Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormack. And
Speaker 1: today we are going to be introducing a classic stuff
Speaker 1: to the Blow your Mind episode. It's a new classic.
Speaker 1: How old is it now? Maybe nine or ten months?
Speaker 1: Like it's maybe it's about a year give a take,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, sometime last winter we recorded this episode
Speaker 1: about dangerous foods, uh, including some of my favorite stories
Speaker 1: about for example, polar bear liver and dangerous within. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a fun episode, and uh, it's it's perfect
Speaker 1: for the holidays because the holidays are a time when
Speaker 1: so many of us eat things that we feel we
Speaker 1: should not or no, we should not. I shouldn't be
Speaker 1: eating this. I shouldn't eating this is delicious, but I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be eating this. The cranberry sauce from a can.
Speaker 1: You know that's wrong. It comes out in the cylinder.
Speaker 1: You can still see the ridges where the and is
Speaker 1: sort of bent a little bit. You know. It's eat
Speaker 1: eat stuff like that stuff you have kind of in
Speaker 1: a stout before, but also just like a bunch of
Speaker 1: rich foods that you know, you shouldn't be eating at
Speaker 1: least in these quantities, but hey, it's the holidays and
Speaker 1: it's about fattening up to survive the horrors of winter.
Speaker 1: But here's my advice. If you are eating turkey and
Speaker 1: the turkey is overcooked, because it always is, don't waste
Speaker 1: your time on it, you know, just skip the turkey
Speaker 1: and move on to something else well with it. With
Speaker 1: a turkey based meal, especially the Thanksgiving Day meal, there
Speaker 1: are so many side dishes you can really just pick
Speaker 1: your poison as it were. Right, Well, Robert, if you
Speaker 1: don't have anything else to add, I think we should
Speaker 1: make way for our episode on a six course feast
Speaker 1: of dangerous foods. Yes, let's roll the repeat. And hey,
Speaker 1: the next episode after this one I believe will be
Speaker 1: a a second course dangerous foods too. So if you
Speaker 1: like this episode, stay tuned, come back for another course
Speaker 1: of all new dangerous foods. For the revenge, for the regurgitation,
Speaker 1: we have quite a feast prepared for ourselves here today,
Speaker 1: A dangerous feast. Yeah. We wanted to think about an
Speaker 1: interesting aspect of human life, which is how often we
Speaker 1: put trust trust at a very level of life and
Speaker 1: death into people who do a very mundane task for us,
Speaker 1: which is preparing food. Yeah, I mean I did basic
Speaker 1: level mundane right. Yeah. Obviously with the appropriate skill it
Speaker 1: becomes our an art form. But we tend to think
Speaker 1: of just like the very basic idea of someone, say,
Speaker 1: opening a can of noodles there cooking it up for us.
Speaker 1: It didn't require any high science. Yeah. And even if
Speaker 1: you even if you're talking about preparing food yourself and
Speaker 1: it not being something that someone else has cooked for you,
Speaker 1: a lot of times you're going to be using ingredients
Speaker 1: that you just assume, you know are properly vetted, these
Speaker 1: are safe to eat, That the nuts I'm getting out
Speaker 1: of a jar of nuts are not contaminated with the
Speaker 1: cole I, that the peanut butter I'm using doesn't have
Speaker 1: salmonella in it. But that may not be a safe
Speaker 1: assumption depending on I don't know where you live, what
Speaker 1: kind of industry regulations are in place, and how well
Speaker 1: they're enforced. Yeah, I mean a lot of it comes
Speaker 1: down to just the human history of cooking and just
Speaker 1: culinary preparation, right, because early on humans learned the value
Speaker 1: of cooking. I means to basically externalized digestion, and eight
Speaker 1: is in the consumption of things that we would not
Speaker 1: otherwise be able to eat. Yeah, that's the thing that's
Speaker 1: easy to forget about. I mean, if you're if you're
Speaker 1: sitting down to a piece of chicken or steak, I
Speaker 1: mean you you probably wouldn't want to eat it just
Speaker 1: straight up raw, But it could be done if you
Speaker 1: were in a pinch, you know, you could chew it.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of foods that you just simply
Speaker 1: can't eat without some cooking, right, things, Yeah that would
Speaker 1: just kill us we ate it without proper prop or
Speaker 1: they'd be just inedible, you know, too tough for to
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, Cooking improves the taste,
Speaker 1: It can tenderize the food in question. It can kill
Speaker 1: off pathogens that would otherwise be of dire consequence. Of course,
Speaker 1: another interesting thing about cooking is that it in some cases,
Speaker 1: I think d nature's our food in a way that
Speaker 1: allows us to sort of separate ourselves from the means
Speaker 1: of production of the food when we're eating it, so
Speaker 1: we you know, like cooking a steak makes you think
Speaker 1: about it as a fundamentally different thing from the flesh
Speaker 1: of a dead animal. That had to be murdered in
Speaker 1: order for you to eat this, Oh indeed, yeah, and
Speaker 1: so it kind of it kind of allows you to
Speaker 1: put some distance. Yeah, yeah, I mean we and then
Speaker 1: we layered language on top of that. You don't go
Speaker 1: to the restaurant in order pig. You don't go to
Speaker 1: the restaurant in order cow. You order pork and beef. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Poyo and guyin know very different words. Yeah and so.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, you know, the butchering. Butchering
Speaker 1: of animals, Culinary preparation in general allows us to more
Speaker 1: precisely choose what parts we're going to eat, what parts
Speaker 1: are delicious, what parts are nutritious, what parts are inedible? Uh?
Speaker 1: And or deadly? So you you keep that tasty crab
Speaker 1: cloth meat, but you throw out the dead man's fingers.
Speaker 1: You know, I've always wondered this, and I've never been
Speaker 1: able to find a good answer so far. Maybe there
Speaker 1: is one out there. Supposedly, apple seeds have a little
Speaker 1: tiny bit of cyanide in them, and I wondered if
Speaker 1: has anybody ever eaten so many, so many apples seeds
Speaker 1: and all that they've gotten cyanide poisoning? There have been
Speaker 1: days where I feel like I've eaten that many apples.
Speaker 1: But I'll have to I have to start counting this
Speaker 1: Robert or u s secret competitive apple eater someday, because
Speaker 1: that's like the I find myself eating more and more apples.
Speaker 1: I think maybe it's Michael Paulin who pointed out that
Speaker 1: if you're if you're not hungry enough to eat an apple,
Speaker 1: then you're not really hungry. Then you shouldn't snack. If
Speaker 1: you are going to snack, hey, and apples great. Oh.
