http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...50729155141.htm

Omnivore and scavenger are hardly incompatible. An animal would only have to include carrion in the diet to need protection, not survive primarily on it.

This kind of stuff fascinates me, like what we could/would really eat if not constrained by strong cultural programming, what our bodies are really designed to eat. From my understanding, humans were plant gatherers, small-game hunters, AND scavangers for quite a long time. Archeologists have found bones in human dwelling areas with both large-animal tooth marks and human stone butchering marks. Especially heads--apparently we were fond of dragging off the heads and cracking them open for brains.

At some point we developed enough to coordinate hunting, and began to take down larger animals such as wooly mammoth, with lots of fat on them. One hypothesis is that at that point we were able to get enough energy from those fats to start our massive brain development. With a larger carcass, I'm sure it sat around for a few days, so those acids would come in handy.

Now obviously my husband has lost the ability to scavenge meat, and would surely die without a refrigerator, because of his delicate stomach. Now I, on the other hand, would probably do okay. I wonder if this is due to my mothers sloppy housekeeping, treating the oven like a second fridge? I'm going off to look around the yard, and see what we have lying around for dinner.

When I entered Culinary Arts school in the early 90s, the first course was Safety and Sanitation. It was drilled into our heads the temperature at which we had to keep foods in order to avoid poisoning our customers. Here is a link to those standards: http://www.idph.state.il.us/about/f...foodservice.htm

My mother never took any such course and we never once got sick from her "mishandling of food." I'm certain that our natural bodies don't require digital thermometers to properly use and digest natural food. However, I'm truly frightened of the future of foodstuffs in the USA due to our not being informed of whether what we eat is genetically modified. If agribusiness has its way, "natural food" may cease to exist. How will we digest and use these frankenfoods?

For the past two weeks I've been gathering the eggs every night from the box nests scattered around the yard. The eggs I boiled and ate have none of the taste I dislike in store eggs. Most people will never know what a real, fresh egg tastes like, or how tough a chicken is which hasn't been pumped full of hormones to fatten it's breast.

We are already half way down the path to the Monsanto goal, whatever that is.

Highly fermentable foods that are often gross on first exposure might be acquired tastes--but it's sort of interesting that once the taste is acquired, the food is not only tolerated, but often relished.

The Inuit did eat some fermented meat. Maybe this changed the nutritional value in some way--but with a limited range of foods, maybe it was just one of the few ways they had of making their food more interesting?

We eat decayed food all the time. In fact, we fetishsize it:
cheese, 100-year old eggs, yogurt, salami, kombucha...

I keep any beef that I'm roasting or grilling out of the fridge during the day of consumption to get it to room temperature. Now, I don't think there's enough time to cause contamination when I do this for a period of 4-8 hours depending on whether it's a roast or steaks, but the sanitary protocols drilled into our heads cause me to keep this meat out of sight when we have company. I haven't poisoned anyone yet!

When we visited friends in Ireland a couple years ago, breakfast was always fresh eggs and bacon. They never refrigerated the eggs, and they sat out in a basket in the kitchen for a couple days before they were all consumed. Then, they'd get more fresh eggs.

I make sauerkraut in late summer, early fall that I leave out for four weeks to get optimum and healthy bacteria development. It goes through 4 stages before I start eating it. I'll then open a jar and serve from it for a couple days before I stick it in the fridge. It's always good, tastes great and I've never had any problems with it. I believe we've adapted away from these types of foodstuffs that our systems were perfectly capable of handling and were likely very healthy for us.

Now, as for the pervasiveness and frequent use of hand sanitizers I see everywhere nowadays, don't get me started!!!!

I don't doubt one bit that this was part of our evolution. Modern thought: the raw feeding of pet dogs. It terrifies a lot of pet owners. "What! You can't feed dogs raw meat!" I fed my dogs raw after I did my research and was satisfied that dogs' stomachs are more acidic than ours, and that's why we didn't have to worry about meat that, to us, would be 'contaminated.' Did it for years with no problems and only glowing health for the dogs.

As for our modern living, I can see both sides of this. On one hand, I do object to the over-sanitization that Procter and Gamble wants to sell us: buy more bleach! Buy more Lysol! Your kids put everything in their mouths, so decontaminate everything or else you're a bad parent! I have to confess that I'm a terribly lazy hand washer. After I go to the bathroom or if I know there's something yucky on them, and that's it. I could go to the grocery store, handle the grocery cart, doors, cash... and come home and eat something without washing my hands. I basically never get sick.

OTOH, like NiceKitty, I question my mom's kitchen cleanliness habits. She always kept the house tidy, but there was always a *nasty* dishrag for wiping things up. Perpetually stank. It seems like my brother and I were sick all the time with nausea and vomiting. We missed a ton of school. I don't know, maybe someone can chime in with what's the average number of times a year a typical child gets sick like that these days, but it seems excessive for me when I think back on it.

Maybe we were in that generation where grocery store meats were just starting to become chronically contaminated with E. coli and salmonella, and food safety was becoming an issue. I don't know. All I know is now, when I cook with raw meats, I decontaminate the kitchen like there was a nuclear meltdown. I have a slightly irrational fear of food poisoning because of my childhood. I'd rather have a root canal or be frozen in the Arctic than spend a few days like that.

http://cooking.stackexchange.com/qu...ill-safe-to-eat

Depends... Some bacteria require a lot to make you sick, some require very, very few. Botulism is so virulent that only about 10 bacteria will kill you.

Of course, if the meat isn't contaminated to start with, that helps. :-) I sure as heck wouldn't do that with ground meat. With steaks, you could salt them to lower the chance.

It helps to have a clean source and I do. I absolutely do not do this with ground meat. Good point with the salt, I usually salt the meat for flavor about an hour before cooking, but not the whole time I have it out. As for solid pieces of beef, I believe this is a safe practice that enables the meat to cook more evenly and thoroughly, as the core gets to the temperature you're looking for more quickly without decimating the outside of the meat.