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Brew: A woman returns home feeling drained
from a long day of work, so she sits down at
her kitchen table filled with anticipation.
She reaches across the table to a jar.
Its contents swish and turn as she pulls it towards her.
She sticks a fork into the floating blue/grey mass at the
bottom, piercing a chunk and lifting out of the swirling
slough, to deposit the wet, rancid, nugget on her tongue.
A foul, putrid smell radiates through the room.
She takes another slimy covered
cube of rotten meat into her mouth.
The jar was on top of her fridge for the
last half-year, so she expected the taste,
but she never thought it would feel so...
good?
Okay, but why are people eating raw meat
they’ve left out in jars for months at a time?
I… why?
And with that out of the way, let’s get into it!
Raw uncooked putrefied meat, has been lovingly
dubbed “high meat” among the initiated.
TRIGGER WARNING, HERE COMES THE MEAT
As the name suggests, it’s being eaten because
the internet heard it could get them “high”.
Some consumers describe feelings of
euphoria and hallucinations after slurping
down diced chunks of decaying meat.
They also claim that the bacterial growth
is beneficial to their gut microbiomes.
Chill: These people know that yogurt, and tempeh exist, right?
Right!?
Brew: Probably, but there’s more to
this unfortunate fetid flesh fetish.
Just so we can get an idea of what the dangers
of eating raw or rotten meat are, these are
just a few of the many meat borne illnesses that
have plagued humanity for thousands of years.
Grill: Oh goodie, this’ll be fun.
Brew: Oh it will be… Alright, because I care about you two,
let’s throw on some wholesome TV, so we can all heal together.
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After eating an old can of corned beef, a young
man feels a sudden loss of feeling in his face.
His eyelids droop, his breath becomes more
labored, and he can no longer form words.
His stomach cramps, and he cannot stop vomiting, and slowly,
he feels himself losing the ability to feel his hands or feet.
Later in the hospital, he loses all feeling,
and his breathing groans to a complete stop.
That’s Botulism!
You can avoid it by fully cooking or boiling your
food, properly refrigerating any foods that use garlic
or herbs, NEVER EATING ANY FOOD THAT SMELLS OFF.
Sorry folks, just had to make that clear.
A teenage girl, after a day spent enjoying homemade
hamburgers with her family, wakes up in the middle
of the night with a growing urgency in her bowels.
She runs to the bathroom, but to no
avail, her father is already there.
“There’s blood in the toilet”, he shouts in agony, so
she runs upstairs to the other bathroom, but her mother
is trapped inside, either vomiting or simply retching.
Her brother beckons her over to the kitchen
sink, which he is currently bent over in pain.
“I won’t look” he says, as she weighs her options.
That’s E. Coli!
This bacteria dies at temperatures upward of 70 degrees,
so properly washing, prepping, cooking, and refrigerating
your food is the best method of household prevention.
Also, DON’T EAT ANYTHING THAT SMELLS LIKE IT’S GONE BAD.
An older gentleman wakes up one
morning fatigued and nauseated.
He staggers to the bathroom, flicking
on the light which makes his eyes ache.
His eyes staring back at him from the mirror are swollen,
and the rest of his face is so tender he can barely touch it.
He goes to the hospital, barely
holding in his bowels on the way.
An X-ray shows eggs in his cranial cavity.
The doctor tells him that they’re pressing
up against his brain, causing inflammation.
That’s what happens if you eat Trichinella worms from
undercooked pork, which hey, we talked about before here!
Cook all meat to an internal temperature
of 60 degrees, and freeze any pork for a
minimum of three weeks to kill any worms.
Also remember that smoking, curing,
and pickling, do not kill parasites.
Also, DON’T EAT ANY MEAT THAT HAS BACTERIAL GROWTH.
There’s also Listeria, Salmonella, Staphylococcus,
Campylobacter, Shigella, Streptococcus, Anthrax, and that’s
just some of the bad bacteria that can grow on tainted food.
Not to mention the countless more
parasites and fungal growths.
Grill: Practicing proper food safety makes food safer?
Who knew?
Brew: The point is that yes, there are “good”
bacteria, but there are just as many, if not more,
“bad” bacteria that might give you stomach cramps,
some that can just straight up paralyze you.
Methods to make “High Meat” vary significantly,
but recipes— and I use the word “recipes”
loosely— do have some similarities.
One is that they’re all wildly dangerous.
Just to be very, very clear, “High
Meat” is incredibly unsafe to eat.
A Youtuber, who demonstrates making “High Meat”,
starts with an undisclosed meat, cuts it into
little pieces, and then puts it in glass jars.
After that he just… shuts the jars and then leaves them out.
He doesn’t even put it into the fridge.
After an indeterminate period of time, he takes a
jar full of the mixture, to show us the process,
gagging as he opens it because it smells so bad.
Grill: Huh, who knew rotten meat would smell bad.
Learn something new every day!
Brew: Then he just eats a sludgy chunk
of whatever meat he left in there.
Chill: I just can’t understand why anyone would want that.
Brew: These “recipes” have next to no
consideration for basic food safety.
