Reports that make us go "duh": Pork doesn't spread swine flu

[Robin Garr]

Consumers can eat pork with no concern for swine flu

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Shoppers should not shy away from pork products over concerns regarding reports of swine flu across the country, said Purdue University experts.

Purdue Extension nutrition specialist Melissa Maulding said the flu virus is not a food-borne pathogen, and there is no risk to the food supply.

"The flu is a virus that is transmitted through interaction with people," she said. "The biggest defense against catching the flu is to wash your hands."

[Jenise]

I will probably be barred from taking pork products into Canada now.

Not that I usually do.

Consumers can eat pork with no concern for swine flu

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Shoppers should not shy away from pork products over concerns regarding reports of swine flu across the country, said Purdue University experts.

Purdue Extension nutrition specialist Melissa Maulding said the flu virus is not a food-borne pathogen, and there is no risk to the food supply.

"The flu is a virus that is transmitted through interaction with people," she said. "The biggest defense against catching the flu is to wash your hands."

Maybe I am ahead of the curve because I have had pork for dinner the past two nights. Tonights was left over from last night with a little tweaking. Last night I took some slices of pork shoulder, prepared some flour with a few twists of black pepper and a generous pinch of ground chile powder, dredged the pork in the flour and browned it in a skillet with a little EVOO, then braised the pork in the mushroom water. I then sauteed the shrooms in EVOO, adding a few sprigs of thyme from my garden,plus a heaping cup of mushroom water, and when that was reduced by half, I added a cup of heavy cream making a sauce. I reduced that by half, added a generous shake of white pepper. poured the sauce over fettuccine and served it with the pork! I opened a 2007 Castle Rock Mendocino pinot noir! quite yum, so had repeats tonight minus the fettuccine and added roasted garlic mashers instead of the pasta. I know, I eat too good!

[David M. Bueker]

Duh, twitter style

We can only hope that this is an over-reaction by the Purdue folks. 'Cuz if this sort of announcement is actually necessary, we're doomed both as a nation and a species.

We can only hope that this is an over-reaction by the Purdue folks. 'Cuz if this sort of announcement is actually necessary, we're doomed both as a nation and a species.

No, this is a worldwide phenomenon. In the Middle East, they've renamed it the "Mexican flu" to allay tarring Muslims and Jews with the hint of pork consumption. However, lest all you folks think that you know so much that you can pooh-pooh the food connection, guess what: in a Nature paper last year, it was shown that the cell-surface carbohydrates from the food that you eat get displayed on your own cells, so eating birds makes you more susceptible to avian influenza and eating pork makes you more susceptible to... swine flus!

H1N1, y'all! Vegans r00l!
Mark Lipton

Our local paper had an article today saying pork was safe provided it was cooked to 160 degrees F
Besides giving the false impression that the consumption of (undercooked) pork is somehow implicated in the outbreak, someone following the instructions would wind up with some pretty dry pork.

Journalism. Sigh.

We can only hope that this is an over-reaction by the Purdue folks. 'Cuz if this sort of announcement is actually necessary, we're doomed both as a nation and a species.

No, this is a worldwide phenomenon. In the Middle East, they've renamed it the "Mexican flu" to allay tarring Muslims and Jews with the hint of pork consumption. However, lest all you folks think that you know so much that you can pooh-pooh the food connection, guess what: in a Nature paper last year, it was shown that the cell-surface carbohydrates from the food that you eat get displayed on your own cells, so eating birds makes you more susceptible to avian influenza and eating pork makes you more susceptible to... swine flus!

H1N1, y'all! Vegans r00l!
Mark Lipton

Damn! You mean Yaniger's really been on to something all these years??

Just wait 'til he gets the truffle flu....

truffle flu??? What does that give you....toenail fungus?

truffle flu??? What does that give you....toenail fungus?

Go watch the old 1950s Japanese Z-grade (B-grade would be too much of a compliment) horror film "Attack of the Mushroom People". It goes a long way to explaining Stuart.

... guess what: in a Nature paper last year, it was shown that the cell-surface carbohydrates from the food that you eat get displayed on your own cells, so eating birds makes you more susceptible to avian influenza and eating pork makes you more susceptible to... swine flus!

H1N1, y'all! Vegans r00l!
Mark Lipton

Interesting Mark. Roughly translated I guess this means you are what you eat. But I'm curious to know more details about how this works, if you'd be so kind. As in, what does "displayed on your own cells" mean exactly??

... guess what: in a Nature paper last year, it was shown that the cell-surface carbohydrates from the food that you eat get displayed on your own cells, so eating birds makes you more susceptible to avian influenza and eating pork makes you more susceptible to... swine flus!

