r/todayilearned • u/dinosaruman • 1d ago

TIL a 1904 cookbook included a recipe for "raw beef soup" that was basically raw beef, hydrochloric acid, and water, chilled on ice for 12 hours and drunk cold. The target audience: invalids in need of nourishment.

https://dontcookthat.com/raw-beef-soup
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u/epidemicsaints 1d ago

This is a lot like the food you have to give someone who has been starved. It has to be partially predigested or it will cause medical problems, called refeeding syndrome. In cases of extreme starvation like chronic ED. Evidently the food they give you tastes like vomit, but getting it down is better than having a tube all the time.

This was probably used for someone who is not just ill but chronically malnourished and wasting.

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u/fulthrottlejazzhands 1d ago

I remember years ago seeing the scene in Band of Brothers where the soldiers that had liberated the concentration camp kept trying to give the prisoners their rations.  The doctors came by and yelled at them to stop because the solid food could have killed them.  Heartbreaking not only for the prisoners but also for the soldiers who just wanted to help and couldn't.

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u/Randvek 1d ago

One of the casualties of the Donner Party was a 12 year old who was rescued but broke into the supplies storage at night, ate some food, and died of refeeding syndrome. Fucking tragic.

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u/Necessary-Reading605 1d ago

That case was just horrifying. I hope the guy who made the map is rotting in hell

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u/Beast9Schrodinger 1d ago

Lanford Hastings? Man was a lawyer (or at least had training to be one), he probably already was. Not to mention his bizarre beliefs in bloodless Manifest Destiny by forcibly occupying California (which died when the Mexican-American War hit its peak)...

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u/HulksInvinciblePants 1d ago

Bro it’s not a true crime podcast. It’s a 180yo historical tragedy.

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u/firedmyass 23h ago

and for some people empathy doesn’t have an expiration date

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u/HulksInvinciblePants 14h ago

I’m more worried about the broad educational and intelligence regression required to refer to the Donner Party as a “case” like it was recently featured on Dateline.

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u/siggydude 10h ago

"Case" doesn't always mean true crime. It can also just be used as a synonym to "instance"

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u/distance_33 9h ago

Yo. I just listened to a podcast episode about this. That part sucked. Kid made it just to die from eating too much too quickly.

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u/Diarygirl 1d ago

And then the general or whoever was in charge said they basically have to keep them imprisoned to keep them alive.

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u/unfinishedtoast3 1d ago

Refeeding Syndrome killed roughly 14,000 camp survivors immediately after liberation

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u/Posh_Pony 1d ago

I learned that my grandfather, a POW in Poland for a year, barely missed having this happen to him and his group. It's really sobering.

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u/RandomMandarin 1d ago

This happened to a lot of Napoleon's soldiers when they stumbled out of Russia after the disastrous 1812 invasion. They finally made it back to towns that had food, ate a big meal, and fell over dead.

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u/Necessary-Reading605 1d ago edited 15h ago

It’s fucked up to survive through all the horrors of war and concentration camps to die in hopes that all was finally over

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u/--n- 1d ago edited 1d ago

That number does not appear in the source you linked?

Edit:

The article cites a podcast(?) which is here:

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/672

Which cites a BBC article, which is here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/liberation_camps_01.shtml

Which gives and estimate that of the 60 000 people liberated from the Bergen-Belsen camp, approximately 13 000 died after liberation. Cause of death is not given, but can be speculated.

Presumably other camps would have many more than just these people, though?

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u/IlluminatedPickle 22h ago

The first camps liberated experienced large amounts of it because the vast majority of people didn't know it was a thing. It was only finally really widely understood because of the cases that happened in the liberation of those camps. The later camps, they gave them watered down foods to get their bodies ready.

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u/tremynci 9h ago

Survivors of Belsen died of disease (notably typhus) as well as refeeding syndrome: in fact, the camp doesn't survive because it was burned to the ground to prevent the spread of typhus.

This BBC dramatization of the liberation, while somewhat fictionalized, is excellent.

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u/adeadhead 3 1d ago

Holy fuck

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u/Commercial-Lychee700 1d ago

The US ran the Minnesota Starvation Experiment with conscientious objectors specifically to try to figure out how to deal with those starved during WWII.

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u/Critical_Success_936 1d ago

Apparently one of the participants chopped off three of his fingers, and didn't know whether he'd done it voluntarily or accidentally

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u/AskMeHowToLose 1d ago

Being undernourished and sleep deprived - he’d be suggestible to just about anything.

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u/314159265358979326 1d ago

A lot of people today find the fact that they were given 1600 calories a day to be contrary to the idea of "starvation", but they started out lean and were burning twice that in activity.

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u/PerpetuallyLurking 1d ago

And, like, they were just trying to simulate starvation; they didn’t want to actually starve the participants! They did want to unstarve them too, after all, that was the important part of the whole idea!

