Yes, I’m regurgitating my summary of the way that I’ve seen other people react to the idea of undercooked or uncooked chicken flesh (like it has near-magical powers to contaminate with a powerful poison anything it touches). For an amusing example, see any Gordon Ramsey cooking show (which I cannot generally recommend). Undercooked chicken is the cardinal restaurant sin. But the fear definitely fully extends to never cooked chicken (cutting boards, knives).
Kindly notice I didn’t say that you’re definitely wrong. I was aware of the distinction between “most people would say he’s crazy” and “he’s crazy”.
I’ve experienced dramatic (but not life threatening) food poisoning on 3-4 occasions only. Once was a raw egg in a smoothie. The other times were especially contaminated cooked meat (e.g. hot dog from grocery store).
I don’t buy that “it would be helpful to have evolved it, and such evolution was possible” means “we have it”. But of course it makes it more plausible that we have it.
the fear definitely fully extends to never cooked chicken (cutting boards, knives)
Because bringing them into contact with cooked foods actually is dangerous. You won’t have any way of knowing the cooked food is contaminated.
Here’s the thing: if your food’s not that fresh, cooking can make an unsafe food safe (from a bacterial point of view) at the cost of destroying some other nutrients. (e.g. creatine and vitamin C). However, that same piece of food you’d spit out due to taste or spit up via whatever the backup test mechanism is.
So it’s not that I’m claiming the raw meat itself is safe in that case. Obviously, if your body rejects it, it’s because it’s not safe. I’m just saying that, raw meat that’s not contaminated is as safe (or safer) than cooked food, and that telling the difference is easy if you use your senses in the way they’re adapted for.
Raw food is only dangerous in a kitchen if you’re combining it with other foods without first ensuring that it’s not contaminated.
The error is in thinking that all raw food is “contaminated”, simply because it hasn’t been cooked yet. Before a certain level of decay occurs, it’s not contaminated food, it’s just food.
I’ve experienced dramatic (but not life threatening) food poisoning on 3-4 occasions only. Once was a raw egg in a smoothie.
Did you smell and/or taste the egg at room temperature before it was added to the smoothie? From personal experience, it’s a bad idea not to. ;-)
I’m not saying “all raw food is safe all the time”, I’m saying, if you smell and taste individual raw foods in as close to a “natural” state as practical (i.e., near ambient temperature, not yet processed or mixed with other foods) then the odds of you coming into contact with an excessive bacterial load are quite low.
As a practical matter, I would also mention that I never eat chicken raw that is only a day or two away from its store-marked expiration date, because during that period it can be difficult to tell by smell right out of the refrigerator if it’s bad. If it is bad, I won’t notice until I’ve chewed or swallowed some, and while it’s not a traumatic event by any means, it is still unpleasant and makes me want to wash my mouth out.
By contrast, beef that has gone bad in the day or two before its marked expiration is pretty damn obvious—brown or grey coloration is also a visible indicator that it’s not particularly fresh. But the scent is more pronounced, right out of the refrigerator.
Anyway, accidentally consuming contaminated (but detectably-so) raw meat is mildly unpleasant. But accidentally consuming contaminated food that your body can’t detect is MUCH much worse.
IOW, if you eat raw animal proteins, smell or taste them separately, and preferably close to room temperature, before consumption. If it’s bad, don’t eat it.
I don’t buy that “it would be helpful to have evolved it, and such evolution was possible” means “we have it”.
Of course. But that, plus the experience of your body rejecting a food makes it considerably more plausible. It’s a very convincing experience, since I’ve never experienced the same rejection of a contaminated cooked food. Nor has anything cooked that gave me food poisoning smelled or tasted bad when I ate it.
This looks to me like strong evidence for contamination-detection machinery that’s tuned to the properties of ancestral food sources, and which is bypassed by cooking.
IOW, the benefit of cooking is that it lets you eat marginal foods. The cost is that you have to substitute careful procedures for “common sense” in order to avoid getting randomly food-poisoned. The extent to which food poisoning still occurs in the modern world is a testament to just how difficult it is for us to notice contamination in cooked foods, vs. its sheer obviousness in the raw.
Really, in the past 100 years of refrigeration and Pasteur, I would hazard a guess that more people have died or become seriously ill (per capita in the relevant regions) from food contamination than in the preceding 100 years, simply because before refrigeration we had a much higher probability of smelling any contamination. To thoroughly check a piece of cold beef, I have to put it right up to my nose and take a deliberate whiff. The same odor from a warm piece would likely be detectable just through ambient proximity—you’d know without even having to specifically check.
