(As a stand-alone column because of length…)
Here: let me open up my brain a bit so you can have another (frightening) look.
Yes, I think about everything. It just takes time to get to it – and there’s a reason: Life is complicated.
But this morning’s “block of missing science” comes courtesy of frequent Comment TBS. Who, as you will remember, was telling us all recently about his grand success with various probiotics. Fine – I mean good for him – but I’m more of an “ask me what time it is, so I can build a watch for myself” type fellow.
Yes – there are RCTs (randomized clinical trials) on a lot of gut-changers. Some likely work and this decade’s design medical school focus seems to be Gut-Brain Axis and all that entrails (if Hank can forgive the pun…).
But here’s what came up at lunch Wednesday: Elaine and I were snacking on a cold Asian stir fry from two nights ago. Small cubes of rib steak, sauteed with onion chunks big as your thumb, and cauliflower flowerets all tossed in an oyster sauce. It was just damn good. A 20-ounce cup of tea (Bullish Bob got me hooked on Yorkshire Gold) after lunch and I’m ready to get back to writing.
Except…
I got thinking about the billions in the supplements and now probiotics markets and I thought back 54 years to 1972, or so, when a buddy (who went somewhere around the Gulf Coast to be a TV News Director himself) was making scrambled eggs with tomatoes and cheese in the radio station kitchen. Which included a hotplate. And Neal was one hell of a cook. Teenage line cook experience if I recall right.
So I asked him (being insensitive to religious rules) “Where’s the bacon?” And that led to a discussion of never “mixing the meat and the milk” which in this case was cheese, right.
Well, as the tea was waving itself hot enough to drink, I began asking myself the Big Ponder of the week.
WTF is with science? All working on the after-meal and the additives along the way, NOT on the initial chemical reactions in that hydrochloric acid pool called the stomach. Where’s THAT database of interactions?
Well there isn’t one. Which honestly, gob-smacked me for several minutes. “Whaddah mean, isn’t such a list?”
A Hole in Science You Could Drive a Cheeseburger Through! (With a shake and fries!)
AI was able to talk around this more gracefully than a congressman caught with his pants down:
“Based on what we actually know today, I would not build a long “never eat X with Y” list for ordinary healthy foods. The strongest evidence is not that common whole-food pairs suddenly synthesize some mysterious poison in the stomach. The stronger hazards are: natural toxins already present in a food, compounds generated by cooking, food–drug interactions, and metabolic/microbiome effects that depend on dose and person. If I were making a personal “don’t stack these casually” list, it would look like this:
- Very heavily charred/grilled meat + lots more oxidizable fat/smoke exposure. High-temperature cooking of meat produces HCAs, while dripping fat and smoke can add PAHs. I’d still eat grilled meat, but I would avoid making blackened, flame-licked, heavily smoked meat a routine dietary centerpiece.
- Large amounts of cured/processed meat + a low-plant meal. This is less a proven “toxic pair” than a chemistry concern: processed meats bring nitrite/nitrate and meat brings heme iron, both relevant to nitrosation/oxidation chemistry. If eating that kind of meat, I’d rather have it in a meal rich in vegetables than make the meal meat-on-meat-on-cheese.
- Aged/fermented foods + an MAOI drug. This one is genuinely dangerous. Aged cheeses, cured meats, fermented sauces, some beers/wines, and similar foods can carry a lot of tyramine; with MAO inhibitors, that can produce a serious hypertensive crisis.
- Grapefruit + certain medications. Grapefruit can inhibit intestinal CYP3A4 and either raise or alter drug exposure, including with some statins, blood-pressure drugs, antiarrhythmics and others. That is an honest-to-God food chemistry interaction, just not food-with-food.
- Raw/undercooked kidney beans + anything. The problem is the bean itself: phytohaemagglutinin can cause severe GI poisoning unless the beans are properly cooked. Likewise, improperly processed cassava and some other cyanogenic plants are genuine natural-toxin cases.
- Alcohol + acetaminophen, especially frequent/heavy alcohol use. Again, not food-food, but it illustrates the core point beautifully: what reaches the liver together matters. FDA specifically warns that heavy alcohol use while taking acetaminophen raises the risk of severe liver damage.
