.  I could certainly cut down the number of times I cross the street, and thus dramatically reduce by chances of being killed by a car.  But life really can't be lived that way.  I do things which are (virtually) infinitely more risky than eating brains all the time.  So do all of you.

In fact, as I type I am eating some fish from a deli.  I am not getting much pleasure out of it, and I am much more likely to choke to death on a fish bone than get cjd.  But, heck, I'm brave enough to carry on chomping.

(Edited by Wilfrid at 2:17 pm on Jan. 15, 2002)

[A Balic]

Quote: from Jim Dixon on 9:26 pm on Jan. 14, 2002

Here in the US, what are sold as sweetbreads are the hypothalamus glands of calves (or veal). The gland disappears as the animal matures.

Jim

Jim, do you think that you could get me the source of information that says sweetbreads sold in the US are the hypothalamus? I have looked myself and haven't been able to come up with anything concrete, although several articles do state "sweetbreads are the hypothalamus". I suspect that there has been confusion of the thymus with the hypothalamus, as they hypothalamus is a) a bit small to bother with, b) The thymus is the classic organ that does atrophy with age, c) if you drop the "hypo-" bit, then thalamus and thymus sound similar. But as I said earlier, "sweetbread" is a very loose descriptor, so it is quite possible that a different organ is used in the US compared to classic French cooking. If so, it would be very interesting to to find out how this difference came about.

[Jim Dixon]

Adam,

The short answer is, "no."

A meat purveyor explained to me long ago about the hypothalmus, and I just spent some time searching myself, with no concrete answer. (Actually, I was searching the web, not 'myself')

The terms hypothalamus and thymus seem to be used interchangeably when talking about sweetbreads. To further confuse things, pig's pancreas are also referenced as sweetbreads. I haven't spent enough time with the brains of any species to say much on the subject with any authority.

So, I may have been a little hasty with my earlier post.

Jim

[Wilfrid]

The hypothalamus of a veal calf must weigh about an ounce - it's a tiny centre within the brain - so I think people are just getting their words mixed up.  A pancreas definitely is a sweetbread, however, but for some reason pig's sweetbreads don't seem to be too popular.

[A Balic]

Jim, thanks for your reply. If anything this thread has highlighted the confusion surrounding this food item. In the US it would seem that sweetbreads from a pig are the pancreas of an adult animal (the thymus from a piglet being to small to bother with, I guess). Most likely doesn't taste as good as a veal sweetbread, especially if the don't bother to make the effort to only get the organ from female pigs.

I really must up grade to Wilfrid version 2.0, this one has started repeating me  .