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Comment by uhtred | Hacker News Reader

I hate this kind of gluttony over meat. No one needs two steaks a day, and just because it is part of some countries culture (although, is it?) doesn't mean it should be glorified. Anyway, it's also ignorant to think all the cows are roaming around free in some grassy bovine nirvana until they get slaughtered.

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Studies (recent and past) have linked red meat consumption to certain cancers. Are Argentina's cancer rates actually any higher than anywhere else or is it basically negligible?

Looks like it's actually lower than most other Western countries:

http://www.wcrf.org/int/cancer-facts-figures/data-cancer-fre...

But I guess red meat is just one of several (many?) things that can affect cancer. For example, it seems that there is an inverse correlation between selenium in the soil and cancer:

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/128/11/1845.full.pdf

uhtred, I hope you expected to be downvoted :o).

My dentist, who also has a phd in chemistry, always tells my about beef. Beef has to rest for a while in the cold storage until it becomes soft and eatable for humans. During this time, which counts as a quality time for the meat, it actually rots. Yes, beef lovers (me included), it rots! - It is called ageing in the ads, as if it were good, red wine. The phd thesis of my dentist was about the number of poisonous substances that build up during the ageing process. He found 200 different poisonous substances! This is most likely the reason why colorectal cancer can be statistically related to beef consumption. Problem is: it only shows after 20-30 years, so there is room for procrastination.

<irony>Enjoy! And ignore the facts. Looking at facts makes life so much less enjoyable.</irony>

The fact is that the decay that occurs during aging does not foul the meat. This sort of distinguishes it from rotten fruit or whatever (unless that fruit happens to be rotted by carefully selected yeast, leading to a good red wine).

So probably no harm looking at the facts.

All this talk of facts, and no source link?

One out of one dentists agree!

No source link. As I have written, my dentist told me. His thesis is published but certainly rots in some archives. If you want to know about the statistical correlation between beef consumption and cancer risk - do yourself a favour and just type some keywords into a search algorithm, please. You will be overwhelmed with results (ignore the ones from south american steak distributors, steak houses and also the ones from vegan activists :o).

You said 'he' and as far as I can tell Dóra is a Hungarian feminine name so I guess it's not this: http://phd.lib.uni-corvinus.hu/597/1/Marta_Dora_den.pdf

"Yes, beef lovers (me included), it rots!"

If you think this is bad, you need to spend a lot more time learning about the incredible diverse array of things that humans ingest without any apparent problem. We eat lots of things that can be characterized as having "rotted": Cheese, beer, wine, which is then double-"rotted" into vinegar, in fact fermentation opens a whole door of its own. Plus with all the recent discoveries about the importance of gut bacteria, arguably half our digestive process could be called "rotting" the food.

Interestingly, in many cases the "rotted" foods are better for us than the raw. Among our many adaptations that allow us to carry around our enormous brains is the fact that we've offloaded non-trivial portions of our digestive systems to exterior systems via cooking and deliberate food treatments like fermentations. Eating carefully "rotted" food is arguably intrinsic to our species now.

If you're going to a good butcher, yes, the outside of the beef does rot. After which the butcher cuts off the rotted bits, leaving behind some fantastic tasting steak.

However, if you buy an aged steak from a supermarket, they'll have done what's known as "wet ageing". Basically they vacuum pack it, and then leave it to sit for 30, 60, 90, or whatever days. During which nothing much happens because oxygen is needed to make the ageing process happen, but it does mean they can sell you a "30 day aged" steak without having to throw away any meat.

> However, if you buy an aged steak from a supermarket, they'll have done what's known as "wet ageing".

If you get a chance, visit a Wegmans. http://catillation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/dry-aging....

I don't want to alarm you, but there's a good chance that food is rotting inside your digestive system right now. Bacteria in the human gut is an all-too-common condition, and can lead to breakdown of food proteins if not treated in time.

Food in your teeth rotting is one of the causes of bad breath.

Bacteria on the back of the tongue. Not so much on the teeth, I'm pretty sure.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/11/extreme-...

Perhaps this is relevant: meat in Argentina isn't aged. You never see it in marketing either... it would seem weird here. Cattle is trucked in to the city (a third of the country is in Buenos Aires), butchered here and sent out to carnicerias (butcher shops) that day. It's a common sight to see refrigerated boxtrucks with cow carcasses hanging in the back double parked outside markets/butchers/etc.

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