Food Health Concerns

[alamut]

I would love to conduct an informal survey about foods we feel the need to avoid (perhaps sadly) for health reasons. Growing up in the South, scrambled brains & eggs was not an uncommon breakfast treat (best with Tabasco), and I have more recently come to enjoy Moroccan style lamb brains, today I steer clear of all brain material. There are a host of nasty degenerative neurological conditions that one might acquire from eating pork, veal, beef, lamb, or sheep brains (mad cow is just the tip of the iceberg).

In reality I do a fairly good job of eating only livestock & poultry on a 100% vegetarian feed. Cows that eat ground up cow/chicken/pig/fish bits not only creep me out, but are great way to keep reinserting disease, parasites, & toxins back into a food chain with me at the top. I Chinese (Cantonese) friend of mine told me a few years back that his parents were forced to give up cooking duck fetuses (is there anything that the Chinese won't eat? And where do you even buy them?!) because of health concerns.

So now I'm asking you what foods have you had to steer away from due to health concerns? Mercury rich Mahi Mahi? Biohazard British Beef? Kontaminated Kentucky Khicken?

[Patrick S]

There are a host of nasty degenerative neurological conditions that one might acquire from eating pork, veal, beef, lamb, or sheep brains (mad cow is just the tip of the iceberg).

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That's interesting. Could you point me to more information on the neurological diseases aquired by eating pork and sheep brains?

[Adam Balic]

Spinach - full of toxic oxalic acid. In fact all vegatables as they are full of lectins, phytotoxins and enzymes. All nuts and pulses for similar reasons. All fish, wild stocks are at crisis point and I'll be buggered if I will eat tilapia, might as well eat frigging goldfish. All other seafood, these are either filter feeders or scavengers, how revolting is that. All poultry, full of disease organisims and gives you breasts. All animal derived red meat, obviously this is a mine field of the potentially fatal. Find out more about diet in my new book "Yeast extract for well being".

[Chris Amirault]

Adam, I see you chose not to address beverages: fatty milk, sugary juices, polluted water, cirrhosis-inducing alcohol....

[jackal10]

All food is fatal. Everyone who has eaten has eventually died.

It may be the DHMO it is commonly polluted with...http://www.dhmo.org/

There are whole industries devoted to making you unhappy with what you eat. I know people who will only eat processed and manufactured food because they believe its healthier and less likely to have nasty germs, as if.

Unpasteurized cheese is an example of food falling to the food police, despite no supporting evidence and statistics of harm - you are more likely to fall ill from eating badly stored processed pasteurized cheese than from eating a an artisan unprocessed cheese. In fact there are no reported incidents of food poisoning from unpasteurized cheese. It looks like sous-vide cooking is going the same way, despite no reported incidents of harm, and FDA time/temperature guidelines.

Many of these scares are poor understanding of the statistics of rare events. Because there is a theoretical threat, it doesn't mean there is an actual risk. The risk is also way below what we accept in other situations. The US has a road traffic death rate of roughly 15 deaths per 100,000 people per year; you have about 1 in 6000 chance of being killed on the road next year. The risk of accidental poisoning from the food you eat is minuscule by comparison.

Edited March 11, 2006 by jackal10 (log)

[Adam Balic]

Adam, I see you chose not to address beverages: fatty milk, sugary juices, polluted water, cirrhosis-inducing alcohol....

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Dude, I do not do "liquids", as liquids are the Devil's spunk.

[Patrick S]

Spinach - full of toxic oxalic acid. In fact all vegatables as they are full of lectins, phytotoxins  and enzymes. All nuts and pulses for similar reasons. All fish, wild stocks are at crisis point and I'll be buggered if I will eat tilapia, might as well eat frigging goldfish. All other seafood, these are either filter feeders or scavengers, how revolting is that. All poultry, full of disease organisims and gives you breasts. All animal derived red meat, obviously this is a mine field of the potentially fatal. Find  out more about diet in my new book "Yeast extract for well being".

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That's priceless!

As for myself, I prefer to extract all my energy and protein needs directly from cosmic radiation, Boddhisattva-style, bypassing all potentially harmful plant or animal products.

jackal, in light of the proven risks associated with DHMO exposure, don't you agree that products containing this powerful solvent should bear warning labels? The really insidious thing is that it is tasteless, colorless and odorless, so you can't always tell when you're being exposed.

[alamut]

That's interesting. Could you point me to more information on the neurological diseases aquired by eating pork and sheep brains?

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[Patrick S]

That's interesting. Could you point me to more information on the neurological diseases aquired by eating pork and sheep brains?

