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The World's Deadliest Thing

the-angry-chef.com

566 pointsmkeeter222 comments

Pop quiz!

Do you ever buy frozen vacuum-sealed fish? The kind where each piece is sealed in its own plastic pouch? It is convenient and delicious. To me it can taste fresher than some "fresh" fish. One reason is that the sealed pouch keeps oxygen out.

Have you wondered why it says "remove all packaging before defrosting"? And ignored that advice like I did for many years?

After all, the fish seems to defrost just fine in its original vacuum-sealed packaging, whether you defrost it in the refrigerator or in a cold water bath. And it is so convenient to leave it in the pouch while defrosting.

Well, there is a reason to take those instructions seriously. The vacuum-sealed package is an anerobic environment, just right for botulinum and listeria.

So unwrap the fish, let it have that little kiss of oxygen, and then rewrap it for defrosting.

https://www.google.com/search?q=remove+frozen+fish+from+pack...

I have wondered about this, but even if botulinum or listeria are present, won't they grow very slowly in the refrigerator? I would think that defrosting for 12 hours or so at refrigerator temperatures would still be fairly safe. Or is the quantity that can be dangerous so minute that it doesn't matter?

Perhaps its one of those things where “95% of the time you’ll be fine, but be careful if you do it 20 times, because botulism only needs to happen once.”

The fact that most people don't know to remove the plastic and yet there are virtually no reported cases of people being poisoned by wrapped fish suggests that the danger is remote. It probably helps that if you fish get to the point where the bactera become active again it tends to smell bad and discolour.

I think if the fish was consumed raw there would be a lot more cases. But the toxin is destroyed by cooking even if the spores do grow.

> be careful if you do it 20 times

Probably just a locution, but be careful with that idea about numbers:

The probability of remaining in a safe zone of 95% for 20 consecutive times is ~36%. It ( (1-(1/n))^n ) approximates to 1/e.

The number of tries to reduce that 95% to a 50% coin toss is 13. It is not fully intuitive. One will put his threshold wherever one may think appropriate, but. A chance of tenth, a hundredth, a thousandth etc. for ten, a hundred, thousand etc. times approximates to 63.2%.

...Maybe a locution like 'Maybe 9 out of 10 times you'll be fine, but be careful about doing it 7 times' could work well (as 6.931 approximates the risk to a coin toss).

So that explains the seven lives of cats, who 9 times out of 10 land on their feet. (Also, 85% of statistics are made up on the spot.)

NB: This failure of statistical logic also shows up in "100 year storm" statistics.

The actual measurement is "storm with a 1% likelihood of occurring in any one year". The odds of that storm occurring in a century is actually about 63%, and of occurring in any ten year period, about 10%.

Add to that the fact that the measurement is based on a storm of a given magnitude (usually total rainfall / precipitation, wind speed, storm surge, etc.) occurring, and small changes in the likelihood of such events can dramatically change the rate at which a storm of a given magnitude is observed. If you live in/near flood-prone areas, keep an eye on, e.g., changes in what are considered flood stages (say, as flood control structures are added or removed), or to likelihoods of events of a given precipitation level or stream height.

Yes, defrosting vacuum sealed fish _in the fridge_ is safe, also in the package, for the next day as well, but not beyond. Defrosting on the countertop (or on the heating) is not, for the reasons GP stated.

I cold smoke meat so I need to be especially careful about this. The good news is, even though the spores are very hardy and can survive boiling at sea level atmospheric pressure, the botulism toxin (i.e. the chemical produced by the germs that does the actual damage) is easy to destroy by cooking over 85 degrees C.

Are botulism spores found inside meat or just the surface? 85C in the center will overcook the meats I cook.

Not inside meat, no. I don't think it's a problem for run of the mill hot-smoking or BBQ. For cold-smoked stuff I don't dare eat it raw yet but use the meat in stews. Cold smoked pork ribs add a 3rd dimension to thick soups like pasta fagioli or split pea soup, while sausages are great fried. I don't know how to safely attempt a prosciutto or lox though :-)

cured lox is easy, it's just a salt and sugar brine (cold smoked is something entirely different). If the salinity and sugar are high enough basically nothing can grow. Salt on its own, sugar on its own don't worry very well.

This is similar for red meat. Vacuum sealed at the source will keep it fresh longer.

Here is a great video on what color meat should be to be considered 'fresh' and how to handle it from there: https://youtu.be/82KT_nb26-4

The rest of the channel is great if you are at all into cooking.

If you put your sealed fish in cold tap water, it will thaw in less than 15 Minutes. 15 Minutes is not enough for the bacteria to produce these toxins.

Right, that was going to be my question. Wouldn't botulism etc need a certain amount of time to grow? Is any normal use case of defrosting in a microwave long enough for that to happen? Is there a safe zone of X minutes, and then an unsafe zone of Y minutes where it gets dangerous?

Fast defrosting in Microwave or sealed, in cold water, is at least better than some of the other suggestions, like poking the seal and slow defrosting over 24 hours in the fridge. In the fridge and without a seal, the effects of exposing fish to other bacteria are really difficult to control.

it takes days for the botulism to grow under a vacuum in your fridge depending on temp.(a proper fridge should be 35-40F but many are much higher than that. 50F takes 2 days or so to form)

https://www.riskyornot.co/episodes/34-thawing-frozen-fish-in...

I know - I was referring to other bacteria in your fridge (such as Listeria etc.)(not in your fridge particularly).

I defrost my fish in the package by putting it in hot tap water.

You, sire, drastically reduced my chance of dying. Thank you very much.

Do not do that. Defrosting should be done slowly in the fridge. Or you can cook frozen food directly. But do not defrost at or about room temperature, this will breed bacteria like crazy.

Wouldn't the food need to warm up to room temperature before bacteria would breed like crazy? If you defrost it from frozen to cold-but-defrosted, shouldn't you be ok, even if the surrounding air is room temperature?

The bacteria on the surface of the meat will hit room temperature in a few minutes, long before the entire piece is thawed all the way through. So it gets an hour head start.

No, it will not. But it depends on the shape of the meat. So if you are not monitoring the surface temperature, go with cold water or the fridge.