What I would not currently avoid on chemistry grounds alone: meat + milk, beef + cauliflower, eggs + dairy, fish + milk, fruit + meat, starch + meat, etc. There are plenty of traditions claiming incompatibility, but for most ordinary combinations there is not persuasive evidence that they form a meaningful internal toxin.
And your second question — why hasn’t science sorted this out? — has a very interesting answer. For this particular question, nutrition science has mostly been organized around the wrong unit of analysis for your question. It studies nutrients, then individual foods, then dietary patterns.
Your question is about the reaction network created by combinations. That problem explodes combinatorially. With only 100 foods, there are 4,950 possible pairs. Add triples, cooking methods, temperature, dose, timing, stomach acidity, medications, genetics, age and microbiome composition, and you’ve gone from a food table to something resembling a chemical-reaction database.
There is also a practical reason: acute poisons are easy to discover. If kidney beans make 40 people vomit violently, someone investigates. But suppose Food A + Food B increases production of some mildly reactive metabolite by 18%, and that matters only after 30 years in people with a particular microbiome.
That is spectacularly difficult to see with conventional nutrition studies. Which makes me think your original question is better than it first appears. The missing scientific object may be something like a Digestive Reaction Atlas: systematically test ordinary food pairs and selected triples through simulated gastric digestion, intestinal digestion and representative microbiome fermentation, then use metabolomics to identify compounds that appear only in combination.
That would let you ask a much more rigorous question than “Is milk bad with meat?”
What molecules appear after A+B that do not appear after A or B alone, and at concentrations high enough to matter biologically? That is absolutely a researchable question. And surprisingly, I don’t think we have anything close to a comprehensive map of it yet.”
Hasn’t anyone read the Bible, Talmud, Quran, and all the Asia groups to find what the common threats are – then tested them???
From my initial tire-kicking into this, nobody appears to have built a systematic cross-cultural food-prohibition database and experimentally screened the resulting combinations as a reaction network. Seriously? (Maybe we will all “go to heaven sooner” – can’t say…)
So here is a more useful area of study for AI than jailbreaking: Load the chemistry books especially the bio-chem series, and get to work. Besides AI, this is a grand topic for home culinary geniuses like our own LOOB character. (Reading his comments can put the weight-on, trust me!)
Be warned. Because Ure’s intuition says there could be a cause for cancer and a cure for a lot of diseases, just laying round waiting to be discovered by accident.
At this rate in another 250,000 years. There it was – on the same day Peoplenomics readers got Test-Fitting Apes. Absolute proof that the title was very much on the mark.
Write when you get hungry (and we do have one early data point: Avoid Hemlock…)
George@Ure.net
History is below and bit complicated.
1) On about 1990 Russia listened to Regan and brought down Berlin wall. They took 10K tanks home…
2) Europe proceeded to lure eastern block countries into western Europe by banking and NATO. NATO was cheap F-16 Foreign Military sale (low bid, marginal) way to combat eastern Europe corruption and get business value investments going in east.
3) Went well.. Clinton in 1992-2000 timeframe.. east Germany built back by west Germany… rest wanted some. Russia no issues.
4) British view of 1990 was simple… Ukraine nuclear weapons returned to Russia and Russia made Ukraine a country of its own. Russia agreed but asked no NATO east of Germany.
5) 2000 and 9/11 events.. and 25 years in sandbox of Arabia… 1/3 conventional forces drawdown in USA post 1990 Russia go home… Nuclear weapons capped.
6) So 2015 or so Russia wanted Crimea back… expelled Muslims… about 1/10 personnel. Ukraine war starts. Obama in USA did not much
7) War ensued under Trump 1 term… as 7 days Russia invasion failed…
8) Covid and Biden and Biden arms for free to Ukraine.
9) Trump 2 term… Trump needs peace.. but Isreal invasion Iran ended that. Most arms stocks depleted. No ability to be NATO support for Dutch desire return Ukraine to self-rule. End Russia people within its borders.