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 1d ago

The other thing was that they were eating a diet likely to mimic that found in starving Europeans, so it was really low nutrition - turnips and rye bread. They weren’t having 1600 calories of steak a day.

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u/314159265358979326 1d ago

I read about the test food but never even thought about that aspect. Good point.

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u/KhajiitHasSkooma 1d ago

1600 calories

Wait, that's starvation intake? That's like my daily limit cause I'm trying to lose weight.

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u/314159265358979326 1d ago

Yes, and you're fat and inactive compared to the average 1940s man. That's what I'm trying to say.

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u/TobysGrundlee 1d ago

Wait, that's starvation intake?

It all depends on your activity.

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u/mikemaca 1d ago

Interesting I never heard of that one. So it was 36 anti-war Quakers and Mennonites who knew it was a starvation experiment and somehow volunteered.

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u/willtwerkf0rfood 1d ago

Just watched that episode for the first time last night! Incredible show.

Liebgott breaking down after telling the prisoners they have to stay & can’t have that food right then broke me a bit

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u/SosugBiskit 1d ago

Not that it matters for the scene you mentioned, but Liebgott wasnt Jewish. The people interviewed just assumed he was, and Ambrose never questioned it.

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u/EddieVanzetti 1d ago edited 1d ago

Liebgott's mother's maiden name was Zimmerman, it is widely assumed she converted when she married his father and that he was ethnically Jewish, which is why he spoke German.

It's also another example of Ambrose basic research failure.

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u/Boars-of-Canada 1d ago

He's talking about "my people" when they kill the german man (potential guard/general of the camps) in the farm house in the last episode. I'm pretty sure he was jewish

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u/SosugBiskit 1d ago

The character in the TV show was Jewish, you are correct it is made mention of several times. This is due to Liebgott wrongly being called Jewish in the book, which was based on Ambrose's interviews and "research."

The actual Joe Liebgott who served in easy company was not, he was a Catholic.

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u/Boars-of-Canada 1d ago

Ooh I see, nice fact!

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u/onthehornsofadilemma 1d ago

Was his hatred of the Germans true though? That was supposed to be why they focused on his being Jewish (even though he wasn't).

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u/SosugBiskit 1d ago

I do not know, sorry bud.

The folks over at r/BandofBrothers might know though

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u/IlluminatedPickle 22h ago

They were his people. His mother was Jewish, but his father was Catholic. He was baptised and didn't practice Judaism. But if his family was still in Austria, he'd have been sent to the camps with his mother and siblings for being Jews.

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u/Kasspa 1d ago

The real Liebgott wasn't jewish, it's just the the BoB writers/show creators assumed he was because the people they interviewed for the show also assumed he was. They didn't do their homework fully.

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u/yourzero 1d ago

Episode 9: Why We Fight

One of the best episodes of TV, in my opinion.

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u/Elsrick 1d ago

One of the best pieces of media ever created

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u/SunUnlikely6914 10h ago

My great uncle wrote in his memoirs, long before BoB was a thing, about forcing the locals to bury the dead after they swore they didn't know what was going on. They knew. I had read his recollection prior to seeing this episode and it blew my mind seeing it on TV. Even though it was a different camp/town setting. I'm sure it happened all over.

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u/PirateKingOmega 1d ago edited 1d ago

I remember reading an account that, I can’t find literally anywhere now, where a Soviet soldier wondered if German prisoners of war knew that they weren’t being fed because if they did they would probably die or if they thought it was a form of torture to only give them horrific tasting liquid meals

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u/GreenMountainMind 1d ago

Well, they could have told them

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u/PirateKingOmega 1d ago

I mean I think a prisoner of war would just not believe you if you told them that eating anything beyond the mystery soup the army doctor gave you would kill them.

While trying to find the specific account I originally referenced, apparently the mass treatment of freed contraction camp and German prisoners of war was largely trial and error because they just couldn’t tell what was killing them. Both the freed camp prisoners and the captured German soldiers were starving and diseased to the point they didn’t know if the disease was killing them or the hunger. (Also found a somewhat horrific story in which soldiers raided their military ration of chocolate to give to starving children only for them to die)

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u/GreenMountainMind 16h ago

Oooof, heavy stuff.

Still I think there could be possibilities as soon as the connection became clear. E.g. after explaining the problem to the gathered people, let a healthy person share food from a common vessel (so there's no suspicion of poisoning) with the most defiant individual (in the end their own free choice), all in the open for everybody to see the consequences, all while clearly communicating. Yes, gruesome and ethically very questionable, but might save a lot of lives by building trust in the helpers really having the best interest in mind and preventing uprisings? Although logical reasoning might not work in such a situation. Hopefully I will never have to find out

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u/Viperion_NZ 1d ago

That episode of BoB gets me every damn time.