By that logic no one could ever safely eat steak tartare, which obviously you can without any issue. There will be bacteria growing in the surface, but unless someone fucked up somewhere along the way, they won't be harmful.

The issue is the timing. If you defrost in the fridge, it will eventually reach ambient temperature, but that's still safe. If you defrost on the counter, it will briefly be cold-but-defrosted, but rapidly progress to room-temperature-petri-dish.

> If you defrost it from frozen to cold-but-defrosted, shouldn't you be ok, even if the surrounding air is room temperature

Yes, that's my point. If you defrost in the fridge it's ok. If you defrost at room temperature then it's dangerous.

It's not extremely dangerous. Many people do it every day and don't die. But it's better not to.

No, what I meant was, if you defrost it at room temperature, it will not instantly warm up to room temperature - it will slowly warm up. You're not forced to leave it on the counter until it reaches room temperature, you can choose to use it before that point (even though it is surrounded by room-temperature air). It's possible to have a less-than-room-temperature fish inside a room that is in room temperature.

defrosting under warm water takes about 5 minutes, if you cook it immediately it's perfectly safe

Very much depends on what you're defrosting. A piece of meat frozeon at -20C will not defrost in 5 minutes under warm water.

It mostly depends on how large (or rather how thick) the chunk is. If you're talking about wafer-thin slices of salmon, then it'll defrost in about 30 seconds in cold water, even if it was frozen at -20C. If you're talking about a whole large turkey, then it'll probably take more than a day.

eep, my girlfriend insists on leaving meat out on the counter top for most of the day to defrost. I mean it feels cold to the touch still when we're ready to cook, and everything is cooked thoroughly, and we've never gotten sick yet but. Still dubious.

Putting it in the fridge to defrost takes 24 hours or so though.

Put it in cold water in the fridge, it goes pretty fast that way. It has saved my bacon a few times (both literally and figuratively).

defrosting in cold tap water also works just fine. I noticed that this keeps the fibres and cells intact which is advantageous for frying afterwards as the filet won't fall apart so easily.

Put it in cold tap water in the fridge and it will also defrost much faster than in the air, while staying at a safe temperature the whole time and it also won't be partly cooked already.

> drastically

If it was that dangerous you'd have heard of dozens of deaths and it would have been banned a while ago. People don't read instructions

Is this really a risk in practice though? I can't find any cases of this actually happening on the CDC's botulism site: https://www.cdc.gov/botulism/surveillance.html

might become a risk if it lies around defrosted for many hours.

I am somewhat skeptical of this as well. It's not uncommon to hear of someone having eaten something "bad", but that can be the result of many pathogens and with regards to botulinum, the article gives a data point:

> In the UK, between 1990 and 2005, there were 5 reported cases affecting 6 people and causing 2 deaths, meaning that you were 15 times more likely to be hit by lightning.

That data is clearly only reporting very serious cases though, since one third of them died.

Food poisoning is much more common than lightning.

> Food poisoning is much more common than lightning.

I said as much. The question is whether botulism is more common than lightning.

Food poisoning is not uncommon, but can be caused by many pathogens, for example E. coli.

Given the fact that we have a common illness but very few confirmations of C. botulinum as the cause, the question stands whether this is really a risk in practice.

it's a risk for certain fish and if you defrost the fish in the fridge for days... but as it stands botulism is not a very common thing to worry about in modern society. there are about 200 poisonings per year in the us. a lot are junkies using shared and dirty needles... babies eating honey is another large one. maybe about 20-50 per year in the us is an adult getting food borne botulism.

in any event yes it is risky to defrost the fish in a vacuum sealed bag but only if you thaw it for a few days or more like that. 50F fridge is about 2 days and 45F fridge is a few more days before there is growth: https://www.riskyornot.co/episodes/34-thawing-frozen-fish-in...

Fwiw i just thaw it the day i use it in cold water for < 1hr and it's almost certainly fine to use that day.

Any people from developing countries reading this thread?

What are your thoughts when you hear Westerners talking about the danger of leaving a meat out of the fridge for a couple of hours and stuff like that?

As long as it’s not vacuum sealed, you can leave it on the counter all day. Even in the west we defrost meat this way :)

Ahhh... Don't tell the health department. :)

No "we" don't.

That is expressly against USDA guidelines that say meat left in the danger zone[1] for more than 2 hours should not be consumed.

I don't eat meat, but my husband does, and he defrosts his meat in the fridge.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_zone_(food_safety)

We are talking about leaving meat out of the fridge in a sealed anaerobic environment, which is quite different.

No thoughts about the fish, but I was recently very surprised to learn that some people exclude my country, Brazil, from “western” culture. Like you did opposing “developing” and “westerners”.

Aside from geographical position, I certainly feel closer in culture to North America and Europe than to Middle-East or East-Asia cultures.

Every time I hear a statement with ”in the western culture…” I always identify myself with it.

So what do you, in your western culture, do with meat?

My wife leaves meat out of the fridge for the practically the whole day...

There are western developing countries.

And those who live there and read HN probably never faced the issues you have in mind for "developing countries".

Huh? In Austrian supermarkets meat just lies in a cool counter and you ask the staff to cut you some pieces. Additionally, there would be some packed meat in a fridge. I think it's the same in most European countries, I guess?

I think it's weird how the US put offloads most of the responsibility for preventing diseases to the supply chain and buyer, and not closer to the source. Lack of refrigerated trucks and unreliable power supply means we cannot rely on temperature being kept below specific temperatures. As a result, the regulations, processing and packaging are all work in tandem for safe food these conditions,e.g. regulations on how animals are reared, transported slaughtered, pasteurization and vacuum packaging. As an example, there are multiple brands of milk that's shelf-stable for months at room temperature.

> What are your thoughts when you hear Westerners talking about the danger of leaving a meat out of the fridge for a couple of hours and stuff like that?

It's not any different from the anywhere in the world, you have to be careful about how you handle food, or you will have a bad time.

> Do you ever buy frozen vacuum-sealed fish? The kind where each piece is sealed in its own plastic pouch? It is convenient and delicious. To me it can taste fresher than some "fresh" fish.

Eeew. No.

Call me old-fashioned but I believe in this thing called seasonality.

