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Josh's Christmas Feast with Gary Kennedy · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans, welcome back to what is fast becoming and semi-annual tradition here on
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uncomfortable conversations.
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One of my favourite regular guests on my radio show, who is now a frequent contributor
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here in the uncomfortable conversations Lair is the one and only Gary Kennedy, who is
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one of the greatest food scientists and food safety experts in the Asia Pacific travels
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all over the region, advising companies and governments on how not to kill people accidentally
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through the food supply.
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Hello Gary.
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I'm George.
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We are taking questions live on sub-stack, video streaming all over the globe, so ask
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your questions in the comment well if you're watching us live.
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Gary, love and cherish all of the conversations that we have had over the years.
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I hope I've taught you well in direct grasshopper.
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We already have a ton of questions, and we just start with the basics.
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Sure.
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Just ask chat GPT what the most popular meat that is eaten on Christmas Day is in the
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United States.
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Yes.
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I would just turkey.
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Ham is number one.
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Oh, Ham is number one.
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They just had their turkey.
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Yeah, they just think they've been there.
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Turkey is number two.
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Should we just talk briefly about if I've left the ham out for Christmas lunch and it's
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been three hours at room temperature and everyone's been carving it and eating pieces.
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The magical number is two hours and four hours.
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Okay.
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This meant to be hot because you baked the ham or it's meant to be cold because you bought
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it out the fridge because people serve it both in Australia.
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So whether it's meant to be hot or meant to be cold, you can leave it after two hours.
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And after two hours, you can make a decision.
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It either gets recooked or it goes back in the fridge or you leave it out.
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And once you've hit three hours, you must always leave it out because it's four hours
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you mean.
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You pass the two hour magic.
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You pass the two hour magic point and a four hours you're actually meant to bin it.
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But no more re, so I can't put it back in the fridge after two hours has gone.
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Yeah, once it's it after once it's it two hours, you've sort of hit a point to which what
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the bugs that are on it are starting to grow.
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And some of the bugs that are growing are not just the ones that will make you sick.
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If you eat them, you're also producing some of the bugs at room temperature that should
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be just a poison.
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So reheating or putting back in the fridge trying to get rid of the poison.
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This is an important thing that I learned from you that many people don't understand.
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There are two kinds of food.
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Yeah, there's two ways to get to live animals.
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And then there's the toxins that they have produced.
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Some of them are produced.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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And you know, toxins, people would probably, you know, sometimes they need tropical fish
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because algae cause a toxin.
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And people know poison as mushrooms produce toxins, but there were also bacteria that produce
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toxins as well.
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Okay.
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Got it.
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Turkey.
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Turkey.
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Same as ham.
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In fact, pretty much the two hour or four hour works for you everything.
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So again, Turkey sits out for two hours.
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You shouldn't even put it back into the fridge or if it's hot, put it into some warming
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tray.
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That's why in things like truck stops and buffets and things, hot dog stands, everything
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is kept above 60 degrees.
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I think it's 63 in the US, but when we keep it above 60, cause nothing else is.
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So I'll see us.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I am old enough to have dealt with Fahrenheit, but don't remember it.
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So if you keep it above 60, nothing grows.
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Right.
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So probably like 140 or 150.
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Yeah, it's about 140 Fahrenheit.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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Now, you mentioned truck stops.
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Yes.
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So you stop at the truck stop and you pick up what we call an Australia, your bachelor's
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head bag.
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Yes.
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It's one of those little plastic containers that has a roast chicken.
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Yeah.
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You might get it at the supermarket as well and you take it home, it's hot.
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You don't want to eat it right away.
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When I leave it on the counter, for those two hours, in the hot bag, you've got to count
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the time you took to take it home.
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Okay.
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So, you know, took half an hour to get home on the train or in the car, that's half an
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hour into your door.
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I have a quick chance.
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Take me everywhere, Gary.
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So this is the car that's a jam cheer, surely, as I whip my, my ritual boy.
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And then, okay, so half an hour to get home at 90 minutes at home.
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And should I leave it in the bag because sometimes I wonder that that's like festering
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and I should take it out of it.
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No, it is.
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It will fester if it's in there, particularly the stuffing.
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So when you're going to cool something, this applies to the turkey and to the chicken.
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You need to break it up.
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It should be no thicker than one inch, if you're American or 2.5 centimeters if you're
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not.
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So you need to break an important, effectively, you need to get the chicken and cutting
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in half, you need to portion up the turkey because if it cools down too slowly, some
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of the bugs that produce the poisons will actually start growing.
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Okay.
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So when I get my bachelor's handbag home, cut the chicken up.
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Yep.
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Now, don't wait until I'm about to eat it in an hour's time.
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You can eat it.
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You can leave it for two hours.
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So if you've got half an hour to come home, you've got 90 minutes to do something with
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it.
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Okay.
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And then the leftovers you break up and put into the fridge.
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What?
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The ham is slightly different because the ham is one big chunk.
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Right.
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And so really the bugs are all on the outside.
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So when you put it in a ham, you can sort of leave us one big lump.
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But if it's warm and it's cooling, isn't there something like, well, the point is between
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the outside and the inside, that's like an optimal temperature for bugs to fester.
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The one that damage ham, and it's really only ham and loins are bacon.
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I'm probably the only two products these apply to.
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That pink color, the sodium nitrate in it, that actually prevents the spore form as growing.
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So the bugs that will produce the toxins don't grow in ham and bacon because the chemicals,
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the nitrates and nitrites, the turn it pink, stop the babies of the ones that produce toxins
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from growing.
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So ham and bacon have got something slightly different we can, ideally, smugs on the outside
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is still there.
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So all the things where people have coughed on it and, you know, everything that fell
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on it while it was open, they will grow on the outside.
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So you should still be putting it in the fridge.
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But the ham is slightly different.
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We don't have to break it up because the preservatives, the nitrates in the ham will actually
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stop bugs growing in the middle.
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Got it.
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Okay.
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You have to cook all the way through.
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But I don't.
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Cook my tea bones takes all the way through.
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Well, tea bones, tea bones actually two whole mussels.
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So a tea.
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Right.
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You're making the bones.
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You will.
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Well, hopefully, if you've cooked well enough, the bone is still okay as well.
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If it's really pink right near the bone, so it's red near the bone and I'm gnawing on
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it like a dinosaur.
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There's a cut, there's a type of cut, let's cook them rare, which is called blue, blue,
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which is where you get the steak or whatever it is and actually let it warm up to body
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temperature, which is how it's supposed to eat.
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And then just pan, sear it.
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And the idea is all the bugs are on the outside, so pan, searing it, you can eat the steak.
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Yes, essentially raw raw.
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And then I was recently in Japan and you can get chicken variation of that, so you can
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get a chicken breast fillet done, pan, sear it as well, raw in the center, which in America
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in Australia just doesn't seem.
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Well, so this brings us to the next question, which is what about steak tartar or Japanese
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cuts of chicken, which are raw, how, why aren't those making this sick?
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There's a couple, let's do the chicken one first.
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One of the reasons the chicken doesn't make you sick is they usually wash the chicken,
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which washes a lot of the bugs off.
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The other thing is they will often effectively do a ceviche on it that will cover it in
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wasabi or teriyaki or soy sauce and effectively surface pasteurizer, not like the fish
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ceviche where you put the flesh you love your perfect Latin pronunciation as well.
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I did my ceviche.
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I did later that high school, so in the Spanish condom, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so I'm
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talking the Australian way of pronouncing ceviche, yeah, tartare, steak tartare mate.
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So with the ceviche, the acid kills in what's usually pineapple juice or lime juice or lemon
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juice kills everything on the outside, similar with teriyaki with wasabi and soy sauce,
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they surface pasteurizing the outside.
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Steak tartare is less, because steak tartare is basically warm, usually beef flesh, although
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in French, you get horse tartare, which I also saw in Japan on sale, and you can get,
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you get the beef, you grind it up, you often run a raw egg through it, and then you sprinkle
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pepper over the top, yeah, I love it.
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And macro biologically, it's unsafe, and so it's obviously not unsafe, because there
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are many high-end restaurants that serve it every single day, correct, they don't end
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up without breakfast.
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California, after putting a warning on the menu, California, after putting a warning
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on everything.
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Yeah, that's true.
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Sign on every single building saying that it contains substances that could give you
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cancer.
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Yeah, I suppose state tartare, if people who are ordering that, you, in Australia, you
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actually, if someone says, you have to actually say it's raw.
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Right, but presumably they're treating that ground beef, or not hiring that ground beef
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in some way that makes the coal irleess, you ski?
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Then if I just bought ground beef at the supermarket and made one myself.
