Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The World's Deadliest Thing

the-angry-chef.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 231 posts

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#161

Post by Tomte »

causi wrote: post #41

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 mix…

A few hints:

"A baby-aspirin-size amount of powdered toxin is enough to make the global supply of Botox for a year. That little bit is derived from a larger primary source, which is locked down somewhere in the continental U.S.—no one who isn’t on a carefully guarded list of government and company officials knows exactly where. Occasionally (the company won’t say how frequently), some of the toxin (the company won’t say how much) is shipped in secrecy to the lab in Irvine for research. Even less frequently, a bit of the toxin is transported by private jet, with guards aboard, to the plant in Ireland."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-26/inside-fo...

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#162

Post by hamstercat »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #90
bambax wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not do that. Defrosting should be done slowly in the fridge. Or you can cook frozen food directly. But do not defrost at or about room temperature, this will breed bacteria like crazy.

eep, my girlfriend insists on leaving meat out on the counter top for most of the day to defrost. I mean it feels cold to the touch still when we're ready to cook, and everything is cooked thoroughly, and we've never gotten sick yet but. Still dubious. Putting it in the fridge to defrost takes 24 hours or so though.

Put it in cold water in the fridge, it goes pretty fast that way. It has saved my bacon a few times (both literally and figuratively).

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#163

Post by Karunamon »

traceroute66 wrote: post #113
Stratoscope wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photographers have a saying: The best camera is the one you have with you. I have a really nice camera with some excellent lenses, but my recent photos that I'm most proud of and enjoy the most were taken with my Galaxy Note 8, a several-year-old smartphone. Of course the kind of fresh fish you're talking about is far superior to the Costco bag of sockeye salmon I have in the freezer. But sometimes, it's getting near…

> American cheese on fish is gross American cheese is gross full stop. ;-) As is American chocolate.

European chocolate tastes dull.

Snark aside, it's about what you grew up with. Fascinating video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J44svaQc5WY

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#164

Post by raisedbyninjas »

foobarian wrote: post #145
antognini wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I cold smoke meat so I need to be especially careful about this. The good news is, even though the spores are very hardy and can survive boiling at sea level atmospheric pressure, the botulism toxin (i.e. the chemical produced by the germs that does the actual damage) is easy to destroy by cooking over 85 degrees C.

Are botulism spores found inside meat or just the surface? 85C in the center will overcook the meats I cook.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#165

Post by athenot »

MertsA wrote: post #82
chadcmulligan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you read closely the ingredients don't list celery, they list "celery seed extract". They're extracting the nitrates, it's just a ploy to avoid having to list nitrates in the ingredients but still use it. Next to the statement saying "No added nitrates!" there will be a tiny asterisk adding "except those naturally present (and extracted and concentrated) in celery seeds."

Similar trick with "no sugar added" in juices, but you can take grape or apple juice, evaporate a lot of the water till it forms a syrup, then add that syrup to juices and still be able to sell the result as "100% pure fruit juice, no sugar added".

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#166

Post by brutusborn »

ddek wrote: post #158
cs702 wrote: post #153

What a fantastic find of an article! It's not every day that I get to read about a microbe so deadly that a small jar would be enough to kill all of humanity , so difficult to weaponize that no nation or group has ever been able to build weapons with it, so important to our modern food system that it has altered the taste of almost every packaged food we eat, and so widely used for cosmetic facial procedures that eve…

> Doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo made a few attempts to deploy it at US military bases in the 1980s, but were so shambolically unsuccessful that their attacks went unnoticed by authorities. Is a wonderful sentence.

My favourite is the last line of this passage:

> It is of course deeply ironic that many celebrities who publicly advocated a clean living, chemical-free lifestyle, were also early adopters of a treatment that involves injecting the deadliest substance on earth into your face (looking at you, Paltrow). If any of them were surprised at this seeming paradox, they certainly didn’t show it.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#167

Post by giantg2 »

One thing not mentioned is cooking destroys the bacteria and it's toxin. I forget the exact times for temperatures, but it's something like 212F for 5 minutes or 180F for 10 minutes.

Also, why is infant botulism an issue with honey but not other other things? The spores are everywhere and cooking does not kill the spores.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#168

Post by baobabKoodaa »

bambax wrote: post #70
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the food need to warm up to room temperature before bacteria would breed like crazy? If you defrost it from frozen to cold-but-defrosted, shouldn't you be ok, even if the surrounding air is room temperature?

> If you defrost it from frozen to cold-but-defrosted, shouldn't you be ok, even if the surrounding air is room temperature Yes, that's my point. If you defrost in the fridge it's ok. If you defrost at room temperature then it's dangerous. It's not extremely dangerous. Many people do it every day and don't die. But it's better not to.

No, what I meant was, if you defrost it at room temperature, it will not instantly warm up to room temperature - it will slowly warm up. You're not forced to leave it on the counter until it reaches room temperature, you can choose to use it before that point (even though it is surrounded by room-temperature air). It's possible to have a less-than-room-temperature fish inside a room that is in room temperature.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#169

Post by quartesixte »

traceroute66 wrote: post #111
raverbashing wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hope so! Flash freezing kills parasites (Sure, it's not an issue if you cook it thoroughly before consumption, but still)

> We hope so! Flash freezing kills parasites It depends where you are. If you are in a Western country, then yes, "sashimi grade fish" equals "frozen". If you are in Japan, then no. Its all to do with the understanding of fish and its handling. In the West its all commoditised, quantity over quality. In Japan, they have a deeply rooted fish culture, a focus on quality and are obsessive over food hygiene. So in Japan…

> Fun fact, salmon sushi/sashimi is a Western thing. The Japanese don't eat it because the parasite risk in Salmon is so much higher than any other fish.

All the conveyor belt sushi chains I’ve eaten at definitely had salmon nigiri on the menu. In fact, they had a wider variety of salmon than what is commonly found in the US. It is most definitely a thing Japanese people eat because otherwise there wouldn’t be five menu items dedicated to just salmon at every major conveyorbelt sushi chain.

Re: The World's Deadliest Thing

#170

Post by FishGuy »

urthor wrote: post #105
Stratoscope wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photographers have a saying: The best camera is the one you have with you. I have a really nice camera with some excellent lenses, but my recent photos that I'm most proud of and enjoy the most were taken with my Galaxy Note 8, a several-year-old smartphone. Of course the kind of fresh fish you're talking about is far superior to the Costco bag of sockeye salmon I have in the freezer. But sometimes, it's getting near…

Isn't practically everything you see in a fish market flash frozen anyway? Afaik there's very little fresh fish going around, period. It's all frozen on the boat.

At least in the US, a significant amount of the fish you eat in high end restaurants, sushi restaurants and fish markets is never frozen.

It is packed in ice and kept very cold, but not frozen.

Supermarkets are more likely to stock frozen/previously frozen. Lots of commodity seafood is frozen when caught.

Source: Spent a season offshore fishing for swordfish/tuna. Worked in the warehouses that unloaded and shipped the same. Drove the truck that delivered the fish.

Post reply on HN