Bring Home the Biotech Bacon

Wired is reporting that researchers may have found the key to "heart friendly bacon." From the article: "Geneticists have mixed DNA from the roundworm C. elegans and pigs to produce swine with significant amounts of omega-3 fatty acids -- the kind believed to stave off heart disease. Researchers hope they can improve the technique in pork and do the same in chickens and cows. In the process, they also want to better understand human disease."

Comments

Pork...

[fatduck]

The non-diseased white meat.

Re:Pork...

[InsaneLampshade]

I hear the Pork Tapeworm is pretty nasty.

Re:Pork...

[montyzooooma]

I think you're pretty nasty for telling me about it. Ignorance is bliss ya know.

Re:Pork...

[chrish]

Bah, everyone wants that skeletal Hollywood look while still being able (and almost compelled) to eat everything within reach...

Re:Pork...

[ToxikFetus]

Just watch out for Trichinosis

Re:Pork...

[Anonymous Coward]

A pork tapeworm once bit my sister.... Mynd you, tapeworm bites kan be pretti nasti!

Fatty

[mr100percent]

Still, the pork has way too much fat to be healthy. You can still get trichonosis or tapeworm from infected meat, like regular pork. It's still not kosher or halal either.

Re:Fatty

[sexylicious]

You can still get trichonosis or tapeworm from infected meat, like regular pork.

But if that's the case, you could market it as a weight-loss program too!

Re:Fatty

[Anonymous Coward]

They should combine this with turkey. Good turkey bacon tastes as good as real bacon, is healthier, and doesn't violate those religious rules. Of course, some people won't touch it because it's "health food" (onoes!)

Re:Fatty

[coleblak]

They used to do that actually. Tapeworms were marketed as the ultimate diet aid at one time.

Re:Fatty

[drgonzo59]

That's what I say. I would rather throw some Salmon on my George Forman to get the omega-3 than buy pork meat from some genetic lab. I like pork but as I am getting older it is time to start eating healthy -- better later than never...

Re:Fatty

[Duckman5]

It's still not kosher or halal either.

Which is exactly why I've been saying the next step should be to genetically engineer a pig with multiple stomachs so it can chew it's cud. Mmmm...kosher bacon.

Re:Fatty

[arivanov]

Salmon?

Wild salmon as most oceanic top predators accumulates all the flame retardants, dioxins, etc we dump in the Arctic nowdays. I would seriously think twice before eating it unless it is from the North Pacific. Same for any Arctic and North Atlantic fish.

Farmed salmon is not much better either. It is stuffed with antibiotics and has dioxin levels way above what should be considered normal.

If you want to eat non-carcinogenic and antibiotic free omega-rich fish eat white trout (in Russian "Sig") which is nowdays farmed across most of EU. It has much better disease resistance compared to salmon so they do not stuff it with so much antibiotics. It also tastes better.

Alternatively - Antarctic fish. It is still reasonably clean from pollution and tastes better than salmon anyway.

Re:Fatty

[Anonymous Coward]

George Forman? WTF?

Re:Fatty

[Lord Kano]

Good turkey bacon tastes as good as real bacon, is healthier, and doesn't violate those religious rules.

Two out of three ain't bad. Definately healthier, and doesn't violate the rules of any sane religion but it doesn't taste as good.

I'd go there with you on turkey ham. But real bacon is in a class all by itself.

LK

Re:Fatty

[mrjb]

You can still get trichonosis or tapeworm from infected meat
Then cook it (the meat, not the tapeworm. Then again, cooked tapeworm should make for a pretty good source of protein).

Re:Fatty

[Brainfuck R00lz]

Still, the pork has way too much fat to be healthy. You can still get trichonosis or tapeworm from infected meat, like regular pork. It's still not kosher or halal either. Your acting as if Pork is the only fatty food, just about any food that has any accutal good flavor has fat (and thats not opinion, from a cooking standpoint, fat = flavor). Pork is plenty healthy right now, just like any meat, just as long as you don't eat it for every meal of every day, each week of the year. As for trichonosis and tapeworm, i'm alsmost certain all uncooked meats carry risk (as stated above), we live in a modern society, we have things called freezers that allow meat to be left in an uncooked state without it spoiling, it's much better then leaving it out on the counter instead. Fact of the matter is infections because of raw meat-bord viruses and parasites are probably down 75% since 1900, it's only a guess, but i'm sure people will agree that it's somewhat accurate. I also don't belive that science should have any place in religion, if you wan't to geneticly engineer a cow thats less sacred to the indian people, thats your thing, not mine, personally I dobt taht the Jewish and Islamic community would accept kosher/halal pork, regardless of if it was or wasn't. In short: Pork isn't a health food, civilized people cook it, and the only people who would buy kosher/halal pork are the people who allready eat pork anyway. I personally think that this is a step in the right direction, if we can't get people to eat right,l we can make bad foods better for people, it's better then trying to force people to not eat foods like red meat and pork (I myself had pork for breakfast, and i'll be damned if some treehugger [no offence to anyone who hugs trees] can get me off of my pork roll addiction).

Re:Fatty

[RhettLivingston]

sigh... apparently, this is one of those government and business promulgated myths that is going to take years to undo, if even undoable. There are a ton of "scientists" out there who are emotionally and economically dependent on the current established "truth". Bad science is killing us all. But, here's the pointer. Read it.

Study Finds Low-Fat Diet Won't Stop Cancer or Heart Disease

Returning natural amounts of fat to our diet is essential for getting our weight back under control. As we've reduced our fat intake percentage, we have increased our food intake to take in the same overall amount of fat, hence the threefold increase in diabetes.

And while you're at it, add the following to your reading.

Omega 3 might not be a lifesaver

I can't find one right now, but there have also been several studies that were suppressed by those funded by the established theories indicating that high concentrations of free iron and calcium, both of which are as essential to the formation of plaque as fat, in the blood stream are more closely associated with heart disease than fat intake. So, yeh, go choke down some more iron and calcium laced supplements if you'd like to die young. And you might throw in the fact that family history, i.e. genetic makeup, is the number one best predictor.

In short, I've decided that your body knows what's best more than current established "science". Since deciding this, I've lost 50 pounds eating what I want instead of what's "good" for me. And the substitution of bacon grease in place of crisco in my corn bread last night was awesome.

Re:Fatty

[Red Flayer]

"You can still get trichonosis or tapeworm from infected meat, like regular pork."

Both trichinosis and tapeworm are now extremely rare in commercial hogs, which is why many restaurants will serve pork at a 'medium' doneness if asked.

Even if you purchase meat from an infected hog, cooking thoroughly will prevent infection by parasites.

Not that I'd advocate eating pork sushi, but pork is much safer than people believe.

Re:Fatty

[breadcat]

healthy or not, tons of people are still going to eat it

Re:Fatty

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been saying this for years. It is not what you eat, its how much you eat. I've just seen so much anecdotal evidence that I can't ignore it anymore. Only fat people eat diet food.

Re:Fatty

[IAmTheDave]

Aside from Salmon having elevated levels of just about everything bad (including our good friend mercury) - you can't eat it all the time anyway. Five nights a week of salmon isn't appealing to me (as much as I love salmon.)

There's nothing wrong with some ham or pork tenderloin having some of the good stuff in it too, since occasionally I'll eat the other white meat.

Re:Fatty

[Anonymous Coward]

It is important to remember that there are different types of fat. People still believe that if you eat fat you become fat, this is not true if you know your fats.

The body needs both Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids to function normally, the ratio of these fats in the body should be about 1:1. With the current consumption of vegetable oils and grains (mostly Omega 6 fats) in the US today, this ratio can reach a very unbalance 16:1. This has detrimental affects on the body(more on this can be found in the research of Dr. Mary Enig).

Also animals do not have to be engineered to produce Omega 3 fatty acids. The reason the fat content of animals today are so high in Omega 6 fatty acids is because they are fed mostly grain diets(amongst other things), which as stated are mostly Omega 6 fatty acids. The old adage "you are what you eat" has never been truer in this case. If a cow for instance is raise on a free range, grass fed diet, the stored fat in the animal will be of the Omega 3 variety.

The simple diet adjustment of trying to balance the intake of the fats you eat can have a profound positive effect on your health. Avoid hydrogenated oils of any kind as these are trans fats. If you must fry foods use olive oil on low heat or expeller pressed coconut oil (deodorized, leaves no coconut taste) for high heat (still, try to avoid fried foods).

Re:Fatty

[mfrank]

Well-cooked pork is perfectly safe. Pork is a lot leaner now than it was twenty years ago (I grew up on a pig farm, and about ten years my dad had to replace all his breeding animals because the slaughterhouses started not accepting hogs if they had more than a certain bodyfat percentage). And trichonosis has pretty much been eradicated in the US except for some wild pigs. You aren't going to get it (or tapeworm) from something you buy in a store.

Re:Fatty

[mfrank]

George Forman (Foreman?) grill. Quick, convenient, easy to clean up. Mmmm, good. May have to pick up some salmon or pork loin on the way home . . .

Re:Fatty

[LWATCDR]

Salmon tends to have mercury in it. So it may be worse for you than genetic lab pork. Just remember smallpox is all natural and organic.

Re:Fatty

[MagicMike]

It's important to note that the methodology of that study, and most nutrition studies, is crap and can't really be used to draw the conclusion that is trumpeted.

If you had RTFStudy you'd have seen that the women in the low-fat group didn't actually lower their fat intake much, and the study involved self-reported data (notoriously bad in a nutrition study, man do we humans lie like thieves to ourselves about food and money).

And there was a drop it just wasn't statistically significant. Is that because the women didn't actually drop their fat intake as much as they said, much less as much as they signed up to?

Who knows?

Bad science is killing us indeed, just remember that when you say that and then point to a science article, you may not be helping :-)

Speaking of bad science and your "eat what you want" diet, substituting bacon grease (not a great fat) in place of crisco (horrible mutant fat) is actually a good thing.

Most Americans really just need to turn the TV off and get the heck up off the sofa, then they could have as many corn muffins as they wanted.

I used to think the Hungry Man breakfasts (something like 1000-2000 calories depending) were ridiculous until I realized that you actually could burn 2000 calories before lunch if you were, say, a lumberjack. Typists should stick to a half bagel though ;-)

Perhaps it's really just bad math (calories in - calories out = weight change) that's killing us.

I'll finish this not quite strung together post by just saying that bacon is tasty.

