The Items on the 'Food Disgust Test' That Are Actually Unsafe to Eat - Lifehacker

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The Food Disgust Test is the latest silly way to waste time online, and like any good test, it reveals things about ourselves we may never have thought to question. Is it gross to be served a fish with its head on? Do you eat bananas with black spots on the peel?

The test, based on the Food Disgust Scale developed by scientists Christina Hartmann and Michael Siegrist, divides your disgust into eight distinct scales. For example, you might be more grossed out by seeing that fish head than by eating jam where the mold was scraped off—or vice versa.

But after you take the test, you may be wondering: How many of these things are actually bad for us? The mold items in particular have sparked a lot of discussion: If I’m not grossed out by the mold-adjacent jam, should I be?

Let’s see how some of the most controversial items on the test compare to food safety recommendations.

Mold on jam

The quiz contains this statement, which you have to decide whether you agree with: “I will not eat marmalade from which mold has been removed from the surface.”

This one is confusing because the advice has changed over the years. It used to be thought that the molds that grow on the surface of jams and jellies are not harmful and haven’t spread throughout the jam. Scoop them out and you’re good. Healthy Canning has collected answers to this question from a variety of sources around the world, and found that UK celebrity chefs, for example, tend to say it’s fine to eat the jam as long as you’ve removed the mold with a healthy margin around it.

But more recent research has found that mycotoxins (toxins produced by mold) are sometimes found in jams and jellies that have mold on the surface.

It is common to scrape the mold off jams and jellies and eat the rest, but it’s not without risk. So, yes, people have scraped the mold off, eaten the jam, and been fine. But the current recommendation from the USDA and others is to throw out the whole jar if you find mold on the surface.

Mold on tomato sauce

What about tomato sauce? This wasn’t included in the quiz, but it’s another jarred product where mold commonly grows on the surface or on the upper parts of the jar while the sauce still tastes fine.

Unfortunately, this one is clearer: Moldy tomato sauce has a body count. Healthy Canning quotes Putting Food By on a case where two people died from botulism poisoning after eating tomato sauce that had Botulinum toxins in it. Botulinum is a bacteria, not a mold, but the problem is that the mold altered the chemistry of the tomato sauce.

Tomato sauce, like jams and jellies, keeps so well after canning because it is too acidic for Botulinum and other bacteria to grow. But once mold gets a foothold, the mold can raise the pH of the sauce, making it less acidic. (This is a potential danger with moldy jam as well.) So chuck that moldy tomato sauce, too.

Mold on bread

“It is sickening to eat bread from which mold has been cut away,” the quiz prompts. Agree or disagree?

The quiz wants to find out how disgusted you are by the idea. The USDA, on the other hand, simply says: “Discard.”

There are many different species of molds that grow on bread, although they tend not to be deadly. Some can cause allergies or respiratory issues if you sniff the spores, though. In rare cases, they have made people sick. And they tend to make the bread taste gross.

By the time you see soft fuzzy spots on the surface of the bread, you can be pretty sure that the nearly invisible, thread-like mycelia (the “roots,” in a sense) have been growing throughout the bread for a while. If you cut off a large chunk—say, half the loaf—you may have gotten rid of the mold on that part of the bread. But there’s a good chance you have more mold spots forming on what looks like the still-fresh part of the bread.

Again, this is a case where people have cut off the visible part of the mold and lived to tell the tale, but if you don’t want to consume mold, you really should chuck the loaf.

Mold on cheese

“I find it gross to eat hard cheese from which mold has been cut off.” How do you feel about that one? If you disagree, congratulations—you can eat hard cheeses once you cut off the mold.

The USDA recommends cutting away a full inch of cheese around the moldy spot, and making sure your knife doesn’t cut through the mold in the process. (It could then contaminate other foods.)

Soft cheeses don’t get off so easy, though. If you’re eating a cheese that was prepared with mold—like brie, with its soft Penicillium rind—that mold is fine. So if you find some old brie in your fridge, and the mold has grown over the cut edges of the cheese, don’t worry about it. But if you find mold on your soft cheese that was not the kind used to make the cheese, it’s time to say goodbye. The USDA doesn’t give guidance on how to tell the difference, but if it’s not obviously the same as the rest of the mold, you should consider it an interloper.

When you can eat mold

Before we move on to non-mold gross food questions, I’d like to bring you some more good news from the USDA: it is totally fine to eat moldy hard salami; just scrub the mold off.

You can also eat the non-moldy parts of hard fruits and vegetables like cabbage and bell peppers. You should not eat soft fruits and vegetables after they go moldy, like peaches and tomatoes.

