Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio or
Speaker 1: Hitchham and today we are answering the question why does
Speaker 1: frog taste like chicken? Or why does alligator or rabbit
Speaker 1: for that matter. Those are all very different animals, and
Speaker 1: yet people say they all taste like poultry. To verify this,
Speaker 1: we're going to do a taste test, and then we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to several experts, including a couple of
Speaker 1: meat scientists and a biologist. It's going to take us
Speaker 1: through millions of years of evolution to find out where
Speaker 1: all meat comes from. So apologies to vegans, but get
Speaker 1: ready to get to the meat of the matter as
Speaker 1: we answer the question why does frog taste like chicken?
Speaker 2: Hey?
Speaker 1: Everyone, Okay, In this episode, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: deep dive into what makes meat taste to way it does.
Speaker 1: But first I wanted to find out if it really
Speaker 1: is true that so many different animals taste like chicken.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of a recurring joke to have
Speaker 1: someone eat an unusual kind of meat and then say, hmm,
Speaker 1: taste like chicken. So in the name of science, I
Speaker 1: decided to try this out. And to do this, I
Speaker 1: started by going to a specialty meat store here in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. I'm standing outside a butcher shop called Harmony Farms,
Speaker 1: and outside I see signs of turkey, chicken, lamb, buffalo, venison, rabbit, peasant, quail, deer, elk.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go inside.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking to buy some meat that people say
Speaker 1: taste like chicken.
Speaker 3: On top of my hand, trying to think rabbit. They
Speaker 3: say it tastes like chicken. Rattlesteaks another one. But this
Speaker 3: is legal to sell in California. You can get in Nevada,
Speaker 3: but not in California.
Speaker 2: I've heard alligator meat also tastes like chicken.
Speaker 3: I want to say, that's more like a fishy taste.
Speaker 4: Okay, but we do have that.
Speaker 3: Also, I don't have a customer that bought some. She's
Speaker 3: a chef from downtown LA. She bought alligator to make
Speaker 3: the beach out of it.
Speaker 5: That's interesting.
Speaker 2: What about a frog? Do you have frog?
Speaker 3: We also have frog in that one. Consider that like
Speaker 3: another fishy taste because you can see off the bat
Speaker 3: texture is real white and it looks like fish.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so frog, alligator? Have you tried these meats?
Speaker 6: I tried.
Speaker 3: I like rabbit it's pretty good. It's like a white
Speaker 3: meat you can fry, you can do a soup.
Speaker 2: I think I will take all the ones you put
Speaker 2: it up.
Speaker 3: Do you think some seasoning, maybe some lemon pepper seasoning,
Speaker 3: or you know, salt and peppers also good?
Speaker 5: So you want to take the meat you don't want
Speaker 5: to with like a right good thickness. Thank you, yes, sir?
Speaker 1: All right, exotic meats secured. The next thing I needed
Speaker 1: to do was to do a taste test. So I
Speaker 1: took each kind of meat and cooked it. I sprinkled
Speaker 1: the little salt, little corn starch, and then I roasted
Speaker 1: them and for tasters, I decided to recruit my kids.
Speaker 1: That's because A I did this the night before the
Speaker 1: edit for this episode was due, and they were the
Speaker 1: only ones willing to eat a bunch of mystery meats
Speaker 1: late at night, and b because kids are notoriously honest
Speaker 1: about what they think when it comes to food.
Speaker 2: If you're a parent, and I think you.
Speaker 1: Know what I'm talking about. So here's how that experiment went. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you four meats and you're just gonna
Speaker 1: tell me what do you think of it?
Speaker 7: Okay?
Speaker 1: Very dark?
Speaker 5: Yeah, what do you think very extra quish? Oh, it
Speaker 5: was like very hard.
Speaker 6: It's like an overpowering like gamey game me.
Speaker 5: Tastes tastes like chicken. Does not taste like chicken. Chicken.
Speaker 6: Probably the rabbit or the alligator alligator meat.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that was the alligatory.
Speaker 1: Now I can.
Speaker 6: Say, okay, it's just a lot better. Very chicken, very chicken,
Speaker 6: chicken chicken like the texture yea, the taste and.
Speaker 5: Taste that is actually chicken.