Not only is raw meat difficult to keep clean in the first
place, the only mention of how one avoids illness in
most of these methods is to “buy from a trusted butcher”.
Which does not guarantee safety.
Lots of “High Meat” proponents argue that
fermentation is no different than what they are doing.
That letting a bunch of meat cutlets
decompose in a jar is the same as, say, making
cheese, or baking bread, which is NOT TRUE.
Curating the microbial life we desire in a product like
cheese, pickles, or kimchi, requires very specific conditions
ensuring that it not only tastes good, but also safe to eat.
One of these methods is fermentation, the
process of cellular respiration without oxygen.
It even happens inside our own bodies!
Our cells use oxygen to help convert nutrients like
carbs into energy, but when oxygen is unavailable,
lactic acid is produced as a byproduct of that process.
Chill: Oh yeah!
My yoga teacher told me that Lactic Acid is
what makes your muscles sore after you work out!
Brew: We purposefully ferment food, and what the end product
is depends on the addition of specific bacterial cultures.
There are three basic types of fermentation:
Lactic Acid Fermentation, which uses bacteria like
lactobacillus to convert sugars into lactic acid, resulting in
foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, yogurt, and sourdough.
Ethyl Alcohol Fermentation, which uses yeasts like
Saccharomyces cerevisiae to break down sugars into alcohol
and carbon dioxide, resulting in alcoholic beverages.
Acetic Acid Fermentation, which uses bacteria
like Gluconobacter to convert sugars into acetic
acid, resulting in vinegar instead of alcohol.
It’s the difference between apple
cider and apple cider vinegar.
Fermentation in food production requires
specific conditions that are strictly monitored.
Yogurt is made by first heating up milk to a
temperature of 185°F for 30 minutes to kill off any
“spoilage organisms”, bacteria that turns milk sour.
Then it’s cooled to 108°F, where the “good”
bacteria we want can grow, whereupon adding
lactobacillus will start the fermentation process.
Grill: Yeah I don’t think making
yogurt is just leaving milk somewhere.
Brew: My point exactly.
Grill: Okay this time I got a real question.
What’s the difference between “High Meat” and dry aged steak?
They’re both just leaving some meat somewhere right?
Brew: A dry-aged steak is kept in a dry-aging
room with tight controls on temperature and
humidity to draw moisture out of the meat.
The meat’s natural enzymes break down the connective
tissue making it more tender, but it also creates
an environment hostile to putrefying bacteria.
If the temperature or the humidity is off by a
fraction of a degree, it could throw off the entire
process and you’d end up with a bunch of rotten meat.
Grill: As someone who likes cookin’, I can tell
you that that should be the end of the line.
Brew: Curing is somewhat similar to the dry-aging process,
except that moisture isn’t drawn out of the meat by a
dehumidifier, but by a boatload of dry salt or a salt brine.
Bad bacterial growth is inhibited by salt, quickly making the
meat a hostile environment to microorganisms that spoil meat.
Chill: So wait, is “High Meat” fermented?
Brew: The short answer is no.
The long answer is noooooooo.
The longer answer is fermented meats are made using
specific bacterial cultures after sterilizing the
product beforehand with salt, heat, or chemicals.
Fermentation, dry-aging, and curing, are
all methods of controlled aging, whereas
“High Meat'' is rampant decomposition.
It’s the difference between landing a plane, and crashing.
Many “High Meat” advocates argue that indigenous
cultures have been fermenting food for thousands
of years, and they’re absolutely right.
Casu Marzu—a Sardinian sheep cheese
passed through the guts of live maggots.
Kiviak—Inuit style fermented Little Auk
birds stored in a Seal skin over the winter.
And Century Eggs—Chinese duck eggs pickled in a salt/clay
mix, are all examples of culturally significant aged foods.
The problem is, people aren’t taking the time to understand
the history or the specific methods behind these dishes.
Yes, Casu Marzu is maggot cheese, but the people
making Casu Marzu are Sardinian sheep farmers whose
families have been perfecting it since the fall of Rome.
Curing, drying, and fermenting, came from the
determination and creativity of early humankind
to preserve food and make it last longer.
BECAUSE WE KEPT DYING OF FOOD POISONING BEFORE THAT.
Carefully and respectfully practicing traditional
preservation techniques that have been passed down
from one’s ancestors is not the same as putting
meat in a jar, and invoking someone else’s culture
to argue about its safety is insensitive at best.
And I’m pretty sure we’ve all seen what it is at its worst.
After all is said and done, I’m begging you
please do NOT EAT ROTTEN OR PUTRID MEAT.
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that eating rotten
meat is legitimately and terrifyingly bad for you, ranging
from basic food poisoning to being left paralyzed or dead.
While our gut microbiome does reap benefits from foods high
in beneficial bacteria, putrefying bacteria ISN’T GOOD FOR US.
While it’s likely that eating rotten meat could
give you a euphoric feeling, there’s no guarantee.
Even if one batch feels good, the
next could give you brain worms.
Chill: Maybe you could just stick
to making kimchi at home instead!
Brew: That one was pretty tough, huh boys?