BS: You are what you eat?

Subject: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Iains
Date: 06 Sep 18 - 04:46 AM

Meat testing: A fifth of samples reveal unspecified animals' DNA. From the Beeb and Huff post:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/meat-from-restaurants-supermarkets-and-butchers-found-to-contain-animals-not-on-the-label

Makes you average meat and two veg a bit of a lucky dip and spog bog will never seem the same again. Is there anything unadulterated in this modern world?

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Sep 18 - 05:36 AM

Dishes suppose to be lamb appear to be the worst offenders.
It seems fairly safe to eat ostrich or goat though!
To be fair, they targeted outlets already under suspicion. It doesn't necessarily mean all food is contaminated. (I wouldn't bet on that though!)

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Charmion
Date: 06 Sep 18 - 08:46 AM

I can usually tell if I am eating lamb or mutton -- it tastes like what it says on the label. Goat is close enough for rock 'n' roll.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Iains
Date: 06 Sep 18 - 11:07 AM

I suspect the adulteration is mainly in prepacked items such as sausage, lasagne, curries and bolognese. At the end of the day it is all protein. How many slugs get tastefully presented in prepacked salads?
I caught the tail end of a TV program yesterday where a family were fast food addicts. If I heard correctly the analysis of their food intake over a period of time came up with 400 chemicals that I presume were additives of one sort or another. Even Mcdonalds has 78 additives on the menu.
The odd bit of dog or horse in a burger is merely the result of someone's money making scam. Perhaps long term the additives present a far greater danger to health. The goalposts are constantly changing. Many colourants were banned in Europe not so very long ago but I believe some are still allowed in the US.
It is a minefield.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Sep 18 - 01:39 PM

The thing is that many folk have religious taboos and need to know exactly what they're eating. My husband cannot eat pork (neither can Jews) and Hindus don't eat beef.

Also, it's fraudulent to sell something which isn't as described.

Finally, with food (and especially meat) one needs to be able to trace the origin and provenance in cases of contaminated or infected products.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Sep 18 - 10:25 PM

If you are what you eat you know why I don't eat vegetables.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: olddude
Date: 06 Sep 18 - 11:03 PM

Oh no I am a dunkin donut

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: robomatic
Date: 06 Sep 18 - 11:32 PM

Said the little girl watching the meat grinder:

"It doesn't matter what goes in - it all comes out hamburger!"

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Iains
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 04:37 AM

"It all comes out hamburger"

How true that is!


https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/4612044/how-much-meat-is-in-supermarket-burgers-the-truth-might-shock-you/

I was pleasantly surprised how much meat there was.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 10:54 AM

This is why I never buy ground meat from a store, I buy roasts and grind them myself as needed: The Burger That Shattered Her Life.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 12:45 PM

Goodness Stilly, that article is quite horrifying. The poor lady.

I think the answer (apart from your sensible suggestion to purchase good quality meat and mince it oneself) is to cook meat until it's reached a high temperature right through.
If it's a burger, it should be well-cooked on both sides and the middle should not be red.

I've never heard the word 'ground' pertaining to beef. I would say 'minced'. My mother had a mincer which was clamped to the kitchen table. One turned the handle and out came the mince. Butchers did sell mince, but one could choose a bit of meat from his display and either watch him mince it or do it at home.

We buy a nice lump of topside occasionally, and I braise it until it's thoroughly cooked. We then cut the cooked beef into smaller lumps and freeze them, so they can be added to various dishes after defrosting and slicing or chopping up.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 12:48 PM

In the US it is called ground beef or hamburger.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 01:30 PM

I see, that's interesting Stilly. I'm always learning stuff on here!

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 01:41 PM

I wonder if some of the unidentified DNA is tapeworm or cockroach?

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 01:50 PM

Bleurgh Jack!

I think the contamination from E Coli is due to animal faeces from intestines and hide, which shouldn't ever get near the mincing machines.
This thread is enough to make one a vegetarian!

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 05:49 PM

I had a couple of holiday jobs when I was a student in New Zealand that gave me some insights into this.

One was in one of the largest slaughterhouses in the world, exporting lamb and beef to the UK and US among other places (including Iran a few years after I left). Accordingly it operated to simultaneous hygiene/quality standards, with a team of independent inspectors on duty for every working minute. Everything was hosed down with hot water, scalded with steam and kept at a level of cleanliness that far exceeded any hospital I've been in - I'd have felt safer stretched out on the gutting chain conveyor for an operation than in any operating theatre gurney. So, the kind of disgusting practices described in that NYT piece are entirely avoidable if the will is there: we avoided them.