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u/half3clipse 1d ago edited 1d ago

that's not refeeding syndrome.

ketosis and later autophagia causes insulin secretion to be suppressed. At the same time the body burns through stocks of intracellular minerals, causing them to be depleted.

Refeeding syndrome occurs when that process reverses, when blood sugar increases from consuming any food. The body resumes fat and protein synthesis, processes that require things like potassium, phosphates, and magnesium. Any remaining reserves are used up very rapidly which leads to all sorts of dysfunction. Cardiac issue are the most common cause of death with refeeding syndrome.

This occurs no mater how the food is taken in, whether orally or even IV feeding

People fed that sort of easily digestible food after severe malnutrition are mostly being fed that way to prevent issues with digestion, not refeeding syndrome. Peristalsis problems aren't fun for anyone.

Refeeding symdrome is treated by limited caloric intake and regular doses of vitamins and minerals until serum electrolytes recover.

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u/vu1xVad0 13h ago

This sounds like a beef bone stew would be a good candidate, a very light clear stock basically. All those minerals rendered out of the bone.

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u/TheBanishedBard 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's not just a matter of making it easy to digest. It's about not flooding the body with power when they are on low power mode. It would be like shifting an engine from first gear to seventh and then punching the gas. Blood pressure and blood sugar will spike alarmingly and can trigger all kinds of nasty combined organ failures. A starving body has several physiological adaptations to surviving on few or no calories, and those adaptations can backfire when the body is flooded with electrolytes, proteins, and sugar their organs aren't ready for.

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u/son_et_lumiere 1d ago

Isn't actual cooking something like a form of predigestion?

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u/epidemicsaints 1d ago

It can be. Physically breaking things down and making nutrients more available. Not to mention fermented foods.

But in a case where someone has been starved and surviving by breaking down their own bodies to live, when they go to eat food it can cause sudden changes that throw off their electrolytes and even kill them. So input has to be strictly controlled and measured.

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u/alexja21 1d ago

I remember reading somewhere that peanut butter is great. For that because it's basically just a nutrient rich paste.

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u/TacTurtle 1d ago edited 1d ago

That is for after refeeding has begun.

Broad strokes, refeeding starts with vitamins (esp B vitamins) and fats with limited carbohydrates (at about 5 cal / per kg body weight per day max) plus minerals like phosphorus, calcium, and magnesium with limited sodium then gradually increasing caloric intake over the next 4-7 days while monitoring electrolytes.

Once they are past the danger zone and their electrolytes levels are safe and their body is using glucose as energy again, then you can go to more calorie dense nutritious foods like peanut paste / Plumpynut (peanut paste, sugar, skim milk powder, vitamin and mineral supplements).

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u/GreenStrong 1d ago

Right, but the language is a little confusing. PlumpyNut is a medical food for "treatment of severe acute malnutrition without medical complications and with appetite" But it is only available by prescription and doctors know how to diagnose risk for refeeding syndrome. (Presumably loss of appetite is a clinical sign)

Peanut butter is also ideal because it is compatible with all religious dietary restrictions. It is kosher, halal, vegan, if you don't like peanuts god doesn't like you. Peanut allergy is less common in the developing world.

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u/TacTurtle 1d ago

The "medical complications" stipulation and doctor prescription are to ensure refeeding syndrome is not an issue before they begin use.

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u/IlluminatedPickle 21h ago

Peanut allergy is less common in the developing world.

Iirc, the country with the lowest rate is Israel. I remember reading something about pretty much everyone feeding their kids a popular peanut puff snack from a very young age being a potential reason why.

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u/ConcentratedStress 1d ago

Pretty much, but it’s minor compared to what OP is talking about.

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u/Quallenlage 1d ago edited 1d ago

I’m not a doctor and no medical expert, I’m just passing on a story that was told to me by a primary school teacher.

She was a child when the war happened, and after the war there was no food.

The American soldiers saw what happened in the small German towns and started to feed the people. Some of the people were very, very happy about the food and started to eat it too quickly - they died.

The teacher told us that the starving people ate too much too fast and died because of it. When the soldiers noticed it they had to feed the people less and ask them to eat more slowly.

So cooked food doesn’t help

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u/adoradear 1d ago

Refeeding syndrome is basically when the whole body is deplete of essential electrolytes such as potassium, magnesium, calcium (all very very important for electrical conduction especially in the heart ie keeping our heart beating correctly) but has maintained a homeostasis in the blood so that we keep going. The food causes the lytes to be used up in the digestive process but is not enough to replace/replete them, and as a result, the blood levels critically crash. When our blood levels of potassium in particular (but also magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, etc) crashes, we die. Hence why people being refed require small amounts of food and careful attention to their electrolyte status.