10) Russians out armed by missiles… Russians funded by oil. Russians’ food okay. Russians’ Chinese/N Korean help valid.
11) 2026 Sept… Europe lacks natural gas for winter and Iran issue gulf means USA strategic oil reserve empty. No Deisel.
12) Dutch say ‘go to war’.
Fast forward…. now..present…what’s up doc?
1) Dutch lady created lots money out of no where… given Ukraine buy weapons post Biden ‘free stuff’ in Trump 2nd term
2) Dutch lady has USA based Dutch gold go home ‘…not Belgium but England’… buys about 100K reservists…
3) German’s upped defense budget for coalition willing with France Marcon.. who is broke…
4) Hired help by Ukraine by Biden funds… fighting Russians.
5) British broke too, but lots bravado.
6) USA oil issue with Gulf getting worse… Trump negotiations ended.
USA diesel availability and cost about 8 dollars a gallon in Calif.. prohibiting shipping
7) USA missiles out of stock… Defense drank to much and used to much and takes to long to fix with new stock.
8) N Korea in tune recently with Russia with 50 Nuclear weapons.. typically aimed at USA west coast.
9) Trump tariffs created much confusion overseas and upset many manufacturing lines everywhere. Same with Canada.
10) Trump latest is sending intelligence chief to Russia to ask them ‘to go home’…result: rejection…
11) Trump on phone today with Putin for 1 hour.. again asking ‘go home’.
12) Putin ‘no’
13) 1914…
You need better drugs…
Thx
I refrained tis time, dealing with enough BS today as is. Death Certs ordered – check, Cremation ordered-check, Clean out valuables remotely – check, everything coded TOD -check, Clean Out-pack up- deliver to storage unit scheduled -check, Inform extended family of oldest, last of generation to transition at 95yrs of age -check.
* Every single person I have dealt with regarding Moms passing at the retirement community described my 95 year old Mom as Feisty, which is a nice of putting it..
“thats probably why she lived that long” – yerp – thats it, Im a believer.
“Another one gone, another one bites the dust”/Queen -https://youtu.be/rY0WxgSXdEE?
“never “mixing the meat and the milk””
Seems to work out OK when making sausage gravy!
This is what I got, years ago, from a rabbinical student.
The meat-milk separation is based on the injunction “Thou shalt not seethe [simmer] a kid in its mother’s milk”. It seemed unjust, and perhaps gratuitously cruel, to use the milk (intended to nourish the kid) to cook the kid. It was bad enough to take the kid from the mother and kill it for dinner, but then to use its nourishment to cook it? How could you do such a thing?
When I trolled the ‘net for the source of the injunction (it’s made twice in Exodus, a third time in Deuteronomy) I found some ‘argufying’ about pagan Canaanite practices of doing just this thing, but the actual documentation to support the practices appear to be exceptionally difficult to find. If such things *were* done by the Canaanites, the children of Israel would (“of course!”) avoid doing them.
No fail dietary advice.
If it tastes good, spit It out.
Stay safe 73
Exactly…..
Now this is interesting and im no specialist or researcher just a NOBODY in the wastelands that likes to read anyway …but..to me find it interesting reading that modern researchers are talking about building a “Digestive Reaction Atlas,” because in reality I believe every ancient civilization has already done exactly that — just they did it without the lab equipment. The Bible, the Talmud, the Quran, the Vedic texts, and the Chinese pharmacopeias all contain food laws that we do everything we can to ignore, food pairings, and food prohibitions that came from centuries of trial, error, and generational observation.
This isn’t really anything new. It’s simply that modern researchers are looking at old science that we stopped listening to and now being rediscovered…..
Look at Shennong the Divine Farmer in China’s legendary past for instance — he systematically tasted plants, recorded their effects, and built the foundation of the Chinese pharmacopeia…..
https://archive.org/download/ShenNongBenCaoLingTheDivineFarmersMateriaMedica/ShenNong%20Ben%20Cao%20ling%28The%20Divine%20Farmers%20Materia%20Medica%29.pdf
Entire food traditions grew out of those early experiments thousands if years ago… The same thing happened in the Middle East, India, Africa, and the Mediterranean. These cultures didn’t have metabolomics, but they had something just as powerful… hundreds and thousands of years of feedback…. If a food combination harmed people, it didn’t survive. If it helped, it became tradition….moms home remedy…
The real issue isn’t that nobody ever built a cross cultural food law database.
