Althouse: Strange deviation or the norm?

April 4, 2023

Strange deviation or the norm?

clean the chili peppers
by u/BigfootDynamite in Wellthatsucks

What do you really know about any of your food?

36 comments:

Terry di Tufo said...: I know that the head of a Greek shipping company told me that if I ever saw rice being delivered into port I would never eat it again. Luckily I still haven’t.; 4/4/23, 5:43 AM
tim maguire said...: You definitely don’t want to know how much rat feces the agriculture dept thinks is normal for a bag of oatmeal to contain.; 4/4/23, 5:53 AM
rrsafety said...: Not clicking the vid. A win for me.; 4/4/23, 5:59 AM
Oh Yea said...: I worked in a restaurant kitchen in high school. It was always an adventure when fruits, particularly bananas, were delivered. We were always discovering new exotic insects, usually quite large.; 4/4/23, 6:04 AM
Enigma said...: Wanna learn? It's not hard. Travel to or live in a farm area. Southern California has fields of chili peppers. Some of them are red hot. The air smells like a Mexican restaurant.

Some farms are amazingly automated and clean (e.g., strawberries grow on plastic sheets to limit dirt contamination and water evaporation) while others are disgusting (e.g., corn fed beef fattening pens).; 4/4/23, 6:19 AM
Another old lawyer said...: Or really anything you don't personally experience.; 4/4/23, 6:28 AM
Michael said...: Ever see a grain silo? Teeming with mice. Think about that as you enjoy your big bowl of whole grain goodness this morning.; 4/4/23, 6:28 AM
Narayanan said...: i guess >> if rats have been on strict chili pepper diet do a study on the effects on the biome?; 4/4/23, 6:30 AM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: Mice eat hot 🥵 peppers 🌶️?; 4/4/23, 7:18 AM
rehajm said...: You definitely don’t want to know how much rat feces the agriculture dept thinks is normal for a bag of oatmeal to contain.

…or your glass of wine.; 4/4/23, 7:22 AM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: Could this have been ‘deep-faked’?; 4/4/23, 7:22 AM
Whiskeybum said...: One thing I know about food: if you are a sauerkraut lover, don't watch the videos where the workers are wading into the kraut batch with their Wellies on, churning it up with pitchforks that look like they came out of your tool shed. And don't get me started on barefoot grape stomping in the wine industry!

Actually, our food is a lot less 'clean' that what most Americans imagine. And in reality, all those contaminates that we ingest, while seemingly disgusting, contain no significant health risks for something like 99.999% of the cases.; 4/4/23, 7:31 AM
tim maguire said...: Terry di Tufo said...if I ever saw rice being delivered into port I would never eat it again.

Fortunately, you can rinse off rice. Oats and flour, not so much. When I wash fruits and vegetables, I use soap whenever possible (ex., yes for apples and peppers, no for berries and lettuce).; 4/4/23, 7:32 AM
Iman said...: I hate those meeces to pieces!; 4/4/23, 7:35 AM
Iman said...: As a kid, I used to love feeding the horses my cousins had… putting the scoop in the grain barrel, making the scoop and watching the inevitable couple of mice scramble in the barrel. Never did figure out how the mice entered that barrel.; 4/4/23, 7:39 AM
Old and slow said...: Oh, I think we all know it isn't unusual. Life is messy and disgusting if you look too closely, and those mice aren't the half of it.; 4/4/23, 7:43 AM
Iman said...: Rinse off the rice
Rinse off the rice
Rinse off the rice
Don’t forget the mice
Oh yeah
Oh yeah
Oh! Oh!; 4/4/23, 7:45 AM
Iman said...: Speedy Gonzalez; 4/4/23, 7:47 AM
Old and slow said...: Obsessive worry about this sort of thing has probably caused the huge increase in severe allergies in children. I can tell you that my children suffered no allergies...; 4/4/23, 7:47 AM
Jamie said...: The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo just wrapped up a couple of weeks ago. I'm two generations from a family beef cattle farm in Wisconsin (my grandfather used to name the calves after us grandkids and call them by those names as we were eating them... sick old Irishman), but I never raised livestock. So it's interesting to me to see the kids and their animals - how they interact, the methods for getting them from place to place, how they care for them, and especially how they let them go at the Sifts and the auctions.

