Hacker News Reader

Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

When I was young my grandma told me an interesting rule of thumb from her childhood in the old country:

If there are no bugs in the grain after it has been stored for a while, don't eat it.

The rationale was that if bugs didn't want to eat it (they didn't have tightly sealed packaging at that time), it was probably chemically contaminated.

View on HN

I expect she was describing something else. Bugs, especially things like weevils [1] tend to lay microsized eggs in grains of all sort. Even when hermetically sealed they'll be able to hatch and thrive. I tend to buy relatively large quantities of things like rice, flour, etc and finding bugs in hermetically sealed bags after some lengthy time is not uncommon.

It's not bugs getting into your food from the outside, but being packaged into your food! If you don't have bugs it means they've been killed in some way, and one of the easiest to do that is chemical. Incidentally, weevils (the most common) are harmless and tasteless to consume. It just means a bit of extra protein in your food!

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weevil

I think that's exactly what OP was describing

Is it extra protein, if they lived only off the rice in the bag? Presumably all the protein inside of them came from rice that would have otherwise been there.

I guess it helps digest and synthesize some of the proteins for you.

We eat grazing animals because they turn grass into muscles (proteins). It's similar for insects. That said, I don't know how the protein amount in one insect compares to the protein amount in rice.

> weevils (the most common) are harmless and tasteless to consume

So chances are good of eating the lesser of two weevils!

I grew up in a hot country. The peaches that were bird-bitten were always the best

That is one fantastic rule of thumb and a great perspective on the way we were that I’ve never heard before.

There's a story from the introduction of the potato into Germany. People would not eat the 'new' potatoes as dogs would not eat them.

>The things have neither smell nor taste, not even the dogs will eat them, so what use are they to us?

https://www.berlinexperiences.com/did-frederick-the-great-in...

Seems to me like a pretty unscientific way to conclude whether a food is edible (or good for you). But it makes sense of course, if you didn't have access to modern science due to poverty or era.

Even modern grain infrastructure relies on delcarations of chemical usage and not itemized testing. Real time testing equipment is prohibitively expensive and lab testing takes too long to do it before mixing a load of grain into a silo. On site tests are done but for indicators of moisture spoilage, protein deterioration and disease, but not chemical contaminants.

Haha reminds me of the time Tintin mixed in an anti-alcohol drug into the Picaros' meal, and they wouldn't eat it until snowy did.

Haha one of my favourite scenes, apart from Captain Haddock losing his taste for whisky at the start!!!

There is such a drug, sort of: Disulfiram. Though the effect isn't technically to make alcohol taste foul, it's to make consuming it give an almost instant, terrible hangover.

Some inkcap mushrooms which are otherwise edible have a mycotoxin with the same effect, coprine. There are persistent rumours that other mushrooms can contain some of it too, not verified as far as I know but there's enough poorly understood variation in mushrooms that I wouldn't dismiss the possibility.

Great read!

> One of the most oft-repeated stories about Frederick’s relationship with the potato concerns the ingenious tactic of reverse psychology the King embarked on to increase interest in potatoes: rebranding it as a ‘royal vegetable’. By ordering his soldiers to plant potatoes in royal fields and lightly guard the crops, allowing the locals to sneak in and pillage the vegetables – the Prussian king would conclude: what is worth guarding is also worth stealing.

This reminds me of Rory Sutherland's "Lessons from an ad man" where he tells this story, and then follows-up with another myth-like story about Ataturk wanting to modernize Turkey, but rather than ban head coverings for women, he required prostitutes to wear one.

full video (which is definitely worth a watch): https://youtu.be/audakxABYUc

3:20 is where the story starts: https://youtu.be/audakxABYUc?t=200

The story about lightly guarding potatoes seems to be common European trope, I've heard it in many countries. Variations include the one you mentioned, and one where potatoes were placed in a warehouse with increased security, in order to attract the attention of the peasants who were allowed to steal them.

I just came across the Frederick the Great story somewhere else this morning. That version also claimed he even told the guards to accept bribes from people trying to steal the potatoes.

That they could see that it was a plant in the nightshade family probably also didn't help matters.

Another really interesting one is about eggs. If you buy eggs from a supermarket in the US they will usually need to be refrigerated. But if you go buy eggs straight from a farm (or in many places outside the US) they'll be fine outside for weeks. When eggs are first laid they have a protective outer coating on them, called either the bloom or cuticle.

The external cleaning process mandated by the FDA results in the destruction of the bloom, which leaves the eggs vulnerable to all sorts of nasty stuff. Moving abroad one of the weirdest things was seeing eggs, on occasion a bit 'dirty', stacked at room temperature for days to weeks. Turns out it's perfectly safe!