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They grind it that day from whole muscle.
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Okay.
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So they will do probably a sterile environment, using a sterile.
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So they'll take a piece of meat, they will typically drain the blood away, because when
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it's holding a vacuum bag, there's blood and the bugs are in the blood.
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Yeah.
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So they'll typically take the bag away, they will then typically pat it down to pat away
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the blood on the outside.
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Okay.
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Sometimes they will wash it to wash away, then they will grind it up.
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And all of that's kept really cold.
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If you keep it below five degrees, then the bugs grow much slower.
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The other question then is in America where they eat rare burgers all the time, do they
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treat their ground beef differently?
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Yeah.
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They irradiate it.
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They irradiate it.
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They irradiate it.
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They irradiate it.
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It's all the E-coli.
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Right.
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So how many times successfully and sometimes not?
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Yeah.
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Occasionally it doesn't work, but usually it does.
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And that's partly came about with the old Jack in the box case.
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In America, or, well, I wouldn't say it all, but for the big fast food chains, the majority
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of stuff you see in the supermarkets, it's been irradiated, which is not a practice
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elsewhere.
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Europe and Australia.
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It's certainly not in Europe or in Australia.
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So there are more bugs in our ground beef than there are in America.
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Yes.
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And a radiation means what?
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They literally zap it with radiation.
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Yes.
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The bugs.
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Gamma race.
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Amazing.
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Let's take some questions from the sub stack.
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Gary, Dom asks, should you ever eat food that's microwaved in anything plastic?
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Despite claims of the container being microwave safe, how do we know that chemicals don't
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leach into our food?
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My question also applies, whether you tensile or container that's silicon based, like silicon
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egg rings and silicon muffin trays, how food safe are they with?
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Right.
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So specifically with microwaves, let's put it into three categories.
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So the first thing is, if it's packaging that it says cook in the packaging, you bet
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they've tested it.
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So things like BPA, this phenyl A and PFAS, which are both in the news at the moment in
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Australia and in America, 20 states in America, BAN PFAS.
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It's been looked at being banned in Australia, it's going to be banned in Europe.
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So what is it?
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Oh boy.
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Teflon and Scotchgar, they're two brand names.
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They're basically for other chemicals that are linked with cancer.
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Uh huh.
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This is another, there is another question about this actually, which I might as well throw
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in now, which is, should we, Scott says, should we be concerned about frying with non-stick
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pans?
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Uh, that's Teflon and Teflon is a PFAS.
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Um, does it come off into the food?
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I mean, obviously it does because my non-stick pans sometimes get scratches in them.
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If it, uh, when it burns is the issue, when it's, hey, what could possibly go wrong?
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No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
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Teflon's actually very heat resistant as well, which is one of the reasons it was put
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on fry pans in the first place.
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Okay.
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It was the guy who invented its wife who suggested being put on fry pans.
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His first thought was putting it on fishing reels, so fishing reels didn't catch.
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And his wife said, how about fry pans?
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Well, she was either clever or a mass murderer, depending on, depending on your viewpoint,
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depending on how history will view her.
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When it comes to a non-stick fry pan with Teflon on it, um, while it's still intact,
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and it's been used to, you know, 40, 50 years now on fry pans, we would have huge rise
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in, uh, cancer if it was the issue is we have even not really not in stomach cancer
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and things like that that this would be linked to, if anything, those sort of things
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are dropping as we go through as a percentage of the population.
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I thought our survivability was getting better, but our diagnosis was more cases.
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We'll talk later on.
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Yeah.
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I had dinner a few years ago with someone who had barbs and he said, bodies are lasting
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longer than they used to, uh, literally, and he said, it's all the preservatives in
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the food.
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He's actually preserving bodies later.
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So we like it.
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Yeah.
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Um, with that direct in the small goods company, we had, we're having such a good chat,
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a waiter came up and said, we've been asked if you could stop your conversation between
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a small goods person and the barber.
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There's a lot in common there.
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Anyway, let's get me off the subject.
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Teflon sauce, but you should be okay until you burn it or you sometimes, you've got
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bits of it start coming up.
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You don't want to consume the teflon as soon and the recommendation is on a nonstick
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saucepan.
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As soon as you burn the teflon, throw the saucepan away.
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Right.
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There he is.
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Sales of teflon saucepan type drops substantially.
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There's also a good alternative to teflon, which I bought last year, which is ceramic.
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Like there's a ceramic, but you can get a, it's not a ceramic, it's metal, but there's
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a ceramic coating on the inside, which is also nonstick, it's like a, it's like a
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baked dynamal.
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Yeah, that's right.
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But it's also nonstick and it doesn't come off and kill you.
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So on the question about cooking in a plastic container, so very bioplastic container
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at the supermarket, what are your beans in it overnight?
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You should be okay.
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And I say this because the Australian Consumers Association went out and bought typical
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brand names.
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They bought Tupperware and decor who are probably the two biggest brands here.
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And they microwaved the bollognaise sauce a hundred times, literally the same sauce.
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They microwaved and cooled a hundred times and then tested the bollognaise sauce for plastics
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and found nothing.
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So plastics that are meant to be cooked in are going to be fine.
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The issue is the plastics that are not meant to be cooked in where you've just taken something
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and was never meant to go through a cooking cycle.
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Right.
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Those are not designed and they can break down.
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I would assume, though, that most of the things that you're buying at the supermarket that
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are meant for more than one use would be microwave, so right?
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It would only be if you're getting, I don't know, something you got a punitive strawberries
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in and you're using that in a microwave or something.
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I tell you one they have banned in this country is polycarbonate from that.
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What's that?
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Polycarbonate is that hard plastic you associate with water cooler bottles.
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Oh, yeah.
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And it's made, there's lots of hard things.
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Sunglass frames are made from polycarbonate.
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It's a much harder plastic.
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I never heat my bollognaise in sunglasses frames, so we're okay.
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Well, the polycarbonate used to be used here for babies bottles.
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Oh, see?
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And of course you do heat and cool and heat and cool and heat and cool the baby's bottle.
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And the chemical bisfenal A, which has been linked to autism and BPA.
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If anyone knows those are proxy glues where you mix an A and a B together and they form an
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incredibly hard, one of those A or B, I should know, I don't.
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One of those is high in BPA.
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It's a thing that firms plastics.
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So it's, you know, at an epoxy, those hard epoxy floors, you see them regularly.
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That is bisfenal A's in higher levels there.
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So polycarbonate has higher levels than that.
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And the problem is you heat and cool and heat and cool and heat and cool.
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You start breaking down the plastic and this chemical can come out.
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So in our country, they've banded in babies bottles.
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There are current changes to laws in the United States, the EU and Australia where they're
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looking at significantly reducing the level of this.
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Your third category is, well, let's call it a clean film for one of the better terms.
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There have been use of brand name.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Common brand name here.
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So they've also choice the ran rap, the ran rap in the Americans.
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Look on the, a lot of people know you're cooking that as well.
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And so the commercial brands of that, what you, what you are okay.
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What we're looking for in a plastic you shouldn't use is a plastic, you know, let us pick
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something stupid.
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You decide you're going to use a leftover chemical bucket or an oil can and the paint
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too.
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A lot of those plastics that were never meant to house food, they're the sort of thing.
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All right.
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Good.
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We're live on Substack with Gary Kennedy, food, scientist extraordinaire answering all of
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your questions theoretically around Christmas and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
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You can ask questions live on Substack.
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If you're listening to this on the podcast after the fact, then go and subscribe on Substack.
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You can find the link in the show description and you can join all these kinds of things
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live and get involved yourself.
17:52
So we've done Turkey, ham, reheating things in plastic.
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On Substack, James says eggs are routinely served with a runny yolk on breakfast menus.
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For example, poached eggs on toast, official advice used to be that eggs should be cooked
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through.
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In the Australian context, are commercially available eggs from a supermarket perfectly
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safe to eat, to serve and eat with a runny yolk?
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Yes.
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Now, if we're talking something slightly different here, the New South Wales food authority
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out in our home state published information on this, the bug that we've got to worry about
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is the bug called Salmonella.
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And Salmonella is basically found in the intraconal packs of birds.
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And anatomically, this isn't quite correct because the egg comes through the usual
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saith and poo comes through the cloaca, which, you know, we're the, you know, we're
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the, I get to kick up the clacker, comes from that turn.
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And so it pretty much the egg comes out of the chicken's palm.
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So the outside of the egg will have Salmonella on it quite regularly.
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Now in Australia and many other countries, you have to wash eggs.
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So you wash most of the poo off, meaning that the company, the egg producer, the egg,
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the egg, the egg, the egg, what they put it in.
