Steak Made from Human Excrement: Is It Safe?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the concept of creating food from human excrement, specifically focusing on a method developed by Japanese researchers to extract proteins from sewage. Participants explore the implications, safety, and societal perceptions of such food production methods.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants describe the process of extracting proteins from sewage and combining them with other food elements to create a meat-like product.
  • There are humorous reactions to the idea of "poop steak," with some participants making light of the concept by referencing popular culture (e.g., "Soylent red").
  • Concerns are raised about the safety and acceptability of consuming food derived from human waste, with some participants expressing disgust.
  • Some participants question the practicality and economic viability of producing food from sewage compared to traditional food sources.
  • There are discussions about societal attitudes towards consuming unconventional meats, such as horse meat, and how they compare to the idea of eating food made from human waste.
  • Participants engage in tangential discussions about other food sources, such as shark meat and the processing of fish for fast food, which leads to a broader conversation about food safety and consumption practices.
  • Some participants reflect on the nature of waste products from bacteria and how they are perceived in food production, questioning the terminology used to describe these processes.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a mix of humor, disgust, and curiosity regarding the concept of food made from human excrement. There is no consensus on the safety or acceptability of such food, and multiple competing views remain regarding societal perceptions of unconventional food sources.

Contextual Notes

Participants express uncertainty about the implications of processing human waste into food, including questions about safety, economic feasibility, and societal acceptance. The discussion also touches on the broader context of food production and consumption practices.

  • #31
Mmmm yeast farts are tasty
 
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  • #32
Well, they make bread what it is. But googling I find that yeast aren't bacteria; more like fungi. Perhaps bacteria do "poop" in the conventional sense. I'm not sure.
 
  • #33
zoobyshoe said:
Well, they make bread what it is. But googling I find that yeast aren't bacteria; more like fungi. Perhaps bacteria do "poop" in the conventional sense. I'm not sure.

Yeah, yeast cells are eukaryotes like our cells are, and it's definitely waste from their metabolism (just like our cells have) but I would say our digestion is more of an emergent property of this micro-digestion than the micro-digestion itself. And waste glands (in our armpits for instance) would also be part of the same emergent waste system. Our lymph nodes and kidneys absorb a lot of waste. So it's a more general case, I think in which micro-digestion is related to macro-digestion.

Some say the difference between eukaryotes and prokaryotes ('bacteria') is that eukaryotes are the result of bacteria eating other bacteria (or archaea), but then making them into an 'organelle' rather than digesting them. (see the endosimbiotic theory of mitochondria, for instance). I don't think there's a macro-organism analogue to that.
 
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  • #34
I just can't believe that I made it to the THIRD page!

Thread dismissed. Unless you people offer a serious BBQ penguin steaks [and by serious I mean find me some active fresh [STRIKE]Pengwuino[/STRIKE] penguin to eat]. :biggrin:
 
  • #35
zoobyshoe said:
Hmmm. That guy gets a lot of information about the world from "reading between the lines" of episodes of the Simpsons, don't you think?

I have always thought of the byproducts of bacteria as that: byproducts. To start calling any of them "poop" is to put an unnecessarily unpleasant spin on them. The alcohol industry might have to be exposed as selling "bacteria pee", and the bread industry might have to confess that bread contains a large amount of "yeast farts".

And I always thought people were talking metaphorically when discussing American beer. It is piss.

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/American_Beer" , often confused with either Bat's urine or water, is a low-alcohol beverage actually enjoyed by many Americans and Canadian children. Canadians will often speak of the low alcohol content of American Beer, because it does not cause fun side-effects such as blindness and gonourrhea like Canadian Beer. There is also a disputed difference between the methods of detecting alcohol in each country. When faced with this fact, Canadians will either run away or turn into a purple moose.

Many American beers are not in fact beer at all, but rather beeroids.

I refuse to click on Evo's link, but if someone has an electron microscope image of a bacteria pooping a steak, that would be interesting to see.
 