I only buy fish that is in season, not farmed, and that is genuinely fresh from reputable suppliers, not supermarket "fresh".

Nice clear bright eyes, clean gills and all that jazz.

There is no substitute for fresh fresh fish. Well, maybe one ... high-quality smoked fish.

>There is no substitute for fresh fresh fish. Well, maybe one ... high-quality smoked fish.

While I take a bit less of a strong stance on this, I definitely agree there's nothing like properly fresh fish. I used to think I didn't really like mackerel but the truth is that supermarket mackerel can be a bit nasty even off the fish counter, mackerel straight out of the sea and cooked right away is absolutely fantastic.

> I used to think I didn't really like mackerel but the truth is that supermarket mackerel can be a bit nasty even off the fish counter

Yes. Oily fish (e.g. mackerel) really doesn't keep well, as you say it has to be eaten as close to "straight out of the sea" as possible. Oily fish certainly is not well suited to supermarket supply chains.

For those in the Bay Area, the Hankook Korean supermarket in Sunnyvale always has good fresh mackerel.

http://www.hankooksupermarket.com/products.htm

Photographers have a saying: The best camera is the one you have with you.

I have a really nice camera with some excellent lenses, but my recent photos that I'm most proud of and enjoy the most were taken with my Galaxy Note 8, a several-year-old smartphone.

Of course the kind of fresh fish you're talking about is far superior to the Costco bag of sockeye salmon I have in the freezer. But sometimes, it's getting near dinner time, and I don't have time to go shopping and just want some fish. Under those circumstances, the frozen fish hits the spot, and it is much better than the "supermarket fresh".

But what do I know? If I'm near a McDonald's and craving a fish sandwich and there isn't a better option nearby, I just might stop in and get a Filet-O-Fish. It's nothing spectacular, but it is line-caught wild Alaskan pollock.

Just be sure to order it without cheese. Because number one, American cheese on fish is gross. And number two, it means they have to make you a fresh sandwich and not give you a premade one.

(Disclosure: I work for McDonald's, at least until the end of this month.)

Isn't practically everything you see in a fish market flash frozen anyway?

Afaik there's very little fresh fish going around, period. It's all frozen on the boat.

A friend told me that he never, ever eats frozen fish, but he does enjoy all varieties of sushi and sashimi, and he explained to me that those are never frozen.

I tried to convince him otherwise, but never got anywhere.

https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-prepare-raw-fish-at-home-...

In some places it is illegal _not_ to freeze the fish for sushi, to avoid anisakis (I don't know how it is enforced, though).

source: https://elpais.com/sociedad/2006/12/20/actualidad/1166569202...

We hope so! Flash freezing kills parasites

(Sure, it's not an issue if you cook it thoroughly before consumption, but still)

> We hope so! Flash freezing kills parasites

It depends where you are.

If you are in a Western country, then yes, "sashimi grade fish" equals "frozen".

If you are in Japan, then no.

Its all to do with the understanding of fish and its handling.

In the West its all commoditised, quantity over quality.

In Japan, they have a deeply rooted fish culture, a focus on quality and are obsessive over food hygiene.

So in Japan your sushi won't be pre-frozen, but it will have been meticulously inspected and prepared.

Fun fact, salmon sushi/sashimi is a Western thing. The Japanese don't eat it because the parasite risk in Salmon is so much higher than any other fish.

Personally, having visited Japan a number of times, I will not eat sushi or sashimi outside of Japan any more.

I live in Japan and some of this is a bit wrong.

1. All Tuna is frozen immediately after being caught on the boat - go to tsukiji (well now toyosu) at the tuna market. They are frozen and they taste better because of it.

2. There is no sushi / sashimi grade in Japan. High quality fish that you can eat safely is just the default

3. It's true that traditional sushi did not include salmon because of the parasites. If you go to a traditional sushi restaurant (3 star Michelin etc) you won't find salmon nigiri. Other than that salmon sushi is everywhere at sushi restaurants in Japan and tons of Japanese eat salmon nigiri and sushi.

1. Noted, although I would say I didn't say all fish was not frozen.

2. That was kind of the point I was making. ;-)

3. I guess we must frequent different places, because the only places I've seen Salmon is Narita airport and at combinis. I don't go to 3 star Michelin, but I do admit I go to more traditional sushi restaurants when I want sushi in Japan. That said, even when I have had sushi at isakaya and small local restaurants, sashimi omakase rarely contains Salmon.

There are many restaurants in Hokkaido that have the seafood version of oyakodon, Salmon and roe.

https://hokkaido-labo.com/en/otaru-seafood-donburi-14255

> 2. There is no sushi / sashimi grade in Japan. High quality fish that you can eat safely is just the default

Many fishes in supermarket are sold as "for heat cooking" except for sashimi. It's costly to make all salmon raw eatable.

Agree for others.

The hell? Have you been to Tsukiji Fish Market? Its immediately obvious that everything is flash frozen

This reads like some old school weeb shit

> Its immediately obvious that everything is flash frozen

"Everything" is a bit of an exaggeration.

I'm sure like at all fish markets, there is frozen fish available, either because it was imported or because that's the way it was pre-processed on the local boat.

But to say "everything is flash frozen". That's pushing it. You fall flat at shellfish at a start. ;-)

> Personally, having visited Japan a number of times, I will not eat sushi or sashimi outside of Japan any more.

Most of us cannot travel to Japan every time we want to eat sushi, so that's simply not practical.

> Most of us cannot travel to Japan every time we want to eat sushi, so that's simply not practical.

FFS !

Did I ever say I travelled, or that anyone should travel to Japan every time ?

No.

Incase you had not seen, Japanese cuisine goes beyond sushi and sashimi.

The quality of sushi and sahimi in the West is simply so poor compared to Japan I won't waste my money. That is what I am saying.

I simply said I do not eat sushi and sashimi. I can fill my Japanese desires with other culinary aspects and save myself for as and when I might visit Japan.

> Incase you had not seen, Japanese cuisine goes beyond sushi and sashimi.

Well, yes, some of us have visited Japan and tried their cuisine, both in their own country and in Japanese restaurants in other countries.

There are also authentic Japanese sushi bars outside Japan, run by Japanese chefs, and making superb sushi.

