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Episode #60: Are All Eggs Pasteurized? (Joel Answers Your Questions) · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: When you go to Virginia Tech and you go to the cafeteria and you get uh scrambled eggs, they're not cracking those eggs in there.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're coming in in big jugs of liquid eggs.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I've actually seen the industry been in the building and watch the machine that cracks those eggs.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine a machine that's cracking eggs.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's pretty amazing.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: But just like you cracking eggs, you get stuff in them.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, sometimes a shell falls in, whatever.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so all of that egg product has to be pasteurized due to the contamination that comes in with the occasional shell, a little piece of manure, some, you know, a feather, whatever.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: There is contamination in there.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so the USDA requires all of those egg products to be pasteurized.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome everybody to another Beyond Labels podcast with yours truly, Joel Salatin, the farmer, and our avant-garde researcher, uh Dr.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McCullough.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: This week we'll have the real pleasure of diving into a listener's question about eggs.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh just so that everybody knows, we are thrilled when we get questions, when people ask us to look into things, uh, because that's what we love to do.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: And um and so just be encouraged to correspond with us and send us in your questions or your thoughts.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: But this one concerned eggs.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Zina, you want to kind of uh summarize it and send us down this path.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this question came in from Jessica Revis.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she's asking the question about pasteurizing eggs.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: She wants to ultimately sell some of her excess eggs.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she says this idea led to a discussion where I was asked if I would pasteurize my eggs.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: She says, I've never heard of such a thing.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very familiar with pasteurized milk, but pasteurizing eggs?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course, I took my question to old reliable Google.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was directed to the USDA's website where I was informed that all commercial eggs are required to be pasteurized.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then she goes on to say, um, the USDA states that this doesn't disrupt the nutritional value of the eggs.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: But, Joel, are all eggs pasteurized, including eggs at the farmer's market?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: The eggs that Joel produces himself, are those pasteurized?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: What's the history of egg pasteurization?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I sent this question over to Joel, and he immediately responded back.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know where she got that information because eggs are not required to be pasteurized.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So then I just quickly also Googled it, and the USDA's website popped up and it says under the question, um, you know, are eggs, do eggs have to be pasteurized?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: It says the law requires that all egg products distributed for consumption be pasteurized.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I sent it to Joel, and Joel said, go ahead, Joel.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is one of this is one of those um, you know, only only techno speak bureaucracy could come up with this sort of thing.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: So uh immediately I saw egg products.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: So in the mind of the USDA, an egg is not an egg product.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: An egg product is a product made from eggs.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh, you know, egg product would be, you know, dehydrated eggs, uh uh uh egg-based protein, liquid eggs like um, like uh uh what's the trade name?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, um scrambled eggs, like like you, you know, where you where you pour them out of a carton where it's liquid eggs, uh, or or eggs that were that are in a like a Duncan Hines cake recipe where there's already eggs and you don't have to add any eggs.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: All of those kinds of things are egg products.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: So um so when the website says all egg products must be pasteurized, they're they're making a great distinction between shell eggs, and believe me, in the industry, they make a huge distinction between shell eggs, what they call shell eggs, versus egg products.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So when the when when a novice uh who's not, you know, um whatever, acclimated to the word speak, you know, to the to the technical uh jargon reads this, you're assuming, well, of course an egg is an egg product.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, an egg is not an egg product.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how that's how the labeling laws and the requirements parse, you know, parse the food system.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's it's why there's a huge difference, for example, between poultry and meat.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Meat is not poultry.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and in the USDA mind, you know, there's a huge there's a huge uh chasm between meat and poultry.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, uh that's where we are.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I saw it quickly as soon as Cena sent it to me, and I saw egg, sure, egg products.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Cena, uh, shall I tell you my tell you my my uh my story?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: So year years ago when when at our farm we were just kind of scaling up on the egg production, uh we didn't have you know uh really an ability to to handle all the eggs we were getting to you know to to clean them and and get them graded and and put them away or anything.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: So uh there was an egg farm, a big uh egg farm not too far away.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so we would once a week, we'd take all our eggs up there, run them through their uh cleaner, candler, sorting machine.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh they didn't charge us very much.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: They kind of enjoyed, you know, having this little thing there.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of a little side deal, and we talked to the folks, we were very friendly, and I mean it was a massive egg farm.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was a way for us to take our apprentices in to see a factory egg farm, which was we had one guy that almost didn't make it out without becoming nauseated.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so anyway, so I'm standing there.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's a there's a tent.