So, while refrigeration and cooking definitely have their place, they also bypass our built-in safeguards.
Did you smell and/or taste the egg at room temperature before it was added to the smoothie? From personal experience, it’s a bad idea not to. ;-)
It’s easy to tell when an egg has gone bad, but not easy to tell whether it’s contaminated with salmonella.
Really, in the past 100 years of refrigeration and Pasteur, I would hazard a guess that more people have died or become seriously ill (per capita in the relevant regions) from food contamination than in the preceding 100 years, simply because before refrigeration we had a much higher probability of smelling any contamination.
I’d take a bet on that. I haven’t read any statistics on this, but I have read that before refrigeration, people were often less picky about what constituted expiration in food, by necessity. People might be able to smell most dangerous food contamination, but before refrigeration and pasteurization, people were often faced with a choice between eating potentially dangerous food and not eating. I recall Bill Bryson writing (in Made In America) that a contemporary noted that at one meal, George Washington put away his food without eating it, because he thought it was off. His wife cleaned her plate.
Of course. But that, plus the experience of your body rejecting a food makes it considerably more plausible. It’s a very convincing experience, since I’ve never experienced the same rejection of a contaminated cooked food. Nor has anything cooked that gave me food poisoning smelled or tasted bad when I ate it.
I have found my senses to be particularly sensitive in this regard and they do seem to work with cooked foods. I’ve definitely ‘rejected’ cooked foods early enough that the experience wasn’t more than a mildly unpleasant inconvenience. (ie. Eating more a minute later doesn’t seem at all unnatural.) Closer inspection confirmed the instinctive judgement and I gave my reflexes a gold star. Yet I would certainly agree that this is much easier when it comes to raw foods.
Did you find it took you time to adapt to raw meats after switching away from cooked meats? It seems like something that would take some adjustment. I find, for example, that my instincts scream at me if they discover I am eating chicken that isn’t cooked through. And eating large slabs of raw fish takes a lot of willpower too.
Did you find it took you time to adapt to raw meats after switching away from cooked meats? It seems like something that would take some adjustment.
Not much. Once I was prepared for the idea, I eased into it by trying things like raw egg smoothies, sushi, beef tataki (meat that’s just seared on the outside—available at many sushi restaurants), and so on. After that, I was psychologically ready to try chicken.
There really wasn’t any adjustment to the food itself, only to the idea of eating it. What I found consistently was that raw food tasted better than cooked, in terms of flavor and texture. The main drawback I have found to eating raw food is the temperature: hot food is generally more appetizing, except for sushi and sashimi. I have very little interest in cooked fish, but I love sushi and sashimi. I can’t stand beef well done any more, I want it to be at least extremely rare if not raw. (I just don’t like it cold that much.)
These were almost immediate changes in my taste preference. Texturally speaking, raw meat is 100% superior to cooked. It feels better in the mouth, it’s juicy… damn, I’m making myself hungry now. Really, the main thing at this point I like better about cooked meat is that the fat portion is more appetizing when heated to the point of softening, and it has an above-ambient temperature. I suspect that this is once again an evolutionary thing—a fresh kill would not likely have cold-hardened fats and would be hotter than ambient temperature. It would not surprise me if early humans began heating meat for the simple reason that it tastes better if it’s at least body-temperature warm.
Is Pasteur to blame? Of course, it’s terrible that governments in Anglophone countries (and why is it only them?) are trying to stop people from selling raw milk, but even with pasteurised milk, it’s easy to smell when it goes bad—rather famously so, I thought.
I understand your claim. You think that most dangerously spoiled food is easy to detect (if not overly chilled, or cooked) by tasting/smelling a small quantity raw, and that that quantity is not enough to harm us. Or, perhaps, even if initial smell/ taste can’t detect it, actually consuming enough of it will lead to detection and relatively safe expulsion further downstream, but that cooked food defeats some of the detection mechanisms.
I do agree that exposure to harmful substances isn’t all-or-nothing bad (while of course I reject most homeopathic-believers’ views that small amounts of harmful substances are magical).
Also, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with a brown or gray surface on meat. It just means the blood has been exposed to oxygen. When I store meat in a sealed glass container in the refrigerator for a few days, it looks like that and tastes+smells fine.
Also, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with a brown or gray surface on meat.
I understand that. However, it’s also correlated somewhat with the age of the meat (i.e. quantity of oxygen exposure), which is why I will smell such a piece more carefully than one without such a sign of age.
I do agree that exposure to harmful substances isn’t all-or-nothing bad (while of course I reject most homeopathic-believers’ views that small amounts of harmful substances are magical).
