[HN Gopher] Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets ___________________________________________________________________ Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets Author : sohkamyung Score : 103 points Date : 2023-03-29 12:30 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.sciencenews.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencenews.org) | bastardoperator wrote: | I eat rotten meat all the time... in video games, and it hurts | you. | purpleblue wrote: | Blecch! Rotten food! The world spins and goes dark. | detuur wrote: | I don't see how that's surprising, at least if you subscribe to | the Endurance Running Hypothesis (and I do). Any prey humans used | to hunt using what we now know as persistence hunting would have | been large game. Especially in the hot, tropic climates early | humans seemed to have thrived in, such meat would have started to | spoil, even if hunted fresh, before any such hunter would have | had the time to bring it back to the family group, let alone | consume it. Meats in general have a very short shelf life and if | we look to the various independently developed preservation | methods in human groups around the world, many of them seem to be | centered around a controlled decomposition by "favourable" | organisms (like the maggots in the seal story). | | There's also the simple observation that no doubt many of us have | already made: animals all around us seem to have no issues with | partially decomposed meat. Dogs don't seem to mind it, nor do | cats, nor do other primates like chimpanzees. It's obvious that | at least in our very recent evolutionary history we had far | higher tolerance to spoilage. | [deleted] | leereeves wrote: | > Dogs don't seem to mind [spoiled meat] | | I've recently seen proof of that. A dead horse was left on a | trail I frequently hike, and I saw dogs eating it a week later. | | I don't even want to imagine how awful that meat was after | sitting in the sun for a week. | fencepost wrote: | I haven't yet listened to the podcast but this has links to | all the relevant info on Dogs In Elk which seems relevant. | | https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/02/25/dogs-in-elk | giantrobot wrote: | Dogs have much shorter GI tracts compared to humans. Just | that fact means there's less opportunity for bacteria/toxins | from rotted food to affect them. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | That said, all the pets I've had throw up way more than I do. | I think we're ignoring the very real possibility that ancient | people were constantly living with some level of | gastrointestinal problems. | mschuster91 wrote: | > I think we're ignoring the very real possibility that | ancient people were constantly living with some level of | gastrointestinal problems. | | We do know that humanity from its earliest days over the | Rome Empire [1] up to, what, maybe a century or even less | ago has had massive infestations of all kinds of parasites, | including gastrointestinal. | | Would it be possible that these parasites actually could | have a symbiotic relationship, in helping to break down | spoiled food? | | [1] https://www.livescience.com/53303-ancient-rome- | infested-with... | protastus wrote: | Pets have diet sensitivities too, which can upset their | stomachs. My cat used to occasionally throw up but with her | current food she has gone for more than a year without any | events. | | By eating spoiled and contaminated food, ancient people | were certainly getting internal parasites too (also | something that a big fraction of pets have). | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | Oh, I'm sure if you wait long enough someone is going to | argue that the parasites were a good thing too. | mrguyorama wrote: | I mean many modern people also live with constant | gastrointestinal problems, and I'm not talking about teens | eating taco bell and mountain dew every day and wondering | why they have bathroom troubles, I'm talking about average | people eating a varied and healthy diet with IBS. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | You're not wrong and that's an excellent example. I'm | questioning the idea that somehow people were able to | consume this food impact-free. I struggle with the common | narrative that somehow people were healthier and better | in some dark forgotten past and we should return to those | times for our own well being. There often seems to be | promises that conditions like IBS would stop existing if | we did that. But maybe ancient man was cool with having | near-constantly runny poos because there was no | alternative. | Connor_Creegan1 wrote: | >It's obvious that at least in our very recent evolutionary | history we had far higher tolerance to spoilage. | | I would agree, both in terms of actual immunity and taste | response, although generally-speaking eating rotten meat | (especially when well-sourced) is not nearly as risky as common | wisdom would make it out to be. Many folks in the deeper | circles of online carnivoria dabble in "high meat" (fermented | rotten meat, a method of preparing meat learned from Inuit | peoples who would feed it to their dogs) and swear by it, even | if the taste can be unbearable to the uninitiated. | prottog wrote: | > Many folks in the deeper circles of online carnivoria | | The wonders of the internet! | MayeulC wrote: | It's still done in some French cuisine/hunting practices, | though much less common nowadays: "Faisandage", where small | game can be left to rot in a relatively controlled way for | months: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_de_la_vian | de#Matu... | neonnoodle wrote: | Relevant quote from the TV show _Newsradio_: | | Bill: In the olden days, a country squire would age his | pheasants for weeks before they were deemed fit for | consumption. | | Lisa Miller : In the olden days, people died of ptomaine | poisoning and blamed it on ghosts. | EdwardDiego wrote: | It used to be traditional in English gamebird hunting to | "hang them by the neck until the body separated from the | head" to age the meat... | atomicnumber3 wrote: | I suspect that a lot of our tolerance of this stuff in | prehistory stems from a combination of: | | - spices and seasoning was a lot less common and meat was | gamey, not the well-fattened meats we're used to. So this | stuff already tasted bland and not amazing as a baseline | | - it was preferable to starving, and hunger is the best spice | of them all | finnh wrote: | Where did I last read about high meat, again? | | Ah yes, the Nov 22, 2010 issue of the New Yorker: | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/11/22/natures-spoils | | big h/t for "deeper circles of online carnivoria", you win | phrase of the day | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | Fermentation implies an intentional process that protects | against spoilage. I don't think anyone considers sauerkraut | or wine rotten food. | Joker_vD wrote: | Not to mention diet of the peoples living in tundra that | includes such wonderful stuff as e.g. igunaq. | eternalban wrote: | Had to look that up. | | -- http://www.nmto.ca/sites/default/files/igunaq.pdf -- | | Igunaq-Aged meat | | Igunaq is fermented ( aged ) walrus or seal meat that has | been cached away for future use. Meat is usually cached | beneath stones or pebbles. Aged walrus meat is extremely high | in protein, iron and vitamins. Igunaq has been traditional | medicine to keep the digestive system clean, as it flushes | away anything in its way. It is also great eating for those | who have acquired the taste and can go beyond the smell. | | Too fermented, igunaq can be poisonous and can kill people. | People have died from eating over-aged meat from walrus and | polar bear. These two mammals are very rich in vitamins. The | fat is often light green colored when the meat is aged | properly. The fat will be darker green if the meat is over- | aged or even brownish. Among Inuit it is a delicacy usually | eaten with apples. To prepare the meat for eating people find | that washing in cold water is better than washing with hot | water. Cold water takes away the smell more. | | Igloolik and Hall Beach are known to have the best igunaq in | Baffin Island. These two communities are blessed with walrus | and proper gravel. Meat ages better when it is fermented in | loose gravel. It takes time to make good igunaq. One has to | store away the meat at the right season when it is not too | hot or too cold. Temperature plays a big role. | | Cached meat is usually saved for the winter for people to eat | but polar bears are known to steal the cache before people | can claim them. Regardless the weight of the stones for | caching, the polar bear will easily get at it. Polar bears | are extremely strong animals. | | Common phrase..." I wonder how many polar bears I have fed to | date?" Meaning...Hoping that the cache is not eaten by polar | bears yet. | | As noted igunaq is good for the digestive system as it cleans | it completely of any foreign objects such as viruses and | sickness a person may have. A person may experience a natural | "high" if they have not eaten aged meat for a while. Men who | grew up with igunaq are usually more physically muscular than | those who have not. Igloolik, Hall Beach and Cape Dorset have | muscular looking men compared to other communities on Baffin | Island. It is believed that igunaq contributes to the | physical appearance of the people who eat it. | | Igunaq is such a delicacy that people that have no access to | it will fly it in from communities that do have good igunaq. | Igunaq is often brought in at special occasions such as | Christmas for community feasts. Some communities look forward | to Inuit organizations having meetings in their | communities...igunaq is surely to be part of the feast. | Igunaq when on sale, will sell better than fresh meat. | Interestingly due to its odor some airlines in the north will | not carry igunaq. People often have to disguise it to get the | aged meat on a plane to take them home. It is said that if | you can get beyond the smell, you'll enjoy the food as it is | very nutritious and gives you energy and warmth....and you | will be physically ready for your next outing. On a final | note a full stomach will also make you concentrate better. | Try it! It's a true Northern experience! | | By Elijah Tigullaraq | | June 2008 | | -- end -- | dendrite9 wrote: | There's also kiviaq: "a dish made by packing 300 to 500 | whole dovekies--beaks, feathers, and all--into the | hollowed-out carcass of a seal, snitching it up and sealing | it with fat, then burying it under rocks for a few months | to ferment. Once it's dug up and opened, people skin and | eat the birds one at a time." | | Here is one of the articles I found that wasn't too focused | on how gross it is that these people eat this and instead | digs into the history and purpose of the food. | https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-kiviaq | eternalban wrote: | am ~ashamed that that description immediately made me | wonder how gross it must be :} | | https://modernfarmer.com/wp- | content/uploads/2014/10/fermente... | | But seriously, the