Can Eating the Meat of a Rabid Animal Give You Rabies?

animals, Food
[caption id="attachment_25951" align="alignright" width="480"] Image by Scientific Animations CC BY-SA4.0[/caption] We're told to cook our chicken through to the bone to avoid salmonella. Then too, there is trichinosis. And there are others. However, salmonella and trichinosis pose no problem if, as we mentioned, we cook our food thoroughly. But there are other issues with food that are not so easily solved. For instance, there is the so-called "mad cow disease". You can cook the beef as much as you want and it still is dangerous! Mad cow disease is more officially known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE. Most of Us At least in the U.S., most of us probably get the bulk of our food from three sources: Grocery store Garden Farmer's market A fair number supplement their food…
Read More

Amino Acids and Proteins: Major Components of Meat

Chemistry, Food
[caption id="attachment_23573" align="alignright" width="480"] Image by LifeisGood[/caption] The meat we eat largely consists of proteins, which are made up of amino acids. Proteins may be broken down into amino acids – and, amino acids may be built up into proteins. Consider the basic structure of amino acids and proteins. Amino Acid = Amine + Carboxylic Acid Amino acids contain an amino group, an acid group, and an alkyl group. In an amino group, there is one trivalent nitrogen atom, which is attached to two hydrogen atoms. We write out an amino group as –NH2. An amino acid also contains a carboxylic acid group. It is written –COOH, that is, it contains one tetravalent carbon atom that is double-bonded to an oxygen atom, and also it is single-bonded to one hydroxyl…
Read More