H1N1, y'all! Vegans r00l!
Mark Lipton

Interesting Mark. Roughly translated I guess this means you are what you eat. But I'm curious to know more details about how this works, if you'd be so kind. As in, what does "displayed on your own cells" mean exactly??

OK, Bob, here goes: the surfaces of every cell your body are composed of a membrane (fats, basically) with some proteins swimming around in them. But, both the lipids in your membrane and the membrane-bound proteins have moderately sized carbohydrates (several sugars strung together) attached to them. This is done to enable various recognition processes,such as the cells in a solid organ knowing that they've got neighbors or a circulating white blood cell recognizing inflamed tissue. Our bodies can produce only a few different sugars (glucose aka blood sugar and ribose, a component of DNA and RNA) so we obtain many of them from our diet. Both plants and animals contain lots of different sugars that we ingest when we eat them. So, what this study revealed was that the glycosyl transferase enzymes in your body that are responsible for placing sugars onto your proteins and/or lipids use sugars that you've made but also those that you've ingested. Since pigs and birds have different collections of sugars, consumption of either changes the composition of sugars found on your own cells. Since the influenza virus (and many other pathogens) bind to certain sugars as a way of entering your cells, changing the composition of your cell-surface carbohydrates changes your susceptibility to certain pathogens.

Mark Lipton

Mark you are a gentleman and a scholar. Thanks for the explanation. A tough read for a lay person such as myself, but interesting. It got me to wondering about the following. A vegan couple are invited to dinner. The hosts are pork lovers and the vegans neglected the inform the hosts as to their dietary requirements. Dinner is a pork roast. The male vegan can't help himself and eats the pork roast with great pleasure. The female vegan is more principled than that and eats only vegetables. Some time later they all vacation together in Mexico and are exposed to swine flu. Is the male vegan who ate pork once as likely to get the flu as the pork lovers? Or does it take a lot more pork consumption to change the composition of the cell-surface cars?

Glycoproteins and carbohydrates are nearly totally broken down to their components during digestion before being absorbed in the gut. A pure vegan and a pork-eater might be distinguishable by the frequency of occurrence of certain glycosides in the glycoprotein chains exhibited in their cell walls, but those glycoproteins are assembled within the human cell, controlled by human cell genes (modulo any viruses already present), and I doubt that the pattern of glycosides in such chains would resemble a pig's enough to cause porcine viruses to key off them for invasive entry.

So no, I'd not expect there to be any difference in susceptibility to swine flu.

-Paul W.

Glycoproteins and carbohydrates are nearly totally broken down to their components during digestion before being absorbed in the gut. A pure vegan and a pork-eater might be distinguishable by the frequency of occurrence of certain glycosides in the glycoprotein chains exhibited in their cell walls, but those glycoproteins are assembled within the human cell, controlled by human cell genes (modulo any viruses already present), and I doubt that the pattern of glycosides in such chains would resemble a pig's enough to cause porcine viruses to key off them for invasive entry.

So no, I'd not expect there to be any difference in susceptibility to swine flu.

Such was the conventional wisdom, Paul, but that Nature paper last year showed otherwise. I'll have to back and read it again, but IIRC it had to do with certain glucosamines and mannosamines that were unique to one organism or the other and were accepted as substrates by our own enzymes. It was a fascinating article. And I know that avian influenza is distinct from porcine influenza in recognizing a different glycosidic linkage of sialic acid (N-acetylneuraminic acid).

Mark Lipton

Does this mean that there will be less people porking out there? And that they will tend to be from the group that doesn't get that it ain't flu caught from dead pigs?

That might be a net positive thing for the gene pool.....

All our pork, chicken, and duck have been in the freezer since before the outbreak, so I guess we're OK.

Such was the conventional wisdom, Paul, but that Nature paper last year showed otherwise. I'll have to back and read it again, but IIRC it had to do with certain glucosamines and mannosamines that were unique to one organism or the other and were accepted as substrates by our own enzymes. It was a fascinating article.

It isn't too surprising that that could happen with monosaccharide derivatives such as glucosamines/mannosamines. They'd be small enough.

And I know that avian influenza is distinct from porcine influenza in recognizing a different glycosidic linkage of sialic acid (N-acetylneuraminic acid).

The key, I guess, is whether porcine influenza keys off of particular individual glucosides unique to swine cell membrane coats? If it depends on particular linkage patterns in the side chain, it might not matter if an occasional porcine glucoside gets substituted into a human-patterned side chain.

-Paul W.

Does this mean that there will be less people porking out there? And that they will tend to be from the group that doesn't get that it ain't flu caught from dead pigs?

It may be too late, but this flu is being renamed partly because the people in Egypt were slaughtering pigs by the thousands in belief that eating pork caused the Swine Flu.

More bacon for the rest of us I guess.