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

The impossible predicament of the death newts

crookedtimber.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 192 posts

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#61

Post by lithocarpus »

busterarm wrote: post #40
steezeburger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they had MSG before salt

Who cares? We don't live "before salt". Human use of salt _predates writing_ by about 3000 years. You wouldn't choose to do manual typesetting (or copying books by hand!!!) today either versus alternatives. If you're _just_ looking to add umami flavor to a dish today, you'd be crazy to pick foraging for wild mushrooms over Aji no Moto.

I'm skeptical of any food that humans only started eating since the industrial revolution, including those that are derivatives of or isolated compounds of real food. Mostly the effects on our bodies are not well studied. I haven't specifically read studies on msg though.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#62

Post by mbg721 »

isk517 wrote: post #34
crazygringo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even that much. A couple of cups of mushrooms -- a generous helping as a side dish -- has around 30 calories. All the significant calories comes from the oil or butter they're cooked in. I'm not sure it was ever about avoiding starvation, but rather just a different flavor to eat sometimes. When you're always eating the same local ingredients, food can get boring pretty quick. It's the same appeal of spices -- yo…

Mushrooms add to the umami flavour, before salt was easily accessible this was probably your best bet for easy flavour enhansement

Salt is more fundamental for the body than just flavoring. I'd hesitate even to call it a spice. That said, umami ingredients like mushrooms and seaweed are certainly used together with salt.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#63

Post by imp0cat »

sbierwagen wrote: post #18
ryanblakeley wrote: post #9

I once took a group of young people foraging for mushrooms in the Willamette valley on a farm that had loads of these newts. I warned every body not to touch them. After preparing dinner, one girl got very ill, as did I, while other people who ate the dinner were fine. I was so worried I'd mis-identified some mushrooms. But turns out she had handled one of these newts and the bacteria had transferred to the mushrooms…

Eating wild mushrooms has got to have the worst cost/benefit ratio outside of wingsuiting or recreational bear wrestling. In exchange for hours of study and a significant risk of death you get fifty to a hundred calories of food. Probably made sense in the tenth century when the average person was one bad harvest away from starvation, but it seems harder to justify today.

Well then, what do you think about eating fugu?

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#64

Post by waynecochran »

titanomachy wrote: post #19

Newt poisoning of humans must be rare, I’ve lived in this region my whole life and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this!

I live in the PNW and I see hundreds of garter snakes, some newts, but never a Rough-Skinned Newt. I had no idea such a creature was around here.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#65

Post by eszed »

jaggederest wrote: post #52
ryanblakeley wrote: post #9

I once took a group of young people foraging for mushrooms in the Willamette valley on a farm that had loads of these newts. I warned every body not to touch them. After preparing dinner, one girl got very ill, as did I, while other people who ate the dinner were fine. I was so worried I'd mis-identified some mushrooms. But turns out she had handled one of these newts and the bacteria had transferred to the mushrooms…

I'm honestly amazed I didn't get tetrodotoxin poisoning when I was a kid. We used to play with these rough skinned newts all the time, they were everywhere, and nobody was especially diligent about washing their hands.

Same! I even kept a couple of them in a terrarium. And, my dad was a PhD in zoology, so it wasn't like I lacked access to expert advice. It was a "they have toxins on their skin, so... Eh, maybe wash your hands a bit", not "wash your hands or the whole family dies" level of concern.

Makes me wonder if a) these toxicity stories are exaggerated, b) it's really regionally specific, c) toxicity has radically increased in the past ~40 years since I was playing with newts, or d) we got dumb lucky.

I loved this article. I didn't know anything about the newt / snake interaction; I wonder if my dad did.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#66

Post by steezeburger »

busterarm wrote: post #40
steezeburger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they had MSG before salt

Who cares? We don't live "before salt". Human use of salt _predates writing_ by about 3000 years. You wouldn't choose to do manual typesetting (or copying books by hand!!!) today either versus alternatives. If you're _just_ looking to add umami flavor to a dish today, you'd be crazy to pick foraging for wild mushrooms over Aji no Moto.

Well you were replying to a comment about why we foraged for them before salt broski. Doesn't really make sense to bring up the price of something that wasn't isolated then.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#67

Post by fwip »

James_K wrote: post #28
deadbabe wrote: post #12

Could being a toxic or venemous creature be bad for survivability of a species in the long term if smarter creatures discover you’re lethal and thus become determined to kill your kind on sight?

What would be the advantage of that? Killing the animal comes with the risk of being poisoned, and no reward. It's best to just ignore them.

In theory, you're killing a species that competes with your preferred prey species for habitat or food, which could mean more abundant food for you and your kin in the future.

I am not aware of any species besides humans that do this, though.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#68

Post by SoftTalker »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #44
busterarm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risk of death is a huge cost/downside. I've known several people poor enough to optimize all of their eating around cost per calorie. 30-50 calories is basically only worth your consideration if it's free at that point. If that came with a high risk of illness/death it's not even worth considering.

Ironically, optimizing around cost per calorie is, at least in most places in the US, a great way to have horrible health and die an early death.

Starve now or die later is not a difficult choice for most people.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#69

Post by tekla »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #44
busterarm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risk of death is a huge cost/downside. I've known several people poor enough to optimize all of their eating around cost per calorie. 30-50 calories is basically only worth your consideration if it's free at that point. If that came with a high risk of illness/death it's not even worth considering.

Ironically, optimizing around cost per calorie is, at least in most places in the US, a great way to have horrible health and die an early death.

No its not. This is such a weird talking point completely divorced from reality. It's the complete opposite.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#70

Post by TechDebtDevin »

sbierwagen wrote: post #18
ryanblakeley wrote: post #9

I once took a group of young people foraging for mushrooms in the Willamette valley on a farm that had loads of these newts. I warned every body not to touch them. After preparing dinner, one girl got very ill, as did I, while other people who ate the dinner were fine. I was so worried I'd mis-identified some mushrooms. But turns out she had handled one of these newts and the bacteria had transferred to the mushrooms…

Eating wild mushrooms has got to have the worst cost/benefit ratio outside of wingsuiting or recreational bear wrestling. In exchange for hours of study and a significant risk of death you get fifty to a hundred calories of food. Probably made sense in the tenth century when the average person was one bad harvest away from starvation, but it seems harder to justify today.

Acccording to America's poisen center these are the numbers:

Calls to poisen control concerning mushrooms: 8,294 Of those calls, 4862 were of unknown origin, only like 3-400 are confirmed dangerous wild grown mushrooms, 2k+ are psylocibin. 3-400 is probably (This was a quick scan)

https://piper.filecamp.com/uniq/dPhtQdu6eCQnIQ5R.pdf [page 174-175]

Post reply on HN