I really don't understand what you're trying to say here.

> Fun fact, salmon sushi/sashimi is a Western thing. The Japanese don't eat it because the parasite risk in Salmon is so much higher than any other fish.

All the conveyor belt sushi chains I’ve eaten at definitely had salmon nigiri on the menu. In fact, they had a wider variety of salmon than what is commonly found in the US. It is most definitely a thing Japanese people eat because otherwise there wouldn’t be five menu items dedicated to just salmon at every major conveyorbelt sushi chain.

At least in the US, a significant amount of the fish you eat in high end restaurants, sushi restaurants and fish markets is never frozen.

It is packed in ice and kept very cold, but not frozen.

Supermarkets are more likely to stock frozen/previously frozen. Lots of commodity seafood is frozen when caught.

Source: Spent a season offshore fishing for swordfish/tuna. Worked in the warehouses that unloaded and shipped the same. Drove the truck that delivered the fish.

Ah, the more you know. Fish guy has spoken I guess.

At least for white fish.

> American cheese on fish is gross

American cheese is gross full stop. ;-)

As is American chocolate.

My European friends: “Hersheys tastes like vomit.”

The same people: “So I know it’s Halloween over there and um… can you send us some Reese’s cups?”

> As is American chocolate.

You've been eating the wrong American chocolate. Hershey's isn't the end all and be all. There are plenty of good chocolate makers and even more good chocolatiers in the US, you just need to explore a bit. L.A. Burdick in New Hampshire, for example, makes really great chocolates, and has a nice wide range of single source bars made with beans from plantations all over the world.

true of cheese as well. Tillamook in Oregon produces fantastic cheese (which is widely vended). The way I think about it is that the average american food is poorer than average european quality, but that our best producers make some of the best in the world.

European chocolate tastes dull.

Snark aside, it's about what you grew up with. Fascinating video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J44svaQc5WY

>> American cheese on fish is gross

> American cheese is gross full stop. ;-)

Cheese on fish is gross full stop.

> As is American chocolate.

Particularly on fish, I'd guess.

I don't eat fish, but I have heard that when modern flash freezing is done properly, you cannot tell the difference from actual fresh.

Unless you’re buying your fish every morning in the fish market at the harbor, it’s probably been frozen. Even wild caught is typically frozen as soon as it’s hauled aboard.

This will vary around the world, of course.

Supposedly, flash freezing (which is distinct from your average home freezer unit) preserves quality such that even trained sushi chefs can't tell the difference between fresh and previously flash-frozen fish.

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/nyregion/sushi-fresh-from...

Indeed, there are some types of fish that are safe for "raw" consumption only after being flash frozen, due to parasites that live in the fish.

Many of those frozen like that were flash frozen on the boat and are fresher than even what you buy at the fish market direct from the boats that landed that night.

It really does depend on your location. Here in Iceland I can get fresh fish that was caught the same day in my local fish store (mind you not all their fish is caught that day, but most if not all inside 2).

Though with the globalized world we live in, I was even able to get fish from Iceland no older than 2 days in Edmonton Canada when I lived there some years ago.

edit; I'll add that there is a massive texture difference in white fish depending on if it has ever been frozen. Flaky fresh never frozen cod becomes like chewing gum after having been frozen.

> I only buy fish that is in season, not farmed, and that is genuinely fresh from reputable suppliers, not supermarket "fresh".

I think everyone wants this, but it's not always practical. Not everyone lives in a coastal area with access to fresh fish of the kind they would like to eat. If you do, more power to you! But if you don't...

Freezing fish also has the benefit that it kills parasites.

The fish you buy even from reputable suppliers was very likely flash frozen on the boat before it ever reached land. Many fishing boats are out for several days or weeks at a time. So just because it's only been on land a short time, that doesn't mean it's recently caught.

This is a good thing because many fish harbor parasites that are killed when flash frozen. Your home freezer doesn't reliably get cold enough to take them out. You can reliably kill them by cooking very thoroughly, but since fish is such a delicate meat, the line between "may still have wriggling worms" and "overcooked, dry, and unpalatable" can be quite fine.

Okay, so in the past we've used a sous-vide recirculator set to 30°C to quickly defrost fish which had been vacuum sealed (dodged a bullet apparently). I looked into it and the temperature at which it is safe to hold food without risk of toxin production is 3°C and less.

What high-speed defrosting methods are there to replace this? is it okay to just open the fish for 30 minutes, re-seal it and then put it in the recirculator?

Really I'm just concerned about a reliable method of defrosting which doesn't take a week. Putting food from the freezer into the fridge has been a hit-and-miss endeavour sometimes taking up to a week.

Back when I used to work in hospitality, we'd defrost fish (both vac sealed and loose) in cold running water.

Defrosting vac sealed fish in cold water over 20 minutes and immediately cooking it carries roughly zero risk of botulism, for 2 reasons:

1. The optimal growth temperature for C. botulinum is between 20-45 C [1], exponentially dropping off outside that range. That's why improperly canned food is risky, as it's usually stored in that range for weeks or months.

2. The bacteria is slow growing and doesn't cause illness itself, it also can't grow in the acidic conditions of the adult human gut. Rather, it's the excreted toxin that's dangerous, which takes several days to form [2].

[1] https://www.publish.csiro.au/bi/pdf/bi9530178 (p.p. 182)

[2] https://journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1128/aem.62.8.3069-3072.... (p.p. 3071)

>>I looked into it and the temperature at which it is safe to hold food without risk of toxin production is 3°C and less.

The what now? My fridge at home is uniformly at 4C, surely that can't be dangerous.

quickly defrosting like that is fine wrt botulism but i'm not sure it's great to do that for other bacteria. but you can also just quickly defrost it in a bowl of cool water and use it within a few hours.

So basically, is sous-vide cooking is a very bad idea?

No. Because you are in pasteurized temperatures. Practically always on the outside of the protein. And there are usually no spores inside the muscles

Sous-vide relies on longer time durations instead of higher temperatures. In most cases, a longer time at a lower temperature is equivalent to a shorter time at a higher temperature in the reduction of pathogenic organisms [0]

[0]https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Safety

> just right for botulinum and listeria

But if it was frozen, wouldn't that kill off any bacteria? Then, as a sealed environment, there wouldn't be anything to grow, even if the environment is just right.

edit: ignore this comment, I just read how the spores are resistant to boiling/freezing...

