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The World's Deadliest Thing

the-angry-chef.com

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Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#41

Post by causi »

The entire global face paralysing industry is supported by an annual production of just a few milligrams.

A writeup of the production methods would be interesting. I wonder if it is produced in highly concentrated or even pure form and then diluted, or produced in diluted form. The former may be more efficient but I suspect it would be difficult to control tiny volumes of toxin that just happen to get lost in the mixing process. If you're diluting red paint into white paint it may not matter if a microgram of pure red hides in a crevice and get deposited into a gallon sometime later but it would sure matter if it was botulinum toxin.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#44

Post by Uehreka »

antognini wrote: post #38
Stratoscope wrote: post #35

Pop quiz! Do you ever buy frozen vacuum-sealed fish? The kind where each piece is sealed in its own plastic pouch? It is convenient and delicious. To me it can taste fresher than some "fresh" fish. One reason is that the sealed pouch keeps oxygen out. Have you wondered why it says "remove all packaging before defrosting"? And ignored that advice like I did for many years? After all, the fish seems to defrost just fin…

I have wondered about this, but even if botulinum or listeria are present, won't they grow very slowly in the refrigerator? I would think that defrosting for 12 hours or so at refrigerator temperatures would still be fairly safe. Or is the quantity that can be dangerous so minute that it doesn't matter?

Perhaps its one of those things where “95% of the time you’ll be fine, but be careful if you do it 20 times, because botulism only needs to happen once.”

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#45

Post by gibolt »

Stratoscope wrote: post #35

Pop quiz! Do you ever buy frozen vacuum-sealed fish? The kind where each piece is sealed in its own plastic pouch? It is convenient and delicious. To me it can taste fresher than some "fresh" fish. One reason is that the sealed pouch keeps oxygen out. Have you wondered why it says "remove all packaging before defrosting"? And ignored that advice like I did for many years? After all, the fish seems to defrost just fin…

This is similar for red meat. Vacuum sealed at the source will keep it fresh longer.

Here is a great video on what color meat should be to be considered 'fresh' and how to handle it from there: https://youtu.be/82KT_nb26-4

The rest of the channel is great if you are at all into cooking.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#46

Post by chadcmulligan »

asguy wrote: post #9

Only two mentions of 'nitrites'? Botulism is the reason we started curing meats with nitrite and nitrate in the first place. Canning is fine, but being able to keep meat at room temperature by just adding common (e.g. available in urine, and celery) chemicals is far more interesting.

so does ham cured with celery also contain nitrites? I've been buying free range ham cured with celery because I thought it was free of nitrites.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#47

Post by Helmut10001 »

Stratoscope wrote: post #35

Pop quiz! Do you ever buy frozen vacuum-sealed fish? The kind where each piece is sealed in its own plastic pouch? It is convenient and delicious. To me it can taste fresher than some "fresh" fish. One reason is that the sealed pouch keeps oxygen out. Have you wondered why it says "remove all packaging before defrosting"? And ignored that advice like I did for many years? After all, the fish seems to defrost just fin…

If you put your sealed fish in cold tap water, it will thaw in less than 15 Minutes. 15 Minutes is not enough for the bacteria to produce these toxins.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#48

Post by awild »

bambax wrote: post #33

> In this way, Clostridium Botulinum shapes our modern food system. It is why (...) jarred sauces can sometimes have a harsh acidic note, particularly creamy sauces that are not naturally acidic. Yes, I have noticed this many times. Tomato sauce is naturally acidic, but ready-made, bottled tomato sauce is much more acidic than what you can make from scratch. Acidity can be fought by adding just a little baking soda.

I've once gotten the advice of boiling it for at least fifteen minutes since the citric acid commonly used will break down at normal cooking temperatures.

Wikipedia lists its breakdown temperature at 175C so it's plausible but I don't know the temperatures at which tomato sauce boils.

Baking soda is fine too, but it can bring its own minerally flavor into your foods. So I'd use it sparingly.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#49

Post by skywal_l »

noisy_boy wrote: post #37
AlotOfReading wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C. Botulinum has a complicated life cycle that involves infecting vertebrates, killing them, and then infecting the invertebrates that feed on the body during decomposition. The bacteria don't particularly care about the host and just want it dead as quickly as possible so they can get on with their real hosts. [1] https://doi.org/10.1093/femspd/fty040

Might be interesting to know how vultures deal with this.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/11/25/3665455...

They are not sure as there are various hypotheses apparently:

> He says vulture stomach acid is 10 to 100 times stronger than human stomach acid, "so it seems like the stomach itself is a very harsh environment."

> "Another hypothesis could be that they're actually using the bacteria in the stomach as some sort of probiotics," Hansen says. By having a gut full of a few tolerable species of bacteria, it's possible that those would crowd out other deadly microbes.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#50

Post by d136o »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #46
asguy wrote: post #9

Only two mentions of 'nitrites'? Botulism is the reason we started curing meats with nitrite and nitrate in the first place. Canning is fine, but being able to keep meat at room temperature by just adding common (e.g. available in urine, and celery) chemicals is far more interesting.

so does ham cured with celery also contain nitrites? I've been buying free range ham cured with celery because I thought it was free of nitrites.

I just listened to a podcast episode about this, basically celery cured just means “naturally found” nitrites… which are the same thing as artificial nitrites… they’re just nitrites. (Disclaimer: not a chemist)

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stuff-you-should-know/...

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