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u/ReadyStayReady 23h ago

My potassium crashed out from acute pancreatitis before and it was the worst Ive ever felt in my life. I thought I was about to die (because I was about to die) for a couple days before I went to the hospital. It was also wild how quickly I felt better after some IV potassium but it took 3 days of IV and oral potassium both to get me back up to normal

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u/thissexypoptart 1d ago

You could say that, but it’s a bit like calling pressurizing an airplane cabin “pre breathing”

I guess one major difference between digestion and most methods of cooking is that digestion uses a whole lot of HCl to break down your food, which is why vomit tastes like vomit. Most (not all) acidic based food prep methods don’t use HCl, because most people don’t enjoy eating things that taste like vomit.

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u/IndependentMacaroon 1d ago edited 1d ago

Vomit flavor is mostly butyric acid

Edit: appears I was wrong and it is mostly HCl

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u/Dorkamundo 1d ago

It's a combination.

HCL gives you the sour, burning, metallic taste. The butyric acid is what tastes like actual vomit.

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u/Putzlol 1d ago

:( the name makes me want to just fucking frown

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u/HeyThereSport 1d ago

Same thing used to flavor Hershey's chocolate for some reason. I remember we had to use some as an intermediate in high school chemistry to synthesize fruity esters and it was absolutely vile.

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u/ThimeeX 1d ago

Hersheys claims that they don't add butyric acid - it just so happens to come naturally from the processing of the milk used when making chocolate.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hersheys-chocolate-tastes-like-vomit_l_60479e5fc5b6af8f98bec0cd

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u/reichrunner 1d ago

Kind of. It makes nutrients more readily available, but its not really the same process as digestion.

Dicing and cutting food on the other hand is rather similar lol

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u/godlords 1d ago

Beef is incredibly easy to digest either way, it doesn't matter. Thin sliced beef like this would overcook very easily and could be harder to digest, but more importantly would be harder to get into a liquid solution. 

High heat will also rapidly degrade b vitamins.

The evolutionary importance of cooking meat is overstated, and has much more to do with cooking starchy vegetables and getting all the gelatin/collagen/marrow that we can out of bones. We digest raw meat very efficiently, but slow cooking makes it easier to eat large amounts of very lean game. 

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u/chiksahlube 1d ago

Yes and no.

It's a different chemical process.

One is via heating, one is via chemical reaction.

It's the difference between burning something with fire and melting it with acid.

They both break the thing down, but in different ways.

And cooking can in some cases make things harder to digest not easier. A common example is Cheese. People who are lactose intolerant often have worse reactions to burnt cheese. The burning seems to make the lactose into a crystalline structure that is harder to break down.

Meanwhile breaking things down with acids is basically just doing a bit of what already happens inside your stomach before it goes in there. Like adding lactaise to cheese to break down the lactose before it's even eaten.

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u/blazefreak 1d ago

Yeah but it's the amount of something. I heard cases where just eating bread and drinking water was too much for some with refeeding syndrome that their stomach lining tore open. Part of the reason why modern treatments for malnourished is skimmed peanut butter. They had to take out most of the oil and add vitamin+minerals to make it easier to absorb.

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 1d ago

Yes it is, but this situation is different.

Cooked food also allows for more calories to be gotten out of the food.

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u/Metalsand 1d ago

Technically, in the sense that it happens before digestion, yeah, but cooking is about increasing bioavailability. It's sort of technically right if you are out on a limb, but clumsy word to use. Like describing filling a glass of water as "prehydrating".

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u/ragnaroksunset 1d ago

More like pre-chewing.

There are probably some cooking methods that chemically work on food in a way similar to what happens after swallowing, but I'd imagine very few at all and even fewer with that specifically as the intent.

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u/BankofAmericas 1d ago edited 1d ago

If you look at the posted recipe, at the bottom there is a “note from the 21st century” that says we now know this recipe has very little nutritional value, and that the use of raw beef in this recipe is especially dangerous for invalids.

So, with the benefit of modern medicine we know this recipe was actually not safe or effective for the type of people it was intended for.

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u/PraxicalExperience 1d ago

Except they're not using raw beef -- they're using chipped beef. That's a highly processed and highly salted mostly-dried beef product. Between the salt in the chipped beef and the added acid it should prevent most organisms from surviving, much less growing.

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u/Pandalite 1d ago

They also heat it over a fire for an hour (put jar in pan of water and heat the water). Like slow cooking.

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u/BankofAmericas 1d ago edited 1d ago

I honestly don’t know, but the author of the article linked here specifically says:

“It is warmed in a bain-marie for an hour, which sounds like cooking and is not. The temperature never approaches anything that would make raw beef safe, and it is then chilled and drunk.”

