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Interesting article however it fails to highlight the real reason for fish in a Friday, which was to do with prevention of waste. The Church encouraged it so t
by mothsonasloth 8y ago
Interesting article however it fails to highlight the real reason for fish in a Friday, which was to do with prevention of waste.
The Church encouraged it so that the last catch on a Friday wouldn't spoil over the Sabbath. It was more out of practically than dogma from the scriptures.
Just the same as why pork has been discouraged from consumption in the middle East; it was incredibly hard to preserve it and stop it from making people ill.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y agoWhy is pork different from e.g. lamb?
- rangibaby 8y agoPork and shellfish can make you sick if you don’t prepare them correctly. Beef otoh is perfectly safe to eat raw
- sorokod 8y agoIn this context - why is beef different from sushi or ceviche ? As to beef perfectly safe to eat raw - good luck with that!
- BjoernKW 8y agoCeviche is marinated in lime juice. The citric acid has similar effects as heat. Sushi on the other hand usually contains raw fish indeed, which is why it should only be eaten fresh. As for cooking beef, there’s certainly a reason why our ancestors invented cooking. It helps with making food more palatable and safer to eat. When heating tissue above roughly 42 degrees centigrade proteins start to denature, which renders many pathogens inactive and harmless. The gastrointestinal system of modern humans can’t stomach many types of foods raw either because we lack the enzymes to digest them.
- mgcross 8y agoAnd the majority of sushi has been frozen, killing any parasites. If the fish has not been frozen, there is still a risk from parasites.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoBy law in America, its frozen in liquid nitrogen?
- evgen 8y agoBy law in most places it is frozen to at least -31F for between 15 and 72 hours and sometimes up to a week. Apparently for best quality retention the fish is 'superfrozen' as soon as it is caught by packing it in dry ice 'snow' and chilling it with liquid nitrogen to get it down to -80F or so, and it can be stored up to two years at this temp.
- sorokod 8y agoAs for cooking beef... So perhaps not perfectly safe?
- BjoernKW 8y agoNo, it isn't. However, there's probably no food that's safe to ingest in each and every circumstance. Even water can kill you. On the other hand, there are dishes like steak tartare, which, if not eaten too frequently, probably and usually won't cause any harm.
- sorokod 8y agoHowever, there's probably no food that's safe to ingest in each and every circumstance Absolutely - and this is exactly my point, everyone knows this. There is no point in gods telling humans what not to eat because humans know this already, known this for millennia. Religious prohibitions on food have nothing to do with "health and safety" and everything to do with manipulation and control,
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoBeef otoh is perfectly safe to eat raw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taenia_saginata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taenia_saginata
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoGarbage-fed livestock is most of the source of worms etc. In the Western world, commercial livestock is not fed garbage. There hasn't been a trichinosis case in America from commercial pork for instance in 60 years. Still, with home-raised pigs you have to be careful.
- tim333 8y agoWikipedia: >Unlike many other forms of livestock, pigs are omnivorous scavengers, eating virtually anything they come across, including carrion and refuse. Hence tapeworms and why people don't order their pork chops rare.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y agoBut cattle also have tapeworms: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taenia_saginata https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taenia_saginata Yet we do eat beef rare.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoFeel free to order your pork chops rare. There's no trichinosis in restaurant pork, hasn't been for two generations. These old stories die hard.
- parenthesis 8y agoI thought the problem with pork is that pigs eat food that humans could just eat directly. As opposed to animals that eat something like grass, that we can't digest.
- thrower123 8y agoWhy would pork be hard to preserve? Is there something about the middle east that makes salting or smoking it prohibitive? Or something about the environment that makes it more prone to spoilage than in Europe or Southeast Asia? Genuinely curious.
- simonh 8y agoI think the problem with pork is that pigs will happily eat and root in human waste. This means human parasite eggs and larvae end up going back into our food chain when we eat the pigs. That's what makes them 'unclean'.
- sorokod 8y agoHumanity made it to the 21st century consuming pork. Labeling pork 'unclean' is just standard operating procedure where arbitrary restrictions are introduced to generate an "us vs. them" divide and give the religious authorities more control over the everyday lifes of the believers. Same dynamics as when religions take great interest in the sexual lives of the belivers
- runciblespoon 8y agosorokod: “Humanity made it to the 21st century consuming pork. Labeling pork 'unclean' is just standard operating procedure where arbitrary restrictions are introduced to generate an "us vs. them" divide and give the religious authorities more control over the everyday lifes of the believers. Same dynamics as when religions take great interest in the sexual lives of the belivers” Going on how your comment has been rendered invisible, looks like you triggered someone :]
- noelwelsh 8y agoFor the people asking about pork, the answer is, I believe, trichinosis aka roundworm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinosis It is infectious in under-cooked meat and can make you very ill (including killing you).
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoBut not in America! Please don't convince Americans to overcook pork into a hockey puck like our grandparents did. Trichinosis in pork went away with tuberculosis etc 60 years ago. Today you find it only in a family-raised pig that is fed garbage (table scraps etc). Its not in any commercially-raised hog.
- sorokod 8y agoHow about mushrooms many of which are poisonous? Why isn't there a religious prohibition on mushrooms? Do you really think that humans need religions to forbid something that was known to be harmful for hundreds of thousands of years?
- stevenwoo 8y agoPork was consumed in the Middle East until the chicken was introduced. It might be a simple as a prolonged drought afterwards that forced the issue. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10814-015-9083-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10814-015-9083-2 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/people-ate-pork-middle-east-until-1000-bcwhat-changed-180954614/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/people-ate-pork-mi... The religious dietary restrictions or pork prohibition of Kosher/Halal came later. (edit: just remembered this) Some of the workers on the pyramids ate pork as well. https://www.livescience.com/28961-ancient-giza-pyramid-builders-camp-unearthed.html https://www.livescience.com/28961-ancient-giza-pyramid-build...
- evgen 8y agoWhile drought and the water requirements for livestock could have had an impact it is strange that pork was singled out when it uses 1/2 to 1/3 of the water per kilo of dressed weight of lamb or beef respectively.
- stevenwoo 8y agoYes, you raise a good point and it does seem it would be hard to discern root causes just from the bones left as trash by previous civilizations - should probably have said it could be speculated, though lamb and cattle can survive on a diet that cannot sustain a pig, the pigs would be competing with humans for the same calories.