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The egg packer.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So it might come from a farm to a packhouse and then, and package the, when you say they
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wash it, are they like, are radiating it or snoring or just in water, they're just washing
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it and just washing it in the morning and it doesn't.
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Well, they also have to put each, each egg gets inspected in small plants.
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It's done visually at something called can doling because you plants smaller egg plants
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in bigger ones.
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It's done with equipment that, you know, like color sorting and anything that's cracked
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or chipped or pitted or has got something inside, meaning it's foot partly fertilized
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or is on blood spot.
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Yeah, right.
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So those are taken away and they're turned into pulp, which is then pasteurized and used
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in the catering industry and manufacturing industry.
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But whole legs and would that go into like the eggs that you buy in a cup, like, you know,
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the, if some of it would be the egg whites that you'll buy and, well, no, it's the bulk,
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the bulk egg.
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When you go into the food industry, they sell, you know, 20 litre bladders of egg and
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1000 litre bladders of egg where they were all with cracked eggs.
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So they do all get used.
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And if you go to a fast food restaurant and get your egg muffin or something like that,
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is that going to come out of a bag of eggs or is that an egg egg?
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Ah, you know, it used to be an egg egg on impressive, still an egg egg, at least in the
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arches.
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It used to be an egg egg when I last dealt with the egg.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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The eggs are on the outside, okay, unless the eggs crack, but all the crack ones are meant
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to be pulled out.
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Okay.
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So Salmanal is actually an easier bug to kill off than most bugs.
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So they've worked out by scientists working for the New South Wales Food Authority.
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He did all the studies and if you cook an egg and the white is firm and the yolk is starting
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to thicken, but still runny, you've killed all the Salmanal and that egg safe to eat.
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So your person who said in the restaurant, the yolks are still serve runny, provided
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the white is set, the yolk can still be runny and it'll be safe.
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Got it.
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And there's a difference I understand between different jurisdictions, different countries
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here about whether or not they clean the eggs.
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So is it the case that, and there's something to do with the cop with keeping a cold
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chain and whether you can keep eggs out of the fridge as well here?
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What's that remind me?
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In Europe, they don't clean the eggs and that means you can leave them out of the fridge
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because they still have like a film on them.
21:33
Yes.
21:34
People or something?
21:35
Yeah.
21:36
Australia went the other way.
21:37
Australia and the US.
21:38
We watched clean the eggs.
21:39
That means that we have to refrigerate them.
21:41
Correct.
21:42
Because they'll go off.
21:43
Correct.
21:44
Because they're the natural protective layer.
21:45
Correct.
21:46
So it's, I suppose Australia and Europe, we have a history of eating raw eggs.
21:54
They're in tiramisu, they're in chocolate mousse, bodybuilders, do them, egg flips, there's
22:02
a hole.
22:03
We do soft boiled eggs and runny poached eggs and all of that.
22:08
So Australia and America have a history of eating raw eggs.
22:12
So in both of our countries, they're going to watch most of the people of France do as
22:15
well, surely.
22:16
In English, they dunk their, you know, toasts soldiers into their egg yolks.
22:20
Yeah, they do as well.
22:22
But I suppose again, different salmonellas in different parts of the world.
22:26
And unfortunately America's got the nasties, one of all.
22:30
And so they'd remind me, but some staggering number of Americans are hospitalised each
22:34
year with E. coli and salmonella right, which is higher than in other rich countries.
22:38
Yeah, it is.
22:39
And we're talking hundreds of thousands of people a year.
22:41
Right.
22:42
What is that?
22:43
Is that because of their rare hamburgers or it is partly?
22:47
You would like to say being such a developed country, food handling is great.
22:51
One of the advantages of Europe and America, I say Europe and Australia is you don't
22:57
get minimum wage in restaurants and fast food.
23:02
And so the minimum wage is a lot higher, correct it.
23:05
And it's mandatory training in Europe and in Australia, if you work in a restaurant
23:11
or even a school canteen or even a sausage sizzle at the hardware store that we do down
23:17
here, all of those these mandatory food safety training in Australia and Europe, that doesn't
23:22
occur in America.
23:23
Man, if they, if it did, Elon would be getting rid of it with his development of government
23:26
and the science or whatever.
23:28
And so it does.
23:30
Because the wages in America are much less than you pay what you pay, you get what you
23:36
pay for.
23:37
Yeah.
23:38
And there's no mandatory requirement for training that in America, they've got a higher
23:43
incident per capita than we do in Europe or Australia.
23:46
Fascinating.
23:47
Oliver has just tried in with another question about eggs saying, are eggs treated differently
23:50
in Japan?
23:51
I saw something recently about how Japanese eggs are tastier and last longer made a lot
23:55
of raw eggs in Japan.
23:58
When we're talking raw versus ready to eat, you can build up a resistance.
24:03
You know, people who live on farm string raw milk, they eat the egg straight from the chicken.
24:07
And probably because you got food poisoning early on, you become resistant to the strain.
24:12
It's like when you catch a cold, you never catch that strain again.
24:14
When you get COVID, you're usually resistant to that strain of COVID, the same is true
24:19
of food poisoning.
24:20
If you get, if you bought up on a farm, you've got food poisoning lots of times when you're
24:25
a kid and you become immune to all the strains that are on your farm.
24:28
Okay.
24:29
So we don't know of any particular difference between the type of, the type of eggs we
24:32
do here anecdotally that like, and I know from going and visiting my family in New
24:36
Zealand, for example, and going and getting the eggs from the neighbor's farm, they taste
24:41
and look different from the eggs that I get at a supermarket.
24:43
I will taste and look different because of you are what you eat.
24:50
And so the chicken is, well, all animals, you know, you can tell the difference in taste
24:55
and colour between grain fed and grass fed.
24:58
And you know corn fed chicken is a variety yellow.
25:02
So whatever you eat, whether it's pasture or grain or other animals, whatever you get
25:09
it's absorbed into your fat and proteins and it changes the colour and taste of what
25:14
you are.
25:15
Okay.
25:16
Okay.
25:17
If you have any questions and you're watching live on substack, feel free to ask a question
25:19
of food scientists extraordinaire Gary Kennedy who runs correct food systems and travels
25:24
all over the age of specific advising governments and corporations about how not to kill their
25:28
populations with bad food practices, we're inspired here mainly because of Christmas and
25:33
all the questions that people might have about how long you can leave things out of the
25:36
fridge and whether you need to pay attention to best before dates and what they've been
25:40
saying best before and used by dates are, this came up just this morning for me Gary because
25:45
my husband who always tends to do this not throw him under the bus but not much of chicken
25:51
drumsticks about five days ago and I said should I put these in the freezer?
25:57
He said no I'll cook them for lunches and then five days go past and now the used by
26:01
date was yesterday and I saw a cinema text saying can you cook those up after smelling
26:05
them to make sure they're okay?
26:07
He did said they smell okay but it's a day passed the used by date and we're going to
26:12
done.
26:13
Probably not because it was raw chicken.
26:18
Yeah.
26:19
You're going to be fine.
26:20
If you cook them properly, that date code I'm surprised if it has used by I think in
26:26
Australia.
26:27
I don't remember what it was said best before.
26:28
I think we'll have more than we have best before on raw meat.
26:31
What's the difference remind me?
26:32
Australia is slightly different to some other places.
26:36
America's got five of them.
26:38
Really?
26:39
Do you know what they are?
26:40
Oh yeah they are.
26:41
They're in the spot.
26:42
No they have best before, best by, used by, there are two others, sorry England's only
26:50
got one.
26:51
And that makes more sense.
26:52
Yeah well.
26:53
Maybe not.
26:54
I have sounds confusing.
26:55
So we've got how many in Australia?
26:57
Two.
26:58
Two.
26:59
Technically we're fine.
27:00
Technically we've got three because things with an extremely long shelf life like wine,
27:05
can, food, doesn't have to put use by or best before.
27:08
So technically we've got three.
27:10
Right.
27:11
So when it comes to things that are going to go off or kill you, we use use by and best
27:16
before.
27:17
Okay.
27:18
And best before means quality and best before means at that date, it's going to stink.
27:22
It's going to be stale, rancid, flat sour, runny, brown.
27:28
It will, it'll be something you don't want to eat.
27:31
Talk to me about my life.
27:32
Yeah.
27:33
This is enough.
27:34
Use by means food safety here and use by means this is the last day, we will guarantee
27:40
it's safe.
27:41
Okay.
27:42
If you eat it after this date, you could get food poisoning because even in a fridge,
27:46
there are some bugs that will grow really slowly.
27:48
So it's saying do not eat it after this date is by as serious like use it by this date
27:54
or throw it out.
27:55
Yes.