Speaker 1: Oh, just kidding, it's not one.
Speaker 5: It's rabbit. Let's have cannibalism. No, this is probably the
Speaker 5: frog meat.
Speaker 8: Yup, what do you think it is very mushy? No,
Speaker 8: how about the taste chicken. Taste tas like chicken. That
Speaker 8: was actually chicken. Okay, last one.
Speaker 5: Tastes like chicken. What does it look like?
Speaker 4: Frog remains taste more like chicken than the others.
Speaker 5: Tastes more like chicken than the chicken. Yeah. So the
Speaker 5: alligator meat definitely tastes like chicken. Tastes like overcooked. Okay.
Speaker 5: What do you think of your dad experimenting?
Speaker 7: I'm sewing.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: I was pretty surprised by these results. So to recap,
Speaker 1: alligator doesn't quite taste like chicken. Rabbit could totally pass
Speaker 1: his chicken, and frog apparently tastes more like chicken than chicken.
Speaker 1: And this is surprising because all these animals are pretty
Speaker 1: far away from each other in the evolutionary tree of life.
Speaker 1: I mean, a chicken is a bird, frogs are amphibians,
Speaker 1: alligators are reptiles, and rabbits are mammals. They couldn't be
Speaker 1: more different from each other, and yet they all taste
Speaker 1: fairly similar.
Speaker 2: How can that be?
Speaker 1: To get to the bottom of this, I reached out
Speaker 1: to a couple of meat experts. The first is Professor
Speaker 1: John Gonzalez.
Speaker 4: My name is doctor John Michael Gonzalez. I am a
Speaker 4: professor at the University of Georgia and the Department of
Speaker 4: Animal Dairy Sciences. My special reality is muscle bio ging
Speaker 4: and meat science. So we study anything from embryo development
Speaker 4: all the way through the powder rays livestock species to
Speaker 4: produce poadable and nutritious muscle products for consumers to eat.
Speaker 4: And so I've been doing this around thirteen years now professionally.
Speaker 1: Okay, So my thinking going into this was that what
Speaker 1: people think of as meat is usually the muscles of
Speaker 1: the animal and so I wanted to know, how is
Speaker 1: the muscle of say a frog or a rabbit different
Speaker 1: than the muscle of say a chicken. Okay, so for
Speaker 1: those of us that are not familiar, meat is usually
Speaker 1: the muscle of the animals. Do all animals use the
Speaker 1: same muscles?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question. I would say, for the
Speaker 4: most part, most animals on the earth do have the
Speaker 4: same type of skeleton muscle. And so when I think
Speaker 4: about our livestock species and anything birds, cattle, pigs, deep,
Speaker 4: you know, my dogs that are there, the overall principle,
Speaker 4: it's the same of how muscle contraction works, how the
Speaker 4: muscles put together. There is a colleague that I had
Speaker 4: from Kansas State University, and she studied the fruit fly
Speaker 4: in fly muscles, and they had the same exact biology,
Speaker 4: and so I would say, yes, for the most part,
Speaker 4: they're all exactly the same.
Speaker 1: Wow, So maybe we should be asking whether fly meat
Speaker 1: tastes the same as chicken too.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't even know how you would be able to
Speaker 4: collect that much fly meat. I guess sure mostly must
Speaker 4: have eaten a fly once or twice in our lives
Speaker 4: of accident. So my hypothesis would be it would taste
Speaker 4: the same as chicken.
Speaker 9: All right, this is.
Speaker 1: A really big clue about the mystery we're trying to
Speaker 1: solve today. As different as animals like alligators, birds, raccoons, snakes,
Speaker 1: even fruit flies and dinosaurs are their meat or mussels
Speaker 1: are kind of the same. Can you dig a little
Speaker 1: bit deeper. You mentioned muscle structure. Can you give us
Speaker 1: a breakdown of what muscle is for all of these
Speaker 1: different animals.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, the whole muscle that we're used to seeing
Speaker 4: the steak in the grocery retail case that is comprised
Speaker 4: of many bundles. Those muscle bundles are composed of muscle fibers.
Speaker 1: So the basic unit of muscle is the muscle fiber.
