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Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)

journals.plos.org

281–290 of 495 posts

Re: Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)

#281
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really well put, and I think is exactly what strikes me as off about these threads as opposed to what I'm used to on HN. It really seems like these conspiracy theories are way more indulged here than they would in any other thread. I'm with you, also from Germany and very rarely eat meat (my rule of thumb is that if it's already dead and in front of me, I'm not going to save anyone by throwing it away -- think…

> if it's already dead and in front of me, I'm not going to save anyone by throwing it away That's a sane and reflected reasoning that many of us could take as an example from time to time. I myself have heavily reduced meat consumption, too, though probably not as much as you have. The best thing to do as a starter IMHO is to reduce the "unnecessary" things: Cold cuts can easily replaced by other - vegetarian - alte…

> The only problem I see with this is that then meat becomes the food of the rich

It already is, poor people in poor countries eat very little meat even though they would like to eat more.

Re: Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a strong cultural component when it comes to disgust. People in many parts of the world eat insects regularly as a part of their standard diets. In the US, most people don't think of honey or lobster (aquatic arthropod) or carmine (red food coloring) as "insect food" but these items most definitely fit in that category and are commonly consumed. In the past, people in the west found yogurt, sushi, and lobster…

Those same populations have much higher parasitic infections as well. That's the whole point of the study on which we are commenting.

The greyness of your comment possibly indicates it has been deemed bigoted. It's relevant regardless. The subject of human parasitology certainly shows geographic and cultural distributions. One example is a strange case of neurocysticercosis, perhaps the most common cause of epilepsy and result of taenia solium or pork tapeworm. The case I recall involved a Jewish family, all infected and symptomatic. Doctors had difficulty discovering the source due to both assumed rarity of the disease and the preclusion of pork in a kosher diet. The eureka was the servant, who did not practice a kosher diet. Because this worm can lay 80k eggs per day, all of which are small and sticky, they tend to accumulate under fingernails, presumably as a result of grooming and outlier of hygiene. There are numerous parasites that are either or both geographically and culturally concentrated. In the US, neurocysticercosis is most common in California. According to sources not my own, this is due to the larger population of individuals who come from areas where swine handling is more common, along with certain mitigation practices or lack thereof. The French have a higher rate of toxoplasmosis, possibly due to, eg steak tartare. There are many examples.

Re: Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)

#283
post #196
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I have noticed that with a lot of HN threads that resolve around eating meat. It gets to a level of tinfoil-hat that I'm absolutely not used to on this website, but maybe I've simply not been here long enough. The other day someone unironically said they feel there is "a war on protein" going on, because apparently it's more likely to have an "elite intellectual class" in the background, scheming to deprive us…

HN has always been tolerant of this kind of fringe, it comes with the territory of its (right) libertarian bent. The fringe just didn't have as much political potential until a few years ago and has been emboldened to be more open about its views. They've also had years to test out ways to be open about their beliefs while hiding behind a guise of "civility" or "curiosity" and spreading blatant lies only to discard t…

> They've also had years to test out ways to be open about their beliefs while hiding behind a guise of "civility" or "curiosity" and spreading blatant lies only to discard them and move on to the next talking point when caught.

Now who's engaging in conspiracy thinking?

Re: Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I’ll pick the salad over the steak any day, though." In terms of food safety and risk of pathogens, salad is far, far more dangerous than steak.

At least the steak will not be soared in pesticides designed to kill animals

The pesticides are designed to kill insects, but research shows pesticides and their residual byproducts do accumulate in animals that eat the plants treated with pesticides.

Animals also accumulate things like heavy metals and the drugs they are given.

Plants can be washed of pesticides fairly well and they accumulate these chemicals at much lower rates, but meat can’t be washed of what has accumulated in it.

Overall the health outcomes of consuming plants appear to be better than those of consuming meat.

Re: Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read a medical research paper about the resurgence of some nasty parasitic disease in Israel with the breakdown by religious community[1]. Turns what? The stricter the dietary laws for the community were - the less infections occurred. And we're talking about sheep here, which is similar in size to pig. There are might be a confounding variables here though, i.e. some communities are mostly urban, others are mor…

> they used 4 different religions there, but I won't name them in order to not offend anyone. Eh? Given the location, I'd assume Jewish (Orthodox), Muslim, Jewish (Non-Orthodox), Christian, in descending order of dietary rule strictness. Not sure how that would offend anyone; the applicable dietary rules are hardly a secret.

I basically agree with that.