Freezing doesn't kill bacteria. Reliably, anyway.

I think Douglas Baldwin's sous vide guide is a relevant aside to this discussion of pathogens on food.

https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html

The rapid, long-lasting and highly noticeable cosmetic effects made Botox a near instant success. In small doses, the same nerve damage that causes fatal paralysis in poisoning cases, helps to remove forehead creases and crow’s feet, with the only side effects being an inability to express emotion using your face,

…

ironic that many celebrities who publicly advocated a clean living, chemical-free lifestyle, were also early adopters of a treatment that involves injecting the deadliest substance on earth into your face (looking at you, Paltrow). If any of them were surprised at this seeming paradox, they certainly didn’t show it.

Loved the subtle irony here.

Technically Botox is all natural. It's even vegan.

Is it? It feels like it exploit the hard work of those poor bacterias ;)

only eukaryotic species are defined as "animal" afaik, so this is another league. Not getting pregnant every month is also not considered abortion in regions where this is banned, right?

In French, the translation for vegan sounds something like "vegetalist". I agree bacteria are not animals, but they are not vegetal either. But I guess this would exclude muchrooms too :D

See also: apple seed extract (cyanide), ricin...

> The lethal dose when consumed orally is around 30 billionths of a gram, which if you want a relatable comparison, is about the same as if you cut a single poppy seed into ten thousand equal pieces and ate one of them. It is an amount so tiny, it really doesn’t make sense.

That's right - it makes no sense. How could such a small amount of anything do enough damage to shut down your entire body? According to wikipedia, it works by "cleaving key proteins required for nerve activation". Unless there's some self-replication mechanism, how does that even work?

edit: I went and did the math. At an LD of 30 nanograms, that's about 1.2 billion actual molecules of this stuff to die. I guess that's enough to shut down a sufficient number of nerves that you just can't function anymore.

The math: lethal dose / per molecule weight (molar mass / avogadro)

(3.0e-10) / (149323.05 / 6.0221409e+23) = 1209888406.377984

Wikipedia says "The estimated human lethal dose of type A toxin is 1.3–2.1 ng/kg intravenously or intramuscularly, 10–13 ng/kg when inhaled, or 1000 ng/kg when taken by mouth."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin

> 10–13 ng/kg when inhaled

Well, that answers the poor "how would Saddam have gotten us to eat it?" joke in the article - disperse it as a cloud instead

I guess that we must therefore make a separate category for self replicating, otherwise prions would be probably the winners. It's like code golf but with chemistry. Great article BTW.

The thing that surprises me is: how does it get distributed widely enough? I would imagine that 30pg would lump together somewhere and damage a handful of neurons, not that it would spread and reach all essential parts of the nerve system.

Extracellular fluid is actively transported-- after all, it's where all gas exchange happens, and if you get a hypoxic spot in your body then those cells are going to die. The wikipedia article claims, without citation: "The extracellular fluid is constantly "stirred" by the circulatory system, which ensures that the watery environment which bathes the body's cells is virtually identical throughout the body. This means that nutrients can be secreted into the ECF in one place (e.g. the gut, liver, or fat cells) and will, within about a minute, be evenly distributed throughout the body."

It's a protease which matches key neural proteins. The key to recognise is that it's reusable: one molecule can keep breaking proteins, and as soon as it does that faster than homeostatic processes can replace them you're in trouble.

Just how "rm -rf /" can destroy your whole system: it's a small character but it matches and destroys everything.

Its a simple spell but quite unbreakable

> According to wikipedia, it works by "cleaving key proteins required for nerve activation". Unless there's some self-replication mechanism, how does that even work?

The toxin is an enzyme and as such is not consumed during the cleavage reaction. A molecule of the botulinum toxin breaks down one protein molecule and then moves on to the next one until the toxin itself is degraded by the organism.

Terrifying, really

Surprised the article doesn't mention honey, which if you're a new parent, is an important thing to know about, on this topic. To quote the US CDC: "Honey can contain the bacteria that causes infant botulism, so do not feed honey to children younger than 12 months. Honey is safe for people 1 year of age and older."

Despite this being reasonably well-known, usually, you still get idiocy like this: https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-informatio...

On top of that, people should remember that while honey is naturally microbially stable. It is not actively anti microbial. Mixing it into your dish will not make it more shelf stable. The stability is simply because it's too dry for microbial activity.

I'm mentioning this because it's a common misconception in fermentation communities.

You’d imagine the fermentation communities have heard of mead!

I remember at least one mead recipe that claims honey is anti-microbial and instructs you to boil the mixture before fermentation. But I can confirm it works without boiling.

Doesn't mead production start off by introducing water to the honey?

What a fantastic find of an article!

It's not every day that I get to read about a microbe so deadly that a small jar would be enough to kill all of humanity, so difficult to weaponize that no nation or group has ever been able to build weapons with it, so important to our modern food system that it has altered the taste of almost every packaged food we eat, and so widely used for cosmetic facial procedures that everyone everywhere knows its commercial name (Botox).

The title doesn't do justice to the article.

> Doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo made a few attempts to deploy it at US military bases in the 1980s, but were so shambolically unsuccessful that their attacks went unnoticed by authorities.

Is a wonderful sentence.

My favourite is the last line of this passage:

> It is of course deeply ironic that many celebrities who publicly advocated a clean living, chemical-free lifestyle, were also early adopters of a treatment that involves injecting the deadliest substance on earth into your face (looking at you, Paltrow). If any of them were surprised at this seeming paradox, they certainly didn’t show it.

I love him for that sentence.

It'd be interesting to know why it's so difficult to weaponize. Is the caveat that the toxin is only so deadly once in the bloodstream, but is otherwise hard to get there?

> Karl Friedrich Meyer [...] is a largely unheralded hero of global public health. Many consider him the twentieth century’s Pasteur, and his work doubtless saved millions of lives.

Unheralded indeed. His Wikipedia entry isn't very well-sourced, but assuming it's mostly accurate this guy could be a great subject for a motivated long-form journalist willing to do a bit of research. At the very least I'd want to read it.