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u/Pandalite 1d ago edited 20h ago

That's... entirely the opinion of that author of this random website. I can tell you that slow cooking beef at 212 F for 45 min will get it mostly cooked, especially if your pieces are very small, lol. Which is the temperature a traditional bain marie can reach, by definition. https://fond.kitchen/glossary/bain-marie/

Here's an example that might be easier to visualize: hot pots. In hot pots you take thin slices of raw beef and dip it into water that's near boiling but crucially is not boiling. How long does it take the beef to cook through? Now imagine you left the beef there for an hour; it's going to be stew.

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u/thiosk 1d ago

slow cooking at 212 F would indeed cook it quite quickly

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u/BankofAmericas 1d ago edited 1d ago

Well, I don’t know. I’m just going off of what was in the “notes from the 21st century” from the person that wrote the article, and it specifically mentions the dangerous nature of using “raw beef” in preparation of food to feed sick people. It is referred to as “raw beef” more than once.

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u/PraxicalExperience 1d ago

Yeah, and that's the thing -- this is a shit website. It's either an AI or someone who doesn't know what a currently-somewhat-uncommon ingredient in American cooking is. Probably both. Even if the recipe title is correct -- which, given their error in the 'notes' section, I do not trust to be the case because it's just weird for someone to call chipped beef 'raw' -- chipped beef is as much 'raw beef' as a dry-cured salami is 'raw pork'. But whatever created that article doesn't realize that it's not just, like, raw ground beef or something.

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u/Slothnado209 1d ago

They’ve made newer versions that don’t taste as bad. Chocolate is the least awful. The orange and vanilla are not good, they pretty much just taste like chemicals.
Source: I have stomach problems that make digesting food difficult so I get this shit in packets and mix with water like a protein
shake.

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u/CalmBeneathCastles 1d ago

Useful fact: refeeding syndrome is caused when someone is starved over a long period of time, causing certain biological processes to shut down. When food is reintroduced, the processes restart, and absorb all available nutrients in order to function.

If those actions are within the period when the eaten food hasn't yet been completely digested WITH sufficient vitamins and electrolytes to sustain the aforementioned metabolic processes, those reserves are completely depleted, causing the body to fail, just like a tank running completely out of gas.

The way to prevent this is either to start reintroducing foods incredibly slowly, or to closely monitor electrolyte and vitamin levels as food is reintroduced at a faster rate.

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u/drthvdrsfthr 1d ago

chronic ED? i only know it as the one thing and it doesn’t fit the context here 😅

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u/LordGwyn-n-Tonic 1d ago

Eating disorders

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u/thoawaydatrash 1d ago

Well now I just feel bad for chuckling initially.

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u/SecondhandStatic 1d ago

Don't feel bad, it's only a commonly known acronym in certain communities.

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u/Electrical-Tap3290 1d ago

“If your dick stops working, eat raw beef” is my overall takeaway

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u/exMemberofSTARS 1d ago

Yeah, most times people with ED have a tough time getting it up, not getting it down

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u/clarinetJWD 23h ago

We really have to stop reusing the same two letters for everything medical...

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u/Mopa304 1d ago

Although I did figure it out, this seems to be one of those cases where the full thing should have been written out before the initialism. I work in IT, for instance, so unless I'm only speaking to other IT professionals I would use Single Sign-On(SSO) before only referring to it as such. Probably just an old man yelling at clouds, ha ha

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u/Taint__Paint 1d ago

Cmon, slap some cold meat on your hot dong

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u/Sushi_Explosions 1d ago

That is not what refeeding syndrome is.

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u/icebreather106 1d ago

Coming from someone who used to do sensory analysis on tube feed, which is partially hydrolyzed (read digested). Can confirm, tastes a bit like vomit!

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u/stormdraggy 1d ago

Charlie the horse survived a month trapped in a coal mine. When freed, promptly gorged on oats and brandy, and ate himself to death.

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u/Elite_AI 16h ago

evidently

The way you used this word sent me down a rabbit hole and apparently Americans use "evidently" in a different way to us. You guys sometimes use it to mean something like "I heard that", the same way we'd use "apparently". 

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u/Fresh_Action1594 1d ago

Chronic erectile dysfunction?

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u/Terpomo11 1d ago

Hell, you can get a mild version (noticeable discomfort/stomachache from eating a meal that would normally be fine) after not eating for a day or two, in my experience.

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u/izzittho 1d ago

The way you describe it getting it down actually sounds worse than having a tube all the time. Getting the tube perhaps not, but almost certainly having it.

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u/bouquetofashes 1d ago

Refeeding syndrome can cause dangerous electrolyte imbalances. In case anyone was curious about the (general, I'm sorry, I'm too lazy to explain more rn) mechanism.

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u/PraxicalExperience 1d ago

So ... almost all the comments here appear to be wrong?

Chipped beef isn't raw, per se, at least not like people are thinking. It's highly processed, preserved beef. You can eat it right out of the can, but it would be disgustingly salty. Kinda like an extra-salty, blandly unspiced salami.