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  • #36
OmCheeto said:
And I always thought people were talking metaphorically when discussing American beer. It is piss.
Yes, but not bacteria piss, as I thought, but eukaryote piss. That's neither here nor there unless you get upset about aspartame being E. Coli "poop". The whole thing reminds me of the fact that shellac is some sort of insect droppings dissolved in alcohol. Which reminds me of the Peter Sellars line, "It's all part of life's rich pageant."
 
  • #37
Hmm. If you're a vegetarian, is this like secondhand smoke? I mean what if the poop going into the process started out as tofu or chicken?
 
  • #38
This is part of the great ecological cycle. Excrement and carcass gives birth to new life. The rich biochemistry and energy contents left over is continually being reused. Manure enriches plants and crops. Bugs dine on the decay products. Plants and bugs then power higher order animals, rodents or birds for example, which are then eaten by even higher order predators and so on, until eventually some it winds up on the dinner table.
 
  • #39
zoobyshoe said:
Yes, but not bacteria piss, as I thought, but eukaryote piss. That's neither here nor there unless you get upset about aspartame being E. Coli "poop". The whole thing reminds me of the fact that shellac is some sort of insect droppings dissolved in alcohol. Which reminds me of the Peter Sellars line, "It's all part of life's rich pageant."

Well, I could never tolerate the taste of aspartame. It always tasted like poison to me.

And your knowledge of shellac seems to indicate to me that you've spent way too many hours on science forums. (as have I)

But the fact that you can quote Sellers...

Wait. Who is this Sellars dude?

Peter Sellars said:
The only thing that I will do that will annoy some people is I am taking poetic license a little bit with time and space onstage,

And the other great thing that we're allowed to do — and you're not — is use metaphor.

hmm...

Never mind. I'm about to stray way off poop topic.

ps. Being There. One of my 10 best movies in the universe. I'm slow.
 
  • #40
Pythagorean said:
naw, they don't use tuna in mcdonalds fillet-o-fish. Pollock is generally the most common commercial fish resource for prepared foods (frozen fish n chips or imitation crab, for instance). McDonald's supplements with another popular commercial fish: hoki.

http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/itemDetailInfo.do?itemID=5926

I've never seen hoki before, but I've fished pollock on a longlining boat. Soft-bellied fish, gets softer fast post-mortem. Cheap (I owed the skipper after that season) and slimy little bastards.

Never longlined again after that trip. Seining for salmon and hering is much more gratifying. Plus, I don't like playing with hundreds of hooks every night that far from town; call me risk adverse.

I said shark, not tuna.

I did some googling and found that it has been rumored as such on the net for a long time. Truthfully, I heard it long before the internet came about. We used to go deep-sea fishing for tuna. Sharks run with tuna so they are often caught as a consequence. Back then, as far as I know, shark meat didn't have a lot of value, and it is a perfectly good meat, so I never really thought twice about it - most people sold their catch when they got back to the docks and I don't remember shark meat being valuable. It was pretty easy to believe that McDonalds would use it. Recall also that McDonalds started in S. California [where I was fishing]. Today it seems that shark meat is pretty valuable so it wouldn't make sense. In any case, I wouldn't be surprised if this was once true but is no longer. But, as you indicated, it is certainly no longer the case... if it ever was.
 
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  • #41
OmCheeto said:
Well, I could never tolerate the taste of aspartame. It always tasted like poison to me.
I partake daily, myself. But now I know: E. Coli poop. I am so happy to be an informed consumer!

And your knowledge of shellac seems to indicate to me that you've spent way too many hours on science forums. (as have I)

Actually, I got that info from a book on guitar making, of all places.

But the fact that you can quote Sellers...

Wait. Who is this Sellars dude?
I was a theater major in college. You make a mental note about how a name should be spelled and it tends to cling where it doesn't belong.

I also liked Being There. I think that line came from The Magic Christian, though.
 
  • #42
Ivan Seeking said:
I said shark, not tuna.