extraordinary power of _hunger_ and | _culture_ are on full display with the items discussed in | this thread. | jonnycomputer wrote: | I really don't think whether the prey is big-game or not | matters with respect to "spoiled" meat, however, contra to what | some others here are saying, persistence hunting is (or was) a | real thing. This paper [1] describes ethnographic examples of | persistence hunting; heck, my grandfather described to me | running down rabbits as a way of hunting them. | | However, I would also argue that a more common approach, at | least when there are multiple hunters working together, is to | "herd" animals into kill zones such as pit traps, or channels. | We have lots of evidence of those in the archeological record, | such as here [2] and here [3]. | | I actually suspect that bacterial "preprocessing" of meat would | assist in digestion. Rather famously, it is hard to get | everything you need in a raw food diet, and a well known | argument in anthropology is that cooking with fire is our way | to make food easier to digest (rather than approach the problem | the way, say, cows do). Fermentation can also improve the | digestibility of foods (increasing bioavailability of calories, | nutrients, etc.). | | [1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/508695 [2] | https://albertashistoricplaces.com/2018/07/18/pronghorn-trap... | [3] https://torbygjordet.com/food/hunting/ | hyperthesis wrote: | What's the advantage to not being able to tolerate rotten meat? | Perhaps it's costly to tolerate it. | | Apparently the advantage of losing body hair is fewer problems | with lice (consider how much time other primates devote to | grooming) | chrisco255 wrote: | I would disagree that meat had a short shelf life. It is almost | trivial to dry meat out and make jerky that will last a very | long time. Doesn't even require advanced tools. | | That being said, still agree with the premise. When you're | truly hungry, food is food. | OJFord wrote: | That _is_ a 'controlled decomposition' preservation | technique like GP described though. | ravenstine wrote: | Why subscribe to the endurance running hypothesis, though? | There are no contemporary examples of humans hunting that way, | and hominids were already making tools by the time they had | developed to subsist on meat. The endurance/persistence | hypothesis doesn't even make sense without tools like spears, | knives, or arrows, because humans don't kill their prey by | biting into them. If they had access to primitive weaponry, why | would they waste energy running when they could instead ambush? | Even other species like chimps and dolphins, that can't chuck | spears, hunt by surrounding their prey. The only reason the | hypothesis is even a thing is because people find it confusing | that we sweat so much. | | If anything, the persistence running hypothesis in some way | discredits the idea that hominids relied on rotten meat. If | they could catch fresh prey, why eat spoiled meat? Yet our | stomach acid has a very low pH, more acidic than even that of | cats. | | What's more likely, in my opinion, is hominids began to | supplement their diet by eating the leftover kills of larger | predators as well as any rotting carcasses they may have | encountered, and then developed hunting strategies around when | they began developing tools. Even having sharp knives made of | stone or volcanic glass would have been an obvious advantage in | food procurement, and it wouldn't have taken millions of years | to figure out that slashing an animal's throat in the right | place would take it down quickly. No need for persistence | running at all if a group can corner a mammoth or buffalo or | lead it to a dead end. | mklepaczewski wrote: | > If they had access to primitive weaponry, why would they | waste energy running when they could instead ambush? | | Have you ever fought a dog, a deer or a boar? Fighting means | wounds, possibly fatal ones. Spear or no spear, you're going | to die in one of those fights. Running on the other hand is | pretty safe and not that tiring, especially if you've been | doing it for years and your weight is close to 50-60kg. | Ability to sweat more should be even more advantegous in a | warm climate. I sometimes run in 30degC for an hour / an hour | and a half. It's hard, but you get used to it. I imagine most | animals would just drop by that time. | majormajor wrote: | Would you want to chase animals you wouldn't want to fight? | What if they turned around and tried to fight you? You have | less tactical advantage than trying to hunt or ambush them | with stealth, and if you turn to run maybe you get away but | then you've burned up a lot of your extra stamina? Give me | the bow and arrow or spears so I can wound the target | before /while chasing it, vs just popping out and hoping it | ran away from me instead of at me. | chimpanzee wrote: | Deer and such will not fight unless there are no options | and it has the necessary energy and verve. Apart from | immediate physical entrapment, they do not realize that | they likely have no options in the long run (pun fully | intended). So they run and keep running until they fall | into the trough of low energy. | | Not to mention, the first weapons would have been far | more basic and require closer range than a bow and arrow | or a throwing spear. So, to your point, early humans | would have had to have taken advantage of the sickly or | exhausted in order to avoid injury. With exhaustion | occurring as a byproduct of the hunt, it would have been | an "accidental" discovery. | hyperthesis wrote: | Attenborough, persistence hunt | https://youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o | FrustratedMonky wrote: | [flagged] | senko wrote: | Good GPT. | ravenstine wrote: | Certainly seems like it. | | Whether it's GPT or a human, this is wrong: | | > Finally, while it is true that the low pH of our | stomach acid suggests that our ancestors were not relying | on rotten meat as a primary food source, it is important | to remember that scavenging for meat was likely an | important part of their diet. It is also possible that | the ability to run long distances gave our ancestors an | advantage in scavenging for meat, as they could cover | greater distances in search of carrion. | | The point I was making was that our ancestors _were_ | relying on scavenged, and probably spoiled meat. | FrustratedMonky wrote: | Yes. Know it is rude (is it impolite to use GPT?), but | I've been playing with GPT and thought I'd give it a shot | to see if anyone noticed, or if HN had any detection. | daliusd wrote: | What is here then https://youtu.be/826HMLoiE_o ? Was this | debunked as fake or something ? | [deleted] | walkhour wrote: | > There are no contemporary examples of humans hunting that | way. | | There are some examples [0], although admittedly they are | isolated cases. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting | mhb wrote: | Running After Antelope: Scott Carrier's story of trying for | twelve years to chase down and catch an antelope by foot. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35362140 | burkaman wrote: | This is an unusually poorly written Wikipedia article with | a very weird style and a lot of unsourced statements. I | would be very hesitant to trust it without extensively | reading the sources. | bernawil wrote: | this somehow always comes up when anybody mentions human | sweating or how good we are walking large distances. But | whoever thinks it's feasible to hunt any animal worth its | calories just jogging behind it has never chased a playful | dog. A furry mammal with no sweat glands has way more | endurance than any fit man and let's not talk about top | speed. You'd never catch it. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | Plus, now you're exhausted and you've chased it for how | long? If you've run for the last 18 hours exhausting the | gazelle, home is now an 18 hour jog back the other way, and | you won't be jogging, you'll be lugging a gazelle with you | and you're already utterly exhausted. | jrootabega wrote: | It would make sense to try to flank the animal and get it | to run where you wanted it to. | mklepaczewski wrote: | Is gazelle able to jog for 18 hours in a hot day? Or even | for 2 hours? Keep in mind that the predator chooses the | prey. Humans didn't had to chase gazelles, they may | choose something bigger and slower. | pegasus wrote: | Why would you be in such a rush to return home? | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | Conceivably everyone you left at home is waiting for you | and the meat. | NineStarPoint wrote: | Dogs also have unusually high endurance actually, some | breeds extremely so like sled dogs (up there in the top | three with humans and horses). In general wolves are | already pretty high up there endurance wise, and dogs | probably had an evolutionary incentive to be able to keep | up with us better on top of that. | pegasus wrote: | Not so: | https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/health/27well.html | | "But when it comes to long distances, humans can outrun | almost any animal. Because we cool by sweating rather than | panting, we can stay cool at speeds and distances that | would overheat other animals. On a hot day, the two | scientists wrote, a human could even outrun a horse in a | 26.2-mile marathon." | jaggederest wrote: | And we know because there are a number of "human versus | horse" races over long distances that are occasionally | won by humans. Generally the longer the race the more | often humans win. | bernawil wrote: | > distances that would overheat other animals | | what other animals? I used the dog example because it | fits perfectly here: they don't sweat yet it's impossible | to catch up to them if they are running away. Even if | they overheat they don't just drop dead, they slow down | to a human's walking pace. | | And what about running animals that do sweat like horses? | makes no sense. What makes more sense is to approach from | multiple fronts and spear/arrow it down. Plus, all | remaining hunter-gatherers hunt with the help of dogs. | Sure, you do have to run, a lot. But the endurance side | is the least important. | mklepaczewski wrote: | On short distances all dogs outpace humans. After an hour | of running most dogs will just quit. On several occasions I | had very hard time convincing various dogs to get off the | ground after an 8-10km run. | bernawil wrote: | my point is, can a human reasonably stay within viewing | distance from a dog that is running away from him? the | dog can just run at top speed, gain some distance, take a | little rest and maintain that distance at a comfortable | pace. | | I used to believe in the endurance hunting thing until I | realized playing with my dog it didn't make sense. They | DO get tired, but they take a 1 minute break and it's | like they are back square 0. | | For the record, I'm in shape and with a pretty light | frame (181cm/70kg) and go for 10km/1 hour jogs regularly. | dmm wrote: | In her book "The Old Way", Elizabeth Marshall Thomas | describes the Kalahari San who she lived with in the 1950s. | Despite having bows and arrows some