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: So candling eggs is not uh is not a wax candle, it's just a bright light that shows up through the bottom of an egg, and you can see kind of the yolk in there.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like a like an egg sonogram.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and you you can kind of see uh you can see blood spots in there, you can see cracks real easily.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: The cracks really show up on the on the shell, and it's just a way to kind of get a get a physical look at at the egg.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so you know, these things are coming through on a conveyor and they come through, they stop, and the conveyor backs up, you know, so it rolls the rolls the egg all around, and you got this bright light.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: And this lady is under this, this, this tent, uh, like a photographer's tent.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's a black hood, so that it's dark in there, and so she can she can see these illuminated eggs better.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And she's pulling out the cracks and you know, different ones.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: She's putting them in a in a uh carton there next to her in in flats.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so um I asked her, I said, Well, you know, what do you do with those?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, you know, in a big egg factory, they're getting, you know, millions of eggs, and and and uh they're getting all these ones that she sets aside.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: She's setting aside misshapen ones, um, you know, uh and some of them have still a few flecks of manure, adhering dirt, you know, that came through the the washing machine.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, the washing machine's full of chlorine.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the thing is it's it's it's smells like a sewer uh because of all the you know the manure and stuff in there washing these eggs.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, um, so I asked her, you know, where are these going?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: She says, Oh, they go down the road to a place where they they just dump them.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: So imagine this: you've got a flat of eggs and you're dumping them into a cylinder that's a piston, and you fill the cylinder up, and then a plunger comes through and pushes all the eggs through a screen at the bottom of it to make sure there aren't any uh shells in it.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and so all the liquid portion pushes through to another you know chamber, obviously underneath.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, what do they do with those with that liquid product?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Then she said, Oh, that's what goes into cake mixes like Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: When you go to the store and you buy cake mixes and and you don't have to add eggs, that's the that's the kind of uh eggs that go in.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so from then on, we always kind of laughed and told our customers, if you're gonna buy a Duncan Hain Hunt Hines cake mix, make sure that you have to add eggs to it uh so that you're not using those kinds of eggs.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: But those, those, you know, um that that's where that product goes.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, things like egg beaters, that's what I was thinking for a minute ago, egg beaters, you know, where you're you're getting uh liquid liquid eggs like like an institutional, you know, when you get when you go to Virginia Tech and you go to the cafeteria and you get uh scrambled eggs, they're not cracking those eggs in there, okay?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're coming in in big jugs of liquid eggs, all right.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I've actually seen the industry been in the building and watch the machine that cracks those eggs.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: It is, I mean, imagine a machine that's cracking eggs.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's pretty amazing.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: But just like you cracking eggs, you get stuff in them, you know, sometimes a shell falls in, whatever.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so all of that egg product has to be pasteurized due to the contamination that comes in with the occasional shell, a little piece of manure, some, you know, a feather, whatever.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there is contamination in there.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so the USDA requires all of those egg products to be pasteurized, but not eggs.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so no eggs, then I want to make sure we answer her question um exactly.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So no eggs have to be pasteurized.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, Joel, you do you do you pasteurize your eggs?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: No, no.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so when you walk into a grocery store, well, she said farmer's market.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So if you go to farmer's market, okay, they're not gonna be pasteurized.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you go to a grocery store, no eggs, are they gonna be pasteurized?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, they're not they're not pasteurized.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: To my knowledge, no shell egg, no egg sold in the shell is pasteurized.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, to my knowledge.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that doesn't mean that there might not be contamination in it when you know, when these big, you know, because the shell is a little bit porous, Cena, as you the shell, because the the chick, if there's a chick in there, um, the chick has to breathe.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So an egg shell has a bit of porosity to it.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh the way the eggs are washed um has a lot to do with uh does any contamination get into the egg?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so in the end, so here at our farm, no, first of all, we don't wash very many eggs.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we only wash very, very few of them, um, only the ones that have to be washed.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and and interestingly, the USDA doesn't even require an egg to be washed, uh, it only requires that it be clean.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's the only thing it requires, be clean, which means it has it can't have any stain, it can't have adhering dirt.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's the big thing, adhering dirt.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: So if there's if there's a feather on it, if there's one straw on it, whatever, you know, uh it has to be washed.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you know, interestingly, in Europe, in the European Union, you cannot sell a washed egg.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Every egg in the European Union, in all those countries that has if it has to be washed because it's dirty enough to have to be washed, it has to go into an egg product and be pasteurized.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot sell a shell egg that's been washed in Europe.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Here, here the the the the basic, it's not a government requirement, but it is more an insurance liability requirement that all eggs be washed.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the washing water gets full of manure because these chickens, you know, the eggs are not always in a they're they're they got manure all over them, uh especially in these big factory houses.