You said:

Ivan Seeking said:
From what I understand, you get a lot of shark meat in a McDonald's fish fillet sandwich.

They snag tons of sharks when fishing for tuna.

The implication is that "they", i.e. McDonald's, are primarily fishing for tuna, (but they don't mind it if shark get caught as well, and they'll use those too).
 
  • #43
zoobyshoe said:
Hmmm. That guy gets a lot of information about the world from "reading between the lines" of episodes of the Simpsons, don't you think?

I have always thought of the byproducts of bacteria as that: byproducts. To start calling any of them "poop" is to put an unnecessarily unpleasant spin on them. The alcohol industry might have to be exposed as selling "bacteria pee", and the bread industry might have to confess that bread contains a large amount of "yeast farts".

I see what you are getting at. As for unpleasant spin, it is what it is. If people freak out, then they probably need to be told how bread and beer are made and that they have been eating that probably their whole life.

I'm not worried per se about the fact that bacteria defecate to create it, personally I'm more concerned about why aspartame was rejected for more than 10 years based on safety grounds and now is legal while being linked to multiple serious health disorders including cancer and neuro-degenerative diseases.
 
  • #44
i wouldn't trust them to neutralize every chemical and drug that finds its way into sewage. if you want to re-use human waste, then I'm OK with maybe autoclaving it before spraying it into a tomato field. but i'd rather get my protein from cows, chickens, etc.
 
  • #45
About the original post: I'm not against the idea if the (ok let's call it horrible) mixture is "safe" for humans. Now if you ask me to try it, I'd never do it. Just like eating spiders or other visible arachnids.
Now if you let children eat that red mixture, after 1 generation you might have successfully implanted into the culture that eating something out of the sewers is normal. If I was born into such a culture I've no doubt I'd enjoy this special meal. But I wasn't :/
 
  • #46
I hope you don't like lobster. They're 8-legged arachnids.
 
  • #47
Antiphon said:
I hope you don't like lobster. They're 8-legged arachnids.

As far as I know they are not arachnids. It's been MORE than 10 years I haven't ate one of these. But I loved them.
I don't want to be too off-topic but since you mentioned lobsters...in the same family I think, there are the woodlouses. I once put 2 of these into a small box and a few hours after I opened to box and there was 11 excrements. I was so disgusted I threw all in the trash (I was then around 10 years old).
 
  • #48
fluidistic said:
As far as I know they are not arachnids. It's been MORE than 10 years I haven't ate one of these. But I loved them.
I don't want to be too off-topic but since you mentioned lobsters...in the same family I think, there are the woodlouses. I once put 2 of these into a small box and a few hours after I opened to box and there was 11 excrements. I was so disgusted I threw all in the trash (I was then around 10 years old).

Woodlouse? google google google.

Ah ha!

Potato Bugs!

74. What do you call the little gray creature (that looks like an insect but is actually a crustacean) that rolls up into a ball when you touch it?
a. pill bug (15.91%)
b. doodle bug (3.61%)
c. potato bug (12.95%)
d. roly poly (33.07%)
e. sow bug (4.13%)
f. basketball bug (0.08%)
g. twiddle bug (0.04%)
h. roll-up bug (0.21%)
i. wood louse (0.47%)
j. millipede (0.88%)
k. centipede (2.31%)
l. I know what this creature is, but have no word for it (9.44%)
m. I have no idea what this creature is (13.21%)
n. other (3.68%)
(10673 respondents)

My sister used to eat them when she was about 2 years old. But I don't think she'll eat a poop steak.
 
  • #49
The proper name for those is "Army Tank Bugs".
 
  • #50
I have to admit I'd have to be starving to death to even consider eating that. Even Bear Grylls would think twice on that one.

This is far from useless, though (at least potentially). What if you're on a space flight to Mars? Technology like that could be very, very useful in circumstances where you don't want to waste anything.

Still gross though. Shame we don't have a puke emoticon or I'd use it here.
 
  • #51
God, I'm hungry!