Re: Raw meat

I love sushi and sashimi.  I eat raw oysters on the half shell and raw squid and octopus too.  (I live on Puget Sound where good sea food is in abundance.)  I eat raw beef steak and even raw ground beef if it is from a shop that I have some respect for.  Raw meats and sea foods are something I've enjoyed for decades.  I've never had worm one nor any kind of parasite come out of me (and there aren't any in me either).  I've also "lived" in Asia (read Korea, during the war), travelled in Asia on my own - and still never picked up a parasite that I'm aware of.  I love garlic, including raw garlic.  Parasites can't stand garlic, particularly raw garlic.  

The only meat I ever got sick on was stewed chicken about a year ago.  Stewed it thoroughly through one day, ate a couple of pieces in the form of left overs the next day, and came down with the worst case of diarrhea and fever I've had in a long time.  That happened about a year ago and I still have difficulty with chicken.  I always wash them and am extremely careful with them.  Saw a scientist on TV a few years ago that said that a little over 30% of all chickens sold at retail in the U. S. have e coli in them.  I am very careful in how I prepare and store them.  I'll stick to raw seafood and beef and I don't plan on quitting the raw meat any time soon.

Don't get me wrong, I am a clean person and keep my place very clean.  However, Americans are obsessed with "germs" and bacteria.  They way over do it with cleaners and all sorts of deadly sprays.  After living in a Third World country and watching people come in contact with fecal material on a daily basis (they use their bare hands to spread it on their crops and then push it into the ground with their bare feet), and have "in houses" with untreated sewage (not out houses), and stop to pee wherever they happen to be, city street, etc. (males and females, the kids have slits in their clothes from the navel to the back of their butt and when they have to go - anywhere, they squat), I get amused when I see the TV ads for Lysol and all that garbage.

Here's just one article regarding the theory that the allergy epidemic that we currently have is due to a lack of parasites and good old dirt.  Though the article is a couple of years old and from Australia, I've seen the same thing from an American physician in the last couple of days.

Magazine feature

Worms of endearment

There's an allergy epidemic sweeping the Western world. Could eating worms save us?

rest of the story at: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/695