Totally agree with points 1 and 3. 2 I’m not so worried about as long as I’m eating somewhere reputable and know they’ve cleaned thoroughly.
But mostly, most organ meats just don’t taste good to me, which is, you know, sort of the #1 requirement for eating a thing, IMHO.
This being a noted exception to “organ meats”. Truer words have never been spoken.
Your circle of friends seems to have a more liberal interpretation of “trust” than mine.
Don’t tell your Japanese friends what’s in a hot dog.
Agreed!
I have always been in average/good shape but over a year or two my weight rapidly increased, I started getting frequent blinding headaches after eating. I never had energy. Always felt depressed. My overall health was just not right. I kept eating less and less until I was down to 1 meal a day but it didn’t help. When I realized I was nearly 300 lbs (298) I went to the doctor. I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic. The doctor sent me to a nutritionist that worked out a balanced diet. Nothing extreme like an all meat fad diet. Mostly fresh vegetables with a bit of meat and a bit of carbs. The hardest part was getting used to eating regularly again. I was so used to skipping meals. In not too long with little effort I lost 60 lbs. I lost a bit more after that but sort of fluctuate in the low 200’s. I’d like to lose more but from a labs perspective my doctor say’s I’m doing super great and to just keep doing what I’m doing.
Not the kind of story we often here about those who avoid meat. Great to hear you found a solution! 
I made a mistake long ago in thinking that vegetarian = healthy, always. It absolutely can be. But the reality is that I rarely ate fresh vegetables or fruits. It was a lot of processed meat substitutes and carbs. There are many cases of type 2 diabetes on my dad’s side of the family. So my version of being a vegetarian just completely overloaded my system for producing insulin. Once that started to fail without me realizing it, doing more of the same just made everything worse.
Makes sense to me. So many processed foods now are loaded with various sugars. I’m almost completely vegetarian and seem fine healthwise, maybe because I do eat lots of fresh veggies and fruit. 
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Absolutely. I was just not very smart about it. Hopefully talking about it will encourage other vegetarians to look at their diet and make sure that in addition to not eating meat, that they are actually eating healthy and to watch out for those stealth sugars in processed foods.
The other issue is that a few years before this all hit I found out I had gout (thanks again dad). So most of the vegetarian sources of protein like beans would cause me to have an attack. So i was always in this gray area of not eating enough protein versus eating too much and having an attack. Now, I need to be careful to not overeat certain meats but I find I have more variety in options and as long as I vary what I eat I don’t have attacks like I used to before.
I guess the tldr; is many of us can benefit from being more aware of what we are putting in our mouths. It’s so easy to get busy and just eat what is fast and tasty and while we might feel full and satisfied we are really starving nutritionally.
So true. And thanks – I do believe I’ll forgo that slice of reheated pizza I was just contemplating. Rice and veggies here I come!
Eating brains is risky (but what isn’t).
CJD (human equivalent of mad cow disease) is a possibility, but is of course very rare. It probably helps to know the source of your edible brains. I read somewhere that in the southern US where squirrel brains are a delicacy, it is more common (but still rare).
@Medievalist beat me to it - it’s the prions you need to worry about.
That’s a serious risk, especially because cooking doesn’t destroy prions. 20 years ago people in rural parts of poorer countries didn’t give much thought to that.
The two things that made it safer were that the source was always known (brain was always cooked and consumed on the same day the pig was butchered), and that small farms didn’t use bone meal as an animal feed yet (BSE epidemic in cattle was mostly caused by adding bone meal to animal feed).
To be honest, right now I’d avoid it, especially not knowing the source.
Couple of points:
A) I’m Black and I still don’t fuck with chitlins, pigs’ feet, hog mauls, or any other nasty ‘traditional foods’ that are a remnant from slavery days. That goes double for any kind of jerky made from said remnants.
B) I don’t have a lot of trust in anyone who’s offering me unknown food, period. (When I was 5, my evil older sibling tried to trick me into eating dry cat food, because she was just a hateful twunt like that.)
This, 1000 times; THIS.
Part of the reason I was skeptical about the veracity of the above image was the “1170 %DV cholesterol” number on the can. Of course, much has been said about how the threat of dietary cholesterol may be overstated, but nonetheless one does not often see such figures in a nutrition information panel.
Also, “milk gravy” ? (The term is doubly strange as the ingredients suggest the “gravy” term is superlative.)
I am NOT going to consult the Urban Dictionary on that one. Nopenopenope
No fear; it’s just gravy made from bacon grease with a small amount of milk mixed in. Surprisingly, it does not seem to be a slang term for anything else…
Of course, now that I’ve said that, someone will invent one…
… as in “the politicians milk gravy trains whenever one comes along”
“Milk gravy” - any politician’s non-salaried income resultant directly from his/her elected position or influence.
First, didn’t I mention in another thread that people basically eat everything?
Second, since @orenwolf, @Melizmatic and @Medievalist concur on their non-prefence: some innards are particularly rich in some micro-nutrients, AFAIR. We are all well-fed and don’t have any of those missing in our diet. If we would, I wonder if we would actually like this stuff.
Can’t imagine it. But still contemplating.
That’s a fair thing to speculate upon; as many different factors play into personal preferences when it comes to food, including social conditioning, locale and accessibility.
But as stands right now, the only way I’d eat any of that shite is if starvation was the only other option.