Speaker 1: I just tend to go to the apple for my
Speaker 1: snack needs if I'm you know, in any level of
Speaker 1: self conscious about my my diet. But you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you're just hungry enough to eat poutine and not anything else.
Speaker 1: It's true sometimes that the apple is not going to
Speaker 1: scratch that itch. Well, speaking of fruits, it looks like
Speaker 1: our first course is arriving. What is this here? Ah,
Speaker 1: we have some acky fruit to enjoy here. Now I've
Speaker 1: never had aki fruit before. What's the deal with acky fruit?
Speaker 1: Acky fruit is really interesting and I had I had
Speaker 1: not actually experienced docky fruit until just a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago when I went on a family vacation to Jamaica.
Speaker 1: U Aki is like that the national dish, the national
Speaker 1: fruit of Jamaica. It's a it's a fruit, but it's
Speaker 1: not your typical like Western idea of a fruit. For example,
Speaker 1: what's you have this yellowish or orange is fruit on
Speaker 1: a tree and then when it ripens, it pops open
Speaker 1: and it looks like a like a three eyed feature
Speaker 1: of some kind of with the big black glassy eyes
Speaker 1: inside of it. Glassy eyes are seeds. Um, So it's
Speaker 1: kind of a Jim Henson dark crystal kind of creature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really, it really looks kind of alien and weird.
Speaker 1: But then uh, even properly prepared at what they do
Speaker 1: is they they take the seeds out, they cut out
Speaker 1: some of the membrane, and you're left with these, uh,
Speaker 1: these little yellowish looking lumps. And the main dish that
Speaker 1: is prepared there is that they take it and they
Speaker 1: fry it in a skillet with some bits of codfish
Speaker 1: so achi and saltfish is the dish, some onions in
Speaker 1: there as well, and it ends up tasting about like
Speaker 1: scrambled eggs. It has that kind of consistency. It's not
Speaker 1: a sweet fruit at all, but it's very good that's nice.
Speaker 1: So it's not sweet. What does it taste like? Is
Speaker 1: it kind of spicy or is it kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of I think it kind of. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: I was I never had a real sense that it
Speaker 1: had much of a taste. But it's in there with
Speaker 1: a little bit of fish, some onions. It's fried up
Speaker 1: more of a texture, kind of more of a texture.
Speaker 1: And the texture is I think closest to scrambled eggs.
Speaker 1: That would be my main comparison there. But it sounds
Speaker 1: like something worth trying. Yeah, I highly recommended for anybody
Speaker 1: goes Jamaica for no other reason because it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's the national dish there. And you said they tossed
Speaker 1: the seeds out right, Yes, because as I'll lay out here,
Speaker 1: the seeds are are poisonous um. This plant was originally
Speaker 1: native to West Africa, migrated to Jamaican seventy eight, apparently
Speaker 1: due to Jamaica's first botanist, Thomas Clark, who introduced it there.
Speaker 1: The aki tree is actually known as bliah sepeda and
Speaker 1: it's named after Captain William blythe the notorious pirate. So
Speaker 1: interesting history there. But where the poison comes in is
Speaker 1: that unripe aki fruit contains a poison called hypoglycin. And
Speaker 1: actually there are two different varieties in the fruit. There's
Speaker 1: hypoglyin A and hypoglycin B, which one is worse. Well,
Speaker 1: A is the main problem here, and so you have
Speaker 1: extremely high levels of hypoglycin BE in the unripe fruit.
Speaker 1: But then the fruit ripens, It pops open like some
Speaker 1: sort of alien creature and stares at you with its
Speaker 1: three black eyes. Uh. And at that point you know
Speaker 1: you you open it up, you remove the seeds. The
Speaker 1: only edible proportion is the yellow a really, which is
Speaker 1: surrounded by on again the toxic seeds. And there's a
Speaker 1: membrane at the base of the seed mantle that's also poisonous.
Speaker 1: You have to take that out to Okay, So it
Speaker 1: sounds like if you don't know what you're doing, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't try to eat a knocky fruit, right. Talk to
Speaker 1: somebody who's familiar with this fruit and knows what knows
Speaker 1: how to carve it up. Right. Yeah, But luckily if
Speaker 1: it's on the menu at a place in Jamaica, like
Speaker 1: they know how to cook it, Like everyone has familiarity
Speaker 1: with this particular dish there. But you are saying, in
Speaker 1: a survival situation, stick to the scrambled eggs. Not probably
Speaker 1: not the black hole eggs. Yeah. Yeah, because someone who
Speaker 1: knows how to deal with this, they're gonna clean it.
Speaker 1: They're gonna wash the fruit after it's gonna be boiled
Speaker 1: in water. Then they're gonna throw out that water because
Speaker 1: that could contain a trace of the poison. And it's
Speaker 1: gonna be perfectly good to eat. It's gonna be rich
Speaker 1: and you know, fatty acids, vitamin A, zinc, and protein.
Speaker 1: But if you were to eat it, uh, the unripened version,
Speaker 1: you could get what's called called Jamaican vomiting sickness. That
Speaker 1: sounds like a not very fun sickness. Yeah, it causes
Speaker 1: a lot of vomiting and can lead to coma and death.
Speaker 1: And uh, in the biochemistry of it is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: It kills you via a form of hypoglycemia or low
Speaker 1: blood sugar. Oh. So, normally, as the body uses up
Speaker 1: the glucose in the blood, your liver releases glucose that
Speaker 1: it formed that it stores in the form of glycogen.
Speaker 1: The toxin, however, halts the process, so a few hours
Speaker 1: after ingesting all of this, your body glucose crashes and
Speaker 1: and just leaves you hypoglocemic. Oh this sounds similar to
Speaker 1: some not poisons, but venoms I've heard of before the
Speaker 1: attack by causing an insulin spike in the body and
Speaker 1: drop in the victim's blood sugar to dangerously low levels. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like those are probably similar. I think there's
Speaker 1: like a there's a snail in the ocean that does
Speaker 1: that or something. Alright, well, what do we have next
Speaker 1: on the mediu here? Ah? Well, it looks like the
Speaker 1: next thing arriving is something I'm a little bit familiar
Speaker 1: with but haven't had the courage to eat myself. It's
Speaker 1: it's something that's straight out of Iceland, and from what
Speaker 1: I've heard, it's well, it's bad news if you're not game,
Speaker 1: but if you are game, I guess some people really
Speaker 1: like it. So, so what do we have sitting here
Speaker 1: before us? It looks like some little cubes of cheese,
Speaker 1: like the kind of the tasters hand out at the
Speaker 1: grocery store in the Delhi. So it's a little white
Speaker 1: cube with a toothpick stuck in it, and I guess
Speaker 1: there there's nothing else on the plate, So it looks
Speaker 1: like you just eat it by itself. Oh, except there's
Speaker 1: a shot of clear liquor sitting next to it, so
Speaker 1: I guess maybe you're supposed to take that with it. Now,
Speaker 1: what's this smell I'm getting from the dish here, Joe?
