meat
dr. dolittle | February 27, 2017 Image of a gilthead sea bream by Roberto Pillon - via Wikimedia Commons
Similar to humans, muscle growth in fish is increased with exercise. Unlike humans, however, teleost fish are able to continue growing in length as well as weight throughout their lives. This type of meat, I mean muscle, growth happens in two ways: 1) muscle cells get bigger and 2) new muscle cells form. Researchers at the University of Barcelona in Spain wanted to know what effect moderate sustained swimming would have on the muscles of young fingerling gilthead sea bream, a type of teleost fish (image above). Their…
dr. dolittle | February 28, 2016 Image of gilthead sea bream By Roberto Pillon - http://www.fishbase.us/photos/UploadedBy.php?autoctr=13070&win=uploaded, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20825139
A new study published in the American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology explored the effects of exercise on growth and hormone regulation in gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata). The main hormones that regulate growth are, perhaps not surprisingly, growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor. Researchers discovered young gilthead seam bream that underwent…
gregladen | October 27, 2015See what I did there?
As you know, the UN WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer has listed Red Meat as Group 2A (probably carcinogenic to humans) and processed meat at Group 1 (causes cancer).
And everyone is upset. The most common reaction to these listings is to criticize WHO. The least common reaction to these listings is to learn what the listings are, what they mean, what they mean to you, to the meat industry, to cancer research, and all that. Here, I will try to provide some perspective on some of this.
WHO is probably more likely to list something as cancer causing
It is…
milhayser | August 14, 2013Life has been growing on Earth for about 4 billion years, and during that time there have been a handful of mass extinctions that have wiped out a large percentage of complex lifeforms. Asteroid impact, volcanic eruption, climate change, anoxia, and poison have dispatched untold numbers of once-successful species to total oblivion or a few lucky fossils. Species also die off regularly for much less spectacular reasons, and altogether about 98% of documented species no longer exist.
Cry me a river, you say, without all that death there would have been no gap for vertebrates, for mammals, for…
gregladen | August 1, 2013Emily S Cassidy, Paul C West, James S Gerber and Jonathan A Foley, from the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, have produced a very important study for IOP Science Environmental Research Letters. (This is OpenAccess so you can access it openly!) You know Emily as one of the participants in our CONvergence panel on food last July. The research Emily and her colleagues do is some of the most important work being done right now, because it is about the food supply.
The bottom line is this: When we look at our food supply, we find that a large amount of what is grown in…
sastyk | April 16, 2012"Context is everything. Breastfeeding is almost universally beneficial in infants, but in an elderly cardiac patient, it can be fatal." - Spider Robinson
Quite a number of readers suggested I respond to James McWilliams' piece in the New York Times "The Myth of Sustainable Meat." McWilliams has garnered quite a bit of attention by critiquing the idea of local food, and in some cases, some of his analyses, as far as they go, are right. For example, McWilliams is quite right that if everyone in America eats as much beef as they always have, but converts to grassfed beef his figures are…
tsmith | January 19, 2012Back in November, I blogged about one of our studies, examining methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in Iowa meat products. In that post, I mentioned that it was one of two studies we'd finished on the subject. Well, today the second study is out in PLoS ONE (freely available to all). In this study, we focused only on pork products, and included 395 samples from Iowa, Minnesota, and New Jersey. We also looked at not only conventional meats, but also "alternative" meat products. Most of the latter were products labeled "raised without antibiotics" or "raised without antibiotic…
tsmith | November 9, 2011I've blogged previously on a few U.S. studies which investigated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in raw meat products (including chicken, beef, turkey, and pork). This isn't just a casual observation as one who eats food--I follow this area closely as we also have done our own pair of food sampling investigations here in Iowa, and will be doing a much larger, USDA-funded investigation of the issue over the next 5 years.
Let me sum up where the field currently stands. There have been a number of studies looking at S. aureus on raw meat products, carried out both here in North…
sastyk | October 4, 2011My friend Alice hosted an urban permaculture class at her house a few years ago. She lives in an brownstone in a downtown neighborhood of Albany with her husband and two young kids, and the occasional housemate. Two permaculture design teachers and a host of enthusiastic students came together to create several designs for how she might optimize resource use and productivity at her home. She and her family chose one of the plans, and set to work on a number of inside and outside projects, including transforming her small, sunny backyard into an urban garden, full of food producing plants.…
tsmith | April 19, 2011As Maryn McKenna and others have reported, a paper was released on Friday showing a high percentage of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus contaminating raw, retail-available meat products. There has been a lot of media coverage of this finding--so what does the study say, and what are its implications? More after the jump.