It's one of the few foods that comes in its own super convenient packaging. Why wouldn't you take advantage of that?

Because it could be covered in salmonella and other things. Even just washing them might not be enough if you’re not careful to not cross contaminate. Washing them and keeping them cold works great.

As others have pointed out, just washing them is exactly the wrong thing to do. But if you don't wash them, you don't need to keep them cold. Not washing them works great too.

But they could be covered in poison. So we clean the poison off which has the side effect of requiring they be put in the fridge. They stay fresh longer too. I don't know why much of Europe is OK with having poisonous eggs. There are hundreds of Salmonella outbreaks in Europe because of eggs every year.

We just don't eat the egg shell. Poison on the outside doesn't matter much as long as it doesn't get in.

There are hundreds of salmonella outbreaks in Europe every year, but also in the US. Salmonella is mostly fought in the animals rather than in the eggs. But both the European and American way of handling eggs works.

It’s funny to me that elsewhere in this thread people are complaining about how Americans are less stringent with food safety, and yet here you are getting lambasted for defending an American food safety practice that objectively has a slight increase in safety, but at an arguably high cost.

Eggs stay fresher longer in the fridge. It's as simple as that. Whether you refrigerate them depends often on how long they are going to be hanging around.

yeah but they last way longer than necessary outside of the fridge anyway.

They'll last at least a month, some have even found eggs last in excess of 100 days, there have been rumours of a year but I've never seen it.

The problem with refridgerated eggs is that they don't tend to be as loose, this is fine for poached eggs but less fun for mayo or baking.

there's pretty good information here https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/wh...

from that page: shelf life of a room temp egg is 21 days; for a refrigerated one it's 50 days. Eggs are washed to control salmonella (eggs are also somewhat dirty when laid, having likely touched poop). US started washing eggs in 1970. Japan started in the 1990's after a salmonella outbreak. Scandinavia also washes. Countries that don't wash-and-refrigerate can require vaccinating chickens against salmonella. It is also commonly recommended to wash unwashed eggs before cracking them.

Why does the FDA mandate a process that destroys the bloom?

It has the potential to be contaminated with salmonella, and they felt mitigating that risk added enough value to counterbalance the loss of the bloom.

The major component missing here is why the US washes eggs, which is that they don't vaccinate against salmonella. The places you're observing that store eggs outside a fridge probably all have some kind of poultry vaccination program, for example, the red lion on UK eggs: https://www.egginfo.co.uk/british-lion-eggs

Here's the answer from the USDA themselves: https://tellus.ars.usda.gov/stories/articles/how-we-store-ou...

The USDA claims the only countries that wash/refrigerate their eggs are the US, Canada, Japan, and Scandiland. The whole argument against washing the eggs is to protect against bacteria, salmonella among them. The thing they focus on primarily for the reason we still wash/refrigerate them is freshness. They carried out a study and found washed/refrigerated eggs were fresher after 15 weeks than those stored using other methods.

I think the lack of refrigeration is mostly a convenience for supermarkets and transport, at least in the UK. I don't think I've ever encountered a household that didn't refrigerate their eggs after purchase, but they're almost always on regular shelves at sale.

Eggs are a major driver of salmonella incidence globally. Washing the eggs greatly reduces the incidence rate relative to not washing eggs. This can be seen clearly in the statistics when countries start washing eggs.

Statistically speaking, unwashed eggs are not "perfectly safe". It is the reason countries started washing eggs.

Which stats? Only 4 countries/regions wash/refrigerate their eggs (US, Canada, Japan, Scandinavia) and the reason the USDA gives for requiring such is freshness. [1]

[1] - https://tellus.ars.usda.gov/stories/articles/how-we-store-ou...

Don't expect a reply. He makes claims but rarely if ever backs them up.

The US washed its eggs to reduce rates of salmonella, it is literally in the article you linked to. That it was effective can be seen by incidence rates. The difference in salmonella rates between e.g. the US and many European countries is almost perfectly accounted for by the difference in handling eggs. With a little googling you can find plenty of papers on the subject.

The OECD and other sources rate the US, Canada, and Scandinavia has having the highest food quality and safety in the world. It goes beyond salmonella, they apply the same zealous cleanliness requirements to many other food products. This isn’t controversial, it is on the OECD website among many others.

Famously, many EU food products could not be imported into the US unless they were processed in Scandinavian food processing facilities, because other European countries had facilities that did not meet US standards. It was good business for countries like Denmark for a long time.

You failed to provide a single reference, continue making grand unsupported claims, and also are making imaginary claims about the article referenced above.

Mom tells me the same thing about mint and other herbs. If it doesn't have holes in it made by worms, then it's been doused by pesticides.

