481–490 of 495 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is eating bugs to satisfy the scalability and reporducibility goals of a software developer who spends hundreds of billions lobbying governments to change what i eat because it meets both his pseudo moral and investment portfolio agendas "the upward course of human history."?
I was referring to the general complaint of the parent poster about how people feel enjoying pleasures is wrong.
It's wild to me to see such an anti-insect eating tirade on HN. Just observe the comments here: almost every highly upvoted comment is anti-insect, and the comments that express any positive sentiment towards eating insect is flooded with angry responses. Bizarre.
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…
Now my mind is wondering if insects could be a source and transmitter of prion diseases. Perhaps the proteins in bugs don’t line up with humans though.
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmissible_spongiform_encep...
There is possibility that ostriches can have some form spongiform encephalopathy:
Spongiform encephalopathy in a red-necked ostrich (Struthio camelus) (1991)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1887441/
Luckily, even most mammalian prions have some troubles jumping between mammal species.
For example, sheep scrapie can be transmitted to primates in laboratory, but to date considered non-transmissible to humans in nature (fortunately, as it is insidious and regulations on sheep and goats slaughter are laxer than on bovine):
Transmission of scrapie prions to primate after an extended silent incubation period
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4485159/
"However, one cynomolgus macaque exhibited obvious neurological signs more than 9 years (110 months) after intracerebral exposure to a high dose of a sheep classical scrapie isolate (25 mg of brain)."
BSE prions are much more infectious, not only for humans and ruminants, but for other species too, for example, cats and hamsters.
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Personally, I don't expect fish or insects to be sources of infection, only potential (if relatively unlikely) transmitters.
That said, apparently nearly everything can be transmitter for prions:
* Fish have prion proteins too (currently, no fish prion diseases are known):
Fish models in prion biology: underwater issues
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20933080/
"To date, the occurrence of TSEs in lower vertebrates like fish and birds has received only limited attention, despite the fact that these animals possess bona fide PrPs."
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* Birds can transmit prions in their poop, spreading them at great distances (keep it in mind when clearing bird feces):
Crows don't digest prions, may transport them to other locations
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017181250.h...
"Crows fed on prion-infected brains from mice can transmit these infectious agents in their feces and may play a role in the geographic spread of diseases caused by prions, such as chronic wasting disease or scrapie."
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* Insects and parasites can be prion infection vectors:
Could ectoparasites act as vectors for prion diseases?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12786866/
"Fly larvae and mites were exposed to brain-infected material and were readily able to transmit scrapie to hamsters. New lines of evidence have confirmed that adult flies are also able to express prion proteins."
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* Plants are acting as prion vectors:
Grass plants bind, retain, uptake and transport infectious prions
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449294/
"Prions bind to plants and bound-PrPSc efficiently sustain prion replication [...] These results indicate that leaves and roots can efficiently bind PrPSc, which remains able to catalyze PrPC to PrPSc conversion, leading to prion replication. [...] After exposure, plants were extensively washed 5 times with water and animals fed with dried material orally. [...] All animals that ingested prion contaminated leaves and roots developed typical prion disease. Although the incubation times were significantly longer in animals ingesting prions attached to leaves and roots as compared with those fed directly with the brain material, the differences were not as high as one could have expected (Fig. 2A)."
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* Excrements can transmit prions, thus coprophagous animals, insects included, can too:
Transmission and Detection of Prions in Feces
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803675/
"Oral exposure to prion-tainted blood, urine, saliva and feces have been suggested as modes of transmission for CWD and scrapie among herbivores susceptible to these diseases. Both CWD and scrapie infection is thought likely to enter the body through gut-associated lymphoid tissues, in Peyer's patches in the alimentary tract. Moreover, the presence of the infectious isoform of the prion protein, designated PrPSc, in Peyer's patches suggests alimentary shedding of CWD and scrapie prions into feces. [...]
When noninfected Syrian hamsters were cohabitated with Syrian hamsters orally infected with Sc237 prions, we observed 80–100% infection rates within 14 days after oral challenge."
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* Even dust can transmit prions:
Circulation of prions within dust on a scrapie affected farm
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25889731/
"Using protein misfolding cyclic amplification we demonstrate that scrapie PrP(Sc) can be detected within circulating dusts that are present on a farm that is naturally contaminated with sheep scrapie."
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* Even ashes from not sufficiently hot cremation can transmit prions:
Infectivity studies of both ash and air emissions from simulated incineration of scrapie-contaminated tissues
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15575075/
"We investigated the effectiveness of 15 min exposures to 600 and 1000 degrees C in continuous flow normal and starved-air incineration-like conditions to inactivate samples [...] yielded a total of two transmissions among 21 inoculated animals from the ash of a single specimen burned in normal air at 600 degrees C."