27:56
Before is like, there's a bit of wiggle.
27:57
Yeah.
27:58
Use by is serious enough here.
27:59
It's actually illegal to sell after a use by date.
28:03
So if I walk into a supermarket and see something passed to use by date, it's fine.
28:09
And even donating it to charity or giving it to the staff to take home is illegal.
28:14
What about feeding it to a starving orphan?
28:16
That's illegal as well.
28:17
We're leaving.
28:18
Yes.
28:19
Provided it even provided as part of the meal service.
28:22
So put it in the lunch room for the staff to eat at lunches and wiggle here.
28:26
And carry the other day I had a job for use by not best before I understand.
28:30
For I have found a jar of bonoks, a half empty jar of bonoks, which I mean for Americans
28:35
don't know.
28:36
It's sort of like this strange kind of meat liquid paste sort of thing, a bit like
28:40
mejumite or something.
28:41
Yeah.
28:42
In the old days, you would mix it with water and drink it as a beef soup.
28:44
I was trying to do that myself.
28:46
And so I opened it and it was liquidy and kind of unpleasant and I turned it over and it
28:51
just had a date stamped on the bottom, which was November 2023.
28:55
Right.
28:56
Now I threw it out, but then I thought, I mean sure it's almost two years past its best
29:03
before date.
29:04
But I'm sure that's not a use by a date.
29:06
Would that have gotten me sick or should I ignore the date?
29:08
You should have ignored the date.
29:09
Must have just seen it two years old.
29:10
Yeah, nothing's going to live.
29:12
The classic when it's raised veggie mite, veggie mite is eight percent salt.
29:17
Nothing's going to live in veggie mite.
29:18
Right.
29:19
Right.
29:20
The producer Dave has done some quick research and said that the other two categories in
29:24
the United States are sell by and freeze by.
29:28
Yes.
29:29
Freeze by is good.
29:30
I like that because I'm always wondering whether or not something that I find in the
29:33
freezer is still good.
29:36
From Tim, I've been in debates about best before and used by a date from food and stores.
29:42
I go by the theory that best before is suggestion.
29:44
I think we just covered that.
29:45
There's some people swear they're eating food several days after it's used by a date.
29:49
They just put the stores put those dates there to make you buy more food.
29:52
What's the illness?
29:53
I go covered that.
29:54
They do.
29:55
I will say one thing.
29:56
There is a fudge factory now.
29:57
I'm not saying to people eat at the day after the use by date, but they do take into account
30:02
the fact that your fridge may not be cold enough and you may have spent an hour while shopping
30:07
to leave it in the back of your car, which is already starting to accelerate.
30:11
But if you have a good friend, my friend, my fridge is fancy, so it tells me that it's
30:15
three degrees.
30:16
Very good.
30:17
Three degrees is right.
30:18
Yeah.
30:19
I taught you very well there.
30:20
Your fridge is meant to be less than five.
30:23
Five Celsius.
30:24
Boy, I'm just trying to think about what that would be.
30:26
Americans can figure it out.
30:27
It's probably thirty eight or something like that.
30:29
I think nine.
30:30
No, it's higher than that.
30:31
I think it's forty.
30:32
I think about forty five.
30:33
But it's funny.
30:34
Well, thirty.
30:35
Thirty five would be like eight.
30:37
Thirty two is zero.
30:38
Yeah.
30:39
Yeah.
30:40
If it's just about, if it's a few anywhere, American can figure it out.
30:44
It's already.
30:45
We always say it should be cold enough that you can't spread your butter and you and I had
30:48
long discussions where the butter needs to go in the fridge.
30:50
Let's go there because this is another good thing for Christmas.
30:53
I never knew until I started interviewing you on my radio show, the butter doesn't need
30:58
to go in the fridge.
30:59
No, it doesn't.
31:00
For, in terms of the aesthetic pleasure of butter, if you're in a hot climate like Sydney,
31:06
then in summer, you probably want it in the fridge because maybe it gets too soft out
31:10
of the fridge.
31:11
Or melt.
31:12
Or melt.
31:13
Yeah.
31:14
Or melt.
31:15
Then I discovered these things called butter bells.
31:16
Yeah.
31:17
So it's a ceramic, upturned, gigantic egg container thing that you smear the butter into.
31:24
It sits in a pouch contained by water, which means that the butter is always touching the
31:31
surface tension of the water basically prevents it from being open to the air.
31:35
And you can leave butter there for months.
31:37
I mean, you can leave butter out of the fridge for months, right?
31:40
I mean, you and I won't make you sick.
31:41
I was in Brunei last year's full work and the butter and margarine are all sitting in
31:48
ambient.
31:49
They're all on display on the show.
31:50
It's in Brunei, yeah, which is right on the equator.
31:53
Right on the equator.
31:54
I'm sure I could have poured it out of the containers, but yeah, they don't refrigerate.
31:59
In a lot of countries where dairy products are not that familiar to them.
32:04
So then a lot of Asian equatorial countries went brought up on dairy product.
32:10
And so butter, yeah, that's a blotty wants to go on the show.
32:14
You'd notice if you wander around the very area or somewhere where butter is where dairy
32:18
does have a long history.
32:20
And again, it's noticeable that eggs and butter are out of the fridge in people's houses.
32:25
Laurie asks on substack, how long do leftovers last in the fridge?
32:28
Does it depend on the composition of the fruit or how long is a piece of string?
32:31
This is a good one for Christmas because there's always leftovers for this one.
32:34
It definitely does depend on what the food is.
32:37
You should be able to get 48 hours minimum on any leftover commercially.
32:44
If we were doing this, and I've got the catering industry background and the small goods
32:48
industry background, if you cook it up to the right temperature, which is 75 celsius,
32:53
and you keep it above 60.
32:55
That's 170.
32:56
Yeah, and then you keep it at 60 to keep it hot, and then you cool it down within six hours,
33:03
less than five, which you can do with blast chillers and things like that.
33:07
What?
33:08
Six hours.
33:09
Yeah, be how much stuff are we talking about?
33:10
I can cool anything down within six hours in my fridge.
33:13
Oh, you won't get a side of pork down.
33:14
Right.
33:15
And there's some of the big stuff takes much longer than that, even in commercial getting
33:20
some of that after chop it up.
33:21
This is because it comes back to you.
33:22
This comes back to why you need to cut the chicken in half.
33:25
If you can do that, and then you put it in the fridge less than five, we commercially,
33:30
you can get up to nine days.
33:31
Well, so a lot of menu cycles are seven days, you know, Monday to Monday to Monday.
33:38
And so you can show up and say, I would like, and they're like, oh, yes, we've got one
33:42
of those available, and this one made, it's one made days earlier.
33:47
But at home, the reality is people are always opening the fridge and things like that.
33:51
So typically, 48 hours should not be a problem on anything, but if you do it well, you should
33:57
be able to get three, four days on most products at home.
34:00
This brings us to the other question in terms of cutting things up so that they cool through
34:04
quickly enough that you're not breeding bacteria on sort of the inside between the cold outside
34:10
and the hot interior rice and fried rice.
34:13
It's something of a tradition, at least in New York, I'm not sure if it's everywhere in America,
34:17
that people might go for a Chinese feed on the day after Christmas.
34:20
A lot of Jews or people who don't celebrate Christmas will go up for Chinese food on Christmas day
34:25
itself. You get home, you've got your hot fried rice and you take away a container,
34:30
and maybe if it's America, one of those white cardboard rectangles or if it's a little
34:35
wire on top, I know them, yeah.
34:37
You're a Europe, it might be a plastic container, you shove it in the fridge, you're good to go.
34:43
Not quite. Gary says no.
34:44
No, Gary's, yeah, computer says no.
34:49
Well, the computer says maybe.
34:52
Rice is...
34:52
You've been very adamant in the past about this.
34:54
I'm not going to kill my children, but through my poor rice storage habit, how much?
34:59
Depends on the container.
35:00
Okay.
35:00
All right, and the Americans have a disadvantage here.
35:04
So, rice is really dangerous because it's one, the bug that grows in rice,
35:09
a bug called bacillus serious, is serious, it's in cereal based.
35:14
It is, it's quite commonly caused upon, because no one thinks rice is bad.
35:20
People think, oh, raw chicken is fridge.
35:21
Yeah, rice is neutral.
35:22
Yeah, it's just basic.
35:23
Rice is the beige of culinary problems.
35:27
Correct.
35:28
The problem is bacillus serious found in soil and rice grows in rice paddies in the mud.
35:34
So, rice is fairly notorious for having this bug in it.
35:37
And if we cook rice and we eat it straight away, not a problem,
35:40
we cook it and we can cool it down quickly, not a problem.