Speaker 1: You know, as as one person, I watched a video
Speaker 1: online of somebody eating this stuff and the first comment
Speaker 1: was smells like windex. That is a that is a
Speaker 1: common description of what this is, which is rotten greenland
Speaker 1: shark meat, a a national delicacy of Iceland, also known
Speaker 1: as hakl and uh. And I apologize if I'm not
Speaker 1: pronouncing that the right way. I don't know the best
Speaker 1: way to say, ha, Carl, But there it is. It's uh.
Speaker 1: It's compared to industrial cleaning products. Often in the aroma,
Speaker 1: it's very high in ammonia, so it's gonna smell like windex,
Speaker 1: or like bleach, or like urine. That is the most
Speaker 1: common point of comparison other than cleaning products. So it's
Speaker 1: it's urine, it's bleach, and then also kind of like
Speaker 1: ambient rotting fishiness of ancient days. Okay, now it's of
Speaker 1: course we're throwing in at this point and reminding everyone
Speaker 1: at far northern cultures typically have a lot of survival foods. Yes,
Speaker 1: where Yeah, it may not seem as as delightful, but
Speaker 1: you have to put it in the context of surviving
Speaker 1: the winter with the foods that could be preserved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is a common feature of of far
Speaker 1: northern climates where you you have dishes that were kind
Speaker 1: of fermented or preserved in a way that produces chemical
Speaker 1: combinations that might seem unappealing to people not accustomed to them. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is Greenland shark meat, and I've never had
Speaker 1: it before. I've read that the texture is also sort
Speaker 1: of sometimes compared to cheeses, like it's a it's a
Speaker 1: little bit chewy at first, but then it kind of
Speaker 1: descends into a powdery grain kind of texture as it
Speaker 1: dissolves in the mouth. And they say you are supposed
Speaker 1: to chase it with a shot of Brinnavin, which is
Speaker 1: an unsweetened caraway schnops from Iceland that I did taste
Speaker 1: that when I was in Iceland, and you know, I
Speaker 1: love Iceland. It was not a fan of that liquor.
Speaker 1: It was it potent that it like warm me up.
Speaker 1: It was very herbal, you know, it was like it's
Speaker 1: like somebody got some herbal tea and then reduced it
Speaker 1: down by like not making it thicker, but just concentrated
Speaker 1: the flavor by about ten thousand times, and that that's
Speaker 1: what it was. So how do you get some of this,
Speaker 1: he carl, how do you make it? You? Well, first,
Speaker 1: like I said, you start with a nice freshly called
Speaker 1: greenland shark or another shark from the same family, the
Speaker 1: sleeper sharks, the somniosis sharks. The greenland shark in particular
Speaker 1: is the somniosis microcephalus, which sounds like it means a sleepy,
Speaker 1: tiny head. But the greenland shark is a really cool animal.
Speaker 1: It's It's also known as the ecolossuac, which is the
Speaker 1: an Inuit term. I've seen a lot of variations on
Speaker 1: the Inuit spelling and pronunciation, so I think they're just
Speaker 1: different transliterations of the same term. And it's a huge shark.
Speaker 1: The greenland shark gets as big or bigger than great whites.
Speaker 1: It grows uh lives probably for more than two of years.
Speaker 1: It grows very slowly, and it can get more than
Speaker 1: twenty ft long ways, more than a ton, and they
Speaker 1: dwell in some of the coldest waters of the earth,
Speaker 1: between like freezing and about ten degrees celsius. And it's
Speaker 1: funny that it's known for appearing very sluggish. They say,
Speaker 1: when you see it in the water, it looks lethargic
Speaker 1: and impassive. Is just not really impressed by anything. I
Speaker 1: read one account that said that people just you can.
Speaker 1: You can catch them by literally just dragging them out
Speaker 1: of the water with your bare hands. If they get
Speaker 1: close enough to the surface. They don't fight much. So
Speaker 1: it sounds like if all the sharks, it's kind of
Speaker 1: the most stoic and resigned to the whims of fate.
Speaker 1: But the question that I had was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: why does it taste like urine? Uh? This knowledge about
Speaker 1: the taste of greenland shark meat apparently goes back a
Speaker 1: long way. I found an interesting article by Lindsay O'Reilly
Speaker 1: and Canadian Geographic Magazine about the Greenland sharks significan against
Speaker 1: an Inuit culture and uh, it's it's offering another variation
Speaker 1: on that same name. This time it's Skalougsuak. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that scalouksuak, And I want to read a little
Speaker 1: quote from this article. She says Inuit legend has it
Speaker 1: that once long ago, an old woman was drying her
Speaker 1: hair after washing it with urine, when the wind suddenly
Speaker 1: whipped the damp cloth from her hand and carried it
Speaker 1: out to see. This cloth, the Inuit say, became skalouksuak,
Speaker 1: the greenland shark. I love that because it sounds like
Speaker 1: there's been a recent trend I think in a couple
Speaker 1: of different skits where you have individuals coming up with
Speaker 1: elaborate descriptions of how bad a beer is, and this
Speaker 1: seems like a more primal version of that. I can
Speaker 1: imagine Inuit setting around eating some of this and saying,
Speaker 1: you know this, uh, this particular meat taste as if
Speaker 1: an old woman washed her hair in urine and then
Speaker 1: threw that hair into the water and it became a shark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very flowery. Yeah, it's like somebody is really overriding
Speaker 1: the Spear Advocate article. But anyway, getting to the point
Speaker 1: about the dangers associated with it. If not prepared properly,
Speaker 1: you don't want to eat greenland shark meat fresh. You
Speaker 1: might not want to eat it anyway because it smells
Speaker 1: like bleach and urine. But let's say you're really really hungry,
Speaker 1: or you're looking for something to feed your dogs, don't
Speaker 1: go with fresh greenland shark meat because it is poisonous
Speaker 1: as hack. So when it's fresh and raw, the meat
Speaker 1: of a greenland shark contains high levels of uric acid
Speaker 1: or urea and trimethylamine oxide, and so if it's eaten
Speaker 1: in high enough doses, it can cause effects that from
Speaker 1: the outside resemble drunkenness. Sometimes people can say like, this
Speaker 1: person is drunk on shark, but it can lead to
Speaker 1: really bad things like nausea and vomiting, oral burning sensations,
Speaker 1: explosive diarrhea, muscle twitching and convulsions, trouble breathing, and even
Speaker 1: in some cases coma and death. And the most toxic
Speaker 1: ingredient in the greenland shark meat is the triethlamine oxide.