It sounds like you might be in danger of overgeneralizing from homeopathy to the hygiene hypothesis and bacterial symbiosis. In addition to keeping one’s immune system in trim, there are other benefits to even the theoretically-nastiest bacteria. I believe E. Coli has actually been experimented with as an anti-cancer agent, for example. The line between “beneficial bacteria” and “harmful invader” is not as cleanly drawn as brains designed for primate politics would like to make it.
(i.e., we are biased to label organisms as good or bad, for us or against us, when it’s really more a matter of how much, where, and when. Dose makes the medicine as well as the poison.)
I do value your experience report.
Yes, I’m regurgitating my summary of the way that I’ve seen other people react to the idea of undercooked or uncooked chicken flesh (like it has near-magical powers to contaminate with a powerful poison anything it touches). For an amusing example, see any Gordon Ramsey cooking show (which I cannot generally recommend). Undercooked chicken is the cardinal restaurant sin. But the fear definitely fully extends to never cooked chicken (cutting boards, knives).
Kindly notice I didn’t say that you’re definitely wrong. I was aware of the distinction between “most people would say he’s crazy” and “he’s crazy”.
I’ve experienced dramatic (but not life threatening) food poisoning on 3-4 occasions only. Once was a raw egg in a smoothie. The other times were especially contaminated cooked meat (e.g. hot dog from grocery store).
I don’t buy that “it would be helpful to have evolved it, and such evolution was possible” means “we have it”. But of course it makes it more plausible that we have it.
Because bringing them into contact with cooked foods actually is dangerous. You won’t have any way of knowing the cooked food is contaminated.
Here’s the thing: if your food’s not that fresh, cooking can make an unsafe food safe (from a bacterial point of view) at the cost of destroying some other nutrients. (e.g. creatine and vitamin C). However, that same piece of food you’d spit out due to taste or spit up via whatever the backup test mechanism is.
So it’s not that I’m claiming the raw meat itself is safe in that case. Obviously, if your body rejects it, it’s because it’s not safe. I’m just saying that, raw meat that’s not contaminated is as safe (or safer) than cooked food, and that telling the difference is easy if you use your senses in the way they’re adapted for.
Raw food is only dangerous in a kitchen if you’re combining it with other foods without first ensuring that it’s not contaminated.
The error is in thinking that all raw food is “contaminated”, simply because it hasn’t been cooked yet. Before a certain level of decay occurs, it’s not contaminated food, it’s just food.
Did you smell and/or taste the egg at room temperature before it was added to the smoothie? From personal experience, it’s a bad idea not to. ;-)
I’m not saying “all raw food is safe all the time”, I’m saying, if you smell and taste individual raw foods in as close to a “natural” state as practical (i.e., near ambient temperature, not yet processed or mixed with other foods) then the odds of you coming into contact with an excessive bacterial load are quite low.
As a practical matter, I would also mention that I never eat chicken raw that is only a day or two away from its store-marked expiration date, because during that period it can be difficult to tell by smell right out of the refrigerator if it’s bad. If it is bad, I won’t notice until I’ve chewed or swallowed some, and while it’s not a traumatic event by any means, it is still unpleasant and makes me want to wash my mouth out.
By contrast, beef that has gone bad in the day or two before its marked expiration is pretty damn obvious—brown or grey coloration is also a visible indicator that it’s not particularly fresh. But the scent is more pronounced, right out of the refrigerator.
Anyway, accidentally consuming contaminated (but detectably-so) raw meat is mildly unpleasant. But accidentally consuming contaminated food that your body can’t detect is MUCH much worse.
IOW, if you eat raw animal proteins, smell or taste them separately, and preferably close to room temperature, before consumption. If it’s bad, don’t eat it.
Of course. But that, plus the experience of your body rejecting a food makes it considerably more plausible. It’s a very convincing experience, since I’ve never experienced the same rejection of a contaminated cooked food. Nor has anything cooked that gave me food poisoning smelled or tasted bad when I ate it.
This looks to me like strong evidence for contamination-detection machinery that’s tuned to the properties of ancestral food sources, and which is bypassed by cooking.
IOW, the benefit of cooking is that it lets you eat marginal foods. The cost is that you have to substitute careful procedures for “common sense” in order to avoid getting randomly food-poisoned. The extent to which food poisoning still occurs in the modern world is a testament to just how difficult it is for us to notice contamination in cooked foods, vs. its sheer obviousness in the raw.