It’s that we systematically ignored the one that our ancestors already built, because modern society assumes we’re smarter today than ancient man.
Yet archaeologists and pharmacologists are now rediscovering the value of these ancient traditions — from the “cookbook table of the gods” that archeologists are writing today…( I get my copy before Christmas for being a recipe tester) to the study of ancient medicinal plants that pharmacy researchers are doing in their quest of finding biochemical logic behind rules that were once dismissed as superstition…..
Modern pharmacology researches these ancient sources….
Thymoquinone from black seed, artemisinin from sweet wormwood, curcumin from turmeric, berberine from barberry, cannabis and its effects that show selective cytotoxicity ( we dumped that one and demonized it for toilet paper) — basically meaning the plants chemicals can kill cancer cells while sparing normal tissue that they are finding in their research of modern lab studies— all of these came from ancient pharmacopeias and deep research Scientists didn’t invent these compounds….they simply discovered and validated what earlier civilizations already knew and rejected for their business model…. modern man simply ignores calling most of it wives tales…..Seriously its all in the business model of more.. create the problem to monetize the potential cures made from old knowledge..
So yes, a modern Digestive Reaction Atlas would be fascinating…..
But pretending we’re starting from scratch ignores the fact that ancient cultures have already mapped the territory and passed this down where we ignored their advice — and now we’re beginning the process of catching up.
Thank you LOOB! This Shennong reference is invaluable! Downloaded for posterity and prosperity! Now all I need is time to actually read it!
Just two days ago I was at my favorite library reading modern research and discovered that pomegranate is now being studied for its interactions with brain and cellular functions. What’s funny is that ancient civilizations — especially Egypt — already knew this ten thousand years ago.
Archaeobotanical studies show that pomegranate wasn’t just food in Egypt…. it was a medicinal plant, a ritual offering, and even a therapeutic root remedy. Modern researchers are only now mapping out the compounds and pathways, but ancient Egyptians were already using the juice, the wine, and even the roots for healing…. not new..old world information that was surrounded with ritual…
By the New Kingdom, pomegranate was so important that it appeared in funeral offerings, medical preparations, and temple rituals, and was even shaped into vases and pendants because of its association with health, fertility, and renewal.
And if you go even further back, archaeobotanical evidence shows pomegranate was deliberately cultivated from the Neolithic period onward, spreading across the Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, and the Aegean — always tied to symbolism of regeneration, prosperity, and life?force.
So when modern science says, “We’re just now discovering what pomegranate does to the brain and cells,” it’s worth remembering…..
Take cannabis for instance that is one of the clearest examples. Long before modern politics demonized it, cannabis was a documented medicinal plant across the ancient world — listed right alongside opium in the earliest medical texts.
In Shennong’s Materia Medica, cannabis was used for pain, cough, inflammation, and digestive issues. Egyptian medical papyri mention cannabis preparations for fever and gynecological pain. Ayurveda used it for cough syrups, sleep, and digestive disorders. Greek and Roman physicians prescribed it for ear pain and inflammation. None of this was fringe — it was standard medicine.
Opium was also widely used, but ancient physicians understood its dangers. They used it carefully, diluted, and often combined with other herbs to reduce harm. Cannabis, by contrast, was considered safer, less addictive, and more versatile….
Now lets fast forward to the 1800s and early 1900s, and cannabis tinctures tgat were sold in American pharmacies as cough syrups, pain relievers, and sleep aids. It was listed in the U.S. Pharmacopeia until 1942. Then it was abruptly demonized — not because it was medically dangerous, but because it threatened powerful industries…. Timber paper companies didn’t want hemp…. Alcohol companies didn’t want competition. Pharmaceutical companies couldn’t patent a plant. And opium?derived medicines were far more profitable…
for years my mom had a bottle of cannabis cough syrup that was replaced with an opium cough syrup..