Speaker 1: This is a chemical used by the shark as a
Speaker 1: kind of natural anti freeze for the proteins and enzymes
Speaker 1: in its body, and it it does a good thing
Speaker 1: for the shark because it allows the shark to survive
Speaker 1: the freezing temperatures of the water that it lives in
Speaker 1: without the formation of ice crystals and the destruction of
Speaker 1: proteins inside the body, so it's it's a fish that's
Speaker 1: got anti freeze in it, and you you know, you
Speaker 1: know the rule about not eating anti freeze. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: one's drilled in at an early age, you know. I
Speaker 1: think there was an episode of the documentary series Human
Speaker 1: Planet in which you see some some fishermen actually pull
Speaker 1: one of these creatures out of the water and then
Speaker 1: I believe they feed it to a dog. I can't
Speaker 1: remember if they cooked it or not. Yeah, actually, I
Speaker 1: I've read that sometimes the meat is fed to dogs
Speaker 1: and it's it makes the dog dog's drunk essentially, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like something. Don't feed greenland shark to
Speaker 1: your pet if you happen to have some fresh greenland shark.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you would, because you typically don't
Speaker 1: get it fresh unless you catch it yourself, because it's
Speaker 1: so poisonous and and so how do you get the
Speaker 1: hakarl the version that's okay to eat, even if some
Speaker 1: people find it very disgusting. Well, the traditional Icelandic way
Speaker 1: of preparation is let it rot, and specifically let it
Speaker 1: rot under pressure, So you bury it under rocks or
Speaker 1: gravel for like three months, and then you'll let it
Speaker 1: rot there and then you dig it up and you
Speaker 1: hang it out to dry for another three or four months.
Speaker 1: So this has had, you know, many months of rotting
Speaker 1: under pressure to press out some of the liquids and
Speaker 1: then hanging up to dry. And this process supposedly makes
Speaker 1: the shark safer to eat, as the poisons are removed
Speaker 1: through the pressing and through the chemical action of the fermentation.
Speaker 1: But another method of preparing greenland shark would simply be
Speaker 1: to boil it in several changes of water to leach
Speaker 1: out the toxins. But the several changes of water is important.
Speaker 1: You don't want to eat greenland sharks soup made from
Speaker 1: a you know, a broth of the meat. But anyway,
Speaker 1: if prepared in the correct way they say it is.
Speaker 1: It is very pungent and likely to terrify tourists, but
Speaker 1: it's safe to eat. You can eat this rotten shark
Speaker 1: and not die. I'm I'm reminded of the episode of
Speaker 1: The Simpsons in which Homer had an especially long sub
Speaker 1: sandwich Marge made him throw out ended up hiding behind
Speaker 1: a radiator and he would sneak it out from the
Speaker 1: radiator and eat it gray and rotten. Um that sounds
Speaker 1: very familiar. All right, Well, let's clear these dishes away
Speaker 1: because we have we have another Arctic dish coming out
Speaker 1: for us. Well, it is labeled on the menu as
Speaker 1: boreal wild game. Uh, it smells very gamy. Oh, I
Speaker 1: see the description here. This is polar bear meat. We're
Speaker 1: being offered polar bear. Okay, Well, I don't seem like
Speaker 1: there could be a problem there, right, No, it seems
Speaker 1: like bear probably shouldn't eat polar bear? Should well? Probably not.
Speaker 1: But I imagine before I think when, because when I
Speaker 1: was a kid in Newfoundland, Canada for about three years,
Speaker 1: occasionally interesting meat to present themselves, such as moose or
Speaker 1: in I think one case there was bear stew. You
Speaker 1: have to put yourself in a pretty extreme situation, I
Speaker 1: think for the question to even come up, should I
Speaker 1: eat this polar bear? Yeah? But it turns out that
Speaker 1: the polar bear, like the acky fruit and the Greenland shark,
Speaker 1: is a food that if you're in a position where
Speaker 1: you find yourself needing to eat it, you better have
Speaker 1: somebody on hand who knows how to prepare it and
Speaker 1: knows which parts to avoid. That's right, because you know,
Speaker 1: the native peoples of the Arctic they've done for a
Speaker 1: long time that some days the bear eats you, and
Speaker 1: some days you eat the bear, right, but on the
Speaker 1: days some days you eat the bear, and then it
Speaker 1: gets you back, yes, because you when you do eat
Speaker 1: the bear, you got to know not to eat the
Speaker 1: bear's liver. And as early as fifteen nine six you
Speaker 1: had European explorers who learned this lesson the hard way, uh,
Speaker 1: coming down with just horrible illness, like nightmarish illness following
Speaker 1: the consumption of polar bear liver. Because with many different animals,
Speaker 1: certainly the kind of animals that European would consume back home,
Speaker 1: the liver is totally fair game. The liver is a delicacy.
Speaker 1: The liver should be eaten. Right. Yeah, you have a
Speaker 1: fine French restaurant making a foix gras or liver moose
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, but then you start dining on polar
Speaker 1: bear liver and you might feel drowsy, sluggish, irritable. Suddenly
Speaker 1: you have a severe headache, you get bone pain. Hold
Speaker 1: on bone pain, bone pain. What does bone pain even
Speaker 1: feel like? Well, there's one way to find out. Blurred vision,
Speaker 1: and then you're vomiting. And finally, this is where it
Speaker 1: gets just really crazy. Is you start experiencing skin peels,
Speaker 1: peeling skin? Yeah, I think you accidentally did your research
Speaker 1: from the plot synopsis of a hell Raiser movie. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a hell raisor movie. Yeah, because in the
Speaker 1: milder cases, you're talking just flaking skin around the mouth, alright,
Speaker 1: you know, unpleasant, but hey, not too bad. But some
Speaker 1: accounts reported cases of full body skin loss. Even even
Speaker 1: the thick skin on the bottoms of a patient's feet
Speaker 1: could peel away, leaving the underlying flesh bloody and expire
Speaker 1: and exposure and on the top of that liver damage, hemorrhage, coma,
Speaker 1: and death. Save your tears, man, that is messed up. So,
Speaker 1: so what's the deal with the Polar bears liver? Why
Speaker 1: is it? Why is it so poisonous? Well, it all
Speaker 1: comes down to vitamin A. Interestingly enough, vitamin A people
Speaker 1: take pills of that. It's in carrots. It should be fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean we've been and it being in
Speaker 1: some of like being one of the pro who's to
Speaker 1: some of the foods that we're mentioning in this episode.