Speaker 1: Some interesting facts about muscle fibers are that they're the
Speaker 1: only cells in animals and in your body with more
Speaker 1: than one nucleus. Every other cell has one nucleus each,
Speaker 1: but muscle fibers can have hundreds of nuclei. Also, the
Speaker 1: number of muscle cells you or any animal is born
Speaker 1: with is the number of muscle cells they're going to
Speaker 1: have for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 4: Your muscle cell numbers determined that birth are certainly at
Speaker 4: depending on species. So I always tell students to compare
Speaker 4: me to the rock. He probably has a lot more
Speaker 4: muscle cells than I do. Because I don't know, I
Speaker 4: blame my mom, I guess, so she hears it should
Speaker 4: be mad at me. But but yeah, I say, my
Speaker 4: mom didn't give me a lot of muscle sell and
Speaker 4: I will admit to you, Yes, I do not work out.
Speaker 4: So that's part of the small too.
Speaker 2: No, no, it's biology. I taken solid. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 2: your fault.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 1: So inside muscle fibers are repeated bundles of long proteins
Speaker 1: called actin and myocin. You might have heard of these.
Speaker 1: They pull and slide past each other, and that is
Speaker 1: how muscles contract and create a force. These two proteins
Speaker 1: are the workhorse of all movement in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 1: All animals basically use these two proteins, and that includes
Speaker 1: animals as diverse as jellyfish, octopuses, elephants, hyenas and ticks, slugs, salamanders, pterodactyls, whales,
Speaker 1: all animals. We'll get to why all animals have the
Speaker 1: same muscles later in the program, but this is one
Speaker 1: reason frogs tastes like chicken. The meat is basically made
Speaker 1: of the same proteins. If you were to strip down
Speaker 1: the meat of any animal on Earth down to the
Speaker 1: proteins acting and lycin, they would all taste the same.
Speaker 1: Now you're probably thinking, but orgey, then what makes beef
Speaker 1: taste like beef or pork tastes like pork? And you
Speaker 1: still haven't answered why specifically frogs tastes like chicken. Well,
Speaker 1: when we come back, we'll answer all of these questions
Speaker 1: and trust me, we'll serve it to you. Well done,
Speaker 1: so stay with us. You're listening to sign stuff and
Speaker 1: we're back.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 1: We talked about how all animals use the same two
Speaker 1: proteins myocin and actin to build their muscles, which means
Speaker 1: they should all taste the same. Everything should taste like chicken.
Speaker 1: But clearly and thankfully, if you like meat, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: Lamb doesn't taste like turkey, which doesn't taste like fish
Speaker 1: or snake. So what is it about the different meats
Speaker 1: that make them taste the way they do? I asked
Speaker 1: doctor Gonzalaz this question. Okay, let's get into the topic
Speaker 1: of taste in meat. What makes meat taste a certain way.
Speaker 4: So surprisingly you don't have anything to do with the
Speaker 4: miralofibular or the mussel protein. It has to do with
Speaker 4: the fat. So it's all fat driven. Okay. So chickens,
Speaker 4: a private example, should not have a lot of fat
Speaker 4: in it, and so it's a lie lean source of protein,
Speaker 4: but doesn't have the most fat in the world, and
Speaker 4: so it's not very flavorful. And so if you think
Speaker 4: about beef has a lot more fat, people go for
Speaker 4: the beef flavor because they enjoy how that tastes, and
Speaker 4: so it all has to do with how much fat
Speaker 4: you have in there. So I go to Japan a
Speaker 4: lot eating that wagou beef. You know, I don't even
Speaker 4: really have to put salt on that type of wagoo
Speaker 4: because it's so flavorful that And so when you go
Speaker 4: and you buy different types of lean grinds and say
Speaker 4: for handiger meat eighty twenty seventy three whatever, you could
Speaker 4: probably taste the difference there of how much beefy flavor
Speaker 4: you would have going through there. And so that's why
Speaker 4: a lot of those species, you know, like frogs, that
Speaker 4: have a lot of lean tissue and not very much
Speaker 4: fat in there. They all taste the same.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is that really the taste of
Speaker 1: what we think of as a chicken is really just
Speaker 1: a taste of that myofibrillar, those myofibrillar sells.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for the most part, yes, because it doesn't have
Speaker 4: a lot of fat in it. It does have a
Speaker 4: little bit of fat, but it doesn't have the most
Speaker 4: compared to the other species.