Contrast another job I had, in a chickenfeed factory. Hygiene inspection zero. One of the major protein constituents was "meatmeal", sorta dried Bovril delivered in tons and kept in a screw-feed hopper to be measured out a few hundred pounds at a time and added to the mixers. Problem was the hopper had been designed by the managing director, who fancied himself as a mill machinery engineer. The bug in the design was a flat bottom that meant the powder didn't all pump out - it just sat there. In an Auckland summer. My brother got the fun job of clearing it out with a shovel. Knee-deep in live maggots. So I didn't need DNA tests to know what animal protein the chickens were eating.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 06:45 PM

I believe the BSE scandal came about due to cattle feed being contaminated with bone fragments and other products which conveyed the prions to the animals and thus to the beef we were eating.

All these things spring from trying to increase profits in the food industry unscrupulously by using cheap, unchecked products which threaten public health.
Money is at the root of it all.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 06:49 PM

I get all my beef from Donald Russell. It comes in a polystyrene box, still frozen on arrival. They are ludicrously expensive but the meat is unfailingly superb, with that old-fashioned beefy flavour. I never pay the proper price for anything, so I pounce when their special offers come in, and then I'm paying local butcher prices. At the moment their minced steak is about twenty quid for six packs, same as you'd pay for those three-for-a-tenner offers in Waitrose and Tesco, etc., but infinitely superior. Their brisket is to die for, and there's no wasteful sinew. As for local butcher, Moores in Bude sell the best pork sausages you can get your hands on, and their lamb (from their own farm) is to die for. His other pork, unfortunately, is from a local source I'm not keen on, so I get all my pork, believe it or not, from Gloucester Services on the M5. It's Gloucester Old Spot we're talking about here, and the pork shoulder with crackling is sublime, as are their man-sized pork chops. The prices are very reasonable.

I've found the Herb-Fed poultry company's stuff to be absolutely excellent, and, failing that, the Creedy Carver free-range chickens from Credition, Devon, are superb. I won't bother with any chicken under 2kg. I want texture and mature flavour, and you never get that from skinny little birds, and non-free-range chickens are invariably watery, flavourless and nasty. Even if one was forced on me, I still wouldn't boil up its bones for stock.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: olddude
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 07:49 PM

Try moose burger oh yes

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 09:05 PM

I never buy burgers. All mine are home-made out of pure beef. No seasoning, no onions, nothing. Two and a half minutes a side. No pink middle? Hello kitchen bin...

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: olddude
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 09:48 PM

Exactly the right way to have them

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Rapparee
Date: 07 Sep 18 - 10:32 PM

Growing up we ate raw hamburger (ground beef). Not usually, just when we kids could pinch some. Of course, that was before salmonella and e. coli and all that.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Iains
Date: 08 Sep 18 - 03:41 AM

Chicken manure used as cattle feed. I believe this happened in the UK up until the BSE scare.

https://www.nation.co.ke/business/seedsofgold/Chicken-manure-has-more-uses-it-is-not-just-waste-/2301238-3170352-op9qe0/index.ht

From the Guardian 1999
https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/oct/27/food.foodanddrink2

I had a fill in job on a battery farm in the 80's. The manure fell into the lower 8feet of the building and was cleaned out with a bobcat a couple of times a year.The rumour was that the final destination was as above.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 08 Sep 18 - 03:53 AM

I agree about those ghastly skinny little chickens Steve. Watery texture, weird flavour with suspicious overtones of chlorine. Wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. We get ours from neighbours, free range (the chickens, not the neighbours!) huge birds, firm flesh and full of flavour. And the creatures have had a nice life in their large back garden.

As a child I was always munching on raw meat of every kind. I adored raw liver and kidneys, mince and even raw pork sausages. My mother kept telling me I'd end up with a tapeworm. Even now, I quite like a raw lamb's kidney or two, rinsed and chopped up. Gawd knows what I'm risking.

My granny died of pernicious anaemia, and I was told she was made to eat raw liver. I couldn't understand why she had to be 'made' to do it!