(Sift is when they decide which animals will actually make it to the auction itself. The ones that don't go directly to the truck where they'll be taken for slaughter. My understanding is that because none of these animals, raised by FFA and 4-H kids, can be sold for meat for humans because they weren't raised under the right governmental regulations.); 4/4/23, 7:50 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Insect Minutiae... Look it up.
A fave phrase discovery of mine in the 9th grade.
Rolls off the tongue. Add FDA to the search string.
Food Defects indeed!; 4/4/23, 7:52 AM
Owen said...: Mice are the bane of machinery too. I have blown up a lawn tractor because they nested in the engine and blocked the air cooling. They also love car wiring (now made with some kind of soy extract: mmm tasty!).

We think we’re running things. Nope.; 4/4/23, 7:59 AM
Temujin said...: I assume all of my 'natural' food has been shat on, nibbled, caressed, or fought over before it gets to our grocery shelf. And that's just the store employees.; 4/4/23, 8:14 AM
n.n said...: Transdietary visibility. Another reason to consume in moderation, or commit to unadulterated, carbon homegrown products. Think of the baby sprouts!; 4/4/23, 8:40 AM
rcocean said...: Just rinse it off. No harm, no foul. besides its not the mice feces that are the problem, its the bacteria like E.coli.; 4/4/23, 9:12 AM
rcocean said...: Just rinse it off. No harm, no foul. besides its not the mice feces that are the problem, its the bacteria like E.coli.; 4/4/23, 9:12 AM
Critter said...: That is why I buy New Mexico chile peppers whole and roasted. No place for the mice to hide.

We also use fruit/vegetable wash on every fruit or vegetable we buy. I often eat strawberries with yoghurt at breakfast. I used to get mild or worse food poisoning on a regular basis before I started using the disinfecting wash on them.; 4/4/23, 9:31 AM
Eva Marie said...: Did you know that most of your vegetables grow in dirt? Yeah, that filthy stuff you walk and drive on. Your food grows in that - with the worms and the bugs and the mice. And if that’s not gross enough - then they add cow shit to the dirt. Yum.; 4/4/23, 9:34 AM
Ampersand said...: Some people say grace before every meal. I tend to say to myself, "this is so much better than a North Korean prison camp." It brings forth the joy in eating.; 4/4/23, 9:53 AM
Ice Nine said...: >I know that the head of a Greek shipping company told me that if I ever saw rice being delivered into port I would never eat it again.
Ever see a grain silo? Teeming with mice. Think about that as you enjoy your big bowl of whole grain goodness this morning.<

Breakfast cereal ingredients are steamed and cooked in production. Rice is boiled or steamed before eating. Both are effectively sterilized before they are consumed by humans. What's not to enjoy?; 4/4/23, 10:03 AM
Shoeless Joe said...: What do I know about my food?

TWO ALL BEEF PATTIES
SPECIAL SAUCE
LETTUCE
CHEESE
PICKLES
ONIONS
ON A SESAME SEED BUN; 4/4/23, 10:18 AM
Tina Trent said...: One thing I learned doing prep work: never eat swordfish.; 4/4/23, 10:28 AM
n.n said...: And if that’s not gross enough - then they add cow shit to the dirt

And the inevitable avian bombs, which a greenhouse effectively defuses.; 4/4/23, 10:28 AM
BG said...: I grew up on a farm. My parents not only had a very large garden, they also butchered beef, hogs, and chickens, with an occasional duck thrown in for good measure. Let's just say their butchering methods most likely would not be Food Safety and Inspection Service approved. (It was fun watching the chickens flopping around without a head!) When I was old enough I helped with harvesting crops and worked in the barn. Yes, messy business a lot of it. I will NOT eat raw oatmeal. I know what was crawling around those oats. (When I was young, it was me.); 4/4/23, 2:06 PM
farmgirl said...: Oh f/k.
I didn’t catch that the 1st time.
Yeesh.; 4/4/23, 7:18 PM
Tina Trent said...: The bigger the pliers, the bigger the worms.; 4/4/23, 8:21 PM