Speaker 1: So what doctor Gonzalez is saying is that it's not
Speaker 1: really the mussel to give a meat it's distinct flavor.
Speaker 2: It's the fat in it.
Speaker 1: And so the reason frog or rabbit taste like chicken
Speaker 1: is that these are all lean meats with low fat,
Speaker 1: and so most of what you're left with is the protein,
Speaker 1: which is what we associate with the taste of chicken.
Speaker 1: If you had never eaten chicken in your life, and
Speaker 1: you lived in a culture that ate frog all the time,
Speaker 1: then when you did eat chicken for the first time,
Speaker 1: you would probably say it tastes like frog. In fact,
Speaker 1: the protein and the fat are so interchangeable that doctor
Speaker 1: Gonzalad says, you can make any meat taste like any
Speaker 1: other meat.
Speaker 4: You know, I could take the fat from a lamb,
Speaker 4: and I could mix it in ground beef and make
Speaker 4: it taste like lamb a little claw, yeah, and it
Speaker 4: would be like, ooh, that's kind of different profile if
Speaker 4: you told them supposed to be beef flavors some people,
Speaker 4: let's say that, you know, wow, that's all. Or I
Speaker 4: could take some pork fat and mix it in with
Speaker 4: something and it would taste very Dutch like pork too.
Speaker 4: And so you could always manipulate by taking those fat
Speaker 4: sources and doing that. Now hardly nobody does that, but
Speaker 4: that's how you can manipulate some of those products.
Speaker 1: That is fascinating. I feel like you're saying that all
Speaker 1: meat tastes like chicken.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and theory, if it has zero very little fat
Speaker 4: in it, they all should taste the salmon. As being
Speaker 4: taught meat science, they said, if we took every specta
Speaker 4: fat out of a meat product and put them all
Speaker 4: in front of you, you wouldn't be able to tell
Speaker 4: us what species it is.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, So that answer is the first big question
Speaker 1: we had, which is why does frog taste like chicken?
Speaker 1: And the answer is that both meats are lean with
Speaker 1: low fat, and so most of what you're tasting are
Speaker 1: the proteins which all animals share. But now this raises
Speaker 1: two one how exactly does the fat give you the
Speaker 1: unique taste of each kind of meat? And two why
Speaker 1: is it that all animals use the same muscles? To
Speaker 1: answer the first question, taker Gonzalez preferring meat to Professor
Speaker 1: Jared Legeco, another meat scientist and one who specializes in
Speaker 1: meat flavor.
Speaker 9: I am a faculty member at Texas Tech University, and
Speaker 9: I study food and meat science. My research tends to
Speaker 9: focus on safety, but more so on the quality. Again,
Speaker 9: where we're looking at things like how meat holds up
Speaker 9: during storage, the factors that influence tenderness, juiciness, and flavor.
Speaker 1: Fantastic. It sounds like you're a perfect expert for us
Speaker 1: to talk to today, So I thought I'd start by
Speaker 1: asking you what makes meat, any meat taste the way
Speaker 1: it does.
Speaker 9: Right when we say it tastes, we use that term
Speaker 9: to predominantly meat flavor. Flavor is the combination of taste
Speaker 9: and aroma. So taste would be those five sensations sweet, sour, salty, bitter,
Speaker 9: and then more recently you mommy, which is the savory
Speaker 9: type sensations. But then aroma's perceived then the back of
Speaker 9: the throat through the nose. When you're eating, we have
Speaker 9: small what are referred to as volatile compounds, meaning they
Speaker 9: can just kind of float in the air, and we
Speaker 9: perceive those and so with that we get that response
Speaker 9: from both the tongue and then the nose.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: Interesting, So those aromatics come in, you said, to the
Speaker 1: back of the throat. It's not like me smelling and
Speaker 1: chewing at the same time.