Speaker 1: But because a vitamin A is important for eyesight, reproduction,
Speaker 1: fetal development, growth, immune response and the sellular formation of tissue.
Speaker 1: Can that's key? Can I go on a little side
Speaker 1: tangent here? This is the thing I had to research
Speaker 1: for a brain stuff video once. It's a myth that
Speaker 1: vitamin A increases your eyesight beyond normal capacity. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is the whole Like if you eat enough carrots to
Speaker 1: improve your eyesight. Right. What is true is that vitamin
Speaker 1: A and carrots are a good source of vitamin A,
Speaker 1: though plenty of other vegetables are too. Anything has beta
Speaker 1: caroteen in it, as like spinach is great too. Uh.
Speaker 1: They will help maintain normal vision, but they're not gonna
Speaker 1: upgrade your vision above the baseline. Okay, alright, good to know. Now,
Speaker 1: if you like me to take a lot of vitamins,
Speaker 1: you probably noticed that on days when you take extra vitamins,
Speaker 1: you end up with, you know, just splendidly golden urine.
Speaker 1: Extra vitamins lee your body. Um. And that's the case
Speaker 1: with the number of items. They simply dissolve in water
Speaker 1: leave your body in urine. A. However, vitamin A only
Speaker 1: dissolves in fat, so that means it does an exit
Speaker 1: the body and urine instead it collects in the body's
Speaker 1: filtration oregan the liver where it can reach toxic levels,
Speaker 1: and generally this occurs over a pro long period of time,
Speaker 1: and if it does get out of control, then you
Speaker 1: end up with chronic hyper vitaminosis A, and that in
Speaker 1: humans involves all the various symptoms that we've already mentioned.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty horrible. So so wait a minute. How
Speaker 1: much polar bear liver do you have to eat for
Speaker 1: it to be dangerous? All right? Well, well, to put
Speaker 1: it in in context here, uh, an average healthy human
Speaker 1: liver contains five hundred and seventy five international units of
Speaker 1: vitamin A program while a polar bears liver contains between
Speaker 1: twenty four thousand and thirty five thousand international units per gram.
Speaker 1: So you compare that to the tolerable upper level of
Speaker 1: vitamin A in tank for a healthy adult human, that's
Speaker 1: ten thousand I U like supercharging your vitamin A consumption
Speaker 1: to just absurd levels. Why is there this much vitamin
Speaker 1: A and a polar bear liver? Well, it all comes down,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of it comes down to the
Speaker 1: hostile environment than necessary biological adaptations. So in the case
Speaker 1: of the bear, the bear doesn't need that much vitamin
Speaker 1: A in its diet. You put a bear in a
Speaker 1: in a zoo, it can get by with with far
Speaker 1: lower quantities of vitamin A. But in its natural environment,
Speaker 1: bears are eating a lot of bearded seals, ring seals,
Speaker 1: both of which store high levels of vitamin A in
Speaker 1: their livers and blubber. Uh. And a lot of this
Speaker 1: seems to have to do with the the again, the
Speaker 1: role that vitamin A plays and growth and naval development,
Speaker 1: so that the seals need all that extra vitamin A
Speaker 1: in order to advance their vulnerable pups into a more
Speaker 1: survivable stage. So it all comes down to the polar
Speaker 1: bear needs to eat those seals. It needs to to
Speaker 1: tolerate high levels of vitamin A, so it is evolved
Speaker 1: to roll with higher levels of vitamin A. It can
Speaker 1: store those higher levels of vitamin A in its filtration system,
Speaker 1: in its liver. It's when we eat its filtration system.
Speaker 1: If when we eat its liver we end up with
Speaker 1: quantities of vitamin A that we have totally not evolved
Speaker 1: to deal with. You know, this might be a different
Speaker 1: kind of category of food than our others where I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, if if you're having your food
Speaker 1: prepared by somebody who knows what they're doing. Aki fruit
Speaker 1: and Hakarl, go for it. I'd probably say, don't eat
Speaker 1: a polar bear. Yeah, it's hard for me to get
Speaker 1: given the polar bear is recent plight. Uh. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't get excited about the idea of eating one of
Speaker 1: these creatures. I mean, unless it's eat or be eaten. Uh.
Speaker 1: Certainly in the survival okay, survivalist case, Uh, they would
Speaker 1: say eat the polar bear, but know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: not the liver, not the liver, and don't feed it
Speaker 1: to a dog, et cetera. And it's just a little
Speaker 1: fun fact. I once wrote a short story in which
Speaker 1: Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton meets Frankenstein, or actually he
Speaker 1: ends up with meeting Frankenstein's monster, I believe, and the
Speaker 1: creature in this particular story, I had him consumed polar
Speaker 1: bear liver and that's how he gets all this figured
Speaker 1: and gross. Wow, I'd like to read that, dude. It's
Speaker 1: out there somewhere. Maybe I'll have to throw up a
Speaker 1: link somewhere. Okay, Well, oh wait, it looks like another
Speaker 1: course is arriving. What do we have here, Well, it's
Speaker 1: a very beautiful plate. It's an ornately decorated plate, and
Speaker 1: it's covered in very thinly sliced, pale, translucent sashimi, tiny,
Speaker 1: just tiny tissue, thin slices of fish. It looks good.
Speaker 1: So imagine you are in this scenario. You're sitting down
Speaker 1: to a plate that looks like this, and you know
Speaker 1: it does look good. So it looks so good you
Speaker 1: eat the whole plate by yourself. But what would you
Speaker 1: do if you're just eating a big plate of suit
Speaker 1: she and then suddenly you start feeling some strange sensations. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: I generally do. But generally that's just the saki. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's a different thing entirely. Know that this would
Speaker 1: be more like a you're sitting at the table and
Speaker 1: there's kind of a burning and tingling on the lips,
Speaker 1: and then it kind of turns into some pins and
Speaker 1: needles pricking at the lips, tongue, mouth, the throat. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a problem. Yeah, And then suddenly you might start
Speaker 1: to lose some coordination. That might still be the saki,
Speaker 1: could be, but it starts to feel more like there's
Speaker 1: a nervous system disruption going on throughout your body. You
Speaker 1: you eventually collapse to the floor. That's bad. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you find your muscles are very weak and sluggish, and
Speaker 1: eventually you are mostly unable to move your body of
Speaker 1: your own free will. And then the vomiting begins, leaving
Speaker 1: you barely able to order seconds on the big dish. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a worst case scenario leading up potentially to
Speaker 1: death in the event of improperly prepared fugu or puffer fish. Now,
Speaker 1: I again, like the other cases, I don't want a
Speaker 1: bad mouth a perfectly good food if it's prepared well
Speaker 1: and and fugu is a perfectly excellent sushi fish, and
Speaker 1: it's not inherently dangerous wind served the right way, when
Speaker 1: prepared by a trained chef who knows what they're doing,
Speaker 1: who has a license to prepare this kind of food.