Blood in steak

The quiz asks us whether we agree or disagree with the statement, “I do not like to eat steak that is still bloody inside.”

Technically, it’s not blood; you’re seeing the myoglobin (a protein in muscle) leaking out of the meat. In any case, myoglobin appears red at rare and medium-rare temperatures, but turns into tan or gray colored compounds at higher temperatures.

So if “bloody” steak grosses you out, you probably won’t be eating anything cooked less than medium. That means your steaks will be cooked to 140-145 degrees or more, neatly matching the USDA’s advice to cook steaks to an internal temperature of 145 and then allow them to rest for three minutes.

While rare steaks are riskier than medium-well, they’re safe-ish to eat because they’re a solid piece of meat. Harmful bacteria are likely to stay on or near the surface, and the searing should take care of those germs even if the internal temperature is still lower than recommended. Again: not zero risk, but low enough that many people choose to risk it.

Ground beef is another story, though. Germs from the surface can end up getting mixed throughout the batch, so the inside of your hamburger isn’t inherently any safer than the outside. The USDA recommends cooking burgers to 160 degrees.

Worms in apples

“I would not eat part of an apple that had a worm in another part of it,” the quiz prompts. I’ve made applesauce from homegrown apples, and if I had to discard every apple that a worm had touched, there would have been no applesauce.

Fortunately, wormy apples are safe to eat. Unlike the issues with mold, you can see the worms. And their trails, and their frass (the dry brown stuff that, I regret to inform you, is worm poop). In fact, you could probably eat the worms themselves if you really wanted; they’re not known to be poisonous.

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The Items on the 'Food Disgust Test' That Are Actually Unsafe to Eat - Lifehacker
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Let's Eat: Bojan's Cafe is new addition to north downtown culinary scene - Tbnewswatch.com

Three skilled entrepreneurs have galvanized their resources, partnering to create Bojan’s Cafe.

Bojan Todorov is the building owner from Southern Ontario. Maria Harrison has extensive management experience, planning the design and operations of the cafe. Mitchell Argue is the owner of Sleeping Giant BNB, and Urban North Property Services.

Argue says the cafe is a result of encouragement from locals and businesses in the area.

“The opportunity arose with our business partner, Bojan, who had the space available to start a new business in a prime location.” Argue said, who operates boutique hotels and vacation rentals in the area.

“We really want to promote our fresh breakfast and lunch meals at a reasonable price. The highlight of the cafe is the large space and unique design which allows customers to comfortably connect with friends over coffee and food.”

So far their most popular offerings have been their fresh made sandwich specials, and breakfast tortillas. Local bakeries supply their pastries, the Cinnamon Swirls from 5-Star Bakery and cookies from Marvellous Makings have been favourites.

Several gluten-friendly and vegan alternatives, such as chia seed pudding, cheesecake and gluten-friendly tortillas are available too.

Bojans Cafe offers a bright, luminous location for socializing over lunch or getting some online work done. In the future they plan to use the large space to also include local vendor displays and host local events. 

The revitalization of the Cumberland St historic buildings is a welcome sight. Bojan’s Cafe is a dynamic addition to the downtown of Port Arthur. 

Visit them at 30 Cumberland Street S., where they are open Monday to Friday from 9 a.m to 4 p.m., and Saturday & Sunday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

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Nutritionist pinpoints the worst foods you can eat if you want to lose weight - The Mirror

Frozen, tinned or fresh? What is the healthiest way of eating fruit - Daily Mail

Local business makes eating healthy easy - Timmins News - TimminsToday

For several years, a local business has made it easy for residents to serve up healthy meals. The trick is they do the shopping and prep work.

 Lonnie Bouvier is the owner of Little Northern Meals, based in South Porcupine. She emails customers menus weekly and they can order prepped meals. 

She thought of starting the business after her family moved North. 

“I’m originally from the London area. My husband and I moved here four years ago,” Bouvier said. “He has background in Cochrane. He got an opportunity for a job here, so we relocated. “I’ve been in hospitality and the food industry for 20-plus years. Working in restaurants, I did wedding and event planning. Before we moved here, I did catering and was working for another company, Urban Jars, that did the same kind of idea of prepared meals. 

“When I moved here, I thought it was a great idea to start something different.” 

Little Northern Meals makes it easy to eat healthy. 

“We do prepared meals pre-ordered,” she said. “I send a menu out on Sunday and they have until Monday to order. I make the meals fresh and send them out on Thursday and Friday. “Some examples are stir-fry mixes, ready to fry up. Soups that are ready to heat up. Smoothie bowls. Easy to grab, prepared meals.” 