35:44
So, in Australia, rice comes in two types of containers.
35:48
We have the flat rectangular one,
35:50
which is about one inch, two point five centimeters.
35:53
It's a plastic container, yeah.
35:55
So, we have one that meets that one inch, two and a two point five centimeters,
35:59
and then we have the cylindrical one with fried rice in it.
36:03
That is sort of a silo.
36:05
Yeah, it's a silo of rice.
36:06
Yeah.
36:07
And that's the one that is the issue, because if we put that whole container of
36:13
and when we're talking rice, we're talking fried rice, boiled rice,
36:17
but also things like Greek rice pudding falls into this category.
36:21
So, when we do get that container,
36:26
the center of the container is still warm for more than six hours.
36:31
And some of the microorganisms that survive cooking rice
36:35
will start growing and produce the poison, the toxin,
36:39
and stir frying doesn't get rid of that toxin.
36:42
So, even if you thereafter super heat the rice or cook it again,
36:46
because the bacteria have already produced the toxin,
36:50
even if you kill the bacteria, you'll still get sick.
36:52
And what does that look like?
36:54
Is that the runs, or is that vomiting, or...
36:57
I'm very, very patient, it's deadly.
36:59
Really?
37:00
Rice can kill you.
37:01
Yeah, to have...
37:01
I'm skeptical about this, because everyone I know, including me,
37:05
will get the leftover rice.
37:06
You've had food poisoning far more than you realize.
37:12
I didn't die.
37:13
Now, well, some people do, particularly older people.
37:17
Right.
37:17
Very young kids, but mainly older people.
37:21
So, we've had debts in Sydney from rice.
37:24
Okay.
37:24
We're things like where it's been left out in a restaurant overnight.
37:27
Some things like that.
37:29
Now, a very similar question.
37:30
Morgan is watching us on Substack and says,
37:32
do I really have to wait for food to entirely cool
37:35
after cooking it before putting it in the fridge or freezer?
37:37
You should leave it out for half an hour.
37:39
Okay.
37:40
Why?
37:41
Well, too.
37:41
Isn't that going to cool down quicker if I just put it straight in?
37:44
Well, you're probably...
37:45
What you should...
37:46
First thing you should do is break it up.
37:48
So, you should break that chicken in half.
37:50
You should decant the soup.
37:52
Pizza is going to be fine, because it's already flat.
37:54
Right.
37:55
But if you've got the soup, you decant it.
37:56
You put it into some chicken.
37:58
A whole piece of pork or whatever.
38:00
So, that old 1 inch, 2.5 centimeters.
38:03
So, it shouldn't be more than 1 inch there?
38:04
Yeah.
38:05
What you don't want to put is put a whole lot of hot food into your fridge.
38:08
What's only to do is raise the whole temperature for your fridge.
38:11
Right.
38:11
And also, if it's more than 1 inch thick,
38:14
like imagine you've bought some chopped up Chinese duck
38:18
or some roast duck or roast chicken,
38:19
crispy skin chicken or something like that.
38:21
And it's more than 1 inch deep and you put it in.
38:23
No, you might as well not chop it up.
38:26
You've got to stack the containers flat.
38:28
Right.
38:28
You've got to pull it apart so each bit is not
38:31
insulating the other bit.
38:33
Correct.
38:33
A heap of warm bed of bacteria.
38:36
So, what you've got to do in these
38:39
is you've got to make sure it cools down properly.
38:42
If you remember, we're speaking about temperatures.
38:45
And we said the magical temperature to cook is 75 in Australia.
38:49
However, when you boil,
38:50
we take it all the way up to 100.
38:52
Now, bugs don't start growing to 60,
38:55
if that makes sense,
38:56
which is why you know the hot dog machines,
38:59
the bean maries in buffets,
39:01
the pie warmers in petrol stations in Australia.
39:04
All of those are above 60 degrees.
39:06
Okay.
39:06
So, what you should do is you've got about half an hour
39:09
before it gets from cooking temperature down to 60.
39:13
And you don't want to put all that heat in your fridge
39:15
because you don't need to cool it down.
39:17
All you're doing is putting that heat into your fridge
39:19
and everything in your fridge is heating up.
39:21
Okay.
39:22
And we've said what we don't want in a fridge
39:24
like opening the door is everything to constantly go hot cold cold cold.
39:28
You're not bouncing between three degrees and six degrees and three degrees.
39:31
Or three degrees and 15 degrees.
39:32
You've got to have much chicken and pork on my shower in my fridge
39:36
when it's getting up to 15 degrees, Gary.
39:38
I don't want to waste their turkey after Christmas.
39:40
I've got the whole turkey.
39:41
And I believe people do that.
39:43
Right.
39:43
So, what you want to do is you want to get something
39:48
that it's seated out about 20 minutes half an hour.
39:51
And a good rule of thumb is,
39:52
if you don't have a temperature pro,
39:54
which most people don't, I do,
39:55
but you know, I work in this.
39:58
What most people do is leave it out for 20 minutes half an hour.
40:01
It shouldn't still be steaming.
40:02
Right.
40:03
So, if the food is still steaming,
40:05
it's too hot to go in the fridge.
40:07
Or you're sitting in a sauna.
40:08
So, don't sit down in a sauna.
40:10
A good rule of thumb is,
40:11
it should put it into smaller containers.
40:14
Shouldn't be steaming when you put it in the fridge.
40:16
Yeah.
40:17
And then there are on Christmas Day in America,
40:20
one of the things that they love the most or someone
40:22
thanks giving are all the side dishes that they have.
40:24
We do that less here, but it's very popular in the States.
40:27
So, you know, I've got a casserole dish.
40:29
I've got my green bean casserole.
40:31
Yeah.
40:31
And it's, you know, several inches deep.
40:34
And I've got the layers the way that I want them,
40:36
or I've got my mashed sweet potato
40:39
with marshmallow on top.
40:40
Do you use an American expression?
40:42
Too bad so sad.
40:43
You're right.
40:44
So, I have to smear it out before I cool it.
40:46
Or cut it into portions.
40:48
Cut it into one inch wide portions.
40:50
Yeah, unfortunately.
40:51
No one does this.
40:52
You're right.
40:53
Well, that's why America has a higher rate of food poisoning than we do.
40:57
Okay, Nessia has a question on substack.
40:59
So, one of the traditions I should preface this for American viewers
41:02
and listeners, which is that one of the traditions in Australia
41:05
is that we will, if as an alternative to doing some kind of hot thing
41:09
like a ham or a turkey on Christmas Day,
41:11
because it's the middle of summer here,
41:13
a lot of Australians will do seed food, right?
41:14
Yeah.
41:15
This summer, I'll be doing a side of salmon.
41:17
I'll be doing a mango avocado and prawn salad.
41:21
We'll be doing some fresh prawns.
41:22
I'll be shucking some oysters.
41:24
That'll be the seed food.
41:25
That'll be the smoked salmon is quite common down here.
41:28
Gravelax is not unknown.
41:30
Nessia says, if I buy seafood, including oysters on Christmas Eve morning,
41:34
can I cook it on Boxing Day,
41:36
which is what we call day after Christmas?
41:37
So, two days later, if it's been refrigerated.
41:39
Again, should be no problem at all.
41:41
Okay, great.
41:42
And Andre says cheese is made for aging.
41:44
So, how accurate is a use by date on cheese?
41:48
You won't find use by dates on a lot of age cheese.
41:52
They'll be best before.
41:54
So, things the obvious ones, parmesan, cheddar, the hard cheeses,
41:58
they were carried best before.
42:00
Right.
42:00
And in fact, some of those, you know,
42:02
some of the parmesan's won't even carry that,
42:04
because they live forever.
42:06
Where you will find a use by date is ricotta,
42:13
Nessia cell, Philadelphia.
42:15
You know, the really soft creamy cheeses,
42:19
Bri and Camden, they are sometimes the really soft cheeses
42:23
that the ones are carried use by date.
42:25
The other interesting thing that I've learned from you about cheeses is
42:28
if you have a hard cheese and it's got mould on it,
42:31
no problem, cut the bit of mould off and you're good to go.
42:34
If you have a soft cheese like ricotta or filly,
42:36
and it's a bit of mould on it,
42:38
you can't just scrape the mould off.
42:40
No, fill it off your cream cheese and then eat the rest.
42:43
No, and this also applies to tomato paste and jam,
42:48
or preserves, if we're jelly.
42:50
Jelly, if we're talking to the Americans.
42:53
So the analogy we use here is the Portuguese man of war's blue bottle.
42:58
There must be an emery.
42:59
Imagine a jelly, a poisonous jellyfish that has long tendrils.
