UN urges people to eat more bugs

[Loki]

Originally Posted by gmoyes

Oh, and before you say anything about insect poop, entire cows are used for ground beef, which of course includes the intestines. Which is why there are E-coli outbreak around ground beef. There certainly is a lot a stigma around bugs. :/

Uh... You've never seen someone butcher a cow have you? After they kill the cow (usually a strong hammer blow to the head or a shot with a gun), they drain the blood, cut out the intestines, and then flay the meat. Intestines and other unusable organs are typically put into rendering and not put into ground beef or hot dogs as urban legends would lead you to believe.

And offals which are eaten are still typically cleaned out. It's not poop filled tubes from animals we throw onto a skillet and serve to people.

[gmoyes]

Of course I have my facts wrong. -_-' Still, eating bugs is probably healthier than many other meats. And our resources are rather flagging, us humans are always looking for new thing to exploit and use up. Eh, at least there's plenty to go around for now.

[Amras.MG]

That went from "we eat cow shit" to "humans are prodigal" really reaaaaaaaally fast.

[Loki]

When rats run out of food on their island, they eat rats.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by gmoyes

Oh, and before you say anything about insect poop, entire cows are used for ground beef, which of course includes the intestines. Which is why there are E-coli outbreak around ground beef. There certainly is a lot a stigma around bugs. :/

I believe this claim is neither correct for how beef is processed nor correct for how E.coli winds up in processed beef.

Beef Processing:
In the case of how beef is processed, the whole animal is not just tossed into some meat grinder and converted into ground beef. The animals are slaughtered and converted into cleaned carcasses (which have had their guts, skin, etc. stripped from them) before they are further processed. This goes for those carcasses destined to become ground beef, too.

Ground beef is usually prepared from the least popular cuts of the animal (e.g. chuck), while the most popular cuts are usually destined to become steaks (sirloins, filets, and so on). Again, you don't normally toss the entire animal into the grinder as, while this does theoretically make higher-quality ground beef, that improvement is indistinguishable by most and robs you of the potential profits associated with the more expensive cuts of the animal. It is in your best interest, as a meat processing plant, to properly quarter the animal and to only send into the meat grinder those cuts which are least profitable. Offal is not a cut.

Also, the USDA banned the sale of ground beef contaminated with the O157:H7 strain of E.coli in 1994. Clearly, it's not a very smart idea then to deliberately inoculate your meat stock with the bacterial strain. Gutting the carcasses and not mixing the guts with the rest of the meat is very, very much the profit-minded thing to do.

E.coli contamination:
In the case of how the E.coli gets into the meat if not from the intestines being tossed into the meat grinder, I'm pretty sure it's because of contamination in the meat processing facility.

Data out of the US suggests that almost 30% of animals going to slaughter could be infected with E. coli O157:H7, and an average of 43% of carcasses coming out of the slaughter line at processing plants are contaminated (NASIM, 2002).

Source: http://www.fightecoli.com/?lang=en&pageID=1-2

If 30% of animals enter with the bacteria yet 43% of carcasses leave with the bacteria, that clearly suggests that there is transmission of the pathogen taking place at the level of the meat processing facility. At best, the facilities inoculate 13% of carcasses with bacteria not previously there. At worst, the facilities inoculate all 43% of carcasses. The reality is likely somewhere in between given that the bacteria primarily reside in the GI tract of most cattle.

I say "primarily reside" because:

Bacteria present on the cow's udders or on equipment may get into raw milk.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli_O157:H7

Clearly, dairy cows aren't butchered during the process of collecting milk from them. And clearly, the udders are on the outside of the animal, far away from the gut. So what's apparently happening is that infected animals are a) shitting and b) getting their shit all over themselves, including over the udders, and then the bacteria makes its way underneath the nozzle, towards the tip of the teat, and is sucked up along with the milk stream into the dairy receptacle. Given this, it's not much of a stretch of the imagination to consider that during the process of preparing carcasses in beef-processing facilities, the workers may transfer E.coli that had been a) inside the gut (just now removed) or b) on the surface of the animal (likewise just now removed) into the meat via their blades, gloves, etc. There's no reason that the E.coli found in beef should have had to have originated from intestines that were ground up right along with the meat proper.

Anyway, this isn't really a rigorously academic reply to your post, and unfortunately my medical texts deal with E.coli only once it's in you, not really with how it got into the food supply in the first place, hence my somewhat lazy links to easily Google-able sites + Wikipedia. But if you believe I'm mistaken, and you have proof that it is a common (or if uncommon at least not a rare) practice in the West to grind up the entire animal, entrails and all, when preparing ground beef, then please do fill me in.

NINJAAAAAAAAA'D! Oh well. That's what I get.

[Rangeet]

Originally Posted by Raptor Jesus

When rats run out of food on their island, they eat rats.

And then they make movies about the last two rats.

[Fallen Icarus]

I'm pretty sure E. coli comes from certain conditions within a cow that are created by a cow's diet of corn. Yay Food inc!

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Fallen Icarus

I'm pretty sure E. coli comes from certain conditions within a cow that are created by a cow's diet of corn. Yay Food inc!

E.coli has got nothing to do with corn. -.-; Not writing up another essay only to be ninja'd so I'll just leave it at E.coli passing from organism to organism typically via fecal-oral transmission and flourishing quite well and naturally in the intestinal lumens of cattle and men alike without regard for the presence or absence of corn in the diet. Cows typically get E.coli by ingesting infected fecal matter along with the grass they graze or the feed they eat; being fed corn doesn't significantly affect the rate of infection. (If anything, being given feed in a trough or bucket would reduce risk of infection compared with grazing on meadows where other animals may have just relieved themselves.)