She is pleased with the reaction from the greater Timmins area.

“There’s been a great response,” Bouvier said. “I kind of thought that nobody would notice or I would just get a couple of people, but there has been a really great response. People really enjoy the salads. I think it’s nice to have something fresh to grab from your fridge. People feel a little bit better eating a salad once in a while. It’s so easy.” 

Meals offered include items for breakfast, lunch and dinner. There are even healthy snacks available. 

“On the menu, we offer overnight oats,” she said. “Everything’s all mixed up and ready to go. It’s the easiest, because you just grab it out of the fridge and eat it, or warm it up first. 

“We do lunch bowls, so it’s like salads and we offer 11 different kinds every week. We also have smoothie bowls, and I change up the flavours every month. I have four flavours of smoothies so you just put them in the fridge to thaw them. 

“I do stir fry mixes. You can pick your own grain and pick your own sauce. It’s all the veggies ready to stir fry. Right now, I’m offering soup, but not for too much longer. Also, energy bites, a quick protein snack I do up.” 

Whether customers want to have a couple of snacks or salads on hand or plan a whole week of eating, it’s up to them.

“I have some customers who just buy a couple salads every week,” she said. “Some buy several salads if there are lots of people in the household who enjoy it.” 

Little Northern Meals is developing relationships with local farms, making the farm-to-table experience easier.

“I do get microgreens from Sandhill Lane Farm,” Bouvier said. “He connected with me just before the holidays. Two of my salads that are on the menu every week has his microgreens in them. He harvests them on Tuesday nights, delivers them on Wednesday and I can put them in the salads on Thursday. So, it’s super fresh, which is really nice.” 

She also plans to get some produce from Rubber Boot Farm when in season. 

“What’s fun with them is I take all my vegetable trimmings and deliver them on Friday mornings and he feeds them to the chickens and pigs,” she said. “It’s kind of a fun way to get rid of my waste without going to the dump.” 

RELATED: Local farm grows from rehab project into family business

For some holidays, the business offers special meals. 

“I’ve done some special menus, like on Valentine’s Day,” she said. “I’ve had someone reach out for a special menu for their parents’ anniversary, so I did a special basket for brunch foods. I have another one coming up where they asked for some special things for a meeting. 

“So maybe the world is changing again and after COVID there will be more catering opportunities. I really love the prep like this, but I really love the opportunity for catering.”

All the meals are plant-based. But customers can also opt to build on the provided meals. For example, add some chicken to make it a chicken stir fry. 

“Everything is plant-based, I don’t work with animal products,” she explained. “I’m not against it. Some people buy it and add their own protein. Not everybody in my own household is plant-based. I have some regular customers who are plant-based, but lots of them aren’t. 

“When I make, for example, the (taco) soup for my own household, my husband will add cheese to it. They are ready-to-go meals.” 

She enjoys every part of the business. 

“I like cooking. I love to cook and feed people,” Bouvier said. “It makes me really happy to prep all this food and deliver it. I enjoy the whole process.” 

Contact Little Northern Meals via email at [email protected] or follow them on Facebook.

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Why You Should Eat More Live Microorganisms - SciTechDaily

Foods with live microorganisms include yogurt and other fermented foods, as well as raw fruits and vegetables. The study found that increased consumption of these foods was linked to better health markers such as lower blood pressure, better blood glucose and insulin levels, lower inflammation, and lower waist circumference and body mass index.

A recent study reveals that individuals who consume higher amounts of live microorganisms on a daily basis tend to have lower weight and improved overall health.

Live microorganisms that are safe to consume can be found in many of the foods we eat daily, including fermented foods like yogurt and raw fruits and vegetables. Despite the common perception that these blends of live bacteria promote good health, there has been a shortage of concrete evidence supporting the link between live dietary microorganisms and improved health.

A recent study has presented some of the first real-world evidence that consuming more live microorganisms can have a positive impact on health. Researchers from the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) led the study and used the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to categorize over 9,000 foods into three groups based on the concentration of live microbes they contain. By analyzing the reported food intake of NHANES participants, the scientists were able to quantify the amount of food consumed that had moderate to high levels of live microbes.

Then they determined how these intakes correlated with various markers of health such as blood pressure and weight.

The scientists found that increased consumption of live microbes in the diet was linked with multiple measurements of better health: more favorable blood pressure, better blood glucose, and insulin, lower inflammation, as well as lower waist circumference and body mass index. This established that those who consumed higher quantities of live dietary microbes showed tangible, if modest, health benefits.