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Thompson
Date: 08 Sep 18 - 05:12 AM

Quotes from the BBC version (the HuffPost one gives me a 404 error):

==
Quote:

The samples came from 487 businesses, including restaurants and supermarkets.

A BBC Freedom of Information request to the FSA revealed that in total 73 of the contaminated samples came from retailers - including three supermarkets. A further 50 came from restaurants, while 22 originated from manufacturing or food processing plants.

(and)

An FSA spokesman said it was up to the relevant local authorities - which procured the samples before sending the results to the FSA - to lead individual investigations and take "appropriate action" such as prosecutions.

He added the results were "not representative of the wider food industry".

(and)

According to the FSA, the inclusion of DNA at a proportion of 1% or greater should be considered consistent with "deliberate inclusion".

(Quotes end)

==

A bit pointless having a body like the FSA if it's not in charge of making the investigations and running prosecutions.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Iains
Date: 08 Sep 18 - 05:35 AM

https://www.food.gov.uk/safety-hygiene/food-crime

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 08 Sep 18 - 06:05 AM

'Manufacturing or food processing plants' probably supply enormous amounts of meat to hundreds of outlets. Action should have been taken immediately.

If a restaurant/takeaway for example is inspected and found to be failing in its hygiene standards, it's usually closed down immediately.

How can they justify taking no action? Many people (as Stilly's article shows) may have had their health and even their lives put at risk!

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Sep 18 - 06:08 AM

I'm a hygiene fanatic in the kitchen. As I do the cooking in our house I feel responsible for ensuring that no-one is put at any risk arising from what I do. I won't handle food after blowing my nose or scratching my back until I've washed my hands with soap whether anyone saw me or not. No cursory rinses for me. I love a rare steak and a pink-in-the-middle burger but I have to know that the ingredients haven't been sitting around for hours at room temp or in a fridge for days. I know I'm made of raw meat and that I am what I eat, but I draw the line at raw meat or fish. No matter how fresh it is, I don't know how it's been handled before I got my hands on it. No thanks!

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 08 Sep 18 - 06:16 AM

"My granny died of pernicious anaemia, and I was told she was made to eat raw liver. I couldn't understand why she had to be 'made' to do it!"

When I was a sprig, my mum suffered badly from anaemia, and she had to eat half a pound of raw liver, and drink a bottle of Mackeson, every day. I remember her screwed-up face as she struggled with the liver, but she thoroughly enjoyed the Mackeson - especially as, being a Salvationist and having signed The Pledge, it was 'forbidden fruit' which she was able to justify!

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 08 Sep 18 - 06:17 AM

Sprig?? Effin' predictive text! SPROG!

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 08 Sep 18 - 08:32 AM

'Sprig' sounds very elegant and sweet Bw. Like a 'sprig' of heather or myrtle!
I'm under the doctor (ooer missus) and may have pernicious anaemia myself. I have vitamin B12 deficiency and I'm due for lots of tests at the end of the month. I hope the doc prescribes lots of raw liver and Mackeson stout. But I suspect it'll involve boring old injections of B12 plus folate tablets.
My granny had to have the raw liver in sandwiches though. I wouldn't fancy that.

We're like you Steve, very strict on kitchen hygiene. Husband is very good about this (he cooks a lot). I'm proud to say we have never ever had any stomach upset or food poisoning.
He has while visiting his family in Abidjan though. Not surprising when you see the conditions under which food is prepared. Rats everywhere, and swarms of flies. Cooking done squatting on the ground in the courtyard. Dodgy food sources, endemic typhoid and cholera, dysentery and anything you care to name. Yuk.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: theleveller
Date: 09 Sep 18 - 11:23 AM

Most of the meat we eat comes from the farm shop down the road where it's cut (or minced) in front of you. They'll even tell you which local farm it has come from. And it's not that much more expensive than the supermarket stuff. Same with a lot of the veg and seasonal fruit, plus we grow some ourselves. Eggs come from a farm in the village where you can see the chickens running around. Only problem is that they don't lay many in the winter so they can be in short supply. So we get great produce and support the local economy.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: frogprince
Date: 09 Sep 18 - 03:42 PM

Ever since I saw the title of this thread, I've been telling myself, "Behave yourself, don't go there".

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: olddude
Date: 10 Sep 18 - 12:59 AM

Lol froggy

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: leeneia
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 02:07 PM

It's important to eat healthful food, but our bodies are very complex and they process food and protect us.