[Kindrindra]

Originally Posted by Sneezey12

Oddly enough, most bugs taste nothing like what people would imagine, and are incredibly healthy to eat. Their shells may be crunchy, but they're not tough like fingernails or shellfish shells or anything, instead picture them like breadcrumbs... breadcrumbs packed with tons of nutrients. And their insides aren't all that different from seafood, save for things like caterpillars which are, in fact, closer to a fatty pork.

Dammit, Sneezey.

Now I have to go find if anywhere nearby sells them. >_>

[Loki]

You could try digging in the dirt.

[Trepie]

I've had a chocolate covered cricket before. The taste wasn't terrible, but I found myself being very aware of what I was eating and it kind of killed the experience for me. To be fair most chocolate and bread products have pieces of insects in them so technically most people consume bugs without even knowing.

[Fallen Icarus]

http://www.healthytheory.com/corn-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef

http://www.usnews.com/news/50-ways-t...rn-consumption

An acidic intestinal tract also favors the growth of E. coli. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, states that the lethal strain of E. coli known as 0157:H7 is believed to have evolved in the gut of feedlot cattle. The development of a more acidic environment in cows’ intestinal tracts created an acid-resistant strain of the pathogen, which is able to survive the acidic conditions of the human stomach and prove fatal. In the documentary Food, Inc., Pollan states that switching feedlot cattle to a grass diet would eliminate 80 percent of the E. coli in the cows’ digestive tracts.

So... I was half right. Kinda.

[Talon87]

If maize + antacids is cheaper than grazing, I'm really not sure why they don't just do that. (Assuming they don't already!)

That stated, something I found while looking into your sources suggests that you can achieve this same effect just by switching the cattle to grass feed several days before they go to slaughter. In other words, you don't have to go from 365 days of corn to 365 days of grass if you want to fight the E.coli problem: you could just go from 365 days of corn to 361 days of corn. I would imagine this is much more affordable for the beef industry, so I'd think that this is what they'd do. Or, for that matter, what they may even already be doing. After all, like we said, any beef with O157:H7 in it isn't even allowed to be sold in the United States. You don't even have the option of buying said beef and then cooking the E.coli to death yourself. So like ... I dunno, I kinda wonder how old this "grass vs. maize" war of information might be. Wouldn't surprise me if it goes back to the 1970s, easily. Possibly even further back than that.

Anyway, as mentioned previously, the problem of transmission isn't so much to do with the feed (though I can see now, as you rightly explain, how that may affect the gut lumen in such a way as to make it a more conducive environment for dangerous serotypes of E.coli to grow in) as it is to do with the feces. The goal in controlling E.coli transmission amongst a herd of cattle should always be, I would think, to minimize their exposure to one another's feces (and, in the case of calves, to make sure that their mothers aren't smearing shit all over their udders, I guess ). I dunno. Not really sure how dirty of animals cattle are when it comes to the poop problem. But I'd think that that'd be the #1 priority for any rancher trying to ensure his herd doesn't spread contagion amongst themselves.

[Fallen Icarus]

The age of sources? Somewhat old I guess, it's outdated by at least 4 years (Food inc came out around that time) but I'm not sure how much has changed since then. The problem with the beef industry is that they don't do the changing of feed, instead opting for a central corn feed. ...Or I might be wrong, haven't researched fully into this topic.

I agree that sanitizing the living conditions and controlling the contamination of beef via feces is important; in tandem with diet, E. coli can be further represed :p.

The one thing that puzzles me is how we got on to this topic. Oh internet, the mysteries you present so often baffle me to no end.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Fallen Icarus

The one thing that puzzles me is how we got on to this topic. Oh internet, the mysteries you present so often baffle me to no end.

ITT: people would rather discuss cows eating cow shit than humans eating bugs.

[Loki]

GUYS! STOP EATING BEEF! EAT MORE BUGS! THAT WAY I CAN EAT MORE BEEF WHILE YOU GUYS EAT BUGS! GO GO GO GO!

[Kindrindra]

Originally Posted by Raptor Jesus

You could try digging in the dirt.

Obviously I meant properly prepared ones.

[Loki]

Nature has prepared them.

[deoxys]

The only thing I've accomplished by reading through this thread is feeling sick to my stomach. So there's that.

[TurTrain]

The only time I've eaten a bug is when a fly flew down my throat.

[Fallen Icarus]

Ah, Nostalgia.

[Doppleganger]

Yeah, I wouldn't eat bugs at all. They're not kosher. There's also the issue of you having to eat the bug whole, meaning you effectively eat its feces along with its digestive system.

The UN is clearly Anti-Semitic by encouraging this non-Jewish diet.

[Emi]

I probably would have no problem with eating an insect if it was prepared. Not one raw for sure, but if it was cooked through I'm sure even its feces wouldn't be bad.

And is this all on the assumption that insect feces are pretty much the same as mammal feces? Cause I would think that they would be different really, :/

[Kindrindra]

Blaze raises a good point- there's a fairly large difference between the feces of a carnivore and the feces of a herbivore.

[Fallen Icarus]

Originally Posted by Fallen Icarus

Because we all know that KinxBlaze is canon.