While the scientific approach did not allow researchers to conclude that the live dietary microorganisms directly caused the health benefits, the results are consistent with plausible arguments that dietary exposure to live microorganisms, in general, could benefit health by increasing the diversity of microbes in the gut or by supporting immune function. In the past century, a reduction in the amount of fermented foods in the diet and increased consumption of processed foods have led to a dramatic reduction in the number of microbes most people consume on a daily basis.

This trend may be reversing, however, since the dietary data used in the study showed that US adults have gradually increased their live microbe consumption over the 18-year study period. This may bode well for the health of the population.

This study was built on two previously published papers, here and here, which conducted the preliminary work necessary to make this assessment of live dietary microbes and health.

”Although the dose-response associations we found were relatively modest, it was notable that these estimated benefits applied to several plausible and important health outcomes and were robust to adjustment for available confounders, including body mass index,” says co-lead author Prof. Dan Tancredi, Ph.D., of the University of California – Davis. “More research that extends these findings to other populations and research that uses study designs that permit stronger causal claims is needed, especially given the potential benefits that might be available by simply substituting into the diet more foods that have safe live microbes.”

ISAPP Executive Science Officer Mary Ellen Sanders, Ph.D., points out the research focused not just on probiotics, but on all microbes in foods, including environmental microbes associated with raw fruits and vegetables as well as lactic acid bacteria associated with fermented foods. Thus, the study differs from probiotic research, which focuses on microbes defined to the strain level, specific dose, and proven health benefits.

Co-first author Prof. Colin Hill, Ph.D., of University College Cork, Ireland, says it’s possible that dietary advice of the future could include a recommendation for the daily consumption of high levels of live dietary microbes.

“Those foods with high levels of microbes (fermented foods, raw vegetables, and fruits) are all nutritionally valuable parts of a healthy and diverse diet,” he says. “Secondly, these same foods could be providing an additional, hitherto unrecognized, health benefit due to live microbes themselves that enter the gut and interact with the host microbiome, immune system, and even the enteric nervous system”.

Reference: “Positive Health Outcomes Associated with Live Microbe Intake from Foods, Including Fermented Foods, Assessed using the NHANES Database” by Colin Hill, Daniel J. Tancredi, Christopher J. Cifelli, Joanne L. Slavin, Jaime Gahche, Maria L. Marco, Robert Hutkins, Victor L. Fulgoni, Daniel Merenstein and Mary Ellen Sanders, 22 February 2023, The Journal of Nutrition.
DOI: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2023.02.019

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Is there anything safe left to eat? - The Spectator

The chapter headings alone are enough to induce a panic attack: ‘Disrepair – how modern diets harm brain health in childhood, adolescence and young adulthood’; ‘How ultra-processed food hacks our brains’; ‘How solving the last crisis in the food system caused the current one’. It’s not a new thing for books examining our food system to be doom-laden, but there has been something of an avalanche of them recently. Within the space of a couple of months we have had four, which may discuss different aspects of how our food is produced, but when it comes to the effects are as one: this is a manmade problem, and without serious intervention the future is bleak for humanity and the Earth.

It can all induce apathy, even nihilism – and it’s hard not to feel berated. I don’t need to be told yet again to eat less meat, sugar and fat and to think more about air miles, carbon footprints, farmers and animal welfare. The sheer number of such books being published feels like something between moral panic and virtue-signalling. So it’s a relief to discover that the latest tranche goes some way to absolving our individual guilt.

Ravenous is a direct result of Henry Dimbleby’s role as the author of The National Food Strategy – which was promptly ignored by the government:

The so-called ‘Government Food Strategy’ that was unveiled in June 2022, in response to my review, is not a strategy at all. It is merely a handful of disparate policy ideas, many of them chosen because they are unlikely to raise much of a media storm.

The book begins bombastically, full of emotive language: ‘You may not want to hear this,’ Dimbleby tells us, but ‘you are certainly not free… All living creatures on this planet, from the plankton in the oceans to the rulers of nations, are prisoners of the food system.’ I soon realised that this wasn’t patronising purple prose but anger and frustration. Dimbleby is absolutely spitting feathers at the government’s failure to confront the realities of our food system.