I'd want to read about his path to discovery and challenges while changing the status quo for sure.

I wouldn't want to read about his grandfather's antique clock or his childhood pets. Long-form journalism in 2021 isn't for me.

Only two mentions of 'nitrites'? Botulism is the reason we started curing meats with nitrite and nitrate in the first place. Canning is fine, but being able to keep meat at room temperature by just adding common (e.g. available in urine, and celery) chemicals is far more interesting.

so does ham cured with celery also contain nitrites? I've been buying free range ham cured with celery because I thought it was free of nitrites.

I just listened to a podcast episode about this, basically celery cured just means “naturally found” nitrites… which are the same thing as artificial nitrites… they’re just nitrites. (Disclaimer: not a chemist)

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stuff-you-should-know/...

Well thats disappointing

some dired hams don't contain any nitrites. I know parma ham doesn't, for example

Yeah, genuine prosciutto is just salt and time.

And piggy

Well, yes. Heh.

I always found it intriguing that some people can have the discipline to make big changes to their day to day routine based on some learned trivia, but don't have the discipline to actually learn the subject.

That's pretty uncharitable. Celery juice is used specifically because it's confusing and misleading - you shouldn't have to have a scientific degree to decode a nutrition label, but here we are.

Ah, the old, "I've sworn off carbs. I might give up sugar too at some point, but one thing at a time," said while eating falafel.

"Beans can't have protein. That doesn't make any sense. Protein is what meat has."

I have spoken to two different people with no connection between them who thought that beans had no carbs and no protein, they were "different," because carbs were grain things and protein was meat. I wouldn't normally judge people for ignorance, but both of those people used the terms "carb" and "protein" while expressing extensive and very strongly held beliefs about nutrition. They are not much different from anti-vaxxers in my book.

You got the point.

Celery extract contains a lot of nitrates and can be treated to produce nitrites as well [1]. The reason they use celery is to exploit a loophole in food labelling laws and avoid usage of the word nitrates due to their association with health risks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celery_powder

If you read closely the ingredients don't list celery, they list "celery seed extract". They're extracting the nitrates, it's just a ploy to avoid having to list nitrates in the ingredients but still use it. Next to the statement saying "No added nitrates!" there will be a tiny asterisk adding "except those naturally present (and extracted and concentrated) in celery seeds."

Similar trick with "no sugar added" in juices, but you can take grape or apple juice, evaporate a lot of the water till it forms a syrup, then add that syrup to juices and still be able to sell the result as "100% pure fruit juice, no sugar added".

No, adding concentrated juice definitely violates "no added sugar" labelling standards, at least as far as the FDA and Health Canada are concerned for sure. I assume in Europe as well.

Some juices are just naturally very high in sugar.

Why are you avoiding nitrites? As far as I can tell they are inert and safe.

> In this way, Clostridium Botulinum shapes our modern food system. It is why (...) jarred sauces can sometimes have a harsh acidic note, particularly creamy sauces that are not naturally acidic.

Yes, I have noticed this many times. Tomato sauce is naturally acidic, but ready-made, bottled tomato sauce is much more acidic than what you can make from scratch.

Acidity can be fought by adding just a little baking soda.

I've once gotten the advice of boiling it for at least fifteen minutes since the citric acid commonly used will break down at normal cooking temperatures.

Wikipedia lists its breakdown temperature at 175C so it's plausible but I don't know the temperatures at which tomato sauce boils.

Baking soda is fine too, but it can bring its own minerally flavor into your foods. So I'd use it sparingly.

Tomato sauce being mostly water it probably boils at around 100°C? I don't think you can have tomato sauce reach 175°C in a normal kitchen (the inside of a pressure cooker is about 120°C). In a deep fryer the oil goes to much higher temps but you can't keep anything watery inside (that's one of the points of deep frying: to remove water).

Or is it 175°F, which would be ~80°C?

In my experience just boiling a sauce doesn't reduce its acidity much; letting it simmer for hours can work wonders but it's a whole different approach.

Yes baking soda is very effective at small doses so just a pinch in a big pan of sauce is usually enough.

If boiling for a few minutes broke down the acid, wouldn’t it be pretty ineffective for use in canning? They boil it during canning.

> a disease that had been coined Botulism, after bolutus, the Latin for sausage

[typo] If the author is reading, sausage in Latin is botellus, or sometimes botulus, but not bolutus.

From the Online Etymological Dictionary:

"poisoning caused by eating imperfectly preserved food," 1878, from German Botulismus (1878), coined in German from Medieval Latin botulus "sausage" (see bowel) + -ismus suffix of action or state (see -ism). The sickness first was traced to eating tainted sausage (sausage poisoning was an old name for it).

https://www.etymonline.com/word/botulism

>it is likely that the pure crystalline form of Botulinum toxin is now also the most valuable, with an estimated street value of $100 trillion per kilogram

So next time when you forget some cooked food out of the fridge and are disposing it, you can think how you are literally throwing a fortune away.

The entire global face paralysing industry is supported by an annual production of just a few milligrams.

A writeup of the production methods would be interesting. I wonder if it is produced in highly concentrated or even pure form and then diluted, or produced in diluted form. The former may be more efficient but I suspect it would be difficult to control tiny volumes of toxin that just happen to get lost in the mixing process. If you're diluting red paint into white paint it may not matter if a microgram of pure red hides in a crevice and get deposited into a gallon sometime later but it would sure matter if it was botulinum toxin.

A few hints:

"A baby-aspirin-size amount of powdered toxin is enough to make the global supply of Botox for a year. That little bit is derived from a larger primary source, which is locked down somewhere in the continental U.S.—no one who isn’t on a carefully guarded list of government and company officials knows exactly where. Occasionally (the company won’t say how frequently), some of the toxin (the company won’t say how much) is shipped in secrecy to the lab in Irvine for research. Even less frequently, a bit of the toxin is transported by private jet, with guards aboard, to the plant in Ireland."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-26/inside-fo...

"The only case linked to a commercially produced food product in that time was non-fatal, involving a man who ate some hummus that had been left out of the fridge for several weeks and smelt so bad that other members of his family refused to go near it."