43:03
Long tendicles, almost invisible tendicles.
43:05
Common on Sydney beaches in summer.
43:07
One of the joys of a beach in Christmas day.
43:10
We do beaches on Christmas day here.
43:12
One of the joys on Christmas day is ready
43:14
across a jellyfish, you're getting stung.
43:16
So if you can imagine moulds are a bit like this.
43:20
So when you see a mould, you see a bit sitting on the top,
43:23
the furry bit.
43:24
And that's like the top of the jellyfish that you can see in the water.
43:27
Underneath in a mould are all the roots,
43:30
literally the roots of the mould.
43:32
And it's like the jellyfish,
43:35
it's the roots of the mould to produce the peasants in food.
43:40
Oh, so you may not be better off eating a piece of mould,
43:43
a piece of visible mould than I would eating the bit that's underneath them?
43:47
Correct, the bit of mould up the top's not going to cause you a problem.
43:51
Is that right?
43:51
If you inhale it into your lungs, yes.
43:53
Right.
43:54
Before you open my nose.
43:55
If you ate the mould just on the top,
43:56
and you ate scrape the top of the mould off an 18,
43:59
it's actually the mould that's underneath that's going to cause some of them.
44:02
Might be invisible.
44:03
Yeah, it almost certainly would be invisible.
44:05
Right.
44:06
And so in a really hard product,
44:08
like parmesan cheese or cheddar cheese,
44:11
you can cut the bit off and just cut a bit underneath
44:13
because the hardness will stop the roots going down.
44:16
Okay.
44:16
The reverse is going to be jelly,
44:20
tomato paste, cream cheese,
44:24
where the roots, because it's soft,
44:25
can penetrate the whole way through.
44:27
The whole container is going to be poisonous potentially.
44:29
Right, so it's right out.
44:30
You've got something soft that has mould on it.
44:32
And in the middle is sliced bread,
44:35
because sliced bread is in the Goldilocks zone between hard and soft.
44:39
Yeah, right.
44:39
And so with sliced bread,
44:40
you should throw away the bits of the mouldy
44:42
and throw away the next couple of slices.
44:44
Okay.
44:45
And you probably rest right to eat the rest of the loaf.
44:47
What is mould?
44:48
What is it?
44:49
It's not a...
44:51
Moulds...
44:52
Mould is different from bacteria and viruses
44:55
are plant different from animals.
44:57
Moulds are a whole...
44:59
Is it a fungus?
45:00
Is it a...
45:00
Fungus?
45:01
It's a mycelium.
45:02
Yeah, like it's in that family.
45:04
Moulds and yeast are fungi,
45:07
along with mushrooms.
45:09
So totally different category of life
45:10
from vegetables and animals, okay.
45:12
And just...
45:13
So we have plant animals, fungi, bacteria, viruses,
45:20
are all totally different from each other.
45:22
Right.
45:22
And if I think about mushrooms in a forest
45:26
and if you had like a kind of infrared snapshot
45:29
of what they're doing under the surface,
45:31
they would have all of these jellyfish-like tendrils
45:33
that are connecting them like a root system.
45:36
Yeah.
45:36
And if what you're saying is similar in a mould.
45:39
Yes, yeah, okay.
45:40
On the substack, Andrew says that in my experience,
45:43
the expiry date on milk in Australia
45:46
is slightly conservative.
45:47
In the UK, it's very short and very conservative
45:49
and the milk seems fine for a long time afterwards.
45:52
And in the USA, the date seems disturbingly
45:54
long way into the future.
45:56
To what extent is this a difference in the product
45:57
and to what extent is this a difference in the framework
45:59
for deciding what date to publish?
46:01
There's really no difference in the all in the product.
46:04
Okay.
46:05
And it's pretty much all pasture-ized the same.
46:07
Yeah, they all use the same temperatures.
46:09
They've offered the same codes of practice.
46:11
Okay.
46:11
UHT is slightly different.
46:13
You know, the longer stuff.
46:15
But when we're talking just buckles of milk
46:17
or, you know, pasture-ized milk,
46:19
no, it's all pretty much the same product.
46:21
In Australia, again, the same ones are used by
46:24
they're a bit conservative on best-before-date
46:27
because they know consumers think,
46:30
oh yeah, they're just today, I'll eat it tomorrow.
46:33
Sort of thing.
46:33
But also, milk is one of those things where,
46:35
I mean, nobody needs a use-by-date on milk.
46:37
It's obvious, right?
46:38
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.
46:40
But you're not going to get sick
46:41
from drinking milk that tastes fine.
46:43
And you're going to get sick.
46:45
I mean, you're gag from it,
46:47
before you'll get sick from it, right?
46:48
I'm eating your curds and way.
46:50
Curds and way is off-milk.
46:53
He's off-milk.
46:54
You can eat or drink off-milk.
46:57
And yogurt is just well controlled wrong with milk.
47:00
The control is the thing, isn't it?
47:02
Yeah, I couldn't eat.
47:04
Because when I come back from holidays and realize
47:07
that I accidentally left a...
47:08
You've gone with fridgin'.
47:09
You can't eat milk and a fridgin'.
47:10
Yeah, you can put curds and way.
47:12
You can't eat that.
47:13
Yeah, it can.
47:13
Stinks.
47:15
That's the difference between best-before-and-use-by.
47:18
It stinks, but if you block your nose...
47:19
Really, it wouldn't make me sick.
47:20
It wouldn't make you sick.
47:21
Oh, milk wouldn't make me sick.
47:22
No, wouldn't.
47:23
When wouldn't make me sick?
47:25
Like, how often would milk have to get
47:27
before it made me sick?
47:28
The bugs that grow in milk
47:31
and curdle it to form curds and way
47:34
produce a term known as competitive microflora,
47:38
which means they grow so rapidly
47:40
and drop the acidity level,
47:42
which causes the milk to coagulate
47:44
and form curds and way,
47:45
that the food poisoning bacteria can't grow.
47:47
And they're not harmful to people.
47:49
No, it won't give me the runs.
47:50
No, really?
47:52
Psychologically, it might give you the runs,
47:54
but from a food safety perspective, a one.
47:57
Amazing.
47:58
On the sub-stack, another question from a viewer,
48:01
Casper says,
48:02
My partner is reading a lot about nutrition for our children.
48:04
She's read a book that has convinced her
48:06
that soy-based products like tofu
48:08
are harmful for our daughter,
48:10
specifically due to trips in
48:12
or other enzyme inhibitors,
48:14
exposure to glyphosate from round-up
48:16
ready GMO varieties of soybean,
48:18
and ferric acid levels that impact mineral absorption.
48:23
My biggest concern, though I plead ignorance
48:24
on this particular point is around plant estrogens
48:27
in soybean, impacting endocrine systems.
48:29
As I've heard that it can cause
48:30
insitility later in life,
48:31
any advice on how to talk this through with my lovely partner?
48:38
Don't have an entirely soybean diet with being my
48:41
have a variety of foods.
48:44
One of the good things about having a,
48:45
and I'm not a dietitian, I'm not a nutritionist,
48:48
but no, I did it as part of my degree.
48:50
One of the reasons they say you should eat a bit of everything
48:54
is foods counter each other out.
48:56
So there are some foods that have good effects
48:59
to counter out some of the bad effects.
49:01
So to talk about everything that listeners done
49:05
would be an entire podcast on its own
49:07
because each of them's an individual problem.
49:12
But would it be fair to say that most of the information online
49:16
about the hazards of soy-based products is woo-woo?
49:21
It's not woo-woo, but it's way over the top.
49:25
I mean, we could go and find the same problems
49:28
on dairy or beef or any on vegan diets, you know.
49:33
But eating tofu a few times a week,
49:35
he's not going to be a problem at all.
49:37
Not going to be a problem at all.
49:37
In fact, eating tofu a few times a week
49:40
is probably better for you than eating a lot of other foods.
49:43
And if you were going to get the protein from meat,
49:45
yeah, there would be less saturated fat in the tofu.
49:47
Tofu is a really excellent source of protein.
49:50
If particularly if you're going down a vegetarian path,
49:53
it's a, Edward, it's really versatile.
49:56
You can use it.
49:57
What about all this stuff about GMOs?
49:58
People hear about here GMOs
50:00
and they're like, oh, I don't want to eat franken foods.
50:04
There were two, I suppose I was partly as get used to it.
50:07
There's a lot more of it out there than you think there is.
50:12
Especially in America.
50:13
In America, it's put, you know, canola, maze,
50:18
both genetically modified,
50:23
which means in America where maze is the predominant starch.
50:27
So things like corn flour, hydrolyzed corn starch,
50:31
the major form of sugar in America is coming from GMO.