Speaker 9: It's kind of described that way that it kind of
Speaker 9: comes in through the back of the throat. Odor would
Speaker 9: be when you're maybe sniffing or smelling something prior to eating,
Speaker 9: and that can have an influence. But classically we think
Speaker 9: about the aroma kind of coming in combined with taste
Speaker 9: when the food is in the mouth during consumption.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of interesting. First of all, your
Speaker 1: tongue really can only detect the broad strokes of flavor,
Speaker 1: whether it's generally sweet, salty, bitter, sour, or savory or mommy,
Speaker 1: what we send as complex or unique to a particular
Speaker 1: food really mostly comes from your nose, and it comes
Speaker 1: in through the back of your throat, according to doctor Legaco,
Speaker 1: and second for us to detect them as aromas. What
Speaker 1: we sense has to be volatile, meaning it has to
Speaker 1: evaporate easily and float in the air.
Speaker 2: Okay, back to doctor Legaco.
Speaker 1: So then what makes lamb meat taste like lamb and
Speaker 1: dug tastes like dug? You know, Byson tastes like bison.
Speaker 9: Right, All those are going to be derived from the
Speaker 9: components of the meat products. We have enzymes breaking down
Speaker 9: skeletal muscle and releasing things that will in part tastes
Speaker 9: you mommy. In particular is from amino acids. Maybe've heard
Speaker 9: the term of aging of meat, so you have spoilage organisms.
Speaker 9: They can also impart some unique flavors oftentimes. But then
Speaker 9: the other thing that we have here are fats, and
Speaker 9: fats are unique to species. Then that's where a lot
Speaker 9: of this comes from. The components of skeletal muscle that
Speaker 9: can vary a lot too across species, but the big
Speaker 9: source of variation is from the fats. So you think
Speaker 9: about red meats, they tend to have saturated fats, but
Speaker 9: they also have a large amount of monounsaturated fats and
Speaker 9: poly unsaturated. Lamb is very unique in that it also
Speaker 9: has some branch chain fatty acids that are very I
Speaker 9: guess specific to lamb. We don't see those show up
Speaker 9: in other species. So not a lot of lamb consumers
Speaker 9: in the US. But if you are, you know it
Speaker 9: has a very unique flavor compared to be compared to,
Speaker 9: certainly to any of the poultry products.
Speaker 1: Okay, here is a key piece of information. Animals all
Speaker 1: use the same proteins to make muscles, but they use
Speaker 1: different fats which give each meat its own signature flavor.
Speaker 1: Now I've been oversimplifying a little bit when I've said
Speaker 1: all animals use the same proteins to make muscles. It's
Speaker 1: true that all animals basically use actin and myocin to
Speaker 1: make muscles, but how those proteins are arranged can vary.
Speaker 1: And this is where the concept of red meat and
Speaker 1: white meat comes in. Here's how doctor Legeko explains it.
Speaker 9: So maybe a metaphor as you think about cars are
Speaker 9: all similar for the most part. Right, they have four wheels,
Speaker 9: maybe some doors, so they have a cross species similar components, right,
Speaker 9: But it's how they're put together, and so muscle fibers
Speaker 9: are going to vary in their type or composition.
Speaker 1: So there's a different muscle fibers. How many would you
Speaker 1: say there are.
Speaker 9: Well, there's really three or four predominant types. We have
Speaker 9: what's referred to as type one, and this is really
Speaker 9: where the term red meats come from, because they have
Speaker 9: the metabolism that lends them to appear more red. They
Speaker 9: are doing more predominantly aerobic type metabolism. The metaphor there
Speaker 9: is like the long distance runners, right, So they're using
Speaker 9: oxygen and with that they require a lot of myoglobin,
Speaker 9: which is a red pigment molecule that kind of makes
Speaker 9: them look red. And then we have a few that
Speaker 9: are type two. That's not incredibly important, but if we
Speaker 9: just lump all the twos together, you go to the
Speaker 9: white meats. So they're short bursts of energy you think
Speaker 9: about like a bird flapping its wings. It's really rapid,
Speaker 9: and they tend to be those that use a lot
Speaker 9: of glucose for their metabolism and contract really rapidly, and
Speaker 9: they appear more white because they don't require the amount
Speaker 9: of oxygen that we would see over for the red fibers.
Speaker 1: So there are different types of meat and they have
Speaker 1: different color, but what really makes them taste different is
Speaker 1: how much fat they keep around to use as energy.
Speaker 1: The slower red meat uses more fat, whereas the faster
Speaker 1: white meat uses more glucose.