Re:Fatty

[benzapp]

There is absolutely no evidence that fat has any impact on any disease what so ever. Most pork today is actually from pigs selectively bred to be very much lean, so much so its impossible to cook.

Parasites are also extremely rare, and really no more or less dangerous than any other disease. Non-human cells outnumber human cells in your own body by a factor of 10 to 1. It is pure fantasy to assume that anyone can live free from infectious disease. The number of tapeworm infections from pork in the US were in the single digits in 2005. Trichonosis is practically unheard of today.

Who gives a fuck about religious nut jobs and their bizarre fetishes. Jews love to bite of the foreskin of baby's cocks. Muslims love to ritualy slaughter animals and have a mass blood orgy in the process.

I don't think the opinions of those twisted religions matter to the average, sane individual.

Risks?

[mtenhagen]

And then in 20 years we will discover that this 'adjusted' meat will cause cancer or 'mad-human disease'

Re:Risks?

[Aranth Brainfire]

Nobody cares if something causes cancer, or some disease in 20 years.

Know any smokers?

Re:Risks?

[uncoveror]

Frankenswine!

Re:Risks?

[daft_one]

It's pronounced "frawnk en sween"

Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Good for us... Not so good for the pig or the rabbit.

Vincent: Want some bacon?
Jules: No man, I don't eat pork.
Vincent: Are you Jewish?
Jules: Nah, I ain't Jewish, I just don't dig on swine, that's all.
Vincent: Why not?
Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don't eat filthy animals.
Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood.
Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfucker. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That's a filthy animal. I ain't eat nothin' that ain't got enough sense enough to disregard its own faeces.
Vincent: How about a dog? Dogs eats its own feces.
Jules: I don't eat dog either.
Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?
Jules: I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy but they're definitely dirty. But, a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.
Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?
Jules: Well we'd have to be talkin' about one charmin' motherfuckin' pig. I mean he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I'm sayin'?

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[arcite]

But do you eat mushrooms? Know where they come from?...

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[dalroth5]

Hello folks.
I really can't let this one go by.

"Pigs sleep and root in shit. That's a filthy animal."

No. When humans are confined without the means to stay clean (think gaol) they too sleep in shit. Does that make humans filthy animals? Clearly not. Equally clearly, when pigs live out in the wild they shun excrement just like you and I do.

"I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy but they're definitely dirty."

No. A dog is merely doing what other animals do with a food which is difficult to digest: they re-digest it. Cattle do the same; but they don't have to shit it out first because they have multiple stomachs. It's called 'cud'. Do you drink milk? Do you eat butter and cheese?

If freshly dropped shit was harmful, you'd be ill already, wouldn't you? Please remember that your own, personal, filthy shit just came out of the middle of your nicely-clean-on-the-outside body. You and I are both literally full of shit. :) So is everybody else. In fact, the only humans who aren't full of shit are the starving millions in the Third World. Do you want to cleanse yourself? Stop eating for about a week. OK? No, I thought not.

Special thought for the day just for you: "I am glad and grateful to be full of shit."

Thanks for your time.

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[DrSkwid]

> Do you drink milk? Do you eat butter and cheese?

No, they are disgusting.

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[Telvin_3d]

And, you know that nice thing called 'fertilizer' that gets put on all the veggies that you buy at the supermarket? A lot of that came in bags marked 'manure'.

And for your piece of mind, I seriously suggest that you don't look that one up in the dictionary.

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it as digusting as eating genetically mishmashed bacon?

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[sciop101]

Chicken is disgusting!

Chickens eat anything and everything. Feces, insects, feathers, dead chickens, and anything that cannot get away.

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[Anonymous Coward]

original post was a scene from Pulp Fiction. not necessarily the feeling\thoughts of the poster.

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[UserChrisCanter4]

One objection to your statement: e. coli. It's used in later portions of the human intestine to aid digestion. It's fine if it stays in the intestine, but it can kill if it's allowed into the upper digestive tract (just ask Jack-in-the-Box!)

Freshly dropped human shit is in fact pretty bad for you.

All your other points are spot on.

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[DrSkwid]

they all turn my stomach

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[Anonymous Coward]

my breath would smell a hell of a lot better if i had multiple stomachs.

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[adyus]

[silly talk mode on]

Yeah man, but people got personality... As we know, that goes a long way.

I mean, we eat soylent green, don't we? :)

[silly talk mode off]

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[Liam Slider]

A dog is merely doing what other animals do with a food which is difficult to digest: they re-digest it

Uh-huh....now explain to me their whole cat shit fetish Mr. Wizard. They'll snarf that shit down like it was candy.

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[vertinox]

Think shit ain't that bad?

Ever hear of Typhoid fever or Dysentery?

There are reasons we wipe our asses, wash our hands after going to the bathroom, and shower once a day (hopefully).

Sure, we can live our entire lives without doing any of the above, but then it might be rather short life...

I like bacon more than the next person, but I'm keen on not getting ecoli or a parasite.

Personally, I avoid eating me when I can, but when I am in the mood I tend to make sure its not too raw.

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[CFTM]

So you're telling me that I'm shit free? I haven't eaten in a week! I'm on the "Four wisdom teeth removed" diet; 10 lbs already!

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[benzapp]

No, its only bad for humans who live in sterile environments. E.coli infections are practically non-existant in the turd world. Why is that? Because the people who live there are filthy and shit is everywhere.

Re:Sounds like a rabbit's foot

[FirienFirien]

Holy moly... all the guy did was quote from Pulp Fiction.

Anyway, we don't eat humans either ;)

Doh !

[sane?]

You can just imagine all those marketeers and press people who were planning to use Omega-3 as a marketing tool when they read this recent article.

As they say in the marketing rulebook: Timing is everything

Re:Doh !

[Tony Hoyle]

That won't stop them.

They're still marketing it as 'super brain food' based on one study that found if you fed children decent food in the morning instead of crap they did slightly better at school.

If you were to believe the marketing the only thing this stuff doesn't do is raise the dead... and I suspect they're working on that.

Re:Doh !

[greg1104]

That article that you and many of the other people here are linking to is largely irrelevant. It's true that there have been many people making wild-ass claims about how Omega-3 fatty acids can stave off heart disease without enough clinical data to correlate that claim. Recent work like that you cite suggests that those claims are -1 overrated.

Regardless, it's still true that the average diet in countries like the US is lacking in O-3 fatty acids, and that there are other health problems that can result from this deficency. See the Omega-3 Wikipedia article for an introduction to this subject. Most troubling is that consuming too few of the O-3 fatty acids, especially in an environment where there's an excess of O-6 ones, can decrease the health of the brain (certainly irrelevant for the average person but I care) and increase the body's inflammation level (which causes all kinds of problems that aren't necessarily linked to heart disease; pick up a title like the Meggs&Svec book "The Inflammation Cure" for a discussion of that topic).

I for one welcome our new pig...err, welcome the concept of foods tastier than fish that are heavy in O-3s. However, the past history of the food industry's use of genetically modified products has led me to a total ban on consuming them (which takes a shocking amount of work to pull off). But, please, focus on why tinkering with pig innards is bad, and not on dissing the essentialness of the fatty acids that most people don't get enough of.

Re:Doh !

[DrSkwid]

You can just buy Omega-3 vegetable oil and use it as a you would use other oils for cooking.

Then you don't have to kill anything or mutate the poor fuckers.

> In the process, they also want to better understand human disease.
So they can invent more pointless "hey it's got chemical X in it" foods when all it takes is a balanced diet and not "new Health Coke".

Re:Doh !

[khakipuce]

It seems to me that the recent study, which was a review of other studies, largely concluded that most studies were not robust enough to be useful, and also that they did not take into account the fact that people that eat oily fish, probably have a better diet anyway.

All that said there seems to be a growing view (and one that seems reasonable to me) that suggests that taking the apparently beneficial component of a food in isolation may simply not work. In this context eating Omega-3 when it occurs in Oily fish may work. But extracting the Omega-3 and taking it as a dietary suppliment may not work.

If this sounds unlikely, consider the situation where a benficial molecule is too large to pass through the gut wall under normal conditions, however suppose there is something in the associated food that enables the beneficial molecule to pass. Take the molecule in isolation and it will not be absorbed by the body.

The whole situation is vastly more complex than main stream dietary advice tends to let on. The food industry loves simple messages - especially where they can readily put a low cost suppliment in a low cost product to yeild a high price "health food" - e.g. Omega-3 in margarine. Best bet is to eat a balanced diet.

Re:Doh !

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut your filthy fucking vegan propaganda hole. You want to eat only veggie, good for you; but sxince this is an article about MEAT, how about you give us higher forms of people a chance to discuss things without hearing your "PETA-Approved" bullshit.

Re:Doh !

[DrSkwid]

And they say meat makes people aggressive!!

Instead of bacon...

[hobotron]

We get bacon with worms?

I think someone didn't run this by marketing.

Re:Instead of bacon...

[someone1234]

No, there is no worm in the bacon, the bacon IS the worm.

Re:Instead of bacon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously the worm part will never be part of the marketing.

There's lots of stuff in products you buy that you really don't want to know about. And you can always trust marketing not to tell you.

Re:Instead of bacon...

[wootest]

Oh. Well, that makes it *much* less gross!

the kind believed to stave off heart disease

[Threni]

> omega-3 fatty acids -- the kind believed to stave off heart disease.

Er...no it's not:

http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,1738 599,00.html

Re:the kind believed to stave off heart disease

[Funkcikle]

From the actual university researchers - http://www1.uea.ac.uk/cm/2.117/2.128/2.139/2.141/1 .1076 It rather seems to me that recent attempts to "breed in" what are considered to be favourable medical components might end up being tonic, tincture and snake oil tomorrow. Still, always nice to be in the newspapers!

Re:the kind believed to stave off heart disease

[localman]

Man, it's crazy reading these health stories. The reports flip-flop back and forth and nobody seems to agree. You can find a study or expert to support completely conflicting theories. What are we to think? I certainly wouldn't dismiss Omega 3 based on this latest study... we've got data going both ways now. Which is wrong? Which is right?

The pattern I usually see in these studies is that after controlling for and isolating a particular dietary component, they find it has no benefit, and that the originally percieved benefits must have resulted from the people who eat that dietary component having an otherwise "healthy lifestyle".

But what is this "healthy lifestlye" then, if not a combination of things that may or may not have a positive effect in isolation? Diet has to be a part of that combination, but it may be that no single dietary component is "the key", rather it's the sum of them that does good. Perhaps then isolating components may not be the right approach.

