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The World's Deadliest Thing

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Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#91

Post by mnw21cam »

bambax wrote: post #79
namdnay wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

defrosting under warm water takes about 5 minutes, if you cook it immediately it's perfectly safe

Very much depends on what you're defrosting. A piece of meat frozeon at -20C will not defrost in 5 minutes under warm water.

It mostly depends on how large (or rather how thick) the chunk is. If you're talking about wafer-thin slices of salmon, then it'll defrost in about 30 seconds in cold water, even if it was frozen at -20C. If you're talking about a whole large turkey, then it'll probably take more than a day.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#92

Post by nfin »

ermir wrote: post #81

Botulism is why you cannot make and keep garlic oil, every time you want to use it you must make a fresh batch.

how do you know that garlic+oil could produce botulism?

I think I haven’t understood what kind of food + low oxygen/low acid + room temperature might create botulism… could you help me understand?

I derived that most of those things are animal related, but garlic+oil is not.

Thanks!!

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#93

Post by kragen »

lkrubner wrote: post #23
sdflhasjd wrote: post #6

Is there a theory for what purpose the Botulinum Toxin evolved for? I don't see that paralyzing your host is particularly useful for a bacterium.

A pathogen's needs will, over time, converge with the needs of its host, but only if the pathogen is only able to survive in one species. When a pathogen is able to feed off of many species, its needs never converge with the needs of any particular host.

Do you mean its needs for reproductive fitness? Only if it's transmitted only from parents to offspring.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#94

Post by traceroute66 »

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…

> 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.

Eeew. No.

Call me old-fashioned but I believe in this thing called seasonality.

I only buy fish that is in season, not farmed, and that is genuinely fresh from reputable suppliers, not supermarket "fresh".

Nice clear bright eyes, clean gills and all that jazz.

There is no substitute for fresh fresh fish. Well, maybe one ... high-quality smoked fish.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#95

Post by Arch-TK »

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…

Okay, so in the past we've used a sous-vide recirculator set to 30°C to quickly defrost fish which had been vacuum sealed (dodged a bullet apparently). I looked into it and the temperature at which it is safe to hold food without risk of toxin production is 3°C and less.

What high-speed defrosting methods are there to replace this? is it okay to just open the fish for 30 minutes, re-seal it and then put it in the recirculator?

Really I'm just concerned about a reliable method of defrosting which doesn't take a week. Putting food from the freezer into the fridge has been a hit-and-miss endeavour sometimes taking up to a week.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#96

Post by BoxOfRain »

traceroute66 wrote: post #94
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…

> 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. Eeew. No. Call me old-fashioned but I believe in this thing called seasonality. I only buy fish that is in season, not farmed, and that is genuinely fresh from reputable suppliers, not supermarket "fresh". Nice clear bright eyes,…

>There is no substitute for fresh fresh fish. Well, maybe one ... high-quality smoked fish.

While I take a bit less of a strong stance on this, I definitely agree there's nothing like properly fresh fish. I used to think I didn't really like mackerel but the truth is that supermarket mackerel can be a bit nasty even off the fish counter, mackerel straight out of the sea and cooked right away is absolutely fantastic.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#97

Post by dredmorbius »

mdp2021 wrote: post #71
Uehreka wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

> be careful if you do it 20 times Probably just a locution, but be careful with that idea about numbers: The probability of remaining in a safe zone of 95% for 20 consecutive times is ~36%. It ( (1-(1/n))^n ) approximates to 1/e. The number of tries to reduce that 95% to a 50% coin toss is 13. It is not fully intuitive. One will put his threshold wherever one may think appropriate, but. A chance of tenth, a hundredt…

NB: This failure of statistical logic also shows up in "100 year storm" statistics.

The actual measurement is "storm with a 1% likelihood of occurring in any one year". The odds of that storm occurring in a century is actually about 63%, and of occurring in any ten year period, about 10%.

Add to that the fact that the measurement is based on a storm of a given magnitude (usually total rainfall / precipitation, wind speed, storm surge, etc.) occurring, and small changes in the likelihood of such events can dramatically change the rate at which a storm of a given magnitude is observed. If you live in/near flood-prone areas, keep an eye on, e.g., changes in what are considered flood stages (say, as flood control structures are added or removed), or to likelihoods of events of a given precipitation level or stream height.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#98

Post by ermir »

nfin wrote: post #92
ermir wrote: post #81

Botulism is why you cannot make and keep garlic oil, every time you want to use it you must make a fresh batch.

how do you know that garlic+oil could produce botulism? I think I haven’t understood what kind of food + low oxygen/low acid + room temperature might create botulism… could you help me understand? I derived that most of those things are animal related, but garlic+oil is not. Thanks!!

The botulism spores are abundant in soil, but they don't get activated unless the conditions are met. The main condition is an environment without oxygen and the presence of proteins, which happen both in sealed oil-garlic containers.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#99

Post by dredmorbius »

bambax wrote: post #25

> a disease that had been coined Botulism, after bolutus, the Latin for sausage [typo] If the author is reading, sausage in Latin is botellus, or sometimes botulus, but not bolutus.

From the Online Etymological Dictionary:

"poisoning caused by eating imperfectly preserved food," 1878, from German Botulismus (1878), coined in German from Medieval Latin botulus "sausage" (see bowel) + -ismus suffix of action or state (see -ism). The sickness first was traced to eating tainted sausage (sausage poisoning was an old name for it).

https://www.etymonline.com/word/botulism

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#100

Post by dredmorbius »

kcplate wrote: post #4
paxys wrote: post #3

That contrast makes the page unreadable for me.

Reader view used to irritate me but I have gown to appreciate it for just this reason

You can modify the appearance of Reader View on Firefox using a userContent.css file.

I've modified fonts, margins, and a few other bits.

Unfortunately, borken semantic page struture still persists, but the net result is an improvement in many cases.

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