Speaker 9: The type ones tend to, because of their metabolism, need
Speaker 9: fat associated with them and near them so that they
Speaker 9: can do their metabolism. Your locomotive muscles tend to be
Speaker 9: more towards that type two. White type fiber poultry is
Speaker 9: a great example. You go over to the breast meat.
Speaker 9: There's a very lean muscle. There's a lack of fat
Speaker 9: associated with that muscle because of the fiber type within it.
Speaker 1: I see that fiber type doesn't need as much fat
Speaker 1: lying around it, right, all right? The last thing I
Speaker 1: asked Firleigeka was how do we go from those fats
Speaker 1: in the meat to the flavors we smell through the
Speaker 1: bag of our throats. Now, what's the connect ch between
Speaker 1: the fatty types of fats and the flavor.
Speaker 9: There's some research that is becoming stronger that shows that
Speaker 9: we may be able to perceive some fatty acids on
Speaker 9: the tongue. But classically we talk more about the fat
Speaker 9: being degraded during cooking to form smaller volatile components. That's
Speaker 9: where we get that flavor is through the breakdown of
Speaker 9: those during cooking. You can also see this in storage,
Speaker 9: and if it becomes too predominant, you get off odors,
Speaker 9: off flavors. If there's too much breakdown during storage.
Speaker 1: During storage, you might ruin those delicious smelling fatty acids.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, So then it's those fatty acids. When they get cooked,
Speaker 1: they break down into volatail compounds which go up to
Speaker 1: our nose, and that tell us us, hey this is lamb,
Speaker 1: or hey this is meat.
Speaker 2: Or bit or anything.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I see.
Speaker 1: It kind of sounds like if someone lost their ability
Speaker 1: to smell completely, then a lot of these meats would
Speaker 1: taste the same. Is that true?
Speaker 9: You know, it's a great question. I don't know the answer,
Speaker 9: but that's a really good hypothesis. If we can gather
Speaker 9: enough people that have that condition, then I guess we
Speaker 9: could test it out.
Speaker 1: Okay, when we come back, we're going to tackle the
Speaker 1: last question in this meaty mystery, which is why is
Speaker 1: it that every animal on Earth uses the same muscles?
Speaker 1: Just how far back in evolution does the taste of
Speaker 1: chicken go. We're going to find out, So stay with us,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Welcome back, Okay, we are answering
Speaker 1: the question why do frogs taste like chicken? And so
Speaker 1: far we've learned that it's the unique fat content of
Speaker 1: a meat that determines its flavor, and the reason frog
Speaker 1: tastes like chicken is that both kinds of meat are
Speaker 1: pretty lean and at their core. Basically, all animal muscle
Speaker 1: is the same bugs, sea creatures, dogs, cats, lizards, birds,
Speaker 1: They all use the same two proteins acting in miocin
Speaker 1: to move. So to really answer the question of why
Speaker 1: frog tastes like chicken, we need to go back and
Speaker 1: figure out why every animal on Earth uses the same muscles.
Speaker 1: In other words, why does every animal on the planet
Speaker 1: in theory tastes like chicken. To answer this question, I
Speaker 1: reached out to a scientist who thinks he's found the
Speaker 1: origin of muscles, doctor Ulrich technav.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 7: I'm a professor for developmental biology at the University of Vienna,
Speaker 7: and I have a long standing interest in the evolution
Speaker 7: of development, which also sometimes is shortly termed by evo devo.
Speaker 10: If you think of worms and sea urchins and sea
Speaker 10: stars and.
Speaker 7: Vertebrates, they all looked extremely different from each other, but
Speaker 7: we all are related, you know, we all come from
Speaker 7: a common ancestor.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, evil Divo sounds like an
Speaker 1: eighties rock band.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was coined by somebody
Speaker 11: in the US.
Speaker 10: I forgot who it was. I think that's what Americans
Speaker 10: are usually very good for, you know, coining these kind
Speaker 10: of channes.
Speaker 1: I guess the main question we're asking you today is
Speaker 1: what is the origin of muscle tissue?
Speaker 11: Right? What if I had the answer that I would
Speaker 11: stop researching?