Health and nutrition are extrodinarily complex. For myself I took a step back from all the analysis and confusion, to a relatively simple system of eating things that I think we must have evolved to eat. I skip just about anything that includes digestable technology. So it's grilled organic meats, salads and raw veggies, and water for the most part. I also try to include something "spoiled' each day, as I figure we evolved eating "spoiled" foods... cheese, yogurt, wine. I eat modest portions. And a few times a week I eat whatever the heck i feel like.

Anyways, since I started doing this I've lost weight and my cholesterol has been greatly improved. Though the latest studies I've seen claim that's not a great indicator anyways, so who knows what that means :)

Cheers.

Re:the kind believed to stave off heart disease

[kfg]

And nevermind the fact that the whole idea that Omega-3 fatty acids reduce the risk of heart attack has always been a poor assumption based on poor science, the result of going on a, well, fishing expedition, for a correlation and stopping when they found one in the fat, with no particular justification for the fat being where the relevant correlation was to be found in the first place.

And, repeat after me: Correlation is not causation.

The most obvious difference to me between Greek and Inuit cultures (the high fat, low heart disease reason for the fishing expedition) and "ours" is that theirs is poor, but low stress with a bit of a fatalistic, what will be will be, view of life and death.

Skip the salmon and the Frankenstein's pork. Just mellow out dude.

And maybe get a little aerobic exercise a few times a week.

Of course nobody can get a headline out of that, or take out a patent on it to make a financial killing. . .

Oh, wait, nevermind. Excuse me, I have to go call my lawyer and patent a method for "MellowCise (tm)".

KFG

Re:the kind believed to stave off heart disease

[dpilot]

We're a "silver bullet" society, I fear.

As for our family, we tried to eat a varied diet, keep up with the 5 servings of fruits/vegetables a day, and get exercise. We also cook mostly from scratch, so most of what we eat has 3 or fewer syllables.

None of us are fat, and we're all pretty healthy.

Doubt on Omega-3 benefits

[Elessar]

This may not be so great. This recent story http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4838086.stm/ casts doubts on the benefits of omega-3.

Yay song

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody loves me everybody hates me
Maybe I'll go eat worms
Long thing slimy ones, big fat juicy ones
Feel them slither and squirm

First you bite off the heads then you suck out the juice
Then you throw the skins away
Nobody knows how I survive
On worms three times a day

What about the animals?

[solarbob]

Whats the effect on them?

Re:What about the animals?

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Preliminary studies show they still mostly die of having their heads lopped off and getting shoved into meat grinders.

Re:What about the animals?

[Firehed]

They won't be in a position to be concerned with their health, I don't think.

Re:What about the animals?

[LouisZepher]

I don't think they've found a safe way to remove bacon from the pig, so I'd say Wilbur isn't very well-off in the morning when you're dunking bits of him in syrup.

Re:What about the animals?

[tpgp]

Whats the effect on them?

Looking at the poultry industry (pdf warning) I'd say, any effects to the Pig's wellbeing (good or bad) will be irrelevant to the agribusiness owners & the vast majority of consumers.

Quite sad - I have no problem with people eating meat, but knowingly choosing to eat something that's the end result of a life of torture is shocking.

Re:What about the animals?

[Anonymous Coward]

What big city did you originate from? Farm animals are animals, they aren't people. They are also treated well by the livestock industry for several reasons: if they are unstressed, they grow faster and have better quality; most producers are decent people who do not hurt animals for the fun of it; and cleanliness in the facilities also reduces the occurance of disease in the livestock which hurts growth rate as well as quality of product. Why don't you think before spouting such idiotic non-sense.

Re:What about the animals?

[RockModeNick]

I find the mutilations performed on many dog breeds through selective breeding to get desired characteristics vastly more shocking, as these are theoretically animals we want to care for and share our lives with, rather than devour, yet we have no problem making them vulnerable to many horrible ailments, preventing them from seeing or hearing properly, etc.

good for us

[pintomp3]

not to sound like some peta activist (i'm carniverous to a fault) but how does it effect the life of the animal? i guess it's kind of like veil where not do you live to be slaughtered, but perhaps also live bad life too.

Re:good for us

[tpgp]

not to sound like some peta activist (i'm carniverous to a fault) but how does it effect the life of the animal?

You're going to get a million people replying to you saying variations of "what does it matter? The pig is going to die"

It's a question that society has to start thinking about - many people (like the parent poster) have no problem eating meat, but are concerned about the life of the animal prior to it being butchured.

Its a valid concern, and not hypocritical at all - there's an enormous gap between an animal that lives a relatively healthy, natural life prior to an (early) death and an animal that lives in pain, fear and misery prior to an early death. (for starters the first will taste much better).

So, in answer to your question, noone really cares how it effects the animal - but we should.

Re:good for us

[DrSkwid]

So, as a carnivore, you eat NO vegetables, fruit, seeds, nuts, pulses or grains ?

Re:good for us

[pintomp3]

that is probably my fiances biggest complaint :)

Re:good for us

[porcupine8]

You don't sound like a PeTA activist at all. You sound like someone concerned about animal welfare - a movement totally separate from the animal rights philosophies that PeTA et al are espousing. Animal rights activists say humans have no right to use other animals in any way, shape, or form (including food, research, fur, pets) - animal welfare activists say we have the right to use animals, but that right comes with the responsibility to minimize their suffering whenever possible.

In other words, welcome to the sane version of "animal rights". :)

Re:good for us

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just guessing but I think that's probably because she doesn't want to experience your premature death. Or maybe she's just in denial about being in love with someone who doesn't love themselves enough to make sure they at least get essential nutrition in their diet.

Wait 20 years

[CosmeticLobotamy]

I doubt regular bacon would disappear overnight or anything, but virtually every time someone comes out and says, "X-inol in corn prevents fin rot," five years later it's common knowledge that X-inol just makes food taste funny. If in twenty years, Omega-3 is still thought to make people healthy, then go adding it to things. For now, odds are you'll just end up with birth defects and adult acne.

Re:Wait 20 years

[Eideewt]

But the only reason I eat so much corn is that I'm afraid of fin rot! What will happen to my fins now?

Trade-offs

[quokkapox]

Is it just me, or are we trying to over-optimize our diets? Why not just try to eat what we evolved to eat, what you in particular tolerate well, whatever makes your body run reasonably well.

You can devote a silly amount of time trying to eat an optimal, low-calorie, lowfat, high-protein, perfectly-whatever sort of diet.

What does that gain you? Is all that time and energy worth it, when, if you get it right, you'll probably just die of something else instead? Sheesh, live a little. Have some bacon once in awhile, have some ice cream for dessert now and then. If you eat too much of something, your body will let you know anyway.

Respect your body's intuition, and get some exercise. There's millions of years of research to back that up.

Re:Trade-offs

[mc bean]

Probably because in the very distant past humans actually lived in our natural environment, and diets were optimized for us by that fact alone. Those millions of years of research went down the tubes with industrialization. I'd agree we're overcompensating though.

Re:Trade-offs

[pintomp3]

this isn't about optimized diets, it's about being able to eat for pleasure and not suffering the consequences. our bodies seek out fatty foods and stores the extra energy because it was needed a long time ago. with the current level of abundance (in some parts of the world), we no longer eat for just sustianance. we eat for pleasure also. just look at the types of things we eat and the quantiy we eat. the body doesn't really say "enough of this particular food".

Re:Trade-offs

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, we make this stuff into rocket science when it doesn't have to be at all. I mean you can just take 10 grossly unhealthy/unfit people and look at how they live and what they eat. Then find 10 healthy/fit people and do the same. While it isn't going to tell you everything, it'll be a big enough chunk of what's a good idea and what's a bad idea to do and to eat.

Personally I think it's more of a case of people looking for a magic bullet that'll let them do the things they know they shouldn't be doing (at least to the extent that they do them). Oh if I eat a bowl of oatmeal I'll be ok, while ignoring the fact they watch TV for five hours a day while stuffing their face with chips and soda.

Re:Trade-offs

[quokkapox]

this isn't about optimized diets, it's about being able to eat for pleasure and not suffering the consequences. our bodies seek out fatty foods and stores the extra energy because it was needed a long time ago. with the current level of abundance (in some parts of the world), we no longer eat for just sustianance. we eat for pleasure also. just look at the types of things we eat and the quantiy we eat. the body doesn't really say "enough of this particular food".

"Eating for pleasure"? If you eat a quart of ice cream or a big bag of potato crisps or a slab of bacon "for pleasure", that's like huffing butane. Eat a slice of bacon, a small dish of ice cream for pleasure, with other stuff that's good for you and you will find the whole experience to be pleasurable.

I love caffeinated soda but if I chug two liters of Code Red, I know I'll get sick from the excess caffeine or sugar. So I drink a couple ounces and stop. Having more is just stupid.

Re:Trade-offs

[thedletterman]

"I love caffeinated soda but if I chug two liters of Code Red, I know I'll get sick from the excess caffeine or sugar. So I drink a couple ounces and stop. Having more is just stupid."

I won't drink caffeine. That doesn't mean scientists were wasting their time for making caffeine free sodas like Sprite. If my only choice was cola or water, I would choose water. If given the between traditional red meat, and red meat whose fat content was replaced with Omega-3 fatty acids, I would choose the latter. Health is about making healthy choices. Giving people more healthy choices, and asking them to sacrifice less, is a perfect play to human nature.

Why else would we "fortify" our milks and cereals?

Re:Trade-offs

[Threni]

> Is all that time and energy worth it, when, if you get it right, you'll probably
> just die of something else instead?

It doesn't take any extra time or effort. You're right though - if you don't stuff your face with food containing a lot of saturated fat, salt etc then you probably will die of something else. That's the whole point though, isn't it.

Re:Trade-offs

[bozho]

I agree.

It's amusing to observe what was considered healthy throughout history. "Drinking donkey urine/bathing in virgin blood will grant you eternal youth!", "High-fiber diet reduces colon cancer risk!"

One of the recent ones was sent to me by a dentist friend - a radioactive toothpaste (1940ies):
http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/toot hpaste.htm

From the advertisment sample that I have:
"RADIOACTIVE TOOTHPASTE - CREATES NATURAL FRESHNESS"

"Gentle rays of Radium are active for 4 hours after application. It will remove plaque and oral inflammations, strengthen blood flow, keep your gums pink and strong, and your teeth as white as snow!"

Re:Trade-offs

[Scarblac]

The problem is that those millions of years were in another environment - we didn't use to live in the enormous year round abundance of food we have now.