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: So our ours don't because they lay in nest boxes, but in in the factory houses, they just lay on a on the same floor that the chicken poops on.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: So so there's there's it there's manure on the eggs simply in in in in our system where they lay in a nest box that's got clean bedding in it.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: The chickens don't poop in there, they poop elsewhere and they go in a nest box and lay eggs.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: But in the industry, these battery cages things, um, they they're they're they're laying on the same screen floor uh as they as they poop on.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: So the eggs have more poop on them.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's always exciting to know.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So so here are these eggs.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're rolling in on this conveyor.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, conveyor might be 18 inches wide.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: All these eggs are rolling in to this, uh, to to basically it's a it's a shower.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a shower bath, and and um obviously sometimes it breaks an egg.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: So this all this gets yellow, all the the water gets yellow, and and it's got manure in it, and they're washing these millions of eggs in this manure uh yellow water bath.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: And to compensate for that, I love your expression, Sigma.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I ate eggs for breakfast this morning, so yeah.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, they were polyphase eggs.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: They weren't they weren't this kind of egg.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, but I used to eat these kinds of eggs, so it just craps me out.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so so so the so the way the way they keep bacterial contamination from getting into the egg is they put copious amounts of chlorine, of chlorine in that wash water so that it while it is filthy, yes, it is filthy, but there's nothing alive in it.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: That that's that's the idea.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: And and so so you and I both know that when you're spraying that on the egg, the egg, remember, the egg is has a bit of porosity to it, a little bit of that.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about, you know, at the molecular level, right?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: The microbial level, some of that is going in the egg.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's no way that you can keep any, you know, all of your wash material out of that egg.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so anyway, that that's the that's the story.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um and and so in the industry, egg versus egg product is a huge distinction, and washing versus pasteurization is also a huge distinction.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that makes so much more sense now.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to add um to the end of your story, the government recognizes that the eggshell is porous and that some of this chlorine may be actually be absorbed into the egg.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so they have defined it to be a food additive.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And because it was uh because it's a food additive, but it was used as a like a cleaning agent, it's not required to be listed on the label.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: So now I I I didn't know that.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you're telling me, all right, so so they know that that that minuscule amounts of this go into the egg.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it so so the so the egg is no longer 100% egg.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's the egg plus something else.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't have to be listed as an additive.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So and I'm looking, I'm looking in our book, Beyond Labels.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: We wrote about this.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's the USDA that lists egg cleaning agents as food additives.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the egg cleaning agents that you're talking about are listed as food additives, meaning they expect it to, quote, become a component of the egg and is there and is exempt from labeling requirements.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: So an additive.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: So here's here's another.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can't make this stuff up.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so so what you're what you're saying is they're parsing, they're parsing additive to what?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: What what then has to be listed on the label?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing has to be listed because it's it's part of the cleaning process of it.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's a cleaning agent.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the same because but but they have to list if if like they use um whatever, red dye 29, that has that's a food additive.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: But that was added for the intended reason of coloring the food.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it wasn't added as part of a cleaning process, it wasn't added part of the cleaning process.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the same holds true for, for instance, chicken.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: As you know, chickens are sterilized with something, you know, in the grocery store and in large part chlorine.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not on the label because it it's used as a cleaning agent.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it could be cleaned with chlorine, it could be cleaned with hydrogen peroxide, you know, none of that, just like the egg example, none of that has to be labeled because it's technically a cleaning agent.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: So a a cleaning, so a cleaning agent doesn't is not an additive, even if it rides, even if it rides on the product to your table.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you know that it's in there, we know it's in there, uh, you know, that the leaks into some of the um the eggs.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: The USDA even admits it.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um actually, we know that some of the that residue stays on chickens as well.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Know how much, but we know it stays on there.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I've actually contacted a company before trying to find out um it was organic chicken in the grocery store, and I was trying to find out what did you clean this with?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because if they clean them with vinegar, um, I can't have it because they're corn-derived.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, most of the vinegars they use are gonna be white distilled vinegar derived from corn.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I called, and sure enough, um, it's from corn, you know, because they used uh vinegar to disinfect the chicken.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they were all excited to tell me that they used vinegar instead of chlorine, you know, because like in the organic movement, we're catching on to the fact that they're using chlorine to to sterilize the organic chickens.