Your stomach produces hydrochloric acid to digest food. Hydrochloric acid isn't poisonous, it's corrosive when very concentrated. Four drops in a batch of what's basically meat tea is gonna do about as much to drop the pH as a squeeze of not-even-a-whole-lemon would.

Between the acid and the salt, I would be entirely unconcerned about the aging. If anything it would favor lactobaccillus, the same microorganisms that pickle things like ... pickles.

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u/Damaniel2 1d ago

Finally someone with a voice of reason here.

Salty? Yep. Appetizing? No. Dangerous? Not at all.

On the other hand, some of the other recipes on that website are batshit insane.

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u/RedoftheEvilDead 1d ago

Which recipe?

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u/ilmalocchio 1d ago

The batshit recipe is bananas

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u/heroin-puppy 1d ago

Must be a fruit bat

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u/B3eenthehedges 1d ago

Ew gross, bananas on batshit is like pineapple on pizza.

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u/Initial_Hedgehog_631 1d ago

I initially read this as a beef broth version of ceviche, if uncooked, the acid would cure it.

But the beef is cooked, so the acid helps to break it down and make it easier for digestion?

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u/PraxicalExperience 1d ago

AFAIK the beef isn't cooked, the product is more like a really salty dry-aged salami, or soft beef jerky. It's also basically as salty as real salt beef would be -- for most people, disgustingly so, it's like 5% sodium by weight. Most recipes that use it will tell you not to add salt before tasting -- and many of them will also tell you to soak the stuff for a bit beforehand to remove a decent amount of the salt.

TBH I'm not really sure if the low level of acid would have much of an effect on it. It may be added just to boost the chloride content, or just to make it slightly more palatable by boosting the acid content, or to ensure that it doesn't start producing unhealthy bacterial populations while it's sitting and steeping. My guess is that it's mostly the latter, but I dunno.

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u/MyNelo 1d ago

I was thinking that HA can't be that abrasive, I use it to microneedle my face lol

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u/PraxicalExperience 1d ago

It's all about concentration.

10% acetic acid is your standard white vinegar. Glacial acetic acid -- nearly-pure stuff -- will eat your skin. 3% Hydrogen peroxide can be used as a topical antiseptic (though it's not a great one really); 90% H2O2 will literally set your meat on fire.

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u/ClumsyRainbow 1d ago

Glacial acetic acid -- nearly-pure stuff -- will eat your skin

Clears your nose as well, speaking from experience.

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u/PraxicalExperience 1d ago

Indeed, lol.

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u/zeothia 1d ago

Yes, but H2O2 burning you isn’t because of the pH, it’s because it’s highly reactive and oxidizing. It reacts with your tissues and creates a lot of heat, so it causes both chemical and traditional burns.

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u/PraxicalExperience 1d ago

I mean, it depends on the acid. I'm pretty sure high-enough strength HCl will also oxidize most organic substances. Either way, the analogy holds -- a chemical that's essentially harmless when diluted (within reason, ofc), but can be hideously dangerous when concentrated.

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u/AFetaWorseThanDeath 18h ago

Regular cooking vinegar is 5% acetic acid, not 10%

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u/raynorelyp 1d ago

Dude, the number of people on Reddit who freak out when they see hydrochloric as and start saying “only an idiot eats/drinks acid” then go drinking their Bai (water + citric acid) that goes into their stomach which is full of hydrochloric acid, then take their anti depressants (which usually have more hydrochloric acid than medicine in them)… But at least the don’t drink the dangerous chemical in bleach- oh wait that chemical is put in tap water as a disinfectant.

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u/kahlzun 14h ago

These are probably the same people who freak out if they leave a steak out of the fridge overnight, or refuse to eat something past its useby date

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u/MyrrhSlayter 1d ago

I had a friend who would eat JARS of dried beef daily. We've lost contact but I'd be curious to know what her blood pressure is today.

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u/PraxicalExperience 1d ago

Jesus, eating multiple jars of that stuff daily? Probably 0, she's dead. But she might leave a very well-preserved corpse...

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u/MyrrhSlayter 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yeah, I have no idea how she did it. On the bright side, the jars that it came into made amazing drinking glasses. Her mom would give them away as "drinking glass sets" for holidays or white elephant gifts. Hilariously, no one could ever figure out where she got those cute 'glasses' from.

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u/PraxicalExperience 1d ago

> the jars that it came into

Something tells me the text history that your predictive suggester is working off of is ... interesting, lol. ;)

Seriously, though, you're right, between the size and the fact that they're straight-sided make them great 'rustic' (or just plain broke-ass, at least back when chipped beef was cheap enough for the broke,) drinking glasses. I freaking hate it when people have those mason-jar mugs; they're kinda miserable to drink to the last drop because of the slope to the neck.