So with the demonized business model of more cannabis was pushed out, opium derivatives took over, and an entire branch of ancient medicinal knowledge was buried under politics and profit.
Meanwhile, modern pharmacology in Canada and the UK, Germany and around the world is jyst now researching the same cannabis compounds ancient cultures already used — THC, CBD, CBG, and Cannflavin A — for inflammation, pain, nausea, neuroprotection, and even cancer?related pathways. Exactly the uses recorded thousands of years ago.
I am just just reinforces the point I’m trying to make…
Ancient civilizations weren’t behind us. We’re the ones catching up….
In ancient Greece & Rome Physicians like Galen and Dioscorides documented cannabis for,ear pain,inflammation,stomach issues,
In ancient Middle East we read In early Arabic medical texts, cannabis extracts were used for,pain,nausea,and respiratory discomfort…
Look at Cannabis as Medicine in the 1800s–Early 1900s ,Before prohibition, cannabis was a standard medicinal ingredient in Western medicine…It was sold in pharmacies…It was listed in the U.S. Pharmacopeia (1850–1942)
Doctors prescribed it for issues like,neuralgia,migraines,asthma,cough…It wasn’t fringe — it was mainstream medicine… that was demonized for the business model of The Paper Industry,The Alcohol Industry,The Pharmaceutical Industry because it was cheap, Drug companies wanted patentable, synthetic, high?profit medicines — including opium derivatives…
They and cartels have given billions and still do to legislators to keep if off the market…
Ancient people weren’t guessing — they had generational feedback. If something worked, it stayed in the pharmacopeia….
Grandpa and Grandma, old German stock from a tiny island in the North Sea. He passed at 97, she at 101. Farm life until late 80’s then city until the end.
They ate what they grew except flour, sugar, and spices. Canning and dark storage for everything. We made sausage, bacon, had a full smoke house.
Up at 4a.m., work until dark. Winter was wet and quiet. Summer was a grind.
Grandpa at bread, butter, jam, eggs, bacon, ham, coffee, every day for breakfast. Lunch was also full on… lots of cheese, sausage, bread, meat. Dinner was fresh killed chicken, ham, home slaughtered beef, bread, and garden vegetables (canned in winter). Always potatoes.
On the way out to milk in the afternoon Gramps would go in the woodshed and take a couple good slugs of Jim Beam, then walk through the garden and pull an onion and peel it and eat it like an apple. He smoked Camels for fifty years, used chew, smoked a pipe, loved cigars, and would have a ‘highball’ (or two) before dinner. I never saw him drunk. When I was fifteen, he was 81 and could work me to dead tired and still be going strong.
Was a 33rd degree too. Hard as steel that fella. Grandma touched her toes every morning until two weeks before she passed.
Food is better when it comes from your own hands.
Stiks
(“Grandpa and Grandma, old German stock from a tiny island in the North Sea. He passed at 97, she at 101. Farm life until late 80’s then city until the end.
They ate what they grew except flour, sugar, and spices. Canning and dark storage for everything. We made sausage, bacon, had a full smoke house.
Up at 4a.m., work until dark. Winter was wet and quiet. Summer was a grind.
Grandpa at bread, butter, jam, eggs, bacon, ham, coffee, every day for breakfast. Lunch was also full on… lots of cheese, sausage, bread, meat. Dinner was fresh killed chicken, ham, home slaughtered beef, bread, and garden vegetables (canned in winter). Always potatoes.
On the way out to milk in the afternoon Gramps would go in the woodshed and take a couple good slugs of Jim Beam, then walk through the garden and pull an onion and peel it and eat it like an apple. He smoked Camels for fifty years, used chew, smoked a pipe, loved cigars, and would have a ‘highball’ (or two) before dinne”)
food processed at home didn’t have the chemicals in it..heck put a snack cake on a fence post and you can come back months later and other than being dry its still edible..I made biscuits a week ago..and had to toss them out ..i no preservatives in it