First, a bit about S. aureus itself, and why this study was carried out. Historically, Staph has been a relatively common cause of food poisoning. The bacterium produces toxins that can collect to a high level when prepared foods are left at room temperature, such as…
sastyk | February 18, 2011Somehow this week has turned into a lovely, but incredibly overscheduled period. Besides the usual sabbath (which I can use this week), and the fact that it has finally melted off enough to clean the buck pen, move the bucks up the hill and move the chicks out of the bathtub (adorable as they are i somewhat prefer poultry not in my house), and the seed starting (going apace), well, there's more.
Monday is devoted entirely to running a talk and workshop by Rabbi Shalom Kantor (the US's only Conservative Schochet) on ethical kashruth and slaughter. The talk will outline the religious and…
sastyk | June 10, 2010A newly produced UN Report rightly points out, among other things, that the western model of meat and dairy production simply won't work on a planet of 9 billion people. The report, which quantifies the basic unsustainability of affluent societies and the challenges facing us in satisfying needs we've spent a century creating and can't possibly actually fulfill, is generally a good one. But I do want to take issue with the underlying assumptions in the report, including the ones that lead the UN to the most controversial and media-attention gathering claim - that we need to move towards a…
grrlscientist | May 19, 2010tags: Why I'm a Weekday Vegetarian, environment, global warming, meat, vegetarianism, ethics, climate change, Graham Hill, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
We all know the arguments that being vegetarian is better for the environment and for the animals -- but in a carnivorous culture, it can be hard to make the change. Graham Hill has a powerful, pragmatic suggestion ...
The video following the TEDTalk is more interesting than the actual talk itself.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and…
sastyk | May 5, 2010"It is funny, but not that funny."
Eric's comment does not stop my uncontrollable giggling. My step-mother comes over to see why I'm hysterical. She agrees with Eric - it is funny, but not funny enough to explain why tears of laughter are literally coming out of my eyes.
I'm reading a passage in Michael Perry's excellent book _Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting_. I gave the book to my step-mother for her birthday, and during a family visit (note blog silence) from which we returned last night, I finally read it.
Now I read a lot of the "How We Done Moved to a Farm and Made Fools…
sastyk | April 5, 2010Last Sunday's New York Times had an article about the shortage of slaughterhouses for those raising non-industrial and local meat.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the number of slaughterhouses nationwide declined to 809 in 2008 from 1,211 in 1992, while the number of small farmers has increased by 108,000 in the past five years.
Fewer slaughterhouses to process local meat means less of it in butcher shops, grocery stores and restaurants. Chefs throughout the Northeast are partnering with farms to add locally-raised meat to their menus, satisfying a customer demand.…
edyong | April 8, 2009Many men think of little else besides sex and meat, but male chimpanzees will sometimes exchange one for the other. Chimps are mostly vegetarian but they will occasionally supplement their diet by hunting other animals, especially monkeys. Males do most of the hunting, but they don't eat their spoils alone - often, they will share the fresh meat with females, even those who are unrelated to them. Some scientists have suggested that this apparently selfless act is a trade - the males are giving up their nutritious catch in exchange for sex.
Cristina Gomes and Christophe Boesch from the Max…
bioephemera | March 26, 2009
From Failblog.
(I dedicate this to Hungry Hyaena, who holds extremely nuanced views on the ethics of hunting, and would no doubt have an easier time if he embraced complete denial, like this poor person).
angrytoxicologist | August 25, 2008There's a story in the WashPost today about how spicy marinades decrease the heterocyclic amine (HCA) content in grilled meat. They think you should care because HCAs are likely carcinogens. There are many things about this that get my back up so lets make a list:
1) Nobody knows how much cancer HCAs may be causing. As far as I can tell (I'd be glad to be e-mailed some reasearch that disputes this), there isn't any study that directly links HCAs to human cancer, qualitatively or quantitatively. I'm not saying they're not carcinogens, I'm pretty certian they are, but the only studies that I…
esiegel | May 23, 2008Brought to you by Max Cannon, creator of Red Meat and also the dude who helps run the awesome independent Loft Cinema here in Tucson:
Hilarious...
Also, if you haven't caught it yet, don't forget to check out this week's Carnival of Space, where we have an entry about actually seeing a supernova go off.