"You are what you eat" probably comes from the kind of people who daydreamed, talked and doodled while their teachers tried to teach how the body works and what the internal organs do.

I once had a friend who was eaten alive with worry because there was a swelling in her underarm. She was afraid it was breast cancer. I told her it was probably a gland which was swollen because it was fighting the infection from a bad tooth. "Didn't you learn about those glands in the fifth grade?" I asked.

She said, "Oh, I never paid any attention to that stuff in school."
================
What's the name of those glands? I can't recall it right now.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Iains
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 02:19 PM

But the burning question is whether the epidemic of obesity is due to the consumption of junk food or idleness, or both. Or perhaps something yet to be disproved rather like the rehabilitation of butter and full fat milk.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 02:34 PM

Do you mean lymph nodes leeneia?

I reckon the obesity epidemic is the result of too much sugar, too many trans fats and too much food generally.

People seem to eat constantly, not just at mealtimes.
We used in the fifties to have just three distinct meals - breakfast, dinner and tea. (breakfast was a decent meal of cereal or porridge, egg and toast or a fried selection, dinner was what is now called 'lunch', and tea was a light meal such as scrambled eggs or cheese-on-toast (Welsh rarebit). Nothing else at any other time.

Very few folk were obese.

We're always seeing people munching away in the street, and they seem to keep at it while watching TV in the evenings as well (snacks like chocolate, crisps and those ghastly doughnuts)

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 02:50 PM

Cheap margarines and spreads, every specimen totally horrible, have the same fat content as butter. Unless the label says low-fat, in which case the concoction in question is even more horrible. You'd have to consume a huge amount of full-fat milk to put much weight on. "Junk food" is a bit vague. Ready meals tend to be slightly too small, in spite of the fact that they're often high-fat, high-salt and innocent of a decent supply of nutrients, so you soon find yerself reaching for the crisps and chocs. A great homemade pizza is a thing of beauty, but every supermarket specimen I've ever seen is high in fat and salt and composed of the cheapest ingredients they can get away with. Of course, you could always go out and buy a tub of tasteless chicken and fries from KFC (terrible), or go down the chippy and buy a cheap thousand calories (so what? Once in a while, what's not to like?)

I've just made a huge panful of ribollita. It took no skill and no effort and is very cheap. It's just carrots, onions, celery and garlic, all roughly chopped up and sautéed in EV olive oil for half an hour, then with two tins of chopped toms, two tins of cannellini beans, a good slug of tomato paste, chicken stock, a glug of cheap red wine (wash the grub down with the rest of the bottle later on), a sprig of rosemary and thyme wot I grow myself and a load of chopped-up kale (I use cavolo nero, a huge bag for a quid at Morrisons) added for the last twenty minutes. Grab some stale bread, rub it with olive oil and garlic, toast it, put it in a bowl and ladle the ribollita on top. Cheap, easy, nutritious, enough for two of us at least twice over, possibly three. Nice with some shavings of Parmesan and a drizzling of EV olive oil. Ribollita means reboiled, and the soup tastes even better for two, three or four more reheatings. All in one pot, and half an hour in the kitchen gives you two or three doses of delicious and really healthy grub.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 03:08 PM

I still bang on and on about fresh, home-grown vegetables and fruit.
Stuff you harvest and eat the same day, from your own garden/greenhouse.
Not many people nowadays I reckon have this kind of gorgeous food, and as Steve says, they get hungry quickly because their bodies aren't properly nourished, and then they reach for the chocs and crisps.

When I lived in Glasgow, pizzas were a new thing. There was a real Italian pizzaria in the centre of town where they stuck the home-made pizzas into an oven on a long flat stick. They smelled delicious and tasted out of this world. (The Italian men who ran it were quite tasty too!)
Modern ready-made pizzas are horrible, nothing like the Real Thing.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Iains
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 03:25 PM

scary calorie content. How do these figures stack up against over the pond?