50:34
Right.
50:35
Most of the oil crops over there are GMO.
50:38
Australia, that's not quite the case.
50:40
We don't have as much.
50:42
When we're talking GMO and people are worried about it,
50:46
there aren't many crops here.
50:49
There are a few.
50:50
Cotton seed oil comes from genetically modified cotton here.
50:54
One of the things that is going to happen is,
50:58
if you like, these people think I would take a gene out here
51:01
and I'll put it to matter in the fish and things that will
51:04
vice versa, things like that.
51:06
There is a lot of manipulation of genes done quite regularly
51:12
to enhance things.
51:15
For example, citric acid has been made now for nearly 100 years
51:19
by a bacteria that produces citric acid.
51:24
There's lots of micro, particularly microorganisms
51:28
where they've taken a gene and stuck it in a bacteria
51:31
and that big bacteria produces that something.
51:34
Now, this is the main thing in vaccines.
51:38
We got you and I got onto that subject.
51:40
Most vaccines are made this way.
51:43
Vaccines in the old days you'd need to have to kill a cow
51:46
to get the thing out or a horse to get things out.
51:49
Most vaccines aren't made that way these days.
51:51
Most vaccine, you take the bit you want,
51:54
you drop it into a microorganism, usually a bacteria,
51:58
sometimes a yeast or a mold, and you produce vats of it
52:03
and you extract it out that way.
52:06
Huge amount of pharmaceuticals are made using GMO.
52:10
But just to get to the punch line,
52:13
this is not something that we should be concerned about.
52:15
I'm not concerned about it.
52:18
There's no scientific data that suggests we should be
52:21
that it's deleterious to our health.
52:23
Correct.
52:24
In Australia, all fruits and vegetables are allowed to be
52:29
radiated, which falls into the same category as GMO.
52:34
GMO? Why does that fall into the same category?
52:35
Only because people say I was radiation,
52:37
so it falls into the same category.
52:39
The tomato gene spliced into the fish is different
52:43
from people understand that radiation has its downsides,
52:46
but it freaks them out less than hearing that
52:50
Monsanto has created a round-up ready type of thing
52:53
and they've created and don't care about people's wellness
52:55
and it's going to turn us all into 5G zombies
52:59
or something because we're eating DNA that just does not belong
53:03
in that place.
53:05
That is misguided nonsense, isn't it?
53:08
Genetically modified in the sense of gene splicing
53:11
different.
53:12
It's been around now since just after the Second World War.
53:16
Just not doing it in a lab but doing it with the plant itself.
53:19
Yeah, in the field with the plant itself.
53:21
It's been around for 60 or 70 years now
53:24
and we haven't seen a huge rise in mutations
53:27
and genetic deformities.
53:30
And even new GMOs have been around for 20 or 30 years
53:33
in terms of doing it in the lab and all this stuff.
53:36
What we're going to see in the next few years
53:39
is we're going to see some very, very targeted GMOs
53:44
where they go to extract things that will produce vitamins
53:47
and minerals and amino acids, a lot of nutrients
53:50
and they're also going to find obscure plants and animals
53:54
that have got something we really want
53:57
and then genetically modify them so they produce huge amounts of that.
54:02
If you're just joining us on the sub-stack app,
54:03
you can still ask a question.
54:04
We have a few minutes left with Gary Kennedy
54:06
who's a food scientist, who's telling us
54:08
what everything you need to know
54:10
about not killing your family by accident this holiday season.
54:14
If you are listening to the podcast
54:16
and then you can just download the sub-stack app into your email
54:19
and start subscribing,
54:20
you'll get all kinds of bonus content
54:22
even if you're on the free tier.
54:25
We'll be doing a lot more of this in 2025.
54:27
On sub-stack, Aaron says,
54:28
are seed oils as harmful as Joe Rogan suggests.
54:32
And Jeremy says, is Joe Rogan as harmful as seed oils,
54:35
suggest?
54:36
I haven't heard what Joe Rogan said about seed oils.
54:40
I think he's being used as a proxy here
54:42
for a certain kind of Silicon Valley style
54:45
tech-bro health, wellness, Andrew,
54:47
Hugh Berman, Peter Rittier,
54:48
seed oils are terrible for you
54:50
so find your oils somewhere else.
54:53
When you think about oils,
54:54
they basically fall into three categories.
54:57
You've got your animal oils, saturated fats,
55:01
lard and dripping.
55:03
I fall into that category.
55:06
Then you've got your hard plant oils,
55:10
coconut, avocado, palm oil,
55:13
fall into that group,
55:15
and pretty much everything else is seed oil.
55:18
So you can only your sunflower,
55:21
your safflower,
55:23
peanut, which technically is not a seed,
55:26
but it is all almonds, macadamia,
55:30
all of those sesame oil seeds.
55:34
The vast majority of oils sold in this country,
55:37
even cotton seed oil seed oils.
55:39
Right.
55:40
And most of the fried food we get would be fried in seed oils.
55:45
Virtually everything.
55:46
Any seed oils because they've got let saturation,
55:50
they're more polyunsaturated,
55:51
they're more mono unsaturated.
55:54
So they're liquid saturation,
55:56
what they're called saturated fat makes the fat go hard.
55:59
So palm oil, coconut oil, lard, saturated fats?
56:03
Well, when I can buy a bottle of coconut oil,
56:06
yeah, or is that mixed with something to keep the liquid?
56:09
It's mixed with something to keep the liquid.
56:11
And when I buy generic vegetable oil,
56:13
or when there's a big container of cheap vegetable oil,
56:16
what is that?
56:17
It's whatever's cheapest at the time.
56:19
But it's probably seeds.
56:20
Oh, almost definitely seeds.
56:22
Yeah, a squeezed oil out of an eggplant.
56:24
No, okay.
56:25
No, we're telling you to explain.
56:26
One of the things you can see there,
56:27
you know, you know the price.
56:29
You know, you want to go buy macadamia oil or sesame oil.
56:32
It's far more expensive.
56:33
So vegetable is going to be the cheapest one.
56:36
In Australia, it's often cotton seed oil,
56:38
which is a byproduct of the cotton industry.
56:41
Okay.
56:42
And so have you heard about this sort of chatter
56:45
about seed oils supposedly being bad?
56:48
No, why?
56:49
No, but you're not aware of any reason why you would prefer a saturated oil,
56:54
a saturated fat oil.
56:55
Well, in fact, saturated fat is actually bad for you.
56:57
Yeah, that's what I thought.
56:58
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
56:59
But I mean, if you had a choice of using either, you know,
57:02
sunflower oil or canola oil or something,
57:05
or avocado or macadamia,
57:07
most people can't tell the difference.
57:09
You know, I had...
57:10
There's no biological difference in terms of your health.
57:12
Um, well, you're not a dietitian,
57:14
but in terms of...
57:15
No, most of those oils with, you know, the cheaper ones,
57:19
canola, safflower, sunflower, blended vegetable,
57:22
cotton seed, um, maize oil,
57:25
which is more common in America.
57:27
It's quite rare in Australia.
57:29
Those are all pretty much of a matchness.
57:31
Okay.
57:31
Uh, Alex asks on sub-stack,
57:34
why so many foods wrongly designated as fruits or berries?
57:37
I've done some research and recently found out
57:38
that strawberries and raspberries aren't berries,
57:40
but pumpkins and chilies are berries.
57:42
What's up with that?
57:43
Uh, it...
57:46
There's two schools of thought here.
57:49
There's biology versus general usage.
57:52
And so general usage takes over.
57:54
Anything with the seed in it,
57:56
the fleshy part of a plant containing the seeds,
58:00
is a fruit.
58:01
So pumpkin,
58:02
capsicum, pepper for the Americans.
58:05
Um, a bell pepper or a bell pepper.
58:08
Um, jalapeno.
58:10
He's a fruit.
58:12
They're fruits.
58:13
Unstricted speaking.
58:15
I'm just trying to think what are the other ones?
58:16
A cucumber?
58:18
He's a fruit.
58:19
Whereas, um,
58:21
if it doesn't contain the seeds,
58:23
it's a vegetable.
58:24
So rhubarb, pineapple,
58:26
are both vegetables.
58:28
I see.
58:28
Okay.
58:28
So,
58:29
and then within that, there's berries and grasses
58:33
and it...
58:34
and different people
58:36
classify them differently.
58:37
So who cares?
58:38
I mean, Alex is worried about the strawberries and the raspberries,
58:41
but it's got berry in the name.
58:42
Yeah.
58:42
Column berries.
58:44
You know where to find them in the supermarket
58:45
under the berry berries.
58:47
Peanut and coconut aren't nuts.
58:49
Right.