Our body's intuition says to stock up on fat for the harsh times, it says sweet = always good, fat = always good. Eat the food you can get before the next famine strikes.

We know what the ideal diet is - eat with the season, in tremendous variety, use meats in moderation, eat lots of fruit and vegetables, prefer wholewheat grains over processed flour, vegetable oils, get those fatty fish while they still exist. Do all those things your mother said you should.

Unfortunately, our body's intuition, given the current environment, causes a large majority of us to overeat and to emphasize the wrong things.

All that said, isolation one molecule that currently looks like it is helpful against a symptom, and fix the bacon so that it contains it... surely that's not the solution.

Re:Trade-offs

[Eivind Eklund]

Optimization of my diet makes my body run much better.

And eating what I am evolved to eat isn't an option: I'm evolved to eat a mixture of things that grow up in a totally mixed environment (no farming, other types of plants next to it), nuts, occasionally game, occasionally fish.

The trouble is that the earth can only support about 100 million people living this way. Which 98% do we kill off?

Eivind.

Re:Trade-offs

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey look I'm doing the best that I can. It would be a lot faster if these cops didn't keep coming around asking questions.

Re:Trade-offs

[vertinox]

Why not just try to eat what we evolved to eat, what you in particular tolerate well, whatever makes your body run reasonably well.

And that is?

Seriously, I don't think we evolved to eat any particular type of food. I think man evolved to eat anything it could get its hands on.

Re:Trade-offs

[jellomizer]

Why not just try to eat what we evolved to eat
Because we are to Evolved to eat that way. The Human Animal is overly effective in gathering food so effective that it has food in excess, wich causes health problems. I for one don't want to go back to wantering the Plains at night with a sharpened stick finding whatever editable things comes my way.

Healthy fat and marketing

[Opportunist]

Can anyone else smell a marketing stunt behind it?

I mean, let's face it, considering the average person in so called "developed countries", there's no such thing as healthy fat. We simply eat too much of it, no matter how healty it is. You can create "high fructose" stuff as much as you like, it still is sugar. Yes, probably better than "ordinary" beet sugar, but still sugar.

Same with Omega-3 fat. It's not like you get more healthy by eating more of it. Yeah, it's better than eating that saturated grease, but best would be NOT eating it at all!

Yes, we need fat in our diet, of course, but it's similar to salt in our diet: In "modern" food, you simply cannot eat too little of it, no matter what you do.

So, instead of eating "more Omega-3 fat", we should eat LESS fat altogether. But it is probably hard to get this past marketing.

Re:Healthy fat and marketing

[greg1104]

You can create "high fructose" stuff as much as you like, it still is sugar. Yes, probably better than "ordinary" beet sugar, but still sugar.

high fructose corn syrup is markedly worse for you than any natural sugar. The main reason HFCS exists is that it's cheaper than real sugar and it doesn't spoil as fast.

Yes, we need fat in our diet, of course, but it's similar to salt in our diet: In "modern" food, you simply cannot eat too little of it, no matter what you do.

Essential Fatty Acids are called that because your body needs them and can't produce them on its own. "Modern" food as you call it has little or no Omega-3 fatty acids; therefore you can eat it all day and not make any significant progress toward getting O-3 fats. The two types of fat are so different in terms of what your body uses them for that you can't substitute one for the other.

Re:Healthy fat and marketing

[Opportunist]

But I hope we can agree on replacing (almost) all fat in your diet with Omega-3 would still result in too much fat.

I was also not refering to hfcs, but currently here the marketing goons of various kid food chains are riding the "full of healthy fructose" fad. Which makes me cringe every time I hear it. Fructose is still sugar.

And O3FS fat is still fat. Yes, it is essential (so is fat, actually), but we already eat far more than enough of the stuff. Yes, we need HDL, but just pumping more of it into you won't decrease your LDL count. Only decreasing your LDLs will.

It's not like you can eat more of one kind to counter the other kind. What you gotta do is eat less of the other kind. But somehow I feel we won't get to hear that from marketing.

Re:Healthy fat and marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Fructose is stunningly bad for you. The rise in obesity in the US shows a remarkable correlation with the replacment of sucrose with fructose as the sweetner in sodas and other processed foods.

Re:Healthy fat and marketing

[grimJester]

Those who care about Omega-3 vs. whatever fats are not very likely to eat too much fat. People who actually care enough to know anything about different kinds of fat fal into two different groups - those who know what they're doing and eat very well balanced diets and those who try to eat "healthy food" without seeing the big picture. The former group has no problem whatsoever. The latter group gets half the calories they should and less than a tenth of the fat.

I've seen newbies on bodybuilding boards who try to gain weight post their daily meals, adding up to 1000-1200kcal, 80% protein, 18% carbs and less than 2% fat. Marketing hype for "healthy" fat is more likely to help than hinder that kind of person.

For those who eat too much fat now, I doubt this will make any difference. They don't care.

Re:Healthy fat and marketing

[Valdrax]

You need to read up a lot more on modern knowledge of nutrition if you think that high fructose corn syrup is healthier than regular sugar and that omega-3 and other polyunsaturated fats are just as unhealthy as saturated fats and should be avoided at all costs.

Re:Healthy fat and marketing

[porcupine8]

In "modern" food, you simply cannot eat too little of it, no matter what you do.

I would definitely have to argue with this. In the 90s, when Low Fat was the craze instead of Low Carb, there were plenty of women who were not getting enough fat in their diets. You could get fat-free versions of just about everything, just like you can get low-carb versions now.

The difference is, in most low-carb breads, pastas, etc, the starches and sugars are replaced by fiber or protein, both of which are at least useful to have in your diet and both of which are things that most people could do with more rather than less of. But in a lot of low-fat/fat-free foods, the fats are replaced with sugars, which nobody needs more of. So plenty of women were eating not enough fat in an attempt to lose weight, but also not enough good stuff to support their body during the weight loss.

Plus, in women much more than men, low good cholesterol is as dangerous if not more so than high bad cholesterol. You need a certain amount of unsaturated fats (particularly monounsaturated) to keep your good cholesterol up.

Now, if someone eats fast food 5x a week and frozen dinners the rest of the time, you're right, what they need is less fat (and salt, and cholesterol, etc). But for those of us who cook our own meals every night, it's really not that hard to keep from overdoing it if you pay any attention to what you're buying. True, many people don't pay enough attention, but if you are, it's probably more useful to pick "good" fat sources than to try and eliminate fat entirely.

Just PLEASE don't take the "old" bacon away

[melted]

I'm afraid of this shit. I love bacon and eggs every now and then, and the same shit could happen with this as with corn - you can't buy non-GM corn flakes anymore unless you shop at an "organic" store and pay twice the price. Leave bacon alone, I say. Or at least clearly mark the non-GM variety so that I'd know which one to buy.

Boneless chickens

[adisakp]

Now all we need to do is biologically engineer boneless chickens for those tasty "boneless" chicken wings :-)

Re:Boneless chickens

[pintomp3]

done

http://www.bundlings.com/rich/boneless.jpg

Re:Boneless chickens

[straybullets]

biologically engineer boneless chickens

they have already done it .

How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[Anonymous Coward]

It sad to see that we as a race still do something so cruel and barbaric as eat the flesh of another living being when we have the ability to sustain ourselves with plants and vegetables. You certainly don't need to worry about eating the wrong fats, as I can't think of one plant that we eat that is bad for you. We would certainly be able to feed more people with plant farms, than animal farms. Another plus is that we wouldn't ruin our environment with plants farms as we would with pig farms. I remember seeing an article about 5 years ago how the pig farms in the US east coast has poisoned the Alantic Ocean with parasites that literally eat the flesh off the fish, not just one species but many species of fish have been affected by this. So how about not bringing home the bacon???

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[LordLucless]

You certainly don't need to worry about eating the wrong fats, as I can't think of one plant that we eat that is bad for you.

Define bad. Where do you think sugar comes from? I'll give you a hint, it's not from pigs. Avocado's are also fairly fatty. Many fruits eaten to excess can cause diarrhea. Vegetarians, especially women, need to be very careful of what they eat to ensure they get needed vitamins and trace elements commonly found in meat - like iron.

We would certainly be able to feed more people with plant farms, than animal farms.

Meat has far more energy, weight for weight, than fruit and vegetables. Depending on how you farm the animals, you can provide more energy per hectare off animals than off most crops.

Another plus is that we wouldn't ruin our environment with plants farms as we would with pig farms.

No, you'd ruin them with other farms. Growing plants puts a strain on the soil. That's why you have crop rotations - you need to give the soil a chance to regain it's nutrients before you stick some more crops in it to start sucking them out again. If you increased the fruit and veg farming industry to the point where society could function totally without meat, you'd most definately have an impact on the environment. It'd just be a different one.

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[dcapel]

You know, no matter how rational of an argument you have, adding multiple question marks or exclamation points always takes credability points away in most people's books.

Because of how the Internet works the only way we can tell how you mean stuff is how you write it -- caps is generally regarded as shouting, and 1337 conveys a stereotype, as does aimspeek. Similarly, using multiple punctuation marks leads to other stereotypes.

I saw a rule of thumb for exclamation points once -- you should only use as many in a week as you have thumbs.

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[canuck57]

...as eat the flesh of another living being when we have the ability to sustain ourselves with plants and vegetables.

Do you mean those pesticide sprayed berries in February? (North America) Or Monsanto Fries, or is it Dow green beans? Half my teeth are for meat, half are for vegies. Thats how I eat. And yes, I know meat has the same issues as vegies. But until we decide to grow food naturally I will have to live with the fact that the "all beef" steroid antibiotic burger will have to do.

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but your conscience would be clear(er). The worst thing about non-vegetarian humans is the fact that 99% of them don't do any of the killing like the other carnivores in nature. They are happy to buy stuff from supermarket shelves not caring that an animal has lost its life for it, as they do not taken any part in the butchery.

To all the carnivores out there:

The next time you want to have chicken, don't go to KFC - find a chook and chop its head off, pluck it, drain its blood and cook it to your heart's content.

The next time you want to have lamb chops, find a cute little lamb; straddle and hold it between your legs; try to ignore its plaintive bleating; take a knife and slit its throat a few times until it stops struggling to live. Again drain the blood (or drink it :S), chop off its fore and hind legs and perhaps its head and cute little tail; skin it; debone it and cook it to your heart's content.

etc. etc. for all the animals murdered in the name of cuisine.

