Superbowl Sunday

So I am going over to supergoober's place to watch the game, and frankly, I am more excited about last night's UFC than I am about today's game. BTW, I don't know the results from the fights, but that is neither here nor there.

I am looking forward to hanging out with a couple of friends and BS-ing for a little bit. Frankly, I don't know what more to write about, but I wanted to just start writing something, and I don't know what.

Oh yeah, just thought of something. McDonald's is going to eliminate ammonium hydroxide from its meat processing. It apparently uses the caustic chemical to kill pathogens and make food that would otherwise only be useful in dog and cat food available for consumption by people (this is according to the newscast I heard on KCBS this morning).

The broadcast continued to state that the chemical is used in cleaning products and homemade explosives (as if this shows how dangerous and bad it is for people). The broadcast concluded that since it is used in a step in a process and is removed, it is often not listed as an ingredient, so people trying to eat well don't know that it is being used.

First, the stupid "news piece" is laden with bias. I don't know a ton about the process, but basically, a step is grinding up beef trimmings and treating them with ammonium hydroxide to kill e. coli. There have been no links to hazards from ingesting the beef treated this way (from the chemical, anyway). The real risk, and the one the FDA is beginning to be concerned with is that there are a number of e. coli outbreaks that are potentially linked to this. This is because the e. coli is not killed, not because the chemical caused it. It may be grounds for stopping this process because the process is ineffective, not because the chemical is dangerous.

I can list a chemical that huge numbers of people consume on a regular basis that has similar qualities and has, in fact, been know to cause deaths of consumers who indulge in the products in which it is used. In fact, some less scrupulous manufacturers will add more of this substance to a product just to increase the potency of there products, while others go through a variety of physical and chemical processes to have this included in their product.

It is also used as a base for many cleaning agents, has know carcinogenic qualities, is highly flammable, can be used to make homemade explosives. It is also well know that it is highly toxic to humans and ingesting sufficient quantities will inevitably be lethal.

Of course, I am talking about grain alcohol. All of what I said above is true, and yet there is no movement to ban the stuff. In fact, at my niece's confirmation party yesterday, a friend of my brother was spouting about the "pink slime" that was "ammonium hydroxide additive" all while sipping away at a beer. In fact, the majority of his argument was based on how gross the pink slime looks, and this is a common persuasion tactic used by the people trying to stop the process.

In fact, ammonium hydroxide is not pink - it is a pungent smelling, caustic, whitish, crystalline salt. The pink slime is the munged up ankle meat and tendon and blood of a cow that is mixed with ammonium hydroxide. It is not pretty, and it probably does not smell good. But if you look at food preparation in general, this is often the case, even for natural or "organic" food. Try watching (or smelling) the making of "organic" cheese (or even regular cheese). There are times when the cheese looks like puke and smells like sweaty feet and excrement combined. It is not a pleasant process. Same with beer making. Just because a process isn't pretty doesn't make the outcome bad.

I am not trying to defend the process; honestly, I don't know enough about it to say whether it is or is not terrible. I would like a little less scare tactics in a news report, however, and also I would like to not have to put up with idiots at parties.

Actually, the guy was kind of nice, and not really an idiot - he was some sort of an engineer (actually, he said "sort-of, engineering" when I asked him if he was an engineer). But, like most people, he had formed his conclusions and wanted everyone else to see how smart he was, so he talk about how acidic this stuff was, and how acidic that diet soda was - it would eat away unlined aluminum cans so quickly - like 2 weeks - if we did not have organic inner linings on the can. I mentioned to him that the stomach lining regenerates every 3 days, his retort was that this was causing that to happen more quickly. I told him I had been drinking diet sodas for 20 years on a daily basis and did not have a bleeding ulcer yet, so I would continue what I liked (I was quite a bit nicer and more personable than this, actually). I also happened to have mentioned earlier in the conversation that ammonium hydroxide was caustic, not acidic, and his reply was "whatever, I'm not a chemist".

If you are going to spout stuff, please try to get it right. Also, he failed to note that they coated the cans with "organic" compounds - that is carbon containing compounds, not the incorrect "Green" usage of the word. This is because metals are vulnerable to the oxidation-reduction reaction much more so than many organic chemicals. He also said that sodas will make the stomach "way more acidic" - wrong again. Your stomach is a buffered system at around a pH of 3 to 4. Diet coke has a pH of about 3.4. When you eat a large (non-acidic) meal, the pH of your stomach drops close to 1 to break down the food. People who suffer from acid problems in there stomachs are having problems with their own system releasing more acid than there stomach can handle; it is not usually that the food, itself, is too acidic. The other problem is a sphincter issue, where the sphincter at the top of the stomach doesn't close properly and stomach acid splashes up the esophagus (causing "heartburn"). If the acid was as dangerous as they say, your mouth and throat would be burned. Take a mouthful of soda and leave it in your mouth. See how long it takes before your mouth gets "burned" by the acid.

Also - pH is logarithmic, so the acid in your stomach after a heavy meal (let's say 1.4 pH) is 100 times more acidic then the 3.4 of diet coke. So stop getting your panties in a twist, everyone, and don't get your panties in a twist about the phrase "panties in a twist", either.