Speaker 1: And since the introduction the introduction of protective measures like
Speaker 1: government restrictions on who's allowed to prepare and serve fugu,
Speaker 1: fugu poisonings and deaths have been rare. But there is
Speaker 1: a reason that these protective measures have been put in place.
Speaker 1: I've read that sometimes in Japan or maybe in certain places,
Speaker 1: fugu is known by the nickname tepo meaning gun and
Speaker 1: like so like gun sushi, and that kind of makes
Speaker 1: sense us. So, some organs in the puffer fish are
Speaker 1: naturally equipped with tetra detoxin, which is an extremely potent neurotoxin.
Speaker 1: You all talked about tetra to toxin on the show before.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's come up a time or two
Speaker 1: in passing. It's very, very toxic by mass ingested. It's
Speaker 1: reportedly about a hundred times as toxic as potassium cyanide.
Speaker 1: So you at least the scene in the James Bond
Speaker 1: movie where the bad guy, you know, he's committing suicide
Speaker 1: with the cyanide pill, he would need a tetra to
Speaker 1: toxin pill one one hundred the size of the cyanide
Speaker 1: pill be very easy to hide in a little compartment.
Speaker 1: But anyway, tetra to toxin, what does it duty? Why?
Speaker 1: Why does it cause all these problems? Essentially, it works
Speaker 1: by messing up communication between the bodies, nerves and muscles
Speaker 1: by blocking sodium ion channels uh and uh. And this
Speaker 1: can lead to paralysis. Especially. The really creepy thing I've
Speaker 1: heard is that it's conscious paralysis. That sounds especially horrifying.
Speaker 1: You don't yeah, like you're you're aware of what's going on.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily knock you unconscious, but you can't move
Speaker 1: and you you might might be having trouble breathing, having
Speaker 1: a fast beating or irregularly beating heart. It sounds very scary,
Speaker 1: but like I said, if this is properly prepared foogu meat,
Speaker 1: this this is not a problem you should have. You
Speaker 1: you'll find this tetra to toxin and especially high concentrations
Speaker 1: in the fishes liver and go nads. So the chef
Speaker 1: who knows what he or she is doing can cut
Speaker 1: around the right parts of the fish, knows what to
Speaker 1: do to prepare it right. They're not going to serve
Speaker 1: you the parts that are going to kill you. But
Speaker 1: what happens when when I don't know things go wrong?
Speaker 1: When somebody doesn't know what they're doing, Uh, it's not pretty.
Speaker 1: I wanted to read from a little case study of
Speaker 1: fugu poisoning from nine that was hosted on a report
Speaker 1: on the CDC website. So this is a case where
Speaker 1: and there were three guys hanging out and they get
Speaker 1: some fugu that was I believe shipped to them from
Speaker 1: a friend in Japan. Yeah, and they're like, well, let's
Speaker 1: try it out. So here's one of the cases. So
Speaker 1: case one is a twenty three year old man who
Speaker 1: he ate a piece of fougo quote the size of
Speaker 1: a quarter approximately one quarter ounce, so that's not that much.
Speaker 1: About ten or fifteen minutes later, it says he had
Speaker 1: onset of tingling in his mouth and lips, followed by dizziness, fatigue, headache,
Speaker 1: a constricted feeling in his throat, difficulty speaking, tightness in
Speaker 1: his upper chest, facial flushing, shaking, nausea, and vomiting. His
Speaker 1: legs weakened, and he collapsed on examination in the e
Speaker 1: D his blood pressure was a hundred and fifty over ninety,
Speaker 1: heart rate was a hundred and seventeen beats per minute,
Speaker 1: respiratory rate twenty two per minute uh, and he had
Speaker 1: a slightly elevated temperature. And there there were a couple
Speaker 1: other guys who had the same thing. Uh. One of
Speaker 1: them reported that he noticed a tingling in his tongue
Speaker 1: in the right side of his mouth, followed by quote
Speaker 1: light feeling, anxiety, and thoughts of dying. It induces thoughts
Speaker 1: of dying. It's kind of interesting, or maybe this is
Speaker 1: maybe he just knew what was up at that point
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, yeah, I just dates some fugu time
Speaker 1: to have thoughts of dying. Yeah. I wonder if he
Speaker 1: went into that scenario, you know, knowing the because that's
Speaker 1: it seems to be one of the attractive things about
Speaker 1: the fish, about the quote the gun, right, is that
Speaker 1: it is there's a sense of danger to it. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's uh in this sense, it's not just a
Speaker 1: really tasty food, but it's kind of a thrill experience
Speaker 1: with the knowledge that you know, oh, if this goes wrong,
Speaker 1: we could all die. It's I don't know, maybe kind
Speaker 1: of like bungee jumping or something. You know that it's
Speaker 1: inherently safe if your instructor has secured everything properly, but
Speaker 1: the thrill of knowing that maybe something could go wrong
Speaker 1: and I could die makes it more exciting. And in
Speaker 1: a sense it's it's kind of you need to go
Speaker 1: into any kind of restaurant scenario and you know, you
Speaker 1: trust that the chef knows what they're doing and yeah,
Speaker 1: but in most cases it's the difference between like, all right,
Speaker 1: if the food taste good and there's a good chance
Speaker 1: that the chef knows what they're doing. Here is a
Speaker 1: case where it's it's live or die. But but then again,
Speaker 1: this is something we touched on at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the episode. But I don't think this is inherently all
Speaker 1: that different from very mundane, familiar foods, not just interesting delicacies.
Speaker 1: It's like, you go to eat a hamburger and if
Speaker 1: this is you know, maybe uh meat that was ground
Speaker 1: under unclean facilities and it was served to you undercooked,
Speaker 1: and you know, the right set of circumstances line up
Speaker 1: with people failing to do their jobs right and giving
Speaker 1: you safe food. Yes, this could kill you too, Yeah yeah. Indeed,
Speaker 1: like most of the items were discussing here today, they
Speaker 1: are extreme and exotic examples of a truth that spreads
Speaker 1: just across the menu for humans. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: return to this case. These three guys who got foogu
Speaker 1: poisoning in nine. Now, this isn't the only case of
Speaker 1: food poisoning it It happens every now and then, but
Speaker 1: this was the one case I looked at. All three
Speaker 1: of these guys survived, so it's not necessarily a death
Speaker 1: sentence even if you do get the poisoning. All three
Speaker 1: were treated with intravenous hydration gastric lovage that means like
Speaker 1: stomach pumping and cleaning the inside of your stomach. And
Speaker 1: and activated charcoal, which I think the idea is that
Speaker 1: the the toxins that were still in the digestive system
Speaker 1: would bind the charcoal rather than entering the body's chemistry.
