Also curious how you feel about the pre-packaging chlorine wash of chicken in some countries. Mostly pointless for the spore resiliency reasons, or useful intervention that decreases bacterial load at an appropriate cost?
Horrifying. The latest in a series of signs that we've totally lost our way with respect to agriculture. Bleach IS one of the best ways to kill spores, but it's still bad practice.
Think about how bleaching a stain works: pigment molecules are like micro-scale antennas—they resonate at a certain frequency, and reflect light of the corresponding color. Bleaching introduces chlorine atoms to random spots on those molecules, which changes their shape—it's like taking the antenna and bending it 90° in the middle. No more resonance, no more stain! But the molecule doesn't go away, just becomes invisible.
So, when you bleach the surface of a chicken breast, you do the same thing to a lot of the molecules in the outer layer. You can clear the residual bleach off, but the stuff that it's reacted with stays, inasmuch as it's attached to the rest of the meat. So now you're eating randomly chlorinated organic compounds, amino acids, etc.
How bad is that? Hard to say—but since a number of similar byproducts resulting from e.g. chlorination of water are known or suspected endocrine disruptors, I'm leery.
I actually did not know how bleach worked, never having used it before, so this was informative twice over. Really interesting, thanks! As usual, best practice seems to be not letting things get stained (biofilmed) in the first place...an ounce of cure or however that saying goes. Also makes me doubly glad I've never much liked poultry to begin with, hard to get that image out of the head.
It's depressing thinking about how all the gross magic works behind the mass-ag curtain. Not worth unsqueezing that genie back in the tube, it wouldn't be a good tradeoff to return to Malthusian malnutrition...but, sigh, the things we do to make the system run. (Sometimes I still dream of the alternate timeline with shelf stable irradiated food.) Same feeling going through the whole egg shortage pantomine all over again, knowing we actually could vaccinate for bird flu in theory, but don't due to incentives..."looks like you win this round, Moloch!"
You don't literally want me to unsubscribe for being from a strongly anti-wash family, right?
>But when you actually look at how people act in the kitchen
I dunno man, this is my primary beef (rimshot) with meatwashers. The ones I've met are exactly the kind who get that shit all over the place, don't thoroughly clean the sink afterwards, don't switch out cutting boards, and/or don't even wash their hands* after handling. Nevermind disposal of the "meat juice pad", which is there expressly to absorb that slime you talk about. I'm curious what % of waste stream contamination comes solely from that biobomb.
It's good to have some actual studies to reference, and some microbiology to reason about. But ultimately I think it comes down to something like masking, where the devil's in the implementation details, and common sense is like assuming a can opener. There's also the prescreening: my family avoids getting sick by being highly discriminating about what chicken we buy, and making sure to cook that stuff ASAP. Working in a grocery store has surprised me by how customers throw anything into their baskets, almost sight unseen. You wouldn't buy a broken bell pepper - don't buy funky-looking meat either! And be willing to toss it if it doesn't seem right at home! (IMO this is one of the better arguments for vegetarianism, that even executing well on meat-knowledge can get one much sicker than ~any plant.)
Lmao I literally lost 6 subscribers so far on this one. Not reading too much into it lol.
Agreed that common sense ain't so common and that checking the meat carefully for freshness is the way to go. If it works for you, it works! Thanks for the thoughtful comment
Is this a similar issue with rice - spore forming bacteria? Does the workaround work there too. i.e. if I wash my rice, do I get a free pass to reheating rice (which I happen to love - next day fried rice is quick, simple and tasty imo). I know people lose their shit over this but I've never got sick from leftover rice before, and I don't know how much of a big deal it is.
I have not tracked the rice discourse. Shouldn't be any more prone to spoilage than other foods—but I expect leaving a rice cooker on "warm" for like 4 hours could get you into trouble.
Also curious how you feel about the pre-packaging chlorine wash of chicken in some countries. Mostly pointless for the spore resiliency reasons, or useful intervention that decreases bacterial load at an appropriate cost?
Horrifying. The latest in a series of signs that we've totally lost our way with respect to agriculture. Bleach IS one of the best ways to kill spores, but it's still bad practice.
Think about how bleaching a stain works: pigment molecules are like micro-scale antennas—they resonate at a certain frequency, and reflect light of the corresponding color. Bleaching introduces chlorine atoms to random spots on those molecules, which changes their shape—it's like taking the antenna and bending it 90° in the middle. No more resonance, no more stain! But the molecule doesn't go away, just becomes invisible.
So, when you bleach the surface of a chicken breast, you do the same thing to a lot of the molecules in the outer layer. You can clear the residual bleach off, but the stuff that it's reacted with stays, inasmuch as it's attached to the rest of the meat. So now you're eating randomly chlorinated organic compounds, amino acids, etc.
How bad is that? Hard to say—but since a number of similar byproducts resulting from e.g. chlorination of water are known or suspected endocrine disruptors, I'm leery.
I actually did not know how bleach worked, never having used it before, so this was informative twice over. Really interesting, thanks! As usual, best practice seems to be not letting things get stained (biofilmed) in the first place...an ounce of cure or however that saying goes. Also makes me doubly glad I've never much liked poultry to begin with, hard to get that image out of the head.
It's depressing thinking about how all the gross magic works behind the mass-ag curtain. Not worth unsqueezing that genie back in the tube, it wouldn't be a good tradeoff to return to Malthusian malnutrition...but, sigh, the things we do to make the system run. (Sometimes I still dream of the alternate timeline with shelf stable irradiated food.) Same feeling going through the whole egg shortage pantomine all over again, knowing we actually could vaccinate for bird flu in theory, but don't due to incentives..."looks like you win this round, Moloch!"
You don't literally want me to unsubscribe for being from a strongly anti-wash family, right?
>But when you actually look at how people act in the kitchen
I dunno man, this is my primary beef (rimshot) with meatwashers. The ones I've met are exactly the kind who get that shit all over the place, don't thoroughly clean the sink afterwards, don't switch out cutting boards, and/or don't even wash their hands* after handling. Nevermind disposal of the "meat juice pad", which is there expressly to absorb that slime you talk about. I'm curious what % of waste stream contamination comes solely from that biobomb.
It's good to have some actual studies to reference, and some microbiology to reason about. But ultimately I think it comes down to something like masking, where the devil's in the implementation details, and common sense is like assuming a can opener. There's also the prescreening: my family avoids getting sick by being highly discriminating about what chicken we buy, and making sure to cook that stuff ASAP. Working in a grocery store has surprised me by how customers throw anything into their baskets, almost sight unseen. You wouldn't buy a broken bell pepper - don't buy funky-looking meat either! And be willing to toss it if it doesn't seem right at home! (IMO this is one of the better arguments for vegetarianism, that even executing well on meat-knowledge can get one much sicker than ~any plant.)
*which many people still do wrong, sigh
Lmao I literally lost 6 subscribers so far on this one. Not reading too much into it lol.
Agreed that common sense ain't so common and that checking the meat carefully for freshness is the way to go. If it works for you, it works! Thanks for the thoughtful comment
Mr Ward is so proud.
Is this a similar issue with rice - spore forming bacteria? Does the workaround work there too. i.e. if I wash my rice, do I get a free pass to reheating rice (which I happen to love - next day fried rice is quick, simple and tasty imo). I know people lose their shit over this but I've never got sick from leftover rice before, and I don't know how much of a big deal it is.
I have not tracked the rice discourse. Shouldn't be any more prone to spoilage than other foods—but I expect leaving a rice cooker on "warm" for like 4 hours could get you into trouble.
Thanks - yeah, I won't do that :)