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Living in the middle of Y'all Quaeda, I'd think the local cousin fuckers would be more riled up about this. Eating steak is a point of passion down here, second only to worshipping Trump.
For the most part it's just ignored... I kinda anticipate a trend of folks acquiring the allergy, then literally killing themselves in denial.
RFK will save them...with leeches eheh. You vote for a snake oil salesman, you get witch doctors, have fun in the middle ages! :)
I'm no vegan but isn't this technically a good thing? Red meat has negative environmental impacts right?
My first thought reading the headline was 'the Earth is healing,' LOL
I can just imagine the coming conspiracy theories.
isn't this technically a good thing?
Far from it. There shouldn't be anywhere near this many ticks as there are now. It's a sign that the climate is changing and that is getting warmer overall.
Where I live is considered to be the tick hotspot in all of Canada. 15 years ago it would be wildly rare to hear that someone had a tick on them. Now it's rare to hear the opposite. Go for a hike in the trails nearby and you can easily walk out with at least a few dozen on you.
And it's not just the temperature itself. It's that the climate is affecting everything in the ecosystem.
We're going to see crazy tropical infections and parasites migrating a bit more north every year, and we're not ready for it.
Except you can die if you accidentally eat a trace amount in something.
Probably. In some situations where there are no predators and you have semi-wild herbivores roam (usually goats, they are the least picky eaters) to eat forest fuel to prevent forest fires, it might be an ecological solution. But otherwise, yeah, red meat is something to reduce, not sure if this will be enough.
Not exactly goats, but kinda.
The same thing applies to roe deer in most of Europe. It has to be culled due to a lack of natural predators. They would eat everything, ruin the ecology and then be on the roads increasing crashes and human deaths.
And can't really introduce wolf populations into populated European zones which haven't had proper predators for ages.
I'm against industrial meat farms, but not eating meat as a concept. There's just no need for the type of animal torturing powerfarming that is so common in, like, the US. (Watch Clarkson's farm for instance to see British farming.)
So red meat prices are about to plummet right?
Fun story: I once watched a lone star tick crawl into the headphone jack of my phone. After trying for hours to get it out, I did two google searches:
What eats ticks?
Guinea hen mating sounds.
Thirty seconds later, it crawled out.
Probably more effective than opossum noises
Hhhhhhhhhhh
My experience has been starkly different from Sterile_Techniques and I'm also living in what might be termed as "the middle of Ya'll Quaeda" USA. So, it's interesting to hear that there's such a big difference in opinion / understanding on this topic.
For sure, 20 - 25 years ago it seemed like almost nobody had heard of it, and whenever someone said they were allergic to meat because of a tick bite, there was a lot of skepticism and denial.
However, these days, pretty much everybody knows someone who has this allergy, and that's no exaggeration. Even the most backwoods, anti-science, do my own thing, fuck your feelings kind of people are telling others to check themselves for ticks and/or taking steps to keep ticks off them because they're aware of all the risks from tick bites. Now, they might be claiming that it's government bio-warfare, related to 5G and/or covid, or some other unnecessarily contrarian bullshit, but they do take it seriously from what I've experienced.
Also, the good news is (or bad news I guess depending on your perspective) is that a lot of people seem to experience improvement of symptoms in time, so it's not necessarily a permanent thing for everybody. I don't know if it's just that some people continue to test the limits and end up inadvertently putting themselves through exposure therapy or if the immune response itself just naturally wanes over time, but several people I know who've had this for 5 - 10+ years say they can usually get away with a small amount of mammal meat, like maybe a hotdog now and then at a minimum, even though a small bite would have caused them a lot of trouble when they first developed the allergy.
Transition to eating the rich.
isn't that red meat though?
I assume there's a reason the euphemism for human meat is 'long pork,' not 'long beef.'
Pork is red meat
Because people don't read the source anymore:
that nickname is misleading, because alpha-gal syndrome can cause strong reactions to many products, beyond just red meat.
The alpha-gal sugar molecule exists in the tissues of most mammals, including cows, pigs, deer, and rabbits. But it’s absent in humans.
the allergy also can be set off by exposure to a range of other animal-based products, including dairy products, gelatin (think Jell-O or gummy bears), medications, and even some personal care items.
it’s possible to get over the allergy if you can modify your diet enough to avoid triggering another reaction for a few years and also avoid more tick bites.
Yes. Tl;dr: avoid (more) tick bites
I find it disturbing people have forgotten about parasites because we got rid of most of them. Ticks are not "just like mosquitos", ticks have seriously dangerous pathogens, and even mosquitos transfer Malaria. Malaria. Which is - if I'm remembering correctly - killing more people in Africa per year than all other causes of death globally combined. That's including coal mining deaths (deadliest job), human war and murder (second-deadliest "animal" for humans is ourselves) and attacks by wild/domesticated animals, and heart attacks and strokes (most common death for the elderly).
I'm going to have to admit I don't know the death toll of Malaria for sure, but it IS or WAS the reason mosquitos are/were the deadliest predator for humans. Either way, I'd rather die than have my life turn into an episode of Monsters Inside Me.
Idk if I'm allergic to red meat, but I do know that my body has a really hard time digesting it. It just sits in my stomach for an absurd amount of time and makes me feel so nauseated.
Haven't eaten any red meat in years because of it.
It just sits in my stomach for an absurd amount of time and makes me feel so nauseated.
I sort of thought that everyone experienced that.
Nice.
Vegans really should consider weaponising these ticks, like breed billions and fly around cities carpet bombing everything.
No more beef industry overnight
Or cheese and other dairy.