The worst thing is when people justify this by saying that the animal is usually killed painlessly.. FFS - you are killing it!

Heartless..

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[LordLucless]

Meh, my conscience is perfectly clear, at least on the charges of eating meat. I've never butchered a chook or a lamb, but I've gutted and cleaned fish I've caught before eating them. Close enough, without the cute appeal.

And the whole supermarket thing is only recent; at least here in Australia. My grandparents can still remember their parents butchering chickens at home. We're the first generation in a while who've had qualms about consuming meat in any serious numbers - and we're the ones most removed from the actual source of the food. Talk to the ones who do do the killing - the farmers and the butchers. They don't have any qualms about it. The people who do are the squeamish suburbian types who've never seen a lamb except at the petting zoo (or the cold storage) and romantacize and anthropomorphize all the cute, cuddly animals getting killed.

And I hope you feel the pain of every soy-bean whose life you brutally extinguish. The worst thing is when vegetarians justify this by saying plants don't have nervous systems and are killed painlessly. FFS - you are killing it!

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[Plunky]

Do you mean those pesticide sprayed berries in February? (North America) Or Monsanto Fries, or is it Dow green beans? Half my teeth are for meat, half are for vegies. Thats how I eat. And yes, I know meat has the same issues as vegies. But until we decide to grow food naturally I will have to live with the fact that the "all beef" steroid antibiotic burger will have to do.

Some people already do grow food naturally, but until you decide to stop buying the steroid antibiotic burgers they will continue to be produced for your consumption.

I voted with my money years ago, I dont buy that shit anymore and I'm not the only one.

This story is not about health, it is about marketing. Nobody is genetically engineeering pigs or corn for the good of the human race, they are doing it to make more profit at the expense of the human race.

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up!

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[localman]

I think your missing something here: you may be able to get more energy out of livestock raised on a plot of land than the veggies raised in the same space. But what do the animals eat? Veggies, usually, from another area. So you're using the vegetable area anyways, and now the livestock area on top of it.

It's pretty well established that feeding veggies to animals and then eating their meat is a very inefficient use of energy. I'm quite certain that you can feed more people off an acre of beans and rice than the cows raised off an acre of beans and rice in the same time frame. Just think about that for a moment. Thus your last paragraph doesn't really line up either, as our overall vegetable farming needs would go down, not up, if we all ate vegetables instead of meat.

Despite that, our food shortage problems have nothing to do with meat eating. Hunger is a political problem. So I say go ahead and eat meat if you like it. And choose organic if you're concerned about the environmental impact. I'm a meat eater and that's what I've chosen, anyways.

Cheers.

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[Lord Kano]

To all the carnivores out there:

I'm an Omnivore, bitch.

etc. etc. for all the animals murdered in the name of cuisine.

It's not possible to murder food.

LK

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[Telvin_3d]

And then you have to add in the fact that 90% of the vegies that show up in our supermarkets are produced by people who live in conditions not a lot differnt than the pigs. Sugar cane, banannas, coffee, oranges, potatoes. Anything that gets shipped in from Mexico or further south can be assumed to be the next thing to slave labour more often than not. So, pick your suffering.

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad to see that my post was looked at and replyed to. I know it's easy to eat meat, as I did for many years of my life. Then one day it all changed. It was a slow build up, but eventually I couldn't agree with the logic of the NEED to eat meat. At the time mad cow disease was discovered (admitted it was greatly hyped, but who really wants that?) and I was still mulling over something I had read from a Hare Krishna book (every religion has something interesting/usefull to say) that I found interesting. It talked about how we as humans are no better or more intelligent than an animal if we eat animals as they do. That by choosing to eat meat or more to the point not thinking about why you eat meat, that you are a slave to your sense of taste, just like an animal. I don't know about you, but I like to believe that I am more intelligent and better than an animal. But how can I really believe that if I don't completely act like it. Also, why be a slave, enslave yourself, or allow yourself to be enslaved by what you want and not need? So other than this pious ideal, it has been mentioned by other posters that it takes a lot more energy than what you get out from animal farming, so in fact you can feed more people without animal farms than with. Any excess or waste vegitation would be composted for fertilizer. In some countries (like Taiwan) waste food from homes and restaurants is collected for composting. As for pests I have seen developments to encourage natural preditors or even grow plants that repel pests. I'm sure there are other ways to deal with the pest problem without chemicals. I know and respect that not all people can choose not to eat meat, like say a tribesman from Peru. These people have so much respect for the animals they eat and take only what they need, unlike most developed contries. What appalls me most is that apathy people feel about it. I'm not going to be slaughtered for someones belly, why should I care? Remember that old sci-fi TV show V? I guess you wouldn't feel so apathic then if you were the food. I know the TV isn't real, I said it to give you something to think about.

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[Valdrax]

You could always eat organic food. You can get produce that has never been sprayed with pesticides and meat that has never been fed food that has been sprayed with pesticides. It costs more due to lower yields (that's why we spray in the first place), but so long as you just accept that people will do that and support it with your dollars, farmers won't decide to grow food naturally -- after all people like you have shown that that's where the money goes.

Incidentally, most pesticides accumulate in the fatty tissues of livestock, so you get a higher exposure from eating meat. I might occasionally buy vegetable and wholly artificial products like Splenda elsewhere, but I buy all my meat from organic producers. The fact that organic farmers can't stack animal enclosures like in factory farms and frequently let their livestock have free range is a bonus too from an ethical perspective.

Re:How about NOT bringing home the bacon...

[mfrank]

Hate to break it to you, but most of the people on this planet kill their own meat. My grandparents were butchers. We used to have chickens when I was little; I've watched my dad wring their necks. I think you live in a part of the country where there's not a lot of hunters; you'd be surprised at how many people in the US kill animals for sport.

My brother used to work on our pig farm. Several times, recent immigrants to the US would come by in a pickup, buy a pig, and slaughter it in the bed of the truck.

*You* may have a problem with killing animals, but humans in general are perfectly copacetic with it.

Maize

[quokkapox]

All corn is genetically modified. Maize was domesticated thousands of years ago in a process of natural genetic modification. I'm not convinced that our recent addition of resistance to specific herbicides or insect pests is more significant than 10,000 years of gradual change by artificial selection. And all sorts of crazy genetic modifications (via viruses, cross-species pollination, etc.) take place naturally under the radar of our current understanding and observation. It's still corn.

Re:Maize

[gbobeck]

I think the parent post was claiming to be afraid of GM plants which are used for genetic research (read: the ones where they add, for example, rat asshole genes to a plant or other organism to see what the genes are responsible for doing). Might as well check out the Wikipedia article on Genetic Engineering.

The funny thing is that while I want my Lucky Charms to contain ingredients which are (ideally) rat asshole free (using above example), I really don't mind if the grain came from plants which were selectively bred so that they produce more grain per acre.

When I eat popcorn, I don't give a second thought to the fact that the corn is guaranteed to be GM. Afterall, Orville Redenbacher made his own hybrid. I do give second thought, however, to the strange substance posing as "butter topping", but mostly because of the fact that after a long movie, it may stain my clothes after it eats its way out of the tub of pop corn.

Of course very few people give a single thought to the fact that the "human" insulin they take via injection is comming directly from a GM'ed lab strain of e. coli. Users of Apidra (Insulin Analog), Novolog (Crap that cloggs in insulin pump tubing), Humilog (Lispro, the grand daddy)... are doubly lucky as their insulin is modified and comes from GM'ed e. coli. (yeah, I'm a type 1 diabetic with an insulin pump.)

No Clear Evidence Omega 3 Fatty Acids Beneficial

[Quirk]

Recently there have been articles that state there is no conclusive evidence that Omega 3 Fatty Acids are beneficial.

Omega 3 might not be a lifesaver
Mar 24 2006
Madeleine Brindley, Western Mail
SCIENTISTS have cast doubt on whether fish oils can really help protect against heart disease.

It's interesting that they're using genes from C. elegans which along with the fruit fly, yeast and the mouse make up some of the most throughly studied organisms. I wonder if it's a case of looking for the lost keys under the street light because that's where it's brightest.

Pigs have become popular as pets and many campaign to end the eating of pork. A open and shut case of anthroporcmorphism.:)

Obb. Futurama Reference

[arcite]

Fry: I'm never gonna get used to the 31st century. Caffeinated bacon? Baconated grapefruit? Admiral Crunch? Leela: Well, if you don't like that, try some Archduke Chocula.

It's a good thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the rest of us don't mold our eating preferences according to arbitrary rules supposedly dictated by some mythical being.

Re:It's a good thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who says mythical? Would something "mythical" have actually turned out to be right? Jews and Muslims rarely get tapeworm or trichonosis, because they usually don't eat pork.

Re:It's a good thing...

[Liam Slider]

I have never in my life gotten any disease from eating pork. And I eat plenty of pork. Maybe because, you know, it's not pork that roams filthy streets eating garbage that I eat, but pork grown in what's basically a giant, clean pork factory that I eat.

Re:It's a good thing...

[Liam Slider]

Oh, and I actually cook my meat before I eat it of course. I'm a human being, not a coyote or something.

Re:It's a good thing...

[mc bean]

[blockquote]giant, clean pork factory that I eat[/blockquote] Now, I've been a hardcore carnivore since rebelling against my hippie parents at 17... But have you ever been to a pig farm? How 'bout a slaughterhouse? It's pretty fucked! This magical pork factory you speak of isn't very realistic, heh.

Re:It's a good thing...

[Liam Slider]

But have you ever been to a pig farm?

I'm an old country boy. I most certainly have. Hell, one of my relatives is a long time pig farmer that has moved to large scale industrial pig farming. The newer ones are far better than the old ones. And certainly have far less stink and just plain disgusting conditions. Of course, there have been all sorts of stupid protests from morons over some of the newer facilities, one new facility going in around here drew out all sorts of kooks, from anti-genetic engineering nuts who bitched that genetically engineered skin from pigs would come off into dust and make people sick with the nasty franken-DNA to the people who complained that it would smell too much...even though there are 3 other facilities by the same farmer not too far away that don't, and other facilities by other farmers that also have no such oder problems.

How 'bout a slaughterhouse? It's pretty fucked!

I have been to a small slaughterhouse yes. What's more I have killed, butchered, and eaten what I've killed myself. What can I say, I'm a country boy. If you can't handle what it takes to eat meat, you shouldn't be a meat eater.

And how is the taste ?

[aepervius]

This remind me of those nice tomatoe which stay red a lot longer. And taste like water. Methink people concentrate too much on "not dying", and not enough on "living".

