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Comment by uiri | Hacker News Reader

I'm mostly concerned about the ammonia used during the process. The ammonia is used to kill off germs due to contamination. Maybe we should just throw away contaminated animal by-product.

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No need for concern. High estimates for ammonia residues in LFTB are around 400 ppm. A healthy serving will net you tens of milligrams of extra ammonia. In scientific terms that's approximately jack shit. Your body gets rid of many times that amount every time you urinate. A lot more if you're athletic or eat a high protein diet.

The intentional mislabeling bothers me most, but yeah I'm not so fond of ammonia.

In the human body, ammonia is a lot like alcohol and carbon dioxide: it is a poison that we are well-equipped to remove.

Well, sort of. Just as people with lung trouble have problems removing carbon dioxide, people with kidney trouble have problems removing ammonia. What about people with kidney trouble? Perhaps they deserve a warning label.

As a vegetarian myself, I wouldn't dare make excuses for the beef industry, but your argument here is pretty fucking weak. At the high end, LFTB contains about as much ammonia as a lot of commercial bread, and about half of what's in hard cheese. The increase this causes in your body is just noise compared to what comes from your natural protein metabolism. Google for "lftb ammonia ppm" for some numbers.

So no, please, let's not start slapping ammonia warnings on all of our food.

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