58:50
Right.
58:51
Peanuts are legume, coconut's a seed.
58:53
I mean, there's a thing between biologically,
58:58
what they are.
58:58
And even within, you know,
59:00
the fruit, vegetables, legumes, fungi,
59:03
you know, mushrooms of fungi,
59:05
it's not actually a vegetable,
59:07
but it's called,
59:07
but it's really confusing.
59:10
And so I just prefer to say,
59:12
well, whatever you think it is is correct.
59:15
Last question from Substak.
59:17
This is a topical one.
59:18
Jess says,
59:18
what can Gary tell us about the recent instances of alcohol poisoning
59:22
in Laos and Fiji?
59:23
And how can it be avoided?
59:24
If you haven't followed these stories,
59:26
there have been a couple of instances in recent weeks
59:28
of Australian tourists dying from,
59:32
or I'm not sure about the Fiji case,
59:34
if they died.
59:34
They certainly got sick,
59:36
really sick and hospitalized from alcohol.
59:39
In Laos, it turned out to be...
59:40
Methanol rude alcohol.
59:42
In Fiji, we don't quite know,
59:44
because the authorities said that it was...
59:46
that these were pre-packaged alcoholic beverages
59:48
that people were drinking at a five-star resort bar.
59:52
What do we know?
59:54
In the Laos case,
59:55
where an American did die?
59:57
So it possibly did make the news in America,
59:59
and there was a British, well,
1:00:00
died, and two days.
1:00:03
Six feet...
1:00:04
Methanol is an alcohol,
1:00:07
like ethanol is an alcohol.
1:00:11
Your problem with Methanol is...
1:00:13
your body really metabolizes it badly.
1:00:16
You do find Methanol.
1:00:19
One of the reasons you get a splitting headache
1:00:22
when you drink wine the next morning is...
1:00:25
a wine does have a small amount of ethanol in it.
1:00:29
It's part of a natural fermentation.
1:00:31
When you ferment,
1:00:32
you're just breaking up all the chemicals
1:00:33
and making lots of nice flavors and aromas.
1:00:36
You also produce a lot of ethanol.
1:00:39
You produce a small amount of Methanol,
1:00:41
and so a really cheap and nasty wine
1:00:43
will have a higher Methanol content,
1:00:45
which is why you wake up in the morning
1:00:46
with a whopping great hangover
1:00:48
and a scrubbing headache.
1:00:50
It's the Methanol content.
1:00:52
What's happened in a Methanol's cheap?
1:00:55
It's an industrial product.
1:00:57
And so if you're...
1:00:58
Is that in methylated spirits?
1:01:00
Yes, it is.
1:01:01
With a cheap drunk might drink methylated spirit.
1:01:04
In fact, it's where the term blind drunk comes from.
1:01:07
Because if you drink Methanol,
1:01:09
it can cause permanent blindness,
1:01:11
and a temporary effect is your vision blurs,
1:01:14
and you can't see long-term effect,
1:01:16
apart from denying,
1:01:17
is a long-term chronic effect is you lose your side.
1:01:20
Where...
1:01:21
Again, where blind drunk comes from.
1:01:23
And they have the same psychological effect of ethanol
1:01:25
in terms of...
1:01:26
Yes, it does.
1:01:26
Seals like you're getting drunk.
1:01:28
Seals like you're getting drunk.
1:01:28
And your problem is like ethanol.
1:01:31
Methanol is colorless, odorless, and tasteless.
1:01:35
So if...
1:01:36
If booze doesn't seem tasteless.
1:01:39
Ah, ethanol does.
1:01:40
If you drink...
1:01:41
If you just drink ethanol,
1:01:42
and I'm not telling anyone,
1:01:43
go drink ethanol.
1:01:44
But if you just drink ethanol on,
1:01:46
it's like water.
1:01:47
Really?
1:01:48
Yeah, it has no taste, no odor.
1:01:51
What is the harsh catch in your throat,
1:01:54
like sensation of drinking alcohol,
1:01:57
then, that is so hard for non-alcoholic cocktail manufacturers
1:02:01
to replicate?
1:02:02
There's lots of other stuff in there as well.
1:02:04
You know, you're...
1:02:05
I'll tell you, just put that in there without the alcohol.
1:02:06
Shiawou has been convinced that the alcohol is doing
1:02:09
some flavor.
1:02:11
The alcohol has got a slight burn to it.
1:02:12
Yeah, right.
1:02:13
Is ethanol have a burn to it?
1:02:15
Yeah, they both do.
1:02:16
So it's not water.
1:02:17
No, it's burning water.
1:02:19
It's burning water.
1:02:20
Okay, but it will still not have a huge taste.
1:02:23
Right.
1:02:23
And it really has no odor and it has no color.
1:02:26
So if you adulterate and put cheap industrial methanol
1:02:30
into expensive, you know, absolute vodka or Johnny Walker,
1:02:34
you know, and pretend it's that,
1:02:36
people won't be able to pick up.
1:02:38
I see.
1:02:38
They won't taste it.
1:02:39
It'll just have the same burn.
1:02:40
Particularly in clear spirits.
1:02:42
You know, it seems like gin and vodka.
1:02:44
And this is what was happening in Laos.
1:02:46
And that's what's happened in Laos.
1:02:47
Right.
1:02:48
They have adulterated.
1:02:50
They put ethanol in.
1:02:52
And presumably unwittingly,
1:02:53
they just made alcohol.
1:02:55
They made booze in a bathtub
1:02:56
and didn't get the recipe right.
1:02:58
Well, I'm sure we'll hear about it.
1:03:00
Well, supposedly, there's a factory
1:03:02
where it's all come from.
1:03:04
One factory.
1:03:04
And it...
1:03:05
Look, it's not unknown if it's been done deliberately.
1:03:08
Really?
1:03:09
Yeah.
1:03:09
Yeah, because it's cheap.
1:03:11
Right.
1:03:11
And they think they can get away with...
1:03:12
It's food fraud.
1:03:13
Yeah, right.
1:03:14
Food fraud.
1:03:16
I'm not even going to get into seafood fraud
1:03:18
because that'll be a whole other thing.
1:03:19
Oh, yeah.
1:03:20
Fish being labeled as things that they're not...
1:03:22
Olive oil, red wine,
1:03:23
pumice and cheese are all part of food fraud.
1:03:26
Which I heard a claim about hangovers
1:03:30
with regards to methanol and ethanol,
1:03:33
which is that the reason why a hair of the dog works,
1:03:35
having an alcoholic drink in the morning after
1:03:39
that people say that gets really headache,
1:03:42
is because your body processes ethanol
1:03:45
before methanol and that the hangover
1:03:48
is your body processing the methanol.
1:03:50
If you top it up with more ethanol,
1:03:52
then it'll start processing the ethanol
1:03:54
and that will take away the headache
1:03:56
until it starts processing the methanol again.
1:03:58
Is that plausible or bullshit?
1:04:00
Uh, it's plausible.
1:04:02
Your other thing is you're diluting the methanol
1:04:04
in the ethanol.
1:04:06
So...
1:04:07
You're adding more methanol.
1:04:09
You're adding more ethanol.
1:04:10
You're diluting the methanol.
1:04:11
So the methanol is taking longer to go.
1:04:13
But you're not noticing the cushion prone.
1:04:15
There's a...
1:04:16
And you're drunk again.
1:04:16
So you're not...
1:04:18
So you're not...
1:04:18
So you're not stating?
1:04:19
Yeah, you're not noticing that you're fabulous.
1:04:21
Gary, it's great to see you again.
1:04:23
I guess we should just wrap by what are you having for
1:04:26
Christmas feast?
1:04:27
Do you have any advice or final words of thought
1:04:30
for people all over the world?
1:04:31
I'll be doing Australian family Christmas
1:04:33
with 18 people.
1:04:35
And we will be having ham, turkey, and prawns.
1:04:38
All of the classic ones.
1:04:40
Fabulous.
1:04:41
My fun of thought.
1:04:42
In fact, I say one thing.
1:04:43
Yes.
1:04:43
And the thing I say,
1:04:44
if you don't think the food is okay,
1:04:47
don't eat it.
1:04:49
This might be the easiest thing.
1:04:50
If you've got any doubt, just don't eat it.
1:04:52
Okay.
1:04:52
Fabulous.
1:04:53
Gary Kennedy.
1:04:54
Thank you so much.
1:04:55
No problem.
1:04:55
Maybe time, Josh.
1:04:56
Thanks for tuning in on Substack.
1:04:58
Great to have you on Substack Live.
1:05:00
If you're listening,
1:05:01
we're back with a regular podcast.
1:05:03
Later on, I'll see you next time.