Really, in the past 100 years of refrigeration and Pasteur, I would hazard a guess that more people have died or become seriously ill (per capita in the relevant regions) from food contamination than in the preceding 100 years, simply because before refrigeration we had a much higher probability of smelling any contamination. To thoroughly check a piece of cold beef, I have to put it right up to my nose and take a deliberate whiff. The same odor from a warm piece would likely be detectable just through ambient proximity—you’d know without even having to specifically check.
So, while refrigeration and cooking definitely have their place, they also bypass our built-in safeguards.
It’s easy to tell when an egg has gone bad, but not easy to tell whether it’s contaminated with salmonella.
I’d take a bet on that. I haven’t read any statistics on this, but I have read that before refrigeration, people were often less picky about what constituted expiration in food, by necessity. People might be able to smell most dangerous food contamination, but before refrigeration and pasteurization, people were often faced with a choice between eating potentially dangerous food and not eating. I recall Bill Bryson writing (in Made In America) that a contemporary noted that at one meal, George Washington put away his food without eating it, because he thought it was off. His wife cleaned her plate.
I have found my senses to be particularly sensitive in this regard and they do seem to work with cooked foods. I’ve definitely ‘rejected’ cooked foods early enough that the experience wasn’t more than a mildly unpleasant inconvenience. (ie. Eating more a minute later doesn’t seem at all unnatural.) Closer inspection confirmed the instinctive judgement and I gave my reflexes a gold star. Yet I would certainly agree that this is much easier when it comes to raw foods.
Did you find it took you time to adapt to raw meats after switching away from cooked meats? It seems like something that would take some adjustment. I find, for example, that my instincts scream at me if they discover I am eating chicken that isn’t cooked through. And eating large slabs of raw fish takes a lot of willpower too.
Not much. Once I was prepared for the idea, I eased into it by trying things like raw egg smoothies, sushi, beef tataki (meat that’s just seared on the outside—available at many sushi restaurants), and so on. After that, I was psychologically ready to try chicken.
There really wasn’t any adjustment to the food itself, only to the idea of eating it. What I found consistently was that raw food tasted better than cooked, in terms of flavor and texture. The main drawback I have found to eating raw food is the temperature: hot food is generally more appetizing, except for sushi and sashimi. I have very little interest in cooked fish, but I love sushi and sashimi. I can’t stand beef well done any more, I want it to be at least extremely rare if not raw. (I just don’t like it cold that much.)
These were almost immediate changes in my taste preference. Texturally speaking, raw meat is 100% superior to cooked. It feels better in the mouth, it’s juicy… damn, I’m making myself hungry now. Really, the main thing at this point I like better about cooked meat is that the fat portion is more appetizing when heated to the point of softening, and it has an above-ambient temperature. I suspect that this is once again an evolutionary thing—a fresh kill would not likely have cold-hardened fats and would be hotter than ambient temperature. It would not surprise me if early humans began heating meat for the simple reason that it tastes better if it’s at least body-temperature warm.
Is Pasteur to blame? Of course, it’s terrible that governments in Anglophone countries (and why is it only them?) are trying to stop people from selling raw milk, but even with pasteurised milk, it’s easy to smell when it goes bad—rather famously so, I thought.
I understand your claim. You think that most dangerously spoiled food is easy to detect (if not overly chilled, or cooked) by tasting/smelling a small quantity raw, and that that quantity is not enough to harm us. Or, perhaps, even if initial smell/ taste can’t detect it, actually consuming enough of it will lead to detection and relatively safe expulsion further downstream, but that cooked food defeats some of the detection mechanisms.
I do agree that exposure to harmful substances isn’t all-or-nothing bad (while of course I reject most homeopathic-believers’ views that small amounts of harmful substances are magical).
Also, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with a brown or gray surface on meat. It just means the blood has been exposed to oxygen. When I store meat in a sealed glass container in the refrigerator for a few days, it looks like that and tastes+smells fine.
I understand that. However, it’s also correlated somewhat with the age of the meat (i.e. quantity of oxygen exposure), which is why I will smell such a piece more carefully than one without such a sign of age.
It sounds like you might be in danger of overgeneralizing from homeopathy to the hygiene hypothesis and bacterial symbiosis. In addition to keeping one’s immune system in trim, there are other benefits to even the theoretically-nastiest bacteria. I believe E. Coli has actually been experimented with as an anti-cancer agent, for example. The line between “beneficial bacteria” and “harmful invader” is not as cleanly drawn as brains designed for primate politics would like to make it.
(i.e., we are biased to label organisms as good or bad, for us or against us, when it’s really more a matter of how much, where, and when. Dose makes the medicine as well as the poison.)