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

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

#211

Post by VBprogrammer »

justthinkhn wrote: post #122
VBprogrammer wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think taboos are in anyway useful in determining health implications. For example, are dogs or horses in any way materially worse than cows or sheep for people to eat? Why are the French happy to eat frogs and snails? I'm reasonably certain the idea of certain food being taboo is almost completely due to cultural norms.

Quoted post unavailable.

I don't believe we have any such instinct, we only have cultural norms.

I can't imagine any ethical experiment which would adequately separate the two factors. It's difficult to raise a child without influence of their surrounding culture.

Predators in the wild tend to eat the vital organs of their prey first, yet for a great many people eating organ meats is gross.

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

#212

Post by donkeyd »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #55
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> both seem to carry plenty of baggage Salads can literally kill you via the listeria they bring.

I’ll pick the salad over the steak any day, though. Above all I’d love to see better technology and attention for food safety, though. It’s stunning to see how many people suffer from food born illness today — something I’d thought was far more under control up until my mid 30s. It’s better under many circumstances and I’m not going to pretend it’s anything like it has been in the past. However, we could do much, muc…

> stunning to see how many people suffer from food born illness today

The way I see people handle food, I'm not surprised at all. People leave lunch meat out of the fridge for sometimes hours, cut the fungus off things and eat the rest (which is ok sometimes, but often isn't), rinse chicken breast in the sink, use the same tools and cutting boards to handle uncooked and cooked food... And I can keep going.

So many people have no clue how food should be handled, or willfully ignore what they do know.

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

#213

Post by mypastself »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #210
mypastself wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was removed from the website after the uproar, 4chan crazies or not. It’s preserved here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... The author later clarified they were predicting a possible future, “for better or for worse”. They didn’t outright deny they supported that specific idea, though, nor does it directly contradict WEF’s stated goals (although it’s on a much shorter timelin…

So the secret conspiracy is clean energy, self-driving taxis, protected environment, and more leisure time due to increased automation? And when intentionally publishing the plan for this secret conspiracy, on their website, cunningly disguised as a fictional take on the near future, they accidentally left in bits where they worried about digital surveillance which luckly the anti-semites on 4Chan noticed, and saved…

Completely agreed. The conspiracy theories are both stupid and evil. But I don’t think being vary of the WEF or their ideas is completely misguided.

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

#214

Post by lovemenot »

nivertech wrote: post #206
ls-lah_33 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't cooking solve this problem? Rare meat is problematic for this reason. Also my understanding is that some traditions in Judaism and Islam even for allow insect consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy_in_humans#Rejectio...

Kashrut doesn't says that one need to cook meat, the only exception is being liver, which requires special preparation. So beef carpaccio, or steak tartar are perfectly Kosher. Exception are Ethiopian Jews who traditionally don't eat popular Ethiopian raw meat dishes. IMO if something can't be eaten raw - it's best to be avoided in any form.

>> if something can't be eaten raw - it should be avoid in any form.

Some foods are changed by cooking. For example, kidney beans must never be eaten raw, but are tasy and nutritious cooked.

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

#215

Post by hsn915 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #195
hsn915 wrote: 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,…

How does this invalidate the point?

The people who are using their brain to override their disgust system are probably doing something that's extremely maladaptive.

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

#217

Post by nivertech »

noduerme wrote: post #189
nivertech wrote: post #109

Larger animals can be inspected individually to find pathogens or diseases. Insects are so small that it's practically impossible to inspect each individual organism. You can do sampling of the batch, but the odds of missing bad ones are still high. Same with the fruits and vegetables, some are easy to inspect, others are almost impossible, or impossible to clean. There are kosher (insect-free) versions of lettuce an…

Religious laws like kosher and halal laws didn't develop from disgust. They engrained disgust to steer people away from contracting trichinosis. That was an exceedingly practical way of putting out a public health message prior to the advent of mass literacy. When my Jewish grandparents came from Ukraine to the US in the 1930s they'd never even considered or been presented with the possibility of eating pork... so fa…

The truth is we don't know why and how they developed. I wrote about it here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32507527

Similarly like only after living 7 years in Israel I discovered that "white meat" is an euphemism for pork.

Also the reality is much more complex. We tend to project our current understanding into the past. The reality of keeping Kashrut back then wasn't as we understand it today.

--

The lifestyle of Eastern European Jews from the beginning of the 20th century until World War II - between keeping the mitzvot and secularization [Hebrew]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfrFQH6RzZc

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

#218

Post by nivertech »

lovemenot wrote: post #214
nivertech wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kashrut doesn't says that one need to cook meat, the only exception is being liver, which requires special preparation. So beef carpaccio, or steak tartar are perfectly Kosher. Exception are Ethiopian Jews who traditionally don't eat popular Ethiopian raw meat dishes. IMO if something can't be eaten raw - it's best to be avoided in any form.

>> if something can't be eaten raw - it should be avoid in any form. Some foods are changed by cooking. For example, kidney beans must never be eaten raw, but are tasy and nutritious cooked.

It's probably best to avoid all beans altogether.

The only exceptions are: coffee beans for espresso and cocoa beans for dark chocolate ;)

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

#219

Post by ZeroGravitas »

hsn915 wrote: post #215
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

How does this invalidate the point? The people who are using their brain to override their disgust system are probably doing something that's extremely maladaptive.

It literally says that what we evolved was a system that can learn that something is bad via society like eating dogs and horses vs eating pigs and cows. The pig eaters and the dog eaters aren't overriding anything, because they didn't learn it in the first place.

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

#220

Post by blablablerg »

ramblerman wrote: post #203

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.

A lot of animals do eat insects however, so it is not that they are dangerous a priori. Our evolutionary ancestors, small mammals/primates, most likely did eat insects. We somehow evolved them out of our diet. Strange actually, since they are quite abundant.
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