Reminds me of a conversation between my brothers after some food fell on the floor:

"You're going to eat that?"

"Yeah, I have an immune system."

"So do I -- and mine includes the part of me that goes 'Ewww, don't stick that in your mouth.'"

This was a surprisingly fun read with some really funny points...

> with the only side effects being an inability to express emotion using your face

> The entire global face paralysing industry

I laughed at this one:

” If any of them were surprised at this seeming paradox, they certainly didn’t show it.”

Is there a theory for what purpose the Botulinum Toxin evolved for? I don't see that paralyzing your host is particularly useful for a bacterium.

The bacteria thrives in rotting meat, so killing the host might be exactly what it needs. It produces lots of spores present everywhere, so transmission from host to host is not an issue.

Edit: what's -> lots

Can it be randomness? Unless paralyzing/killing the host is actively harmful, it might evolve by chance and remain as-is.

Being an anaerobic bacteria and one that can lie dormant for long periods of time, I don't think it needs the host to be alive.

Clostridium botulinum is anaerobic, and live in soil, so living humans are not a particularly good host. Dead humans could be, though, so natural selection would favor strains that efficiently returned themselves and their descendants back to the soil.

Evolution doesn't need purpose. As long as a feature doesn't reduce the survival rate, it remains in place. The toxicity could just be a side effect of the spores durability and longevity.

Exactly. See also, cats & sweet flavors:

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=476655...

A defective gene resulted in No Big Deal to a very successful class of animals.

C. Botulinum has a complicated life cycle that involves infecting vertebrates, killing them, and then infecting the invertebrates that feed on the body during decomposition. The bacteria don't particularly care about the host and just want it dead as quickly as possible so they can get on with their real hosts.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1093/femspd/fty040

Might be interesting to know how vultures deal with this.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/11/25/3665455...

They are not sure as there are various hypotheses apparently:

> He says vulture stomach acid is 10 to 100 times stronger than human stomach acid, "so it seems like the stomach itself is a very harsh environment."

> "Another hypothesis could be that they're actually using the bacteria in the stomach as some sort of probiotics," Hansen says. By having a gut full of a few tolerable species of bacteria, it's possible that those would crowd out other deadly microbes.

Nature's beautiful garbage disposal. Botulism. Anthrax. Vultures don't care.

What would be the role of the bacteria in a zombie invasion? Would it eat the zombies away or would it give them natural protection from predators? Both?

Botulinum toxins are paralytic, so they'd make very tame zombies. Fungi would take care of the rest pretty quickly.

Its very close cousin tetanus toxin has the opposite effect, but would also cause zombies to be immobile all the same.

I'm in no way a scientist, but it sounds like the bacteria grows best in oxygen-free, low acidity environments with a lot of protein: that's dead things. Paralyzing your host is a bad idea for diseases that will be permanently destroyed shortly after their host dies, but it's a pretty great plan if it creates a wonderful ecosystem free of pesky immune cells and oxygen for you to grow and produce spores that can happily sit around forever waiting for something to eat them.

A pathogen's needs will, over time, converge with the needs of its host, but only if the pathogen is only able to survive in one species. When a pathogen is able to feed off of many species, its needs never converge with the needs of any particular host.

Do you mean its needs for reproductive fitness? Only if it's transmitted only from parents to offspring.

I can't answer your question for C Botulinum. But many times we are just in the middle of warfare. That is, it is an accident we are harmed.

For instance, Corynebacterium Diphtheriae is not lethal per se, but then comes a virus that infects the bacteria, and kills the bacteria, and a byproduct of the virus causes the bacteria to cause diphteria. The phage (the bacteria virus) provides no advantage to C diphteriae.

My hypothesis for clostridiums, that includes C botulinum, is that they do want to kill their host, however. They kind of kill the planet they live in as they can thrive in the carcass while it lasts. So, deathly clostridiums have this at least short term advantage over non deathly ones.

C. tetani, perfrigens, botulinum and difficile can all kill you. However, C. perfrigens does it differently, by diggesting you before killing you, "on the fly" or "just in time"

It comes in handy for organisms that happen to like feasting on decaying bodies through saprophytic nutrition.

Paralysis enhances the chance of dying.

Being anaerobic limits their expansion.

Thanks to the Great Oxidation Event, cyanobacteria caused.

By the way, often humans and other multicellular Organisms are just battleground or collateral damage in billion year old wars between bacteria and/or viruses.

That contrast makes the page unreadable for me.

Reader view used to irritate me but I have gown to appreciate it for just this reason

You can modify the appearance of Reader View on Firefox using a userContent.css file.

I've modified fonts, margins, and a few other bits.

Unfortunately, borken semantic page struture still persists, but the net result is an improvement in many cases.

Pro-tip to save your eyes: activate reader mode in Firefox by pressing F9

I think it's F9 only on Windows; it's Ctrl+Alt+R elsewhere.

Botulism is why you cannot make and keep garlic oil, every time you want to use it you must make a fresh batch.

This is the main danger of homemade mayonnaise as well - it’s not the raw egg that gets you.

If you don’t add sufficient acid to the mayo, then your potato salad ends up in a perfect oxygen-free environment for botulism…

how do you know that garlic+oil could produce botulism?

I think I haven’t understood what kind of food + low oxygen/low acid + room temperature might create botulism… could you help me understand?

I derived that most of those things are animal related, but garlic+oil is not.

Thanks!!

The botulism spores are abundant in soil, but they don't get activated unless the conditions are met. The main condition is an environment without oxygen and the presence of proteins, which happen both in sealed oil-garlic containers.

I guess I'm having the same struggle as nfin.

> The main condition is an environment without oxygen and the presence of proteins, which happen both in sealed oil-garlic containers.

This seems such a general condition... in first approximation, sealed containers with anything at home are sealed containers with proteins...

Most factory-made food has preservatives and other stuff that stabilize the food and prevent botulism. In particular many foods use vinegar to increase acidity and make it impossible for botulism to bloom.

In general, canning oils at home is unsafe (unless you have a pressure canner and take it up to 121C). Canning water-based stuff with high acidity (pH < 4.3 or whatever) is pretty safe, as long as you follow a safe procedure and the seals are intact.