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There's been some association between eating the brains of any animal and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease as well as Alzheimer's. Also some researchers believe that old fashioned mad-cow is transmitted by to us by eating lamb or pork that fed on ground up infected beef.

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Edited March 13, 2006 by Patrick S (log)

[JohnL]

I am laughing-- though the

mask I wear to protect me from the air we

are forced to breathe is making it difficult.

(this haz mat suit is too damn warm anyway)

great stuff!

[alamut]

I can't claim to have any higher education degrees in medicine/biochemistry, so I will of course defer to your accredited background Patrick. Most of the "reports" that I'm familiar with, are to be found in the popular media.

University Of Kentucky Drs. have found a link between what a type of CJD and the some consumption of squirrel brains. Weisman, a behavioral neurologist who practices in rural western Kentucky, reported in the Lancet that he suspected that eating the brains of wild pigs/feral hogs might possibly lead to the same outcome. Again, not being a physician myself, I couldn't speak to any similarity or difference on squirrel/hog neurology that support or discredit his supposition.

On Feb 17, 2004 the NY times reported that a new prion strain closely related to a strain of scrapie (a sheep disease?) was found in a French cow. I believe that prior to the discovery there had been a handful of cases (again based on the NY times reporting here) of persons with CJD type symptoms who had eaten rodent or pig brains, or simply raw meat, but not beef.

Finally, I am aware that a 2001 report by the CDC concluded that scrapie had re-crossed the species barrier (transmissions from sheep, to cow, back to sheep), which had granted these strains the ability to infect humans. This is thought to lead as well to strains of BSE (mad cow) in sheep. I believe that the report urged (been quite a while) for the elimination of all forms of Spongiform Encephalitis and not simply BSE.

As I stated, I do not pretend to have a medical degree or speak with any sort of accredited authority. My information comes simply from trying to stay abreast of the news. Neurologists, tenured professors of bio-chemistry, or researchers at the CDC should be encouraged to share their opinions here to correct any misrepresentations in the popular media.

[Patrick S]

I'm flattered by your assumptions, but let me assure you that I have absolutely no formal education on any of these topics. I don't have a college degree of any kind.

Now, regarding Weisman's paper. He refers to a total of 5 persons with CJD who had also eaten squirrel brain. The problem is that this is common on western KY, where the cases were from, as the same letter itself points out. This is an interesting bit of data, and I appreciate you pointing it out. But the letter doesn't provide any evidence that this association is causal, and I would be skeptical of it in light of the fact that squirrels themselves have not been reported to have spongiform encephalopathies.

Regarding the second paragraph -- CJD has been around for a long time, and does not just occur in people who eat beef. So therefore it would not be at all surprising to find people with CJD who had eaten rodents or pigs. Now, if you had some people who developed the variant CJD, vCJD, who had eaten other mammal brains but had never been exposed to beef, that would be more interesting. And the only case I've read about was a woman who did not eat beef but worked for years with meat and bone meal in a pet store, and could have concievably been exposed that way.

Regarding the third paragraph, I am not aware of the CDC report you reference, and I could find nothing about any risk of a aquiring a spongiform encephalopathy from eating sheep. All of the sources I consult (even those written well after 2001) say that there is no evidence that any human has ever aquired a TSE from eating sheep.

Berger JR, Weisman E, Weisman B. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and eating squirrel brains. (Letter) Lancet 1997;350(9078):642

University Of Kentucky Drs. have found a link between what a type of CJD and the some consumption of squirrel brains. Weisman, a behavioral neurologist who practices in rural western Kentucky, reported in the Lancet that he suspected that eating the brains of wild pigs/feral hogs might possibly lead to the same outcome. Again, not being a physician myself, I couldn't speak to any similarity or difference on squirrel/hog neurology that support or discredit his supposition.

On Feb 17, 2004 the NY times reported that a new prion strain closely related to a strain of scrapie (a sheep disease?) was found in a French cow. I believe that prior to the discovery there had been a handful of cases (again based on the NY times reporting here) of persons with CJD type symptoms who had eaten rodent or pig brains, or simply raw meat, but not beef.

Finally, I am aware that a 2001 report by the CDC concluded that scrapie had re-crossed the species barrier (transmissions from sheep, to cow, back to sheep), which had granted these strains the ability to infect humans. This is thought to lead as well to strains of BSE (mad cow) in sheep. I believe that the report urged (been quite a while) for the elimination of all forms of Spongiform Encephalitis and not simply BSE.

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[eJulia]

All I can say is "Thank God! Finally a reason to turn down all those offers of squirrel, rat and feral pig brains!!!"