members of that group | would persistence hunt. | | Dmitriy Lykov(1940-1981) of the Lykov family living an | isolated life in Siberia developed a method of persistence | hunting, despite or perhaps because of, the absence of any | sort of hunting culture in his tiny, isolated group. | | Those are just two very recent examples off the top of my | head of people persistence hunting for survival. Maybe you're | out of your depth on this subject. | precompute wrote: | Some tribes in Africa also drink milk mixed with animal | blood. Not enough water to go around. | trws wrote: | In addition to the direct persistence hunting, also note | that most bow and arrow hunting or even spear hunting is, | in and of itself, a form of persistence hunting. The | expectation that an arrow will take down the animal where | it is hit is usually not how it would have worked with more | primitive bows except with very small game. The animal | would still have to be followed and possibly struck more | times to actually bring it down. Bull fighting is a modern | extension of this, though in an enclosed space. | kybernetyk wrote: | >If they had access to primitive weaponry, why would they | waste energy running when they could instead ambush? | | This is the main point why I don't believe in the endurance | running hypothesis. Humans are lazy. Why would they opt to | run for days over just waiting at the local watering hole for | prey? | krona wrote: | > Humans are lazy | | I don't think you realize how easy it is if you know how to | track and jog for 2-3 hours for antelope, even less for | cats. All you need is a club. 'Running' isn't necessary. | chimpanzee wrote: | Plenty of humans "run for days" for pure enjoyment. Not to | say the ancients would be so foolish when energy | expenditure is a concern. But run for days, for a purpose, | with companions, releasing endorphins throughout, and then | topping that off with a nice, rewarding meal full of fat | and protein? I don't see why not. | vuln wrote: | > It's obvious that at most in our very recent evolutionary | history we had far higher tolerance to spoilage. | | I wonder what effect that's had on a humans immune system. I'd | imagine eating spoiled meat containing bacteria, etc was giving | their immune system a run for its money until a tolerance was | built. | zadler wrote: | It might have been a good thing? | zikduruqe wrote: | Just look up the Hadza tribe's gut microbiome. | | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36238714/ | https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4654 | | That's probably as close as you are going to get to truly | paleo diets... not paleo-bros that eat only bacon, butter | and meats. | AlbertCory wrote: | I was going to post about "paleo" diets, but you beat me | to it. | | The Paleo Cafe would get closed down by the Health | Department _real_ fast if it actually served paleo foods. | klyrs wrote: | I'm picturing a guy hauling a roadkill deer in, tossing | it on a table and yelling "meat's up!" I mean, sure, they | didn't have cars back then, but it's better than letting | trash-eating deer meat go to waste. | AlbertCory wrote: | I dimly recall a New Yorker article about people who eat | roadkill. They do have their limits though. It has to be | _fresh_ roadkill :) | klyrs wrote: | New paleo motto: "Maggots is protein" | vuln wrote: | I see how easy it would be for me at least to assume they | had better immune systems from eating the spoiled meat. If | true our modern immune systems are most likely way less | effective than theirs at that time. | rybosworld wrote: | There does seem to be this notion that being "too hygienic" | is a negative thing because it doesn't train your immune | system. | | That's only kind of true. Exposing a healthy person to | small amounts of weakened virus tends to build immunity. | Exposing the healthy person to large amounts of the virus | overwhelms the immune system and may not even lead to a | strong viral immunity. | | If I had to guess, eating rotten meat is something that | indigenous peoples have adapted to over time (and some | individuals died along the way to that adaptation) and they | are resistant to the specific things in rotten meat that | make modern day humans sick. I think it would be wrong to | suggest the rotten meat eaters are somehow better off for | doing this, or that they have stronger immune systems in | general. | | Immune systems aren't like a muscle that you can repeatedly | train to get stronger and stronger and stronger ad | infinitum. | | Immunity also comes at a cost. This isn't talked about | often. But it's not "Free" for your body to learn and | maintain immunity to specific infections. | legulere wrote: | Especially in the last years, the hygiene hypothesis is | not about a lack of immune training against harmful | microbes, but a lack of encounter of so called old | friends, harmless microbes. | | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1700688114 | Retric wrote: | The major issue isn't the bacteria but their byproducts. Ex: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulism | | This is why you can't render rotten meat safe by simply | cooking it. That said, people still age meat. Small birds for | will get left for 4-9 days in a cool space before being | butchered etc. | https://magazine.outdoornebraska.gov/2014/01/hanging- | pheasan... | giraffe_lady wrote: | Yep other than a couple notable exceptions like salmonella, | this is the norm for food poisoning. It's intoxication from | metabolic byproducts, not infection. Remains one of the | biggest lay misunderstandings of food safety though. | | "Just cook it out" plus "your nose can tell" (it can't, | spoilage microbes aren't usually illness microbes) are | false beliefs that still get people killed. | foobarian wrote: | Curious about sources for this. I see some indication | that botulism toxin can be destroyed by cooking, though | the bar is pretty high - needs to be boiled over 5 | minutes. So lesser temperature methods such as grilling | the meat may not be sufficient, but something like | stewing over many hours seems like would work fine. | undersuit wrote: | Boiling for 10 minutes would be better. Pressure Cooking | would be best as it can reach the heat/pressure needed to | destroy the botulism spores too. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | Here's an example with Staph food poisoning[1]. The | bacteria dies when you cook it, but the enterotoxins that | Staph generates aren't broken down by heat and remain | (section 4). It's good to not consume live Staph, but | contaminated food can still cause issues despite cooking. | | [1]https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2014/827965/ | giraffe_lady wrote: | I'm not gonna have a peer reviewed journal article for | you or anything. I learned this in the food safety class | you have to go through before managing a kitchen in a lot | of jurisdictions. | | > stewing over many hours seems like would work fine. | | It won't! Good luck with it though. | foobarian wrote: | Well I get that would make sense in that kind of | environment. Best way to not hurt your customers is to | never even risk it - why would you? | | But my agenda is more selfish. I like to cold-smoke meats | for adding to stews, based on the knowledge that stewing | in > 85'C [1] water will destroy the botulism toxin. I | could just stay away from cold-smoked meats to be safe; | but then I would lose out on some of the tastiest food | ever :-) | | It can be a confusing topic because there are 3 different | things to worry about: the active bacteria, the spores, | and the toxin. Of the 3, the spores are the most | resistant to heat, and according to the WHO link [1] can | survive multiple hours in boiling water. However the | toxin seems relatively unstable. | | I really need to track down their sources though. | | [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact- | sheets/detail/botulism | throwway120385 wrote: | USDA indicates that boiling for 10 minutes can prevent | botulism: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/m | edia_file/202... | | Although the boiling doesn't destroy the toxin itself, | only the bacterial spores. | foobarian wrote: | > Although the boiling doesn't destroy the toxin itself, | only the bacterial spores. | | The other way around | logicalmonster wrote: | 1) Is this what was referred to in the movie "The Menu" | where they were taking the tour in the beginning and | talking about the 152 day aging process for meat, but the | 153rd day would bring chaos? | | 2) Why is there such a precise known number for that issue? | Don't bacteria grow differently? It just seems odd that 152 | days would definitely be ok and 153 days would definitely | kill. | nathanvanfleet wrote: | My dog's propensity for diarrhea makes me feel less inclined to | state that she has any tolerance for it. | zdragnar wrote: | I've known dogs that have lived on very varied diets | (including most human food sans poisons like grapes), and | other dogs that had very strictly controlled diets because | they were sensitive to pretty much anything and everything. | | Many breeds of modern dogs are very far removed from the | lifestyle and habits of their wild brethren. | version_five wrote: | But studies conducted over the last few decades do indicate that | putrefaction, the process of decay, offers many of cooking's | nutritional benefits with far less effort. Putrefaction | predigests meat and fish, softening the flesh and chemically | breaking down proteins and fats so they are more easily absorbed | and converted to energy by the body. | | That was my first thought seeing the headline. As long as it can | be stomached, it makes sense that we'd favor rotten food as a | kind of natural over processed food that makes it easy to get at | the nutrients. Another way to look at it is that the putrefaction | is basically the same thing that happens once we eat it. | dabernathy89 wrote: | I can't wait to see all of the influencers who will feel | obligated to post TikToks of themselves eating rotten meat now. | mrguyorama wrote: | You're looking for "high meat" and it's already a thing. | dabernathy89 wrote: | Yuck. | greenhearth wrote: | It's worth considering that our recent obsession with the | "caveman diet" is the extension (and obvious continuation) of the | early modern "noble savage" construct. It seems we ran out of | culture clashes of colonization and now are trying to colonize | the past to process our anxieties and dissatisfactions. | [deleted] | elhudy wrote: | >"a gold mine of ethnohistorical accounts makes it clear that the | revulsion Westerners feel toward putrid meat and maggots is not | hardwired in our genome but is instead culturally learned," Speth | says. | | These two statements aren't necessarily in contraindication of | one another. The revulsion can be both hardwired in our genome | _and_ we can culturally train ourselves to ignore that revulsion. | exfatloss wrote: | The book The Fat of the Land by Vilhjalmur Stefansson | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson) describes | how the Eskimos he lived with ate rotten fish all the time. It | was a delicacy for