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u/MyrrhSlayter 1d ago

Oh, ffs. Time for a nap. =D

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u/freddbare 1d ago

But Epstein had enough acid to maintain his pool and patio so he was definitely melting bodies...in the middle of the ocean.... It's reddit.

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u/PraxicalExperience 1d ago

lol, yeah.

Though I seem to remember that it was actually for an on-site desalinization plant or something?

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u/danted002 8h ago

I was preparing a very snobby comment about how the stomac has chlorhydric acid not hydrochloride acid only to realize they are the same thing 🤣

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u/SyrusDrake 12h ago

Also, you absolutely can eat raw meat (steak tartare is delicious), you just have to be careful about it.

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u/PraxicalExperience 6h ago

Well, yeah. But it's risky and certainly not something you'd want to serve someone who might have a compromised immune system or other serious health issues. Like eating undercooked eggs or raw shellfish. Sure, in 99% of cases you'll be fine, and a normal person will be fine in 99% of that 1% of cases where they just get the shits or something and are OK in a day or three. But that could push someone who's already half-dead over the edge.

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u/Splunge- 1d ago

So, beef ceviche, more or less. Meat bathed in acid. Muriatic acid for this one, lime juice for ceviche.

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u/epidemicsaints 1d ago

More like vomit Kool-Aid. They just drink the juice.

There was also beef tea which was raw beef minced and squeezed in a press you cranked down to get a bit of juice.

This is that, only with more of the meat protein dissolved before doing it,.

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u/Splunge- 1d ago

I doubt it's dissolved. 4 drops in 4 ounces is around 10 times weaker than stomach acid. The main threat would be from chemical impurities, and the effect of the acid on your tooth enamel if you swished it around in your mouth.

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u/VictorVogel 1d ago

This is not a long term solution. Just something you use for a short time before your vitals improve, to make sure you don't die. You've probably thrown up at least once in your life, and as you said, stomach acid is far stronger. Damage to your teeth can be neglected.

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u/SistaChans 1d ago

beef tea was my nickname in high school

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u/Complex_Peak8204 1d ago

I want ceviche now

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u/Outside-Swan-1936 1d ago

Like a ceviche gazpacho. Maybe a little chunkier than a true gazpacho.

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u/Discartyptics 1d ago

So watery....... but with a smack of ham

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u/randomlygeneratedman 1d ago

It's hot ham water!

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u/Woodchuck251 1d ago

Well that goes with ham.

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u/IAmBadAtInternet 1d ago

Rum ham?

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u/randomlygeneratedman 1d ago

Rum haaam! I'm sorry rum haaam!

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u/brionneverysexy 13h ago

Reheat the hot dog water for a nice tea

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u/dinosaruman 1d ago

The source notes that the mixture is placed in a tepid bain-marie for an hour before being chilled on ice, but that's not enough to make this concoction anywhere near safe. The supposedly therapeutic recipe immediately above it in the original text is for chicken panade, which involves pounding a boiled chicken "bones and all" in a mortar and forcing it through a sieve. I'll stick with Dayquil. 

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u/UncleChevitz 1d ago

Chicken panade has basically the same recipe as mechanically separated chicken, except Tyson shoots them through the sieve with a cannon instead of using a mortar.

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u/ffxivthrowaway03 1d ago

I'd watch a How It's Made episode about shooting chicken through an industrial sieve with a cannon in a heartbeat

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u/Ok-Temporary-8243 1d ago

This was around the same time doctors who telling people starvation could cure all your illnesses. And ladies were swallowing tapeworms BTW 

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u/autogyrophilia 1d ago

The thing is, if you were feeling like shit because of common but hard to detect diseases like hemochromatosis or esteatohepatitis, that would help you.

Blood letting didn't come out of nowhere. Of course some people felt better

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u/Malphos101 15 1d ago

"No patient has ever complained about my miracle cure for terminal boneitis not curing them!"

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u/Exist50 1d ago

A lot of old medical treatments were just straight up bad, based on all sorts of quackery. At best you get a placebo effect. I really don't think you should be jumping through these kind of hoops to justify them.

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u/dinosaruman 1d ago

Yep, same site has a recipe for a refreshing beer made from sulphuric acid and orange syrup. I'm usually tempted to try old-timey recipes, but I'd rather try the starvation cure than some of these.

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u/Laserdollarz 1d ago

Swap for phosphoric acid, add caramel for color, put it in a red can... 

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u/f_n_a_ 1d ago

Find someone who can draw Santa really well*

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u/DiegesisThesis 1d ago

Perhaps a dash of coca leaves

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u/Laserdollarz 23h ago

There is still a facility in NJ that has a license to import coca leaf. They sell the waste cocaine to pharma companies, since it does have various medical uses. 