Re:And how is the taste ?

[ducman]

That's my only concern,too. I sure don't want my pork to taste like fish.

Re:And how is the taste ?

[Porktastic]

If I had mod points, I'd raise this up. People will do just about anything to "not die" instead of "live". Taking a vitamin, herb, or supplement to enhance your life, make you perform better, healthier can be great - if it works for you. The problem is that when stuff like this happens and food gets broken down into "components", people tend to go into a frenzy over it. Also, with the low-fat, non-fat stuff here (in America) people tend to see "Low Fat" and go crazy and end up eating MORE fat (and consume more calories) than they would otherwise. This biotech bacon just seems like a marketing gimmick to sell THEIR bacon, and if it's developed, people will probably eat more bacon, which, in the long run, might be unhealthier anyway. Who knows what kind of side effects could develop down the road from GM bacon...

I have real bacon, eggs, real butter, and WHOLE milk in my fridge. Why? Because I like the taste! I also know that if I consume a stick of butter and a pound of bacon a day, odds are that I won't live too long, so I eat them sparingly. (But oh what a delicious life it would be!)

Thanks to the parent - reminds me I need to start planning my garden! (and I finally get a topic relevant to my nickname)

Clean food is good for you

[canuck57]

Far too much is made of these improvements, if they are in fact improvements.

My grandfather lived to be 92, and died 2 days after playing and dancing to fiddle at a wedding. After having 2 wives and 15 children it is not hard to see why he had a large farm. Being monetarily poor, everything was used and everything made from the farm and without chemicals or bio agents. He was a mixed farmer raising cattle, pigs, chickens and wheat.

Well, to the point. None of the food, including eggs fried in suet every day, or the grease from the cattle or pig lard in bread, pastries or what amounts to steak-fried chicken ever hurt him. By modern days standards he should have died at 22 of a massive heart attack due to cholesterol alone.

But one truth appears to be the chemicals, the bio "enhancements" and engineering of foods is what is killing many of us. Growth hormones get passed on through the food chain and tell our bodies to "put it on". Radiation sterilizes but also kills proteins we need and thus we eat more. Nitrate preservatives... The pesticide residues in steady feed but minute ("government accepted levels") linger and pass regularly down the food chain to humans. Who knows, your cow might have been grazed down wind of a chemical processing plant or drank water downstream from another city or chemical use agro farm with god knows what in it.

It isn't just in livestock like chickens, pork and cattle. Seafood caught after rivers carry out taconite, lead, cadmium, chromium, mercury and a host of other impurities. The shrimp from Thailand to the Cod of the shores of Newfoundland all have similar issues.

When it comes to tinkering about the food chain, we might want to concern ourselves about a species like the Leopard Frog that is sensitive to mans pollution and bio agents. There used to be lots of them, but haven't seen one for 20 years and I have looked. Never saw tumors in fish until the last 5 years either.

Finding clean food is increasing becoming a problem. The problem is there are few places to grow clean food.

Re:Clean food is good for you

[Quantum Fizz]

Nice post, and I tend to agree with you.

People in the past century lived pretty long because they used primarily organic farming (didn't have non-organic methods yet) and also had more physically active jobs.

I wonder how the life span of baby-boomers and gen Xers will be comparitively. I mean, we are more likely to have desk jobs, and our food just has lots of processed crap, like unsaturated fats, hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup, remnants of growth enzymes from meat and dairy, etc. And we also have alot more plastics, especially plastic-coated cookware, which probably isn't good for us either.

So while our technology is getting better, our societal progress may be pushing us backwards in terms of life span and general health. It'll be interesting (and probably sad) to see what happens in the next decade or two.

Re:Clean food is good for you

[Alioth]

Actually, you're both wrong: life expectancy has been increasing all along (in the western world at least), and one instance of a man eating a fatty diet and living to a ripe old age with no heart trouble is about as representitive as the smoker who smoked 40 a day and lived to 90 - it's an anomaly.

Plastics are probably a lot better for us than bare metal, after all, you're not going to get traces of aluminium along with your food (aluminium is a cause of Altzheimer's).

The evidence shows that progress is pushing us FORWARDS about 18 months of life expectency per decade.

Re:Clean food is good for you

[rundgren]

well, my grandparents are 75 and has bben smoking 30 a day since they were 17. That doesn't prove anything.

Re:Clean food is good for you

[Anonymous Coward]

Aluminium concentration in the nervous system is an EFFECT of Alzheimer's.

Re:Clean food is good for you

[Noehre]

>Radiation sterilizes but also kills proteins we need and thus we eat more.

Your digestive system does a good job of "killing" proteins you eat. What, you think you absorb whole proteins from your meal and they magically start doing their thing?

Re:Clean food is good for you

[blahtree]

Although I don't disagree with you, it's also important to note that people react very differently to a high fat diet depending on their genetic makeup. Some people have a naturally high level of HDL cholesterol and seem to be completely unfazed by a high fat diet. Meanwhile, people who have a naturally low level of HDL cholesterol are dying in droves of heart disease. Your grandfather appears to be one of the lucky ones.

polyunsaturated fatty acids

[flowerp]

They would need to make pork meat with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. That would be nice and healthy. Problem though: I doubt a pig can live consisting of fats that are usually mostly found in plants and vegetable oil. Would that pig have green color? ;)

Dune

[Velocir]

Does no-one remember sligs? The Tleilaxu bioengineered combination of slugs and pigs that feed on garbage and produce the sweetest meat known to man. Calling someone a slig is a grave insult, yet sligmeat is valued above all other meat...

Re:Dune

[Nursie]

It was the first thing I thought of. But then I did just read the Dune books last month...

you apparently don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

resistant to herbicides ("roundup-ready" for instance) means they spray even *more* herbicides on the corn then they do now.

what planet are you from?

[Khashishi]

Meat has far more energy, weight for weight, than fruit and vegetables. Depending on how you farm the animals, you can provide more energy per hectare off animals than off most crops.

I'm surprised that someone can be so wrong. Meat takes very roughly ten times the energy to produce than vegetables. Livestock have to eat plants to survive. Mostly, they are fed low-cost-high-yield plants like maize, soy, and castor bean, and various animal wastes, but livestock still require a great deal of land. You think livestock feed on air or something?

By going to a fully vegetarian society, though there would still be an environmental impact, the impact would certainly be much less.

Re:what planet are you from?

[LordLucless]

It depends on how you raise them. A decent-sized herd of cows can get most of their food intake by grazing in their pasture. The same land they live in grows food to support them. That's not to mention that animals also eat the low-grade foodstuffs that are unfit or undesirable for human consumption. If you didn't utilize that stuff to feed animals, what would you do with it? Throw it away? Force people to eat it?

Now granted, as I understand a lot of modern animal farming, you simply box the animal in and import all its food. I've no idea what sort of efficiency that gives in terms of land used. But the fact remains that animal farming does not have to cause these huge environmental problems; it's only when you start trying to cram as many as possible in to as small a space as possible that you start hitting that sort of problem. And if you farmed fruits and vegetables in the same way, you'd deplete the soil and screw everything up too. The problem isn't meat vs vegetables, it's responsible farming.

Re:what planet are you from?

[Alioth]

I don't eat grass. However, the sheep in the field behind my house do eat grass. The meadow has no fertilizer or pesticides put down on it, and it is just left with the sheep on it - leading to a diversity of wild plant species especially in the hedgerows which would not be there if it were turned over to crops.

Sheep also simultaneously produce wool for clothing (which I dare say has less environmental impact than making synthetic wool).

Re:what planet are you from?

[Bloke down the pub]

Now granted, as I understand a lot of modern animal farming, you simply box the animal in and import all its food. I've no idea what sort of efficiency that gives in terms of land used.

For it to be more efficient to produce meat, the animal would have to produce energy from thin air. Even if the meat produced contained all the calories in the animal feed, you'd just be breaking even. The usual rule of thumb is about 10% efficiency, i.e. if a certain plot of land could produce enough cereal & veg to feed 100 people, it would only feed 10 who were feeding the crops to animals and eating those.

Of course calories aren't everything. But they're important.

Re:what planet are you from?

[Anonymous Coward]

You still don't get it (or don't want to get it) - the animals can process far more plant species than we can.

It's not 1 for 1!

Re:what planet are you from?

[Bloke down the pub]

No matter what plants they can eat, the primary energy source is sunlight, and the more steps you pass through between there and your plate, the more you lose.

If eating animals was more efficient, then why have people who practice a pastoral lifestyle generally been displaced from the best land by farmers?

And don't presume to tell me what I do and don't get, AC.

Re:what planet are you from?

[mfrank]

Uh, you can ranch cattle in places where it's not feasible to grow crops.

Re:what planet are you from?

[Bloke down the pub]

Where there isn't a choice it's hardly a valid comparison, since the opportunity cost is zero; anything is better than nothing.

While what you said is true (albeit obvious) it in no way invalidates the fact that if you can do it direct or in fewer steps (e.g. eat the corn, not the pigs that ate the corn or the dogs that ate the pigs that ate the corn), it's more efficient to do so - though if you've found a way round the first law of thermodynamics, send me a postcard from Stockholm.

Do you think it's a coincidence that cattle (or other animals) are frequently raised where it isn't possible to raise crops? Wales or the Yorkshire moors spring to mind, though somehow I doubt you know where either of those are.

Swine Heart Disease?

[Daengbo]

Geneticists have mixed DNA from the roundworm C. elegans and pigs to produce swine with significant amounts of omega-3 fatty acids -- the kind believed to stave off heart disease.

Why would they bother doing this? I doubt heart disease is a major cause of death in pigs. Most of them don't live long enough to get past middle age. Maybe we should focus our DNA testing on animals which live over five years, like the turtle. Jeez! What a waste of funding! ;)

Don't play with your food

[coffeechica]

Can we please stop messing with food? Please? Especially when we don't really know anything about the long-term effects yet? It's really stopping to be funny now, and I'm running out of meat which hasn't been tampered with. Beef? Mad Cow (we know the long-term there). Pork? Antibiotics, plus this lovely new genetic experimenting. Chicken? Antibiotics again, and same goes for turkey. Fish? Full of lead. It's getting a bit tricky by now, and switching over to venison or kangaroo isn't exactly an option.

There's no knowing what the long-term effects of genetic engineering in food will be. So stop mass-testing it on the population.

Re:Don't play with your food

[gbobeck]

Actually, when it comes to fish, you have to really worry about the mercury content.

