Exotic Woods as cutting boards?


tim0625

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You're right Vinny.  With our first, you think everything will kill him.  By the time we got to the 4th child, we realized nothing could kill them.

I think we were tougher because we weren't coddled as much and because our foods were more simple.  We rode bikes without helmets and we WRECKED.......OFTEN!! We're still here to tell it.  We drank from the water hose and swam in irrigation ponds and in Black River.  We learned to change the brakes on our piece of junk car that because no one could afford a mechanic! You hunted and killed game and caught fish and dressed it and ate it all - deer, doves, squirrels, and rabbits.  Things were more down to earth...more natural. People who had a farm or access to live chickens ate one off of the yard-natural. We had a garden and grew and canned all sorts of things-natural. We caught fresh fish and had a  fish fry or made a stew-natural.  I do think we are dealing with more food allergies as a society because we buy most of our food now and it has a lot of chemical things in it. Some people are just more sensitive and personally, I think a lot of the cancers out there are due to to the chemicals in foods. As far as cutting boards, I think we're ok as long as we don't EAT the Purpleheart.

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There's actually a thing called the "hygiene hypothesis", which says that our immune systems evolved to deal with playing in crap, eating dirty food, and living with a a dozen or so parasites in our bodies.  Now that we live in safe, antiseptic environments we see a lot more auto-immune diseases like psoriasis, crohnes, asthma, allergies, etc.  Basically, our immune systems don't know what to do and freak out.

 

It's a hypothesis, meaning that researchers are looking into it, but it's not an accepted theory (yet).

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I looked up the foodborne illness stats from the CDC.  From 2013.  We all know that stats can be deceiving, so take them for what they're worth.  Also, this is internet research..no scientific process on my end.

 

Keep in mind this only refers to 'reported and confirmed' cases, but I'll assume any life threatening illness or death would have involved a trip to the doctor/hospital/coroner/Quincy.

 

Population 316,000,000

Foodborne Illness  cases: ~21,000   (.007% that's seven-thousandths of 1%)

Salmonella cases: ~9000 (.003% that's three-thousandths of 1%)

Foodborne Illness deaths  ~80 (.000003%...a very small number)

 

Most all of the salmonella cases were raw egg related.  Some involved a granola bar of some sort.

 

That said, I'm going to put it on the bottom of my list for things to worry about.  Below a bad infection from a splinter.

 

Or....here's how I look at it.

 

Let's assume the worst day of the year for cutting board/kitchen bacteria is Turkey Day.  Kitchens nationwide have raw poultry juice everywhere, lots of other food sharing counter space, guests in and out of the kitchen, total mayhem.

 

Have you in all your years, had a Thanksgiving Weekend ruined due to salmonella.

 

Do you know anyone who had a Thanksgiving Weekend ruined due to salmonella?

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Hear hear.  Our brains (evolved / were designed) to live in small groups.  If you heard that someone got attacked by wolves when they were out fetching water, then that was a real thing to worry about, because they were just like you and fetched water from the same place you did.  And the sample size was small, so one case was a big %age.

 

But now, we hear about one person getting salmonella halfway across the country, and our brains still think that it's something to worry about.

 

Me, I tend to over design everything, worrying about tiny details that won't really make any difference.  Cutting boards are no exception.

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The first kid...in that first month you're boiling the bottles, sterilizing the nipples, etc. After 6 months the the pacifier falls in the litter box, you blow it off, and it's right back in the kids mouth.

roflmfao! That's my wife... Now he's eating off the floor, chewing on electrical cords, and kissing the dog. I work in the refuge business, some of these guys that are on trash route never, ever get sick! I swear it's all the physical labor and exposure to God only knows what kind of nasty germs!
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Hear hear. Our brains (evolved / were designed) to live in small groups. If you heard that someone got attacked by wolves when they were out fetching water, then that was a real thing to worry about, because they were just like you and fetched water from the same place you did. And the sample size was small, so one case was a big %age.

But now, we hear about one person getting salmonella halfway across the country, and our brains still think that it's something to worry about.

Me, I tend to over design everything, worrying about tiny details that won't really make any difference. Cutting boards are no exception.

what about Ebola?
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Back then food was food.  I tell my daughter the ingredients in some of the things on the grocer's shelf and if she cant pronounce them back to me,  it's not good to eat (simple litmus test) :-)  She's 4...  Good rule of thumb ;)

I used to work in a food micro QC lab.  Those crazy ingredients sometimes help with stability of the food, sometimes help preserve it.  Since we mass produce food on huge scales and then ship it all over, those two sick chickens farmer Bob raised that might've made two sick families contaminate the whole batch and then get shipped nationwide.  To avoid those ingredients you usually have to go to less processed food.  I enjoy less processed food myself, but it does cost more and go bad faster.  Add to that that with consolidation when organic or small producer food does need some minimal processing, often it ends up needing to be done at the same factories as the other stuff, so gets exposed to whatever was over there. 

 

Working that job I was impressed/horrified that while they are required to report test results to the government, and the government has standards, you aren't required to do any of the testing at all.  What keeps the food producers honest about nutrition facts and ingredient lists is liability, and that they'll buy competitors products to test them and then tattle on them if they were lying about how much sodium was in your crackers and so on. 

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