I wonder, how bad is prion contamination of the Ganges river in India?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now my mind is wondering if insects could be a source and transmitter of prion diseases. Perhaps the proteins in bugs don’t line up with humans though.
This might explain how wild deer develop prion diseases. My understanding is that they aren't eating the nervous tissues of other animals but perhaps an insect, parasite, or other lifeform is providing the infection.
Grass plants bind, retain, uptake and transport infectious prions
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449294/
"Prions bind to plants and bound-PrPSc efficiently sustain prion replication
Roots and leaves were washed thoroughly and analyzed for the presence of PrPSc by serial PMCA (Morales et al., 2012). The results show that even highly diluted PrPSc can bind to roots and leaves and sustain PrPC conversion (Fig. 1A). [...] However, both roots and leaves capture PrPSc efficiently, even at very small concentrations, equivalent to those present in biological fluids, such as blood and urine (Chen et al., 2010).
Animals can be infected by oral ingestion of prion-contaminated plants
After exposure, plants were extensively washed 5 times with water and animals fed with dried material orally. [...] All animals that ingested prion contaminated leaves and roots developed typical prion disease. Although the incubation times were significantly longer in animals ingesting prions attached to leaves and roots as compared with those fed directly with the brain material, the differences were not as high as one could have expected (Fig. 2A)."
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Something developed sporadic prion disease (in humans its called "Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease": https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29887134/ ), died from it, plants grew on the fertilized land and were eaten by deer, the cycle repeats.
CWD-infected deer shred prions in urine, feces, probably saliva too (the aforementioned paper mentions that this is enough for plant-mediated infection), a trait shared with scrapie-infected sheep, hamsters and, i assume, BSE-infected cows.
Transmission and Detection of Prions in Feces
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803675/
"Oral exposure to prion-tainted blood, urine, saliva and feces have been suggested as modes of transmission for CWD and scrapie among herbivores susceptible to these diseases. Both CWD and scrapie infection is thought likely to enter the body through gut-associated lymphoid tissues, in Peyer's patches in the alimentary tract. Moreover, the presence of the infectious isoform of the prion protein, designated PrPSc, in Peyer's patches suggests alimentary shedding of CWD and scrapie prions into feces. [...]
When noninfected Syrian hamsters were cohabitated with Syrian hamsters orally infected with Sc237 prions, we observed 80–100% infection rates within 14 days after oral challenge."
Also, birds can spread prions in their litter:
Crows don't digest prions, may transport them to other locations
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017181250.h...
"Crows fed on prion-infected brains from mice can transmit these infectious agents in their feces and may play a role in the geographic spread of diseases caused by prions, such as chronic wasting disease or scrapie."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you think the Orthodox can dictate to non-Orthodox you haven’t spent much time in America.
Just a heads-up: You're responding to an ML language model, or possibly to a human giving their best GPT-3 impression.
Also commonly accused of mental illness, you gotta look at both sides of the story.
I guess the reason people are like "no no no no!" is first, truth, second, not being afraid of being accused of bigotry--don't want to be bigoted, but also not willing to err on the side of not being accusable. Just being straight. Then, further you have the act of going through mental illness and coming out of it with a clean bill of health--unheard of. Afterward, hamming it up. I could if desired be totally neurotypical, without medication (I did hear one case of this), n I identified everything that was hosing me. F atoms especially.
But I love my poor beleaguered soul, it's been through so much, why change it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a heads-up: You're responding to an ML language model, or possibly to a human giving their best GPT-3 impression.
> possibly to a human giving their best GPT-3 impression. Also commonly accused of mental illness, you gotta look at both sides of the story. I guess the reason people are like "no no no no!" is first, truth, second, not being afraid of being accused of bigotry--don't want to be bigoted, but also not willing to err on the side of not being accusable. Just being straight. Then, further you have the act of going throug…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> both seem to carry plenty of baggage Salads can literally kill you via the listeria they bring.
The majority of foodborne illness and death in the US is due to animal products. [1] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution-image.html#f...
The data is also from 2008. Things have likely changed since US households and food prep has been heavily focused on cleanliness around animal products but nowhere near as much focus is on produce. The 'pre-washed' pre-packaged produce is especially risky.
It's not surprising... I mean look at them. There is an evolutionary reason why insects look disgusting to us. Same reason why feces look disgusting - We're not supposed to eat that.
However they look to their parents when doing it, or about to do it and are generally quite good at picking up on even subtle facial clues. Since kids can easily be 1 or 2-shot learners about stuff like this it's very difficult to separate innate from learned.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
with pair production I assume you mean electron positron pairs? how is that harmful in food? the lifetime of a positron wouldn't be very long, or is the concern free radicals?
as I thought pair production is irrelevant in food irradiation the tolerable limits in particle energies and doses are very high for truly tiny increases in induced radioactivity. its really marginal as long as the very conservative limits are respected. see for example: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/te_1287_prn.p...