I worry less about GMO and a whole lot more about food additives. MSG, high frutrose corn syrup, Splenda/Saccrin/Asperitame... stuff like that isn't really healthy for anyone.

Re:Don't play with your food

[Dan Farina]

Would you like to continue to be able to eat affordably?

Buy your organic free-range beef if you like, I care not. Just don't suggest that we should all have to pay for organic free-range beef.

(This is in the sake of argument, as I do not eat beef much at all. I'm instead saddened by having to ration my fish intake, where there is seemingly no recourse in buying "organic fish")

Re:Don't play with your food

[coffeechica]

I'm buying organic meat. Which means that I'm cutting back on how much of it I eat, since of course it's more expensive. Healthier all around.

I don't want anyone to be forced to pay for organic or bio food. But at the same time I don't want to be forced to have to buy food which has a list of ingredients full of emulgators and other stuff that belong in a chemistry lab and not on a plate.

Odd - "biologically sound" fish is easy to get here and not even that much more expensive. It's quite a market. As long as you don't want salmon or anything else that can't be raised/grown/whatever you do with fish in controlled environments. It all depends on the demand for it, of course, so if you're one of the few who cares...

Re:Don't play with your food

[Anonymous Coward]

erm this is research to discover these effects and to assess wether this omega 3 pork is a viable , safe meat product. It is not being released / mass tested on the public, this reasearch is preventing that.

No meat products have been genetically modified and sold as food. However, things like pumping them full of growth hormones etc happens in the US (which I think is cruel), that is banned over here in UK + I would guess europe.

Someone else stated it, additives are what people should be more worried about, it'll be at least a decade before any gm type meat is even close to be on sale.

Also, I hope people realise this is only 1 apllicaiton of GM. If it wernt for GM we'd be seriously stunted in the production of antibiotics etc, medical research on any genetic diseases, e.g. cancer, would be non-existant. GM is a useful tool, however some applications of it a very good and some are questionable.

Re:Don't play with your food

[rhettoric]

There's no knowing what the long-term effects of genetic engineering in food will be. So stop mass-testing it on the population.

You do realize that all of the derived benefits of evolution were conferred upon populations that had to endure the mass-testing of a change in their environment, right?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for ecological biodiversity and the stability in confers, but evolution isn't finished and to think we're living in some sort of steady-state paradise is an inaccurate way to view ecology. Do we know the long term effects of genetic alterations? No. Should we ignore the power of genetic manipulationm and return to a Rousseau-like state of nature? I'd say no.

Interestingly enough, most of the tampering you mentioned in your post is icedentally environmental rather than deliberate. Mad Cow's deisease is thought to have developed from livestock being fed the nervous tissue of butched livestock. Antibiotics in pork and chicken arose out of a direct response to the demand of consumers to keep prices low. Lead (and other metals, especially mercury) poisoning of fish has arisen due to the increasing amount of pollution our culture creates.

So again, I do sympathize with your concern and share it to a great degree, but I think most of these problems have come about because the owners/operators of these production centers see science as a means to improving their profits and blissfully ignore the other, less (forgive the pun) appetizing implications a rigorous appraisal of their operations by a scientist might illuminate.

For example, anyone with a rudementry understanding of evolution and the reproductive cycle of bacteria would strongly recommend against keeping livestock healthy by overmedicating them with antibiotics. This might work in the short term, but the bacteria reproduce so fast that resistence to the antibiotics would be selected for at an incredibly fast rate, so now you're stuck with the same problem and one less tool to combat it. Deliberately ceasing to "mess" with food isn't a flag that will rally many, but intelligently going about attempting to solve problems instead of deferring or ignoring them might not either. Still, I think it's a strategy that makes more sense.

Flax Seeds

[PenGun]

Flax seeds are an excellent source of omega 3. 25g ground up will give you about 10g of omega 3.

    PenGun
  Do Whta Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Re:Flax Seeds

[Anonymous Coward]

3.25g ground up will give you 10g of omega 3. Wow!!!!!

22 Slices of Bacon Later...

[It's Impossible]

Finally I can eat my* Ultimate Bacon Sandwich without guilt!




* Sadly, this is not actually my Ultimate Bacon Sandwich.

Re:22 Slices of Bacon Later...

[Valdrax]

* Sadly, this is not actually my Ultimate Bacon Sandwich.

Wait. You mean you have a more ultimate bacon sandwich? Do share!

Let me be the first to say it...

[iamdrscience]

GOD BLESS SCIENCE!

And to all you vegetarians out there, until they make a plant that tastes like bacon, I'm not switching. If God didn't want us to eat animals then why did he cover them in meat?

Re:Let me be the first to say it...

[ZigiSamblak]

Not that I'm a vegetarian, but...

You must be covered in some meat too, if you're a fanatic pork eater then probably quite alot of it too. I wonder what Hannibal Lector would have to say about your statement. :)

By the way I can't help noticing you using religion as an excuse to do something without considering the moral aspect. Well if god didn't want us to blow each other up why did he let us invent bombs?

Re:Let me be the first to say it...

[ConceptJunkie]

It was a joke, lighten up. If the Good Lord didn't want us to laugh once in a while, then why did He give us a sense of humor?

(or for /. I could say: "...then why does He allow Microsoft to exist")

Mmmmmm

[thallgren]

Mmmmmm, woooooooormmm baaaaaacooooon.

Say

[Sqwubbsy]

You don't work for the Loser Research Foundation, do you?

I, for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome our parasitic porcine overloads.

Fake lives

[Dewin Cymraeg]

Nice to know that with the huge problems facing the world in terms of poverty, hunger, the environment and inept politicians, so much energy is being wasted in genetically engineering food.

Hey here's a thought: just don't eat so much bacon!

Maybe we could genetically engineer humans so that instead of having free-will, we follow a government-led pre-planned path to happiness. That way there'd be no more crime. There might be poverty, but we wouldn't care! And we can eat as much pig-like meat as the labs can produce.

Oh, brave new world...

Re:Fake lives

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the impoverished parts of the world could stop overpopulating and that would reduce the problem.

I'd rather risk the low-chance unknown

[Ogemaniac]

than risk the sure-thing known. Wouldn't you?

Spoo: the other white meat

[Anonymous Coward]

Me thinks spoo would be healthier than any other white meat...

Re:Spoo: the other white meat

[Anonymous Coward]

But only if it has been properly aged. Fresh spoo is disgusting.

where is the research

[order_underlies]

this is just the sort of shit we should be doing unitl long term reseacrh has proved it to be safe. some company will try and push these things through the FDA, and food associations, and there is just no way of telling what the side effects would be - especially the long term ones.

this is such a digusting aborration of science - only when we have lost what we have got will we realise how beautiful it was untouched.

You can have my fatty bacon...

[The Beezer]

when you pry it from my sweaty, overstuffed dead hand.

pig in a jar

[dankelley]

The Globe and Mail newspaper today has an article about growing meat in a jar. Test products so far taste like "jelly on fabric" ... yum ... http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20060327.wxmeat27/BNStory/Science/home

Life, feeds on life, feeds on life...

[Anonymous Coward]

This.. is.. necessary..

Re:Life, feeds on life, feeds on life...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses!

Sizzlean

[sciop101]

The Breakfast Strip of the 80's!

FINEST KIND!

Animal rights whacko prespective

[Nonillion]

Just another excuse for the meat and dairy industry to perpetuate the senseless slaughter of these innocent beings; just so you can have your fucking eggs and sausage. It amazes me to no end that most people don't have the intellectual capacity to catch even half a clue. It isn't bad enough that I have to foot the medical bills of people with health problems from eating this shit. Now we have 'science' making flesh that's 'better for you'.

I could go on, but no one will listen anyway.

Not optimize, compensate.

[Shivetya]

The industry and science are both compensating for human behavior. The problem in Western countries is that the people KNOW what they have to do to be healthy but many do not do it. Throw in free health care and why should they give a wit? Someone else will pay to fix it. People still drink heavily though they know its bad and many still smoke packs of cigarettes daily. Its similar to the syndrome with lotteries. People understand the hideous odds yet still buy multiple tickets. Yet confront them with odds that are many times more likely that their alcohol, smoking, or over-eating is going to cause health problems and they will claim "won't happen to me"

In the less developed countries improving the benefits of food that people already consume helps make what gets to those who need it better for them. Usually the amount of food is reduced by corruption, theft, and environmental loss (bad storage facilities etc).

I really don't care for engineered animal products. I don't have a problem with plants being bioengineered to produce stuff but for some reason it creeps me out when it comes to animals.

Whats next, cows from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?

Do you want to cleanse yourself?

[dpilot]

Live until you're 50, then get ready for The Camera.

Go home from work 24 hours ahead, and take your Fleet's Phospho-Soda. Then enjoy jello, Gatorade, etc for the next 24 hours, but NEVER let yourself get very far from the toilet. You'll get cleaned out.

Then go into Ambulatory Care for the Grand Finale.

However, there quite a bit of peace of mind in being told, "Everything looks good, come back in 8 to 10 years."

Which 98% do we kill off?

[dpilot]

We all start with someone else, besides our family and friends. (our "tribe")

diets were optimized for us

[dpilot]

I suspect you've got this backwards. Our diets weren't optimized for us as we evolved. We were optimized for our diets. (Otherwise we died, or otherwise failed to reproduce.)

Cloven Hoof?

[lonebannana]

Hey, let me know if i am wrong, but couldn't we just genetically put a cow digestive system (so pigs could chew their cud)and split their hooves. Bingo! Kosher Pig!

Re:Cloven Hoof?

[abandonnship]

Now if there were only a way to get meat without killing the animal or dairy in some crazy way we could have meat and dairy in the same meal...

Margaret Atwood's Vision

[oddRaisin]

So it's started. Go read Oryx and Crake. Bio-engineered piggins that grow food on their backs, and the eventual downfall of humanity caused by bio-engineering. I'm sure other people have written about it, but this wasn't a bad book.

My byline for nutrition

[SeanDuggan]

You know you're old when you remember when bacon, eggs, and sunshine were good for you
And incidentally, they're already back to saying that eggs are good for you...

I too find the flip-flopping of nutrition to be vexing. Myself, I manage by eating whatever I'm craving and I try to eat in large quantities and with variety. *wry grin* That said, I only pull off the large quantities because my family has a metabolism more in line for a mongoose, but eh...