He’s not alone in his righteous fury, or his conclusions. Kimberley Wilson’s Unprocessed looks at the effect of nutrition on the brain during pregnancy and even before conception; on the child’s developing brain and education; on the criminal justice system; on the cycle of poverty; on depression and anxiety; on the ageing brain, and how we could prevent, or slow, dementia. It reaches one overarching conclusion: this is a policy problem, not a people problem. But she goes further than that. The government is already in possession of the information that shows how urgent the action needed is, but refuses to implement it:

How dare they? How dare they allow private food industry lobbyists to dictate public health policy? How dare they renege on policy promises that would improve children’s health because it doesn’t suit their personal political ideology?

In Ultra-Processed People, Chris van Tulleken, who trained in molecular virology and practises as an infectious diseases doctor, takes us on a deep dive into ultra-processed food. Essentially the term refers to produce which has been created through a series of industrial processes, using ingredients that you wouldn’t ordinarily find in a domestic kitchen. ‘Stabilisers, emulsifiers, hums, lecithin, glucose, a number of different oils… these are the hallmarks of UPFs,’ he explains. Pretty much all modern shelf stability relies on them, so we’re not just talking of junk food.

The central argument of the book is that these foods are damaging our bodies and brains, and our inability to stop eating them is not our fault: they are explicitly designed to override our biological satiety cues. Van Tulleken is adamant that this goes beyond willpower or education, and that any solution has to be top-down.

It should be a relief to learn that not only are we not to blame for this problem, but that there is even some agreement about where our answers should come from. But despite their individual merits, these books, taken together, make for depressing and occasionally confusing reading.

The problem is an obvious one: there are so many different, profound difficulties about the way we grow and eat food that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and once we drill down, consensus is hard to find. As Dimbleby puts it:

Right now we are trying to fight two fires at once: diet-related disease and environmental destruction. It is always tempting to hope that there might be one solution for both. The reality is disappointingly complicated… Alternative proteins probably won’t do much for our dietary health.

What he means is that plant-based alternatives will reduce our meat consumption, which is good for the environment, but by their very nature these are ultra-processed foods which are bad for our bodies. He concludes: ‘But the environmental benefits of making this switch are so important that, in my view, the trade-off is worthwhile.’ I suspect van Tulleken might disagree.

Our inability to stop eating processed foods is not our fault. They are explicitly designed to override satiety cues

In Unprocessed, Wilson refers briefly to Kevin Hall’s research into UPF and the study in which he matched calorie, fat and fibre intake across a wholefood diet with a UPF one, and found that those on the UPF diet consumed an average of 500 more calories per day while producing more of the hunger hormone. She finds the results useful, but warns that it was ‘an admittedly short, in-patient study (so we must be cautious about interpreting it)’. For van Tulleken, Hall’s study is the starting point for his entire thesis. It was for him so ‘robust’ that ‘the impact of the experiment can’t be overestimated’.

What is the reader to make of all this? Such conflicts are the subject of Avocado Anxiety. Louise Gray was motivated to write her book by the bewilderment she felt when she started feeding her young daughter solids and realised she didn’t truly know where the food on supermarket shelves came from. She approaches the matter not as a campaigner or a medical professional but as a journalist and consumer. She has no skin in the game, and consequently is able to explore the nuances and complexities in a deeply relatable way.

Her book is a gentler wander through the inconsistencies and the competing considerations of our decision-making about how we consume food. Each chapter focuses on a different fruit or vegetable (including beans, bananas, potatoes and, of course, avocados), and how our choices in buying them affect supply chains, workers’ rights, pesticides, genetic modification and climate change; so it’s not surprising that it feels impossible to find a morally neutral option, or even just a straightforward answer. But in her final chapter she addresses the effect of this information overload, and the all-encompassing anxiety that any vaguely switched-on person now has about food: ‘Are all these investigations and revelations making us eat a better diet, or are they just making us all terribly, terribly anxious?’

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Anxiety is certainly my experience. Reading Wilson on the lifelong effects of maternal nutrition on children, I had a full-blown existential crisis, convinced that I had stunted my son forever thanks to the many Babybels I’d consumed when pregnant – though of course van Tulleken might respond that we are all predisposed to angst, thanks to the high levels of UPF in our diet.

Grey’s answer is that this isn’t a counsel of perfection: ‘You can think about where avocados come from; you can educate yourself and make decisions… but don’t make yourself ill worrying about it.’ This is a compassionate point of view, but one that is at odds with the other authors calling for action now.

Are these rallying cries, or just shouts in the wind? If Dimbleby’s government-commissioned strategy was effectively ignored, will a book on a table in Waterstones make any difference? He must think so: ‘The food system can change, at speed – but only under intense pressure, and with sufficient collective will.’ Of course this puts the responsibility back on the individual to push the creation of policy. Lucky us.

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Is there anything safe left to eat? - The Spectator
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