Speaker 1: So another interesting fact about the tetra detoxin and fugu
Speaker 1: and some there are other sea creatures that have tetra
Speaker 1: detoxin to like blue ringed octopus and stuff. Uh, the
Speaker 1: puffer fish raised in aquariums with clean water tend to
Speaker 1: be non toxic. Okay, Well, that would lead one to
Speaker 1: believe that they're acquiring these toxic property from something in
Speaker 1: their diet exactly you see with a number of different animals,
Speaker 1: including some some poison frogs from example. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: seems to be the case with the fugu. So it
Speaker 1: what scientists think now is that they get their tetra
Speaker 1: detoxin producing capabilities through something in their food, specifically through
Speaker 1: eating foods containing bacteria. And it now appears to be
Speaker 1: the case that fugu become toxic by capturing and using
Speaker 1: tetra detoxin produced by bacteria that produced the tetra detoxin.
Speaker 1: So they don't make the poison. They get that. They
Speaker 1: get it from the bacteria, and they have evolved a
Speaker 1: resistance to that poison that allows them to store it
Speaker 1: as a defensive mechanism within their bodies. So, if you
Speaker 1: are a spy extracting eurotoxins from a puffer fish in
Speaker 1: order to assassinate your target, you're using essentially a third party.
Speaker 1: There's a middleman puffer fish generation poison. Okay, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I do want to stress one more time. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be an alarmist about fugu. They say, you know,
Speaker 1: the chefs who are licensed to serve fugu know what
Speaker 1: they're doing, and it's it's supposed to be a very
Speaker 1: safe experience. Yeah, just maybe it's just some guy in
Speaker 1: your dorm or apartment. What I'd really what I'd really
Speaker 1: be worried about is if you're out, i don't know,
Speaker 1: snorkeling or something and one of your buddies catches one
Speaker 1: and says, let me prepare some boat side sashimi for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be a good, a good opportunity to turn
Speaker 1: them down. Probably, what do we have next here? Oh,
Speaker 1: we have a nice cassava roots salad and oh a
Speaker 1: little tapioca pudding on the side. Um, now here's one
Speaker 1: I've had before. I've had tapioca pudding. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like most of us have probably had tapioca pudding.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you've had bubble tea with tapioca bubbles in it?
Speaker 1: Is that? What that is? I believe in most cases
Speaker 1: I always get the kind with the tapioca, but that
Speaker 1: there may be another variety that is available as well.
Speaker 1: I've never liked bubble tea. I found it kind of gross, Like,
Speaker 1: why do you want little lumps in the stuff you're drinking?
Speaker 1: I need flavorful fold lumps in my beverages. I I
Speaker 1: kind of dig it. Robert lamb endorser of lumps. Yeah. U.
Speaker 1: Tapioca itself has its roots, if you will, in the
Speaker 1: cassava root. So cassava is cultivated throughout the tropical world
Speaker 1: for its roots, which are just superstarchy. They contain nearly
Speaker 1: the maximum theoretical concentration of of starch on a dry
Speaker 1: weight basis among food crops. So we're we're exceeding potato
Speaker 1: territory here. Yeah. Um, And you can think of them
Speaker 1: in terms of potato. There essentially like a tropical potato. Uh,
Speaker 1: fresh roots contain about starch, very little protein. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a number of different uses. They're used to
Speaker 1: produce a cassava flour. So you get breads, you get tapioca,
Speaker 1: you can get a laundry starch derive a laundry starch
Speaker 1: from it. Uh, there's an alcoholic beverages that are made
Speaker 1: from it, of course there are, yeah, and uh oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's also a cyanide producing sugar derivative that occurs in
Speaker 1: varying amounts in most varieties of cassava. Wait wait, wait
Speaker 1: wait cyanide. Yeah, so there's yeah, essentially cyanide in the cassava. Well,
Speaker 1: good thing, there'd have to be as a hundred times
Speaker 1: as much of that as there would be a the
Speaker 1: tetrator toxin. Yeah, it's um. Just to back up a
Speaker 1: little bit, Cassava probably was first cultivated by the Maya
Speaker 1: and the Yucatanda peninsula, so quite a while ago. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of cultivation of this, a lot of
Speaker 1: time for for humans to work out the kinks to
Speaker 1: know what to eat what not to eat. Um. And
Speaker 1: even back then, they developed a complex refining system to
Speaker 1: remove poison from the plant by grating, pressing, and heating
Speaker 1: the tubers, okay, and then they also they also used
Speaker 1: some of the poison for darts and arrows. So basically,
Speaker 1: you want to avoid the leaves, which have the highest
Speaker 1: concentration of these cyanogenic glucosides, and you also want to
Speaker 1: peel the roots as well, because the peel is also
Speaker 1: fairly potent. But all the nutritions in the outside I know,
Speaker 1: Oh no, wait, that's carrots. I mean I always when
Speaker 1: I'm eating something, say, um, like a potato or what
Speaker 1: is that delicious kind of German cross between an art
Speaker 1: of choke and a sun choke. Yeah, I love sun chokes,
Speaker 1: but I love the texture of the sun choke. I
Speaker 1: would never want to eat a peeled sunchoke. But apparently
Speaker 1: most methods call for peeling the cassava roote just to
Speaker 1: avoid any potential poisoning UM. On top of this, cooking
Speaker 1: the cassava tends to remove the toxicity UM, and adequately
Speaker 1: processed cassava flour and cassava based products have a very
Speaker 1: low cyanide content and are just very safe to eat. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is this is one of these foods, and
Speaker 1: I believe there are other foods like this that are
Speaker 1: sort of standard saples that are fine once they've been
Speaker 1: cooked properly, but you wouldn't want to eat them raw.
Speaker 1: Are Lima beans also in that cara beans are off
Speaker 1: are also on the list of things that, yeah, you
Speaker 1: definitely want to kick cook. I want to say red
Speaker 1: beans as well. Red a de beans uh as well
Speaker 1: are also on that list. Yeah, just things where you know,
Speaker 1: we were fortunate to live in a time where long
Speaker 1: ago people went through the painful and potentially lethal process
Speaker 1: of figuring out which part of the plan is good
Speaker 1: and under what circumstances is it good to eat? Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: today we can enjoy tapioca putting, even though at some
Speaker 1: point in the past um some Mayan's went to an
Speaker 1: early grave because they had to figure out how it works.
