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

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: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.