So keep in mind the world eats basically European cuisine. It is for this reason that in Paris yes food is great but nothing is exotic because eg Duck á la Orange is known everywhere (and it was particularly exported in the 20th century, and particularly with the Green Revolution). And it's made to suit Europeans, so it seems like the restrictions are lax but actually European Christian diets are baked into the sanitary codes. So like shellfish. Wilbur Wright died of shellfish, and many others, he was the son of a bishop. The thing is Christianity and especially European Christians dominate the culture around food in the West, have tons of cultural export. So they're the default, so it looks like they don't care. But oh man do they care. When they travel they get special bottled water, say.

And it's the most typical thing to have dietary restrictions, for a long time I avoided fish for mercury while eating crazy doses of fish oil, a brain damage recovery diet, Christians accommodated that. It just never came up as a religious doctrine, it's fine. The Christian usually has idk type 1 diabetes, that's restrictions, or is an athlete, that's restrictions, or is a woman seeking to lose weight that's like 80% of women right there, that's restrictions. Bodybuilders are much more restrictive than Orthodox Jews.

Orthodox Jews seem very restrictive, and yes they totally are, but while it is partly because they make basically no concessions, and are part of a powerful ethnic group in America, meaning they have power everywhere, like newspaper editors, practically if not literally all producers, a good share of politicians, bankers, what else...well they also have been a fractionally small highly persecuted (on-and-off) minority for thousands of years.

In agreement, let me cite the exception that proves the rule: Charterhouse monks. Eat no meat absolutely ever. I think do eat fish, so fish on Fridays is a Christian thing.

Re: Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)

#286
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lastly, disgust is a part of the human immune system. This is the most important bit. Too many "rationalists" who otherwise preach evolution all the time forget to notice that our sense of disgust is also evolved just like everything about us for the purpose of survival and reproduction and is not just some annoying irrational quirk that gets in the way of doing the right thing.

I thought the generally accepted science was that humans can learn disgust reactions socially, so that they are more adaptable on a non-evolutionary timescale. > The disgust system is a psychological mechanism for producing pathogen avoidant behaviour [10–12]. In previous work, we have stressed the universality of disgust, showing that there is much that is similar about disgust responses between animals and humans,…

Social transmission is an evolved trait that is beneficial, and transmitted disgust that prevents disease spread is absolutely one reason it might be beneficial.

Re: Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)

#287

If insects were such a valuable and risk free source of nutrition wouldn't we see a lot more human cultures eating them? They've been around forever, but somehow we share a mostly common disgust for eating bugs. Is it farfetched to assume that perhaps that disgust allowed us to survive.

That's simply not true. The UN FAO estimates that 2B people worldwide consume terrestrial insects regularly in their diets. Add in aquatic insects like shrimp or lobster and that number increases drastically.

No doubt, but I'd be interested to see this figure broken down by country and sorted by GDP.

Re: Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)

#288
post #50

I don’t get why it’s so hard for people to just stop eating animals.

Over the years I've seen several female friends try to stay vegan. One managed a decade before she couldn't put up with the anemia any more. The others quit sooner, because of weight loss, malnutrition, and other issues. It seems humans were evolved to scavenge animals as well as eating plants. It's not just protein, it's iron and fats, and a few other things.

Vegan for ~15 years here. It's important to be thoughtful about nutrition when going that route (I do various supplements 2-3x day). Common pitfalls for people are B vitamins, zinc, and iron (as your friend found out the hard way, perhaps), and there are vegan gummies with these specific vitamins/minerals in them.

Re: Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they used 4 different religions there, but I won't name them in order to not offend anyone. Eh? Given the location, I'd assume Jewish (Orthodox), Muslim, Jewish (Non-Orthodox), Christian, in descending order of dietary rule strictness. Not sure how that would offend anyone; the applicable dietary rules are hardly a secret.

I basically agree with that. So keep in mind the world eats basically European cuisine. It is for this reason that in Paris yes food is great but nothing is exotic because eg Duck á la Orange is known everywhere (and it was particularly exported in the 20th century, and particularly with the Green Revolution). And it's made to suit Europeans, so it seems like the restrictions are lax but actually European Christian d…

If you think the Orthodox can dictate to non-Orthodox you haven’t spent much time in America.

Re: Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)

#290
post #79

Insects are the food of the future. So glad to live in the present.

We'll all live in megacorp apartments eating crickets and own nothing but subscribe to everything.

I will eat crickets when the rentiers do, which is to say, never.
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