Speaker 1: That's something I think about often, the the the debt
Speaker 1: we owe to our ancestors, the people of many, many
Speaker 1: years ago who figured out what you couldn't eat and
Speaker 1: paid for that research with their lives. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: without even getting into so many processing food processing technology,
Speaker 1: I mean just the basic ability to turn grain into bread, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, I anytime I read about all
Speaker 1: this stuff. I just imagined myself in the wilderness, starving,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out which berries I dare eat ones
Speaker 1: will kill me dead? Can I eat these mushrooms? I
Speaker 1: don't know? God? Yeah, mushrooms is an entire that's an
Speaker 1: entirely different area to consider there, because you have so
Speaker 1: many delicious, food worthy mushrooms even in our our own
Speaker 1: local environment here, and then so many just deadly ones
Speaker 1: as well. Again, the rule with mushrooms is if you
Speaker 1: really don't know, don't eat it. Yes, indeed, yes, And
Speaker 1: people continue to learn that one the hard way. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I wanted to find out though. All of these we've
Speaker 1: talked about are are interesting to me in that they
Speaker 1: become perfectly fine as long as you can trust the
Speaker 1: person who prepared them. They're they're not gonna hurt you
Speaker 1: if if you've acquired the food properly, prepared it in
Speaker 1: the right way, and you check all the boxes, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna be fine. But what is the food out
Speaker 1: there that is not just interestingly dangerous in potentsia, you know,
Speaker 1: in potential, but that that actually gets the most people. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, prior to this episode, I might have guessed
Speaker 1: poor yeah, you know, that could especially, yeah, or barbecue pork,
Speaker 1: because they've been some headlines in recent years where where
Speaker 1: there have been barbecue competitions and illness springs up. So
Speaker 1: that would have been that would have been my guests. Well,
Speaker 1: there was one report from September of two thousand nine
Speaker 1: that the f d A issued, and it was it
Speaker 1: was a list of the top ten most dangerous foods
Speaker 1: in the United States at the time, based on the
Speaker 1: number and severity of food poisoning outbreaks by food vector.
Speaker 1: So not just like three guys eating fugu and stealing
Speaker 1: the headlines, but actually actual thousands of people. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: what was the culprit? You know, is it was it fugu?
Speaker 1: Was it aki? No? It was none of these None
Speaker 1: of these foods we've talked about even made the list.
Speaker 1: The real criminal was salad, a specifically leafy greens, which
Speaker 1: you know often feels like the safest thing. I know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as the Simpsons once observed, you don't make friends with salad,
Speaker 1: especially if the salad is funneling listeria into your friends bodies.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I want to read from the report. They
Speaker 1: say iceberg let us, romaine let us, leaf let us
Speaker 1: butter let us, baby leaf let us, immature let us,
Speaker 1: or leafy greens, eskarrol in, dive, spring mix, spinach, cabbage, kale, arugula,
Speaker 1: or shard account for of all the outbreaks linked to
Speaker 1: the f d A Top ten UH. Those outbreaks sickened
Speaker 1: over thirteen thousand, five hundred and sixty eight people who
Speaker 1: were reported to have become ill, almost thirty percent of
Speaker 1: all the reported illnesses caused by the f d A
Speaker 1: Top ten UH. I don't know if it's still the
Speaker 1: same today as it was in two thousand nine. I
Speaker 1: hope this has changed in the past six years or so.
Speaker 1: But as for food that not only sickened people but
Speaker 1: killed them, I tried to look up food poisoning outbreaks
Speaker 1: with the most fatalities to see if there was a
Speaker 1: running thread, but I couldn't find one. It seems like
Speaker 1: it was all over the place, and meats, cheeses, vegetables,
Speaker 1: packaged food products like peanut, butter, bag spinach. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like no matter where you turn, something that
Speaker 1: you're probably consuming could kill you if something has failed
Speaker 1: somewhere in the process between the farm and your face.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is that We could have many
Speaker 1: more six course dinners like this one if listeners choose
Speaker 1: to uh to attend it with us, right. But I'd
Speaker 1: say the real takeaway here is that I think the
Speaker 1: most dangerous foods are not the kinds of foods, uh
Speaker 1: that that make people feel uneasy because they're unfamiliar, you know,
Speaker 1: delicacies from other countries that many Americans wouldn't be familiar with.
Speaker 1: That They're going to be things that you eat every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: things without that overt danger factor, but still with a
Speaker 1: very inherent uh sense of danger if not prepared with
Speaker 1: you know, a monicum of of decency and in awareness. Now,
Speaker 1: let me let me offer a caveat even to the
Speaker 1: last thing about salad. I I hope you don't take
Speaker 1: this as a recommendation to stop eating salad. You know,
Speaker 1: leafy greens are a wonderful thing we have as part
Speaker 1: of your diet. And here's my recommendation. Don't buy the
Speaker 1: pre bagged, pre wash stuff and just eat it straight up.
Speaker 1: Buy ahead of let us cut it up and wash
Speaker 1: it yourself. Get you a salad spinner. It's worth the work.
Speaker 1: It's very nice. I don't know, that's a lot of work. Joe,
Speaker 1: I kind of like just opening the bag, dumping it
Speaker 1: and then opening the little packets and then I have
Speaker 1: a salad. But well, okay, and no accounting for keeps
Speaker 1: me from dying. I guess I'll try it, all right.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Uh, they we're going to
Speaker 1: clear the dishes away here. Thanks to everybody for for
Speaker 1: joining us for this dinner. I hope you enjoyed it
Speaker 1: as much as we did. All right, So there you
Speaker 1: have it, Dangerous Foods Part One. There will be a
Speaker 1: brand new part two coming out in the days ahead. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna love it. There's some good stuff in. There's
Speaker 1: some dangerous stuff, some poison the stuff, and some misunderstood stuff.
Speaker 1: Things we think that our poisonous that have kind of
Speaker 1: a reputation for being bad, but maybe aren't, or at
Speaker 1: least aren't in the way that we, you know, think
Speaker 1: that they are. Maybe they'll just poison your mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you want to poison your mind a little more,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That is where you will find all of our podcast episodes.
Speaker 1: You will find links out to our various social media accounts.
Speaker 1: You also find blog post videos, you name it all
Speaker 1: right there, Stuff to blow your Mind dot com And
Speaker 1: if you want to get into this directly, you can
Speaker 1: email us. As always said, blow the mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, because that how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Twined twenty fine part proper