I'm a personal believer in that if you eat what your body tells you you want, you only eat when you're hungry, and you get moderate exercise, you should be fine. Maybe it shaves 5 years off of your life due to it not being an ideal diet. It will probably add another 5 years due to the lack of stress of not worrying about your diet and you'll enjoy yourself a lot more.

Humans dont know its good for you....

[CatsupBoy]

bacon bacon bacon bacon bacon.... ITS BACON!!!!

Living to be slaughtered

[SeanDuggan]

i guess it's kind of like veil where not do you live to be slaughtered, but perhaps also live bad life too.
Anybody else flashing back to the Dish of the Day from HHGttG?

Healthier does not mean healthy

[m0llusk]

Meat eating is directly responsible for heart disease, and in conjunction with smoking causes almost all cases. Heart healthy eating involves a vegan or restricted vegitarian diet. Eating this different pork could potentially be healthier than eating normal pork because of the increased omega-3 oils, but other compounds such as saturated fats make eating this meat still dangerous especially over the long term.

Re:Healthier does not mean healthy

[Rotten168]

Nonsense. Ever hear of the "Lipid Hypothesis"? The connection of diet to heart disease is merely a hypothesis and so very weak at that.

Yum Yum Yum...

[eno2001]

Wormy pork! It's not just for infection anymore!! Or... Um... It does a body good? Or... "Shhh!! Don't move! You'll scare em"! Or... It's a honey of an O (geddit? ringworm)? Or... "Got Ringworm"? How many 70s, 80s and 90s "healthy breafast" jingles can YOU think of? ;P

Tuna Club

[Doc Ruby]

Or we can just eat bacon and tofu or fish, maybe in separate dishes the same day or week. That way we'll get the O3FA along with other nutrients, but without the genomic pollution roulette game.

What does bacon fried in fish oil taste like?

Obligatory, Beaten-to-Death SImpsons Quote

[Valdrax]

Meat has far more energy, weight for weight, than fruit and vegetables. Depending on how you farm the animals, you can provide more energy per hectare off animals than off most crops.

"Lisa, in this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

I'm no PETA freak, but what do you think we feed animals? For the most part, we feed them the same kind of grain that we eat (like corn and soy) or parts of other food that we don't eat. (Look up silage some time.) Even grass fed animals eat up far, far more calories of plants than their bodies contain at slaughter time. You didn't think that animals are nearly 100% efficient translators of vegetable calories to meat calories, did you?

I love meat and all, but a a vegetarian diet does have significantly less impact on the planet because you don't have to waste food to feed other food. In fact, the shifting of developing countries to a Western diet is commonly cited as one of the factors behind famland straining our resources (such as groundwater) over the next century. We actually feed much more than half of our grain output to livestock instead of to people, and a lot of potentially productive farmland is "wasted" in keeping animals and growing food to feed animals instead of people. About 80% of our corn goes to livestock. This is only expected to rise worldwide as more people abandon carbohydrate food staples to enjoy a high meat and sugar diet like we've been eating for 2-3 centuries.

For HEART DISEASE, probably thanks to mercury.

[Valdrax]

Recently there have been articles that state there is no conclusive evidence that Omega 3 Fatty Acids are beneficial.

*BZZZZTTT* This is only for heart disease and is slightly inconclusive.

From the aritcle itself:

Despite the findings, leading dieticians said the public should not stop eating oily fish as omega 3 is associated with a huge range of health benefits.

It also states that:
More research is needed to establish why some studies have shown a slightly increased risk associated with eating very high amounts of oily fish, which is possibly related to mercury levels.

Note that many (if not all) of these studies involved oily fish consumption or supplementation from fish oil capsules. If you got Omega-3 from flax-fed chicken eggs or from GM pork, you wouldn't have the problem with mercury, but I've never seen a study that addresses Omega-3 consumption from non-fish sources.

On the other hand, unless you completely replaced saturated fats with Omega-3 fats in bacon (which should alter the solidity of bacon fat), you certainly are not going to see a heart benefit from eating Omega-3 fortified bacon thanks to the overwhelmingly bad effects of the saturated fats.

Wild Game Meat

[Valdrax]

Problem though: I doubt a pig can live consisting of fats that are usually mostly found in plants and vegetable oil.

The best natural sources of Omega-3 fatty acids are in fish. A lesser known fact is that wild game animals have a lot of polyunsaturated fat in their meat and are actually good sources of Omega-3 fatty acids as well. There are lots of mammals with polyunsaturated fats in their bodies just as there are plants with saturated fats in their seeds. It's not purely an animal/plant divide as a lot of people think.

In addition, pigs should be able to release stored calories from polyunsaturated fats just as easily as from saturated fats. Our biologies aren't that different, and we know that unsaturated fats are healthier for us too.

And, no, those pigs wouldn't have a green color, but these pigs would.

Try Mahi Mahi

[Dareth]

I first ate Mahi Mahi on a trip to California. It was the catch of the day. White meat fish, delicious. It doesn't have that "fishy" taste that tuna or salmon. Grilled or baked... so very good!

Re:Try Mahi Mahi

[aaron_hamilton]

Mahi Mahi is a good choice - it's not a carnivore, therefore it's less likely to be affected by the biomagnification of the food pellets they feed to salmon and other carnivorous fish.

Biomagnification occurs when you feed meat to a carnivore high up on the food chain. All that meat comes from other animals that have already ingested pollutants such as mercury. When your farmed salmon/carnivore eats the pellets of other fish, its eating all the accumulated toxins from the flesh of the reconstituted flesh bits, so a "pure" farmed fish is just as hazardous as a wild fish.

The other reason to avoid farmed salmon is that its food is gotten using huge factory ships that scoops all the oceanic life off the seabeds, destroying habitat and consuming all the fish that were once the livelihood of local fishermen.

Body Image - Hollywood

[Dareth]

I think all these "farm-raised" chickens have been affected by the Hollywood Body Image.

It is all about the breasts! I mean, have you seen the breasts on these chickens!?! I know we raised chickens when I was young, but none of them were these "Dolly Parton Big Boob" chickens you see now.

You know these chickens can't run, hell I wonder how they can even walk with those huge breast!

Why not add those omega-3 genes directly to humans

[s0l3d4d]

Why not add those omega-3 genes directly to human DNA instead? That way you wouldn't need to eat pork or margarine or other omega-3 fatty foods to get healthy. (and you wouldn't need to wait to get a big mac marketed as a health option because the parts of animal used in making the beef were omega-3 modified).

Having those genes modified in human DNA are as natural as having them in a pig's DNA.

Is bioengineered stuff kosher/halal?

[wsanders]

What do the religious autorities have to say about this? If I put pig genes in a cow, does it make the cow treyf?

I think they are putting worm genes in pork. Now the answer to that one is easy.

Obligatory South Park reference

[anonymous_wombat]

Does the pig have four asses?

A farm kid's perspective...

[jollygreengiantlikes]

I'll second what's been said already in reply to this comment.

A couple facts:
The pigs wouldn't exist save for being produced to be eaten by you and me.
Think about the last time you were beaten/sick/etc. Did you eat well? Did you gain weight? Producers know that treating an animal as humanely as possible results in a better product and a larger profit.

For further information, you might inspect the National Pork Board's website for information about the Pork Quality Assurance program: http://www.pork.org/Producers/PQA/PQA.aspx

Another point: As a scientist, if the concerns for animal testing have been met, I see nothing but good information coming from such experimentation. People may be concerned about 'mutant' animals and their effects on humans who consume them, but without experimentation, we'll never find out.

JGG

Depends on the cut

[GunFodder]

There are several cuts of pork that contain a reasonable proportion of fat to protein. The tenderloin is the best example; the ratio of protein to fat is something like 3 or 4 to 1. And even the higher fat bits make good flavor accents.

Worst story to read at lunch... ever

[IgLou]

Why does anyone subject themselves to Frankenfood like this? If a fuckin' pig/worm cross should ever have been possible then they'd be able to mate!

This is just disgusting... why do we keep looking and manipulating DNA to produce results like this when breeding seemed to work fine. I mean really, riddle me this, why is it so important to get Omega 3 from Bacon? Eating a fucking fish for Christ's sake! (And wrap it in bacon if you love the flavour that much!

Birth Defects?

[IdahoEv]

For now, odds are you'll just end up with birth defects and adult acne.

I'll be 32 years old in two weeks. Now admittedly IANAB (...Biochemist), but I don't think any amount of Omega-III Fatty Acids can give me birth defects at this point.

Do I see a mad cow disease in the making?

[ravee]

I have heard that in the western countries, the cows are fed food mixed with animal fats to increase their body mass. There is a pertinent theory that it is these wrong practices of making the cow eat meat instead of grass that gave rise to the mad cow disease.

Now reading this article makes me wonder if another man made disease is in the making ? Perhaps it would be aptly named mad swine disease.

Bacon is a vegetable!

[Mal-2]

Now maybe bacon truly is a vegetable... or at least as good for you. Good news for baco-vegetarians, and vegisexual swine are abuzz.

Mal-2

they're getting much better

[r00t]

Pigs are often raised indoors now. The USDA is about to start certifying some of the cleaner ones as being free of various diseases. This would mean that eating raw pork would be about as safe as eating sushi.

It's not the killing I mind.

[r00t]

I'm totally cool with killing anything non-human, cute "pet" animals included.

Cleaning up the mess is another matter. Animals are full of shit!

Dealing with a 600-pound carcass is another matter. I guess I'd need a winch and an ax...

I'd at least taste anything that's low on the food chain, like a bison or a bunny rabbit. I just want to buy it in pieces that fit in my refrigerator. I envy the French, who supposedly are able to buy horse meat. I envy the Germans, who supposedly are able to buy deer meat. In the USA I could mail order some dried deer meat, but that's nothing like picking out the best roast at the supermarket.

I want to try whale, elephant, hippo, seal, emu, sloth, giant ant eater, zebra... Guess what was on my mind when I visited the zoo a month ago.

it's not always like that

[r00t]

New Zealand grazes animals on rocky hills. To farm that for humans, you'd need to eliminate the hills. Farm equipment requires that the land be fairly smooth. If we don't use the rocky hills for grazing, they just go to waste.

Humans don't like to eat food with insect holes. When insects damage our crops, shall we let the crops go to waste? No, we can feed the crops to animals. Even when the crops are undamaged, humans won't eat most of the crop. We only want the fruit, not the stems and the leaves. You could serve pigs with apple peels, carrot tops, broccoli leaves, and far yuckier.

Re:it's not always like that

[localman]

Good points, thanks.