them. | | Kind of like we eat "rotten/spoiled" blue cheese and dry-aged | beef. | dugmartin wrote: | I remember watching a video a few years ago about a present day | tribe (I believe in SE Asia) that went on a hunt and killed a | monkey. Due to the heat by the time the hunting party was back | the meat had spoiled but nobody in the village had any issue with | diving in and eating it. I would think that up until very recent | times in human development this was very common. | precompute wrote: | Not new, Aajonus Vonderplanitz talked about this for years. | https://aajonus.online/ | koliber wrote: | Fish sauce, dry aged steaks, and bellota ham come to mind. All | delicious, and while I'm not sure if you'd call them putrefied | meat, it's not that far off. | ThePowerOfFuet wrote: | Jamon is about as far away from "putrefied" as you can get; | it's cured in salt for weeks and then hung to dry for months or | years. | hirundo wrote: | I enjoy the work of Israeli anthropologist Miki Ben-Dor on this | subject: | | https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=miki+ben+dor | | He's very much in agreement, saying that the human pattern was to | hunt large game and then bring it home to eat over weeks, | evolving a highly acidic stomach as a result to deal with the | bacterial load of rotten meat. That pattern was interrupted by | the growing scarcity of megafauna, perhaps caused by human | hunters. | | "Archaeological evidence does not overlook the fact that stone- | age humans also consumed plants," adds Dr. Ben-Dor. "But | according to the findings of this study plants only became a | major component of the human diet toward the end of the era." | | https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/814485 | stefantalpalaru wrote: | "It is interesting to note that humans, uniquely among the | primates so far considered, appear to have stomach pH values more | akin to those of carrion feeders than to those of most carnivores | and omnivores. In the absence of good data on the pH of other | hominoids, it is difficult to predict when such an acidic | environment evolved. Baboons (_Papio_ spp) have been argued to | exhibit the most human-like of feeding and foraging strategies in | terms of eclectic omnivory, but their stomachs - while considered | generally acidic (pH = 3.7) - do not exhibit the extremely low pH | seen in modern humans (pH = 1.5). One explanation for such | acidity may be that carrion feeding was more important in humans | (and more generally hominin) evolution than currently considered | to be the case [...]" - ["The Evolution of Stomach Acidity and | Its Relevance to the Human Microbiome" (2015)](https://journals.p | los.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...) | MagicMoonlight wrote: | Or maybe the people who eat trash are the ones that never | developed and that's why they're still eating trash today. | fwlr wrote: | I recall reading, a long time ago, of a person who was eating | just meat and only meat for his diet. He was struggling for a | while with it, until he intentionally allowed a small amount of | meat to rot for a bit, consumed that, and from then on he did | much better on that diet. The principle I believe was in play was | that the rotting meat contained a lot of bacteria that was very | good at breaking down that meat (it would proliferate the | fastest) and that bacteria was taking up residence in his gut | microbiome and assisting in digesting non-rotten meat in the | future. Sort of like how herbivores will sometimes consume small | stones to act as mechanical grinders of plantstuff in their | stomachs. | | This seems like the most likely way that ancient humans consumed | actually-rotten meat, in small doses to edit their gut microbiome | (likely encoded in traditions that viewed certain specific rotted | foods as a delicacy/luxury - not because it was hard to acquire | but because you were only supposed to eat it rarely). To the | extent that you see claims that "ancient humans ate large amounts | of rotten meat" I suspect they're conflating that with merely | "spoiled by modern food standards" meat, which is much less | rotten than it sounds. | moremetadata wrote: | Menaquinones are the naturally occurring form of vitamin K | identified in bacteria. | | Different bacteria make different chemicals which can be useful | to humans. | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7928036/ | | Is it any different to the Germans eating fermented sauerkraut, | or Asians eating fermented Soy source? | tracker1 wrote: | Kind of curious how much this may correlate to the fact that we | don't dry age meat nearly as much as in times past. | 1MachineElf wrote: | As an aside, most industrial meat is exposed either intentionally | or unintentionally to lactobacillus strains. Working in kitchens | I've had the opportunity to taste spoiling meat that had high | amounts of it. When prepared right it is actually quite good. | Taste can be similar to dry-aged steak, but juicer and more | flavorful. I've never gotten sick, but it certainly seems like a | risk, however tasty it may be. | tyfon wrote: | I eat lactobacillus all the time in my sourdough bread :) | | It is what makes the sourdough bread taste so good too. | Zickzack wrote: | Lactic acid fermentation [1] is the secret to many sausages. In | the case of Mettwurst [2], made of raw meat, it is essential. | Aged steak, hanged pheasants [3 - with a discussion of | bacteria] - even today, the list should be long. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactic_acid_fermentation [2] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mettwurst [3] https://honest- | food.net/on-hanging-pheasants-2/ | fencepost wrote: | Lactobacillus has been a part of human meat preservation for a | long time. https://record.umich.edu/articles/underwater- | storage-techniq... | giraffe_lady wrote: | Yeah you can definitely lacto ferment meat, it's a major flavor | component of the european dry sausages. Doing it safely isn't | hard, but a lot of the nuances of that technique are towards | making it actually taste good. It's very easy to lose control | of water activity and get out of control rancid elements, or | get air ingress and grow aerobic bacterias that clearly taste | like rot, or too much oxidation of the fat, or the wrong mold. | | Definitely pretty advanced level fermentation stuff, more to | control and more serious consequences than making kimchi or | something. Naem and other SE asian sour sausages are probably | the most approachable entry point if you want to give it a | swing though. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | Lebanon bologna is a more commonly available fermented meat | in the US. Much better stuff than the pink slime bologna. | tracker1 wrote: | I can say, that I grew up on "well done" meat... Even as an | adult, It's taken years to get used to medium-rare steak. The | texture of raw fish is still really hard for me to get past. It's | definitely a learned thing, and the hyper-palatable "foods" we | have today doesn't exactly help things at all. | al2o3cr wrote: | Sadly for the cause of lolz, the subreddit where folks would | trade tips about eating "high meat" and reassure each other that | intestinal parasites are "totally natural, like our caveman | ancestors had" went private a while back. | djaychela wrote: | I was unfortunate enough to eat some rotten meat at a restaurant | in Tanzania when I was working there. The main part was not down, | but it was hidden under some potatoes, and I only discovered it | as I ate. | | Took me months to recover from it. Up to that point in my life, I | was totally "regular" as they say. It was probably a year before | I got back to normal in that respect. | | Don't mess with your gut flora if things are going well, imo. | ulnarkressty wrote: | There are quite a lot of videos on YouTube of people eating | rotten meat, they claim it 'gets you high'. Perhaps one reason | it's considered a delicacy? | jrootabega wrote: | My gut refuses to believe it, but my brain understands that this | is probably a lot like cheese -- blue cheese in particular. If | you've only had fresh milk, letting it curdle and mold before | eating it would probably be unthinkable. Same for fresh cabbage | vs. kimchi or sauerkraut. | wincy wrote: | If you ever get a chance to go to a really nice steakhouse, and | eat a 45-day or 60-day dry aged steak, do so. It's one of the | funkiest most delicious things I've ever eaten, like a combo of | the best blue cheese and the best steak I've ever had. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | The trick with a dry aged steak is that you don't eat the | bits that were directly exposed to the air. The outer layer | of the beef protects the inner from the intrusion of all the | bacteria and spoilage that makes you sick and that's | discarded and you cook the inner stuff that's had time to | change but not go bad. | kerpotgh wrote: | [dead] | BigCryo wrote: | Scavenging explains many of the body traits that humans have.. | are good binocular vision allows us to see long distances.. so | prehistoric man may have been able to see buzzards surfing over a | corpse miles away.. so then we began to ran toward the corpse but | we had to run fast so that we could beat the other animals to | it.. our skeletal structure allows us to run fast and the fact | that we have little hair allows us to sweat and carry off the | heat so we can run long distances quickly.. once we get to the | corpse there are likely other animal scavenging it such as | hyenas, and our ability to grasp rocks and throw them allowed us | to throw rocks at the hyenas or whatever and scare them off the | corpse.. then if there was even little meat left we could pick up | a rock smash the bones and get the marrow out.. this explains how | we got good long distance binocular vision, a skeleton that | allows us to run, a body that allows us to carry off heat through | sweating, hands and other anatomy that can grasp and throw | stones, and smash bones to get the marrow out | mzimbres wrote: | So why rotten meat smells terrible and a steak delicious? Why | would we evolve that perception of something that nutritious and | which could prevent me from starving. Why my nose keeps telling | me to keep away from rotten meant? | m0llusk wrote: | There is an interesting related point in that cruciferous | vegetables and allium roots synthesize specific chemicals which | have been correlated with healthy effects. Many of these | chemicals have significant amounts of sulfur and tend to smell | quite strong not necessarily in a pleasant way. Olfactory | associations seem to be complex. | hvis wrote: | IIUC, the digestive system (and the gut bacteria in it) provide | feedback to your taste buds over time. | | If the appropriate "paleo diet" bacteria settled in (e.g. using | the gradual method to build tolerance), your nose would | probably change its mind soon enough. | | Not a biologist, just a layman here. | eqefqe wrote: | I saw people on youtube who eat rotten meat on purpose. | amriksohata wrote: | https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancest... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-29 23:01 UTC)