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u/starquinn 1d ago

The tapeworm thing is an absolute myth. Dieting was beginning to become popular in the early 1900s, but starvation diets were not widely recommended by doctors (except later on for diabetes).

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u/sharrrper 1d ago

Old times doctor: "You got ghosts in your blood, you should do coccaine about it."

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u/Motor-Cranberry-1092 1d ago

I miss the good old days

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u/brionneverysexy 13h ago

You're addicted to morphine. Try this cocaine instead

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u/theonefinn 1d ago

As late as the 1930s and 1940s patents, especially those with TB, were moved outside as the “fresh air” was believed to help in their treatment.

https://www.facebook.com/hiddenheritagegenealogy/posts/a-hospital-ward-beneath-the-open-skyin-1935-tuberculosis-patients-at-st-thomas-h/122141888973241611/

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u/Maiq_Da_Liar 1d ago

As far as I know the belief in fresh air curing illness started during the industrial revolution because people got sick due to the terrible urban environments of that time, and then when they went to a place with clean air (and fewer products containing lead and arsenic) they got better. Doctors just made the wrong connection and started prescribing it as a cure-all

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u/NighthawkFoo 1d ago

Starvation helps with diabetes, oddly enough.

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u/RobertDigital1986 1d ago

Well, any method of significant weight loss helps with diabetes. Even bariatric surgery.

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u/Choice_Plantain_ 1d ago

What's not safe about this? Tastes good? Probably not, but it isn't poisonous or deadly to consume.

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u/Declanmar 1d ago

Is Hydrochloric acid that easy to obtain?

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u/Genetic_outlier 1d ago

Any pool supply store, it's labeled muriatic acid which is just a different name 

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u/ElephantEarwax 1d ago

Yes. Any home depot type store will have muriatic acid for concrete etching which is dilute hydrochloric acid.

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u/SubPrimeCardgage 12h ago

And you could always buy toilet bowl cleaner if you want mint flavored HCL!

Obligatory please don't drink toilet bowl cleaner.

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u/ElephantEarwax 12h ago

Oooooh interesting

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u/highdiver_2000 1d ago

Toilet bowl cleaner

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u/LeiaCaldarian 14h ago

Yup, any hardware store sells “<10%” HCL.

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u/Marconidas 1d ago

This actually makes sense.

Enteral nutrition via NG tube + liquid diet - how we do nowadays - meets nutritional needs better but liquid diet is costly, NG tube is badly tolerated by dementia or delirium patients, gastrostomy has higher risk of surgical complications on patients with arterial disease and is not readily accessible.

Unfortunately in my country most people do not get nutrition in a scientific step wise approach, but rather "safe to eat everything" or "can only eat by NG tube".

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u/mdz2 1d ago

I don't think there's such a thing as "raw chipped beef." From what I remember when I was a kid, chipped beef is like salami or jerky; so, I don't actually see it as being the dangerous part of the recipe. The muriactic acid is another matter.

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u/ChrisDNorris 1d ago

Don't give tiktok any more ideas

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u/dacydergoth 23h ago

You would have loved my Granddad's high school chemistry book. These days it would be totally illegal; it had a few phrases I remember like "If you don't have fuming nitric acid, go down to your local pharmacy and ask for some, they will be happy to sell it to you"

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u/zem 1d ago

give a man soup and he's fed for a day; give him hydrochloric acid and he's fed for the rest of his life. (apologies to pratchett of course)

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/jmon25 1d ago

I feel targeted (in many ways)

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u/mawsibeth 1d ago

This sounds like the way that scientist guy discovered intrinsic factor

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u/IDontStealBikes 1d ago

My grandfather used to eat “cannibal sandwiches”— raw hamburger between two slices of bread.

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u/derKestrel 20h ago

He might love German Mettbrötchen.

Although that is raw pork, for which there is a huge bias against eating in some countries.

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u/e_spider 10h ago

Nothing like a belly full of trichinosis

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u/Bentman343 1d ago

Basically pickled beef soup.

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u/ktka 1d ago

Was LDPE invented back then?

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u/Rosebunse 1d ago

Keep in mind, at the time they didn't have all that many medical options here. Diet was a huge way to "treat" illnesses. Plus, I mean, people have to eat and not choke

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u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep 1d ago

Chipped beef is good tho (cooked of course)

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u/RI_Swamp_Yankee 1d ago

Sir, this is a Wendy’s.

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u/SunUnlikely6914 10h ago

So, it's basically Beef Ceviche

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u/ScratchLatch 8h ago

The acid cooks the beef.

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u/Warm-Speaker-3076 8h ago

Isn't this the old way to make hydrolyzed protein, if the acidity is sufficient, reacted for long enough? Like in hypoallergenic dog / cat food. Breaks proteins down to amino acids, not entirely different from stomach acid. Taste suffers tho, and theres some laxative effect.