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/i-ll-have-1-500-calories-with-that-burger-please-1.538017

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: peteglasgow
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 03:27 PM

senoufou - was that restaurant Dino's by any chance? at the concert hall end of sauchiehall street? we used to have a pizza there once a year after a celtic connections gig. it was simple and lovely food in a very busyrestaurant that felt like a glasgow institution. sadly it closed 3/4 years ago

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 03:42 PM

Yes yes pete!! It was indeed in Sauchiehall Street! Can't remember the name Dino's but I think it was the only one around in those days.
You and I may well have been in there at the same time! Sad to hear it closed down.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 03:49 PM

The best pizzas we ever had were in a little pizzeria in Napoli, across the main road from the amazing archeological museum. Watch your pockets in Naples! There was a thunderstorm raging of tropical proportions so we took refuge. Mrs Steve had the biggest and most beautiful Margherita I've ever experienced and I had a pizza fritta the size of three Cornish pasties. Sublime and dirt cheap, Naples to a tee. We strolled down the road from there to the Duomo, just to get out of the rain, and were horrified to see an urn in the crypt which had San Gennaro's bones sticking out of it. He'd been murdered in the fourth century, apparently, martyred even, at the Solfatara crater at Pozzuoli. This year in Rome we found a restaurant that specialised in pinza pizza, made with a special dough that had been allowed to rise before topping. Totally gorgeous. I haven't bought a shop pizza here ever since, not even a Sloppy Giuseppe! I want to buy an outdoor pizza oven but Mrs Steve won't let me. She'll wake up one morning, look out of the window, and...

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Senoufou
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 04:16 PM

Gah! I thought my spelling of 'pizzaria' looked a bit weird.

I don't much like the 'relics' one comes across abroad. I remember visiting the Cathedral of St Theodora in Corfu on some special day, and her bones and bits and pieces were exposed and being kissed by devotees.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 05:18 PM

Also, there's a phial of San Gennaro's blood in the Duomo that "miraculously" liquefies three times a year, and many a devout Catholic turns up to pay tribute...yikes...

We visited the Solfatara crater in 2013, a sinister, primeval sort of place with boiling mud and hissing fumaroles. Gennaro was beheaded there in 303. The crater last erupted in 1198 when groundwater reacted with shallow magma, a phreatic eruption in other words. Sadly, a family of three died in boiling mud a couple of years ago and I'm not sure that it's so easy to visit the crater any more. When we were there we did think it was rather too easy to put yourself at risk... Unusually, it isn't situated high on volcanic slopes. you just stroll in through a rather grand entrance, having paid your several euros first of course!

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: leeneia
Date: 12 Sep 18 - 09:52 AM

Yes, Senoufou, lymph nodes. Thanks.

Steve Shaw, I liked Naples too.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Sep 18 - 09:59 AM

There are still pizza places in Scotland that do them the old-style way. Try the Caprice in Edinburgh - branches in Leith Walk and Musselburgh. I'm sure there are comparable ones in Glasgow.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: Charmion
Date: 12 Sep 18 - 10:23 AM

I recently learned how to make decent pizza at home with an ordinary Canadian gas-fired cooker (i.e., kitchen stove). Much to my surprise, the secret to good crust is sourdough starter and an overnight process -- nothing impulsive about good food, no surprise there.

It's harvest time in Perth County, and the market is full of local corn (alas, not the varieties of my long-past youth) and field-ripened tomatoes, and peaches trucked up the road from Niagara. We are currently eating them with every meal. Life is tough.

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: theleveller
Date: 12 Sep 18 - 10:46 AM

I've been making pizza at home for years and eventually realised that it's just not possible to cook a really good one in a domestic oven (despite experiments with cast iron plates, slabs of granite and terracotta platters). So I finally bit the bullet and bought a small catering oven which fits in a cupboard and reached 350C ( not as hot as I'd like but it does the job).

I've also built a wood oven using an oil drum (worked fine until the wooden frame collapsed from the weight of the concrete covering) and I've also constructed several wood-fired cob ovens for different people - which are very low cost but need a gang of people to tread the cob. These work beautifully, get really hot and can last several years if you keep the rain off. Here's a pic of one I built at a community allotment in Hull. It's still going strong (I'm the grubby one on the left).
Cob Oven under construction

I sometimes use sourdough for the pizza base, as I make sourdough bread twice a week, and this sound like the pizza that Steve Shaw mention having in Naples, but mostly I prefer a slow risen conventional yeast dough. Nothing, though, will ever be as good as the ones they serve on the first floor of the Central Market in Florence!

Subject: RE: BS: You are what you eat?
From: theleveller
Date: 12 Sep 18 - 11:01 AM

Here's the oil drum oven, if anyone's interested. And a tip for home pizza makers - use Marino 'O' flour - it's by far the best.

Oil drum oven.