There is a lot of truth in that. If no other mammals are eating those bright red berries in the woods, you probably don’t want to either.

If mature rodents are unsure about a food source they’ll wait for some young go-getter to have a bite then watch to see what happens to them. I put poison packs everywhere in my apartment but after the first couple died none of the other mice would touch them.

There are a few exceptions to this rule however. For example saponins. One of the most common plant poisons in the natural world that might kill your dog. If you ever read an ethnobotany piece and it mentions that a certain plant is used to kill fish in a pond, it's likely a saponin-rich plant (which also means it's likely to be good to make soap out of). But since these compounds are so common humans have evolved specific enzymes to break this down and they leave us mostly unaffected (indeed some have even been turned into important drugs).

It's kinda like lignin. When wood first evolved, there was nothing that could break it down. And for thousands of years the world was "littered" with wood from dead trees until fungi finally learned how to break it down. I'd say plastics might be the next lignin as we see more and more organisms already learning to break it down, but there are too many different types of plastics that I doubt all of them could be broken down

I think the point I'm trying to make is that the "toxicity" of a chemical or compound is often in proportion to how much time the rest of the ecosystem has had to evolve a way to deal with it

I like this theory very much!

But there was also thread here on news.ycombinator about a paper which says that this theory is not entirely true.

I can't recall the paper. I think, paper said "the lignin breakdown by fungi" was already invented. The abundance of dead wood (which became coal) is described by existence of wast marshes.

I'm sorry without link is my text not valid very much. Maybe someone could find the paper and link it here.

> A widely accepted explanation for this peak in coal production is a temporal lag between the evolution of abundant lignin production in woody plants and the subsequent evolution of lignin-degrading Agaricomycetes fungi, resulting in a period when vast amounts of lignin-rich plant material accumulated. Here, we reject this evolutionary lag hypothesis, based on assessment of phylogenomic, geochemical, paleontological, and stratigraphic evidence.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517943113#:~:text=The...

Very interesting, thanks so much for the link!

It is a very cool long-term view of our current environmental degradation, whether or not it plays out.

I just love the idea of a Earth in the far future, where the huge pile of plastic rubbish left by humans is rotting like an old log.

We might have inadvertently created an enormous pile of fertilizer for a new world :-)

Wonder if it'll degrade to something oil like? :)

Right but our entire infrastructure has been built to resist that. Most likely it'll happen at a slow enough pace that we could adapt, but just imagine if soil fungi could suddenly eat PVC pipes

Most traditional architectural techniques didn't try to resist rot so much as plan around it. I.e. have the structural integrity so that you could take out and replace parts of the building without the whole thing coming down. It's why Japanese temples are the oldest standing buildings around today

I imagine we'll have to relearn some of those lessons at some point

I think a lot about this. How on a geological timescale, most of our rubbish will be compressed down to a layer of oil with a bunch of increasingly heavy metals and radioactive isotopes towards the bottom. It'll be a rich vein for building a civilization for whoever comes along in half a billion years. (My bet is on the octopus).

I must have had especially stupid rodent problems, because they sure weren't smart enough to avoid traps. Not even the rats.

Darwin agrees. I've watched live how this goes with a young family of rats. The first 2 got caught in the trap and the others were already pretty scared off by the closing mechanism kicking in. Left it like that for a couple of minutes, then I put the caught ones somewhere else then reinstalled the trap. The next 3 nor the mother came anywhere near the trap. Not even after moving it to a different location, nor with different types of food inside, nor with a different trap with a somewhat different shape.

On the odd occasion they’d get mice in the house, my parents living in Melbourne had difficulty would have difficulty getting rid of them.

Five years ago I moved out into a tiny rural town, and saw and heard mice very regularly (the house’s previous owner had only been around every couple of weeks). But I haven’t had the slightest difficulty in slaying them: I put a couple of traps in areas I’d seen mice traversing, and was catching them within hours, occasionally as much as a day or two, from hearing or seeing evidence of the mouse. (And if I saw one, I’d give it a verbal warning to flee for its life. Don’t know if any heeded it.) Within a few days I stopped even bothering with bait. In that first year, I lost count somewhere around fifty. Each year the number has dropped. This year, I’ve had only one since last autumn (it’s now mid-summer), slain before I even saw or heard it.

Anyway, we decided (lightheartedly) that it must be the difference between town mouse and country mouse.¹

¹ See Aesop’s fables, if you’re not familiar with the expression.

Similar idea about corn. Select the corn with insects - they are your taste testers. Of course, remove the critters before boiling your corn-on-the-cob.

I got the exact advice from my parents, too. If bugs eat that then it's mean it's safe to eat.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com