think of the food taister next time you think your job sucks : )

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/steak-made-from-human-poop-passes-taste-test


POO'D FOOD: The steaks had a red food coloring added to make them look more like real steaks. (Photo: combust/Flickr)

Steak made from human poop passes taste test
Would you eat a steak made from human sewage? Believe it or not, this concept has already been taste-tested and approved.


If you prefer your steak to be cooked rare, you may want to reconsider that choice after hearing about the latest advancement in food technology to come out of Japan: an edible steak made from human feces, reports Discovery News. (Update: Discovery News is now unsure if the story is real and wondering if they were duped. It reminds us of this "Yes Men" poop burger hoax.)

Take a moment to let that gag reflex subside. Now consider this: it's already been taste-tested, approved, and could eventually become a practical solution to sewage treatment. Someday "bowel burgers" may even provide an easy source of protein for the hungry.

The steaks were first envisioned by Japanese researcher Mitsuyuki Ikeda after he was approached by Tokyo Sewage to come up with a solution for the city's overabundance of sewage mud. Although "eating it" probably wouldn't have occurred to most people, Ikeda recognized that the mud was chock full with protein-rich bacteria.

After isolating those proteins in the lab, Ikeda's team then combined them with a reaction enhancer and put them in an exploder. What eventually came out was no filet mignon, but it was edible.

"Theoretically, there's nothing wrong with this," said Douglas Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University. "It could be quite safe to eat, but I'm sure there's a yuck factor there."

To make swallowing the stool steaks a little bit easier, a nutty flavor was added using soy protein, and red food coloring was mixed in too, apparently to make the concoction look more like a juicy, bloody steak. A few brave researchers even took the plunge and taste-tested the product. (Apparently it tastes like regular beef.)

The official composition of the lab-grown steak is 63 percent proteins, 25 percent carbohydrates, 3 percent lipids, and 9 percent minerals. (Which sounds a lot better than 100 percent poop). According to Powell, the idea isn't really all that much different than eating plants that have been fertilized with manure or other excrement.

The idea could even help to solve the world food crisis. By comparison, researchers have also proposed harvesting insect protein (i.e., "bug burgers") as one possible way to help combat famine worldwide. Are "bowel burgers" really so much worse? They also take the ethic of recycling to its logical extreme.

Powell did offer one caveat to the future poo'd food revolution, though: because the steaks are made from human feces, there's always a chance for contamination. If you're brave enough to eat this, at least make certain that it's properly cooked (as if you were going to eat one raw!).

When asked if he would ever consider eating one of the poop steaks if it wasn't cooked, Powell responded matter-of-factly.

"I wouldn't touch it," he said.

I like medium well

Poop to save the world food crisis... Who they trying to fool?

Sick f@ckers

I bet Obama is going to try and get funding for that right away from Congress!

This cannot be real! The chemical changes in food are too numerous. And there really isn't enough nutrition left to matter.



P.K. Newby, ScD, MPH, MS nutrition scientist and food writer:

"Bottom line: the human body is a wondrous machine, with complex systems designed to extract nutrients from food and, during metabolism, excrete the waste products in the form of both liquids (urine) and solids (feces). The body is not 100% efficient, however (no machine is), so there could be some residual nutrition left in the waste.

That said, whatever small amount of nutrition that remains, which can have utility in some cases—-a likely explanation why certain species do eat their poop, like dogs; why poop from some species provides nutrients for others; etc—-it's not a terribly efficient way of obtaining energy and nutrition for humans. Your body has excreted this waste, and reconsuming it is literally a waste of energy and, further, could be harmful; there's a reason your body is excreting this waste, after all, and no reason to further tax your excretory and digestive systems with remetabolizing it."

I have a feeling that there are some steps being left out in the article.

If you trace things back far enough, _everything_ we eat was once poop, it's just been changed by the cycles of life.

Probably they are just trying to shorten the cycle. Rather than use poop as fertilizer for plants which we eat, they are using it as fertilizer for bacteria which somebody then eats.

I'm might be okay with it as long as there is some serious sterilization happening in between, and rigorous safety testing. Even eating meat from the grocery store brings small amounts of fecal bacteria into your kitchen.

Edit:

I need to read more closely, if the article is right then I was wrong:

"After isolating those proteins in the lab..."

This could imply that they not only separated the bacteria from the rest of the poop, but they actually broken the bacteria completely apart and separated out the non-protein - extracting only the protein, which was then used to synthesize in the next step.

I mean, this is really far removed from being poop. Its a derivative of the protein extract of some of the bacteria in the poop.

great... just how am i supposed to eat my next steak without thinking of this? i can't just unread this mess...

Gives new meaning to...

" it's a huge $hit sandwich,
and we're all gonna have to take a bite."

Did I see a couple of pieces of corn in one of those steaks?

metalwing if memory serves the food process is only a bout 60% efficient. but sill i think i will take a pass on that restaurant

I prefer cow poops psychedelic effects.

Is this going to be the Soylent Green reboot?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IKVj4l5GU4

I watched this clip from Soylent Green and forced myself to hear "poople" in place of "people."

I entertained myself.

Leave it to the Japanese scientists to come up with this. First tofu, now this.

what's wrong with Hide-Glue?

Today, animal glues are sparsely industrialized, but still used for making and restoring objects, paintings, illuminated parchment manuscripts, and other artifacts.[6]
Gelatin, a form of animal glue, is found in many contemporary products, such as gelatin desserts, marshmallows, and pharmaceutical capsules,[15]

and is used to reinforce sinew wrappings, wood, leather, bark, and paper.

This adhesive is mostly used as glue, sizing, or varnish, although it is not as frequently used as other adhesives because it is water-soluble. Other aspects, such as difficulty of storage in a wet state, requirement for fresh raw materials (the animal skin cannot be rotten or grease-burned), make this product more difficult to find and use. Factories now produce other forms of adhesives, as the process for animal glue is complex and tricky to follow.[16] Animal glues will also darken with age and shrink as they dry, giving them the potential to harm wood, paper, or works of art. Too much handling and too many changes in temperature or humidity could cause further harm.[7] Some companies, such as those in Canada, still produce animal, hide and hoof glues from horses, even though the slaughter of horses in the Western world is seen as a negative influence. Recently, animal glue has been replaced by other adhesives and plastics, but remains popular for restoration.WIKI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_glue