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: So they were like, oh no, we don't use chlorine, you know, we use vinegar.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I was like, is it apple cider vinegar?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Of course not, right?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no, it's white distilled vinegar.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked, well, um, do you have any data to show that the vinegar or remnants of it are not getting into the chicken, you know, because I have this issue with corn.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and by the way, people don't understand a sensitivity for the most part.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: You have to say an allergy.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, I've got a severe allergy to corn, I can't have it.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the company was um honest enough to say to me, we know that some type, some of the vinegar gets into the chicken.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot guarantee 100% that the corn proteins are not in that chicken.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: So credit for them to them because they were at least honest about it.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I had uh uh years ago, we had a a customer who was extremely, I mean, violently chlorine sensitive.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, where if she if she went to the store and got a chicken, if she just touched that chicken in in in 10 minutes, she would have a rash, a red rash would run up her arm all the way to her elbow.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was just an extreme sensitivity.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so she came to us, and of course, you know, ours don't have any chlorine, so she was able to handle ours uh perfectly fine.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, all this stuff, Cena, all basically all food is porous.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's part of that's part of life.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then I I never thought about this before.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: But whether it's fruits, beef, jerky, soup, whatever we are, we are whatever, succulent, pliable, you know, we're we're we're we're porous.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, you and I are porous.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's right.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: You you you you you know, when you use um cosmetics and things, right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh some of it goes into you.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh chicken skin, obviously, is spongy and and porous.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but but so are so are squash and potatoes, everything is is um has a softness to it.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to have to I'm gonna have to just meditate on this for a little bit.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's a kind of new thought that that all living things have a porosity to them.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um not you you can get non-porosity in metal in non-living things, you know, uh um metal, certainly um plastic, okay, can be non-porous, but uh, but all living things have a porosity.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm just gonna have to process that a while.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: That that's uh that's an interesting, I never really just thought about that before.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: But but but but it it does show why the medium surrounding what we're eating, surrounding us, is so important because all of life is porous.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's very important.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's why it's important too, like what you put on your skin, you know, what can get absorbed through your skin, for instance, um, what you're inhaling.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, and I would this is kind of off uh, you know, off the topic of this podcast, but you brought up non-porous, um, non-living substances.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I would my husband has a PhD in chemical engineering, so I'm gonna follow up with him on this, but I would argue that um plastic is porous, right?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, you can hold things in it and it will change color of, you know, the plastic, the plastic changes color.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we know that when you heat it, like if there's a little bit of heat, like you put soup in it, it's gonna start leaching in.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say to a certain extent, it might be somewhat porous, unlike maybe like glass.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Glass might have like less, less ability to be porous.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, put petroleum, petroleum supposedly has its base in um in living things.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, fossil fuel, uh, even even um, you know, synthetic, synthetic plastic made from corn uh is still coming from a living thing.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: So your glass and your metal actually have no living substance behind them.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I think your point's well taken.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: So all every living thing, well, you know, um that's why I love talking with you, Cena, because it you know it pushes me to think about things I haven't have.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: You thought about this before?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: But all of life has a porosity to it.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that that has significant ramifications, it does, it does, and not only in what we're absorbing and what the food is absorbing, but also keep in mind what we are releasing, right, from our own bodies.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: What it just like the trees can send chemical signals to each other, right?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right, that has to be released, and some of it could be released through the leaves, not just the roots.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: What signals are we sending to each other?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because we are porous, we do send signals, right?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is we we could go really philosophically deep here, Joel.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, let's uh let's not.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think we I think we've developed and and probably uh my own uh whatever um uh excitement over a kind of a new thought is uh Did you say excitement?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, this is fantastic.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Jessica Revis, we thank you so much for sending in this question.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: We started with do eggs have to be pasteurized?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're ending with what chemical signals are we sending to each other through our pores?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like yes, that's really great.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: So uh if you want us to uh dig down on your question, uh send another one in.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And uh they might not all get this kind of exposure, but uh exposure.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, but we'll we'll do our best to look at them.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's always a delightful conversation.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Cena, you're you always bring uh good good insights into the discussion.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for joining us on another um uh Beyond Labels podcast, and we look forward to seeing you next time.