Speaker 1: Okay, doctor tech now is being a little modest here.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, he and several colleagues published a paper
Speaker 1: in the prestigious journal Nature titled Independent Evolution of Striated
Speaker 1: Muscle in Nidarians and by Latarians, in which they trace
Speaker 1: the evolution of must back to before animals even existed.
Speaker 1: That's right before animals existed.
Speaker 11: So when you ask, you know how the muscles arise.
Speaker 10: Later studies have shown that even certain microbes, the aki are,
Speaker 10: which are dating back like three billion years, you know,
Speaker 10: they even have filamentous acting in them. So this is
Speaker 10: a very very ancient protein, you know, which we can
Speaker 10: trace back in evolution very deeply.
Speaker 1: All right, what doctor tech now is saying is that
Speaker 1: actin one of the two key proteins in all muscles,
Speaker 1: was around pretty close to the beginning of life itself.
Speaker 1: It's been found in Archaea, which is one of the
Speaker 1: basic life forms that have been around since before any
Speaker 1: animal or plant or fungi existed billions of years ago,
Speaker 1: and actual muscle what's called smooth muscle and strayated muscle,
Speaker 1: can be found in jellyfish, which is one of the
Speaker 1: oldest animals that evolved about five hundred million years ago.
Speaker 1: So the same muscle structure you and I have has
Speaker 1: been around for a long time.
Speaker 7: Because if you think about what animals are really known for,
Speaker 7: I mean, they can move, you know, and some can
Speaker 7: move very fast.
Speaker 11: It's all based on muscle movement. So that's why it's
Speaker 11: hard to imagine once you have evolved that you would
Speaker 11: lose it again because it means it also allows you
Speaker 11: to explore new territories, which allows you more easily to disperse.
Speaker 11: So there's a lot of reasons why muscles are important.
Speaker 1: So the reason frogs and chickens and pretty much every
Speaker 1: animal on Earth have the same muscle is that it
Speaker 1: evolved in its basic form a long time ago. Basically
Speaker 1: since the beginning of animals and it stuck around. In fact,
Speaker 1: you might say it's what made animals animals because it
Speaker 1: allows help them to move. All right, I think that
Speaker 1: answers our question for today. Why does frog taste like chicken?
Speaker 1: The answer is that actually all meats taste like chicken
Speaker 1: because all animals use the same proteins to build their muscles.
Speaker 1: The structure of muscle is something that evolves super early
Speaker 1: in the evolutionary history of animals, and it's stuck around.
Speaker 1: It's a useful mutation. Then, what gives a meat its
Speaker 1: unique flavor is actually the fat, which is related to
Speaker 1: what the animal eats. It's biology and the kind of
Speaker 1: energy each type of muscle uses. Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: close out the episode by asking our experts a potentially
Speaker 1: tasteless question, which is how does one become a meat scientist.
Speaker 9: It's you know, it's not your normal field. Right when
Speaker 9: you go to like the kindergartener graduation, they're talking about
Speaker 9: being a fireman, a doctor, whatever it may be. It
Speaker 9: rarely does a meat scientists unlock, if ever. But it's
Speaker 9: it's a very dynamic feel, you know, It's there's a
Speaker 9: lot of aspects to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, meat science really cool world. It's funny because I'll
Speaker 4: tell you one last story. I was providing products for
Speaker 4: a fundraiser and they're like always a meat scientist at
Speaker 4: the University of Georgia. And one person there was like, Phil,
Speaker 4: that's a made up thing. Just started laughing, like that
Speaker 4: meat science is made up. You said it right, Friday.
Speaker 4: I just started laughing like, yeah, a lot of people
Speaker 4: are unaware of you know that. See, science is a discipline.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of science that goes into what we do.
Speaker 4: So thank you for letting us let me have this
Speaker 4: platform to talk about it.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're saying that when you bring home work,
Speaker 1: you're literally bringing home the bacon. Yes, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: See you next time you've been listening to Science Stuff.
Speaker 1: Production of iHeartRadio bringing and produced by Me or hit Chim,
Speaker 1: Credited by Rose Seguda, executive producer Jerry Rowland, and audio
Speaker 1: engineer and mixer Kasey peckrom And you can follow me
Speaker 1: on social media. Just search for PhD Comics and the
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