> An alternative approach is to acidify the contents to a pH below 4.5 (although the effective upper limit is 4.2-4.3 in most production, just to be sure), and then apply heat up to about 91C to kill any bacteria, in a processed known as Pasteurisation. Although the spores remain intact at this temperature, the __low acidity__ means that they will not grow into bacteria or produce their deadly toxin

This paragraph highly confuses me. Shouldn't that be "high acidity, as in low pH"?

It might mean that it is acidic, but not strongly acidic? "Lightly acidic", maybe? A pH of 4.5 is less acidic than soda water.

"low as in not neutral" and not "low as in not a lot", yeah maybe, thanks.

> Shouldn't that be "high acidity, as in low pH"?

Yes.

Maybe sibling comment is right that the author was trying to suggest 4.5 isn’t especially acidic, but it is somewhat confusing to read.

One thing not mentioned is cooking destroys the bacteria and it's toxin. I forget the exact times for temperatures, but it's something like 212F for 5 minutes or 180F for 10 minutes.

Also, why is infant botulism an issue with honey but not other other things? The spores are everywhere and cooking does not kill the spores.

> One thing not mentioned is cooking destroys the bacteria and it's toxin. I forget the exact times for temperatures, but it's something like 212F for 5 minutes or 180F for 10 minutes.

The article mentions this explicitly:

> To combat botulism in canned foods, it is necessary for all parts of the sealed can to reach an internal temperature of 121C, as this is sufficient to destroy botulinum spores …

> An alternative approach is to acidify the contents to a pH below 4.5 (although the effective upper limit is 4.2-4.3 in most production, just to be sure), and then apply heat up to about 91C to kill any bacteria… Although the spores remain intact at this temperature, the low acidity means that they will not grow into bacteria or produce their deadly toxin.

The latter approach is what is commonly used in “water bath” home canning. The former is also doable at home, but you need a pressure canner to get the water well above boiling.

That's the pasteurization part. What I'm saying, is that if you had a jar of food that wasn't processed correctly but looked fine (botulism doesn't typically change the appearance), subsequently cooking it will destroy the bacteria and toxin. There's no mention in the article of the toxin being heat sensitive.

So if you can some spaghetti sauce and simmer it for 10 minutes before adding to the pasta, then you should have no risk of botulism. Think of it as defense in depth - a second safeguard against botulism.

CDC says 85C internal temperature for 5 minutes, but better to just throw it out - botulism isn’t the only thing that will grow in food that hasn’t been prepared or stored safely.

https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/Botulism/clinicians/control....

Well sure, if you have reason to believe it spoiled (you can't tell by looking at it). I'm just saying, botulism isn't as much of a threat as some people make it out to be. If the article was to mention that it is easily destroyed by cooking, then readers could take the extra step of cooking it before eating to put their minds at ease.

If you don’t have reason to believe it’s spoiled, there’s no reason to follow the botulism toxin procedure. As the article mentions, botulism in canned foods is practically non-existent with modern safety procedures.

I'll reiterate, defense in depth. This is alo geared towards home canning.

Related: America’s Food Safety System Failed to Stop a Salmonella Epidemic. It’s Still Making People Sick

https://www.propublica.org/article/salmonella-chicken-usda-f...

> To combat botulism in canned foods, it is necessary for all parts of the sealed can to reach an internal temperature of 121C, as this is sufficient to destroy botulinum spores, leaving the contents of the can free from the potential for bacterial growth*. [...]

> In this way, Clostridium Botulinum shapes our modern food system. It is why canned foods have a burnt, metallic taste [...]

This seems to suggest that canned foods are heated inside of the can. But cans are usually lined with BPA or similar chemicals on the inside. Wouldn't those melt at such temperatures?

Wikipedia says BPA has a melting point of 158-159 C, though I don’t anything (not even the name) about whatever chemical will replace BPA now BPA is regarded as an endocrine disruptor.

tl;dr: botulinum toxin. From TFA:

It is perhaps strange that such a rare poisoning event shapes our modern food system so profoundly, but this is perhaps because the toxin produced is one of, if not the, deadliest on earth. It has been estimated that in its pure crystalline form, six grams of botulism toxin, about one teaspoon full, would be enough to kill 200 million people. The lethal dose when consumed orally is around 30 billionths of a gram, which if you want a relatable comparison, is about the same as if you cut a single poppy seed into ten thousand equal pieces and ate one of them. It is an amount so tiny, it really doesn’t make sense.

That was awesome to read.

> If any of them were surprised at this seeming paradox, they certainly didn’t show it.

I wonder how long the author chuckled at this turn of phrase.

After reading this article and some googling I am still confused if salt is as efficient against it as vinegar?

Hmm, I guess then it is not safe to store walnuts in a vacuum package if they are not dry enough. Initially I thought it only affected meat/fish.

There's a lot of things at stake, especially if you're dealing with foods that are processed. Some might even last than our lifespan.

Great article. Do we have any idea how or why this microbe evolved to be so lethal, widespread, and tough? How old it is?

I have a tin of sardines that's been kept in the fridge for quite a while (2 months I think) Is it now unsafe?

Interested article, but what's with the overly intense site color scheme? It's hard to read becasue of it.

Just updated my SQLite table of "Things_Wont_Work_With.txt"

..."It has been estimated that in its pure crystalline form, six grams of botulism toxin, about one teaspoon full, would be enough to kill 200 million people. The lethal dose when consumed orally is around 30 billionths of a gram..."

That was a fascinating story!

"I'm looking you, Paltrow." was a chuckle.

very nicely written history of the toxin, the drug botox, and the principles of canning. related see the article on HN regarding Campbell's soups.

Are vaccines or antibiotics available against Clostridium Botulinum? Would it help e.g. to vaccinate lifestock?

This is one of the worst colour schemes I've seen in waking memory. I can't read it.

document.querySelectorAll('.section-background').forEach(x => x.style.backgroundColor = 'black')

Just click reader mode in Firefox.

I'm not going to install a different browser to read one article

Install it to read everything then :-]

It's available for Chrome also.

outline.com is good too

https://outline.com/U6wfgV

Protip: They also bypass certain paywalls

Lol, people were just assuming you were using the correct browser for this day and age. Don't be so obtuse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com