Some questions about food that mystify me..

[LouraLoura]

1/ Is a gherkin a pickled cucumber? (too lazy to google).

2/ What are non corn fed chicken fed on?

3/ Why did granola go out of fashion? (I have a lovely plant based one with no sugar).

4. What's your favourite thing to put on sourdough? (if you eat it that is)

5. What is essentially wrong with farmed salmon, and are the antibiotics a real issue? Do you prefer farmed? I find it more succulent..

6/ A simple suggestion for homemade fajita?

Am feeling peckish...

I’m eating that right now 😂

@TheGetaway DP swears granola makes him fart, but as he does so (often, and awfully) without granola I thought 'yeah, sure'. Now I'm wondering....

1. I grew up thinking gherkins were specially grown mini veg related to cucumbers... they are, I'm told, just a type of cucumber that best suits pickling. I love them, I don't care either way.

1. I try not to think about this one.

1. Is it out of fashion? I love the stuff, but have to examine the ingredients carefully as they're often way too high in sugar, and I cba to make my own.

1. Just a good butter. Maybe a dark cherry jam, if I have it.

1. I think it's very polluting for the environment, and on a superficial level the meat looks completely different to a wild filet. Insipid vs richly coloured.

1. Forget the fajitas and eat soft/crispy tacos instead, yum.

Vegan granola = no honey, I assume? Uses agave syrup or similar, instead.

Just to nitpick one tiny detail out of all this, chickens are most definitely not herbivores. I have 23 of them in my garden at the moment and they are enthusiastic omnivores. They love plants but eat lots of bugs of all varieties and also any mice they can find. They will catch a mouse and swallow it whole. VERY definitely not herbivores!

@TheGetaway food of the gods

4. hummus and kimchi

5. Tin of spicy mixed beans, drained and fried with onions and peppers and Cajun seasonings.

Fish farms : There are no wild caught fish at the moment in UK waters, if it says British or most likely Scottish it's Farmed. The fish are exposed to or injected with : Antifoulants Antibiotics Parasiticides Anaesthetics Disinfectants Vaccines

The link is to a 2.49 sec video I searched around for a short one
Even if after watching you have no empathy for all the suffering and pollution I honestly don't know why on Earth anyone would want to put all that in their bodies

@UtterlyUnimaginativeUsername Yep! I always imagine them as tiny dinosaurs, as they will eat anything they can get their hands/beaks on.

Now that is what I call a very helpful answer that has sorted out a few things that have puzzled me, I am feeling the same elation I experienced when I realised the truth about tortillas.

@LouraLoura
"I wonder, does anyone know if the antibiotics in farmed animals actually reach us in a way that will alter our resistance ? And if so, why does no one seem worried about this?
It isn't something I've looked into, so will have a search - sadly the internet throws up too many conflicting results to make much sense of things."

It isn't about the antibiotics reaching us, or about our resistance. The antibiotics force the evolution of bacteria which are resistant (to the antibiotics used).
So then if we become infected with bacteria, there are no antibiotics which can treat them.

Basically, mutations (mistakes in their DNA) happen when bacteria reproduce. Only occasionally, but given how often bacteria multiply, there will be quite a few mutated bacteria out there.
By complete chance, some of the bacteria will have a mutation which means they aren't easily killed by, for example, penicillin.
If you treat the host animal with penicillin, the "normal" bacteria will be killed off. But the mutant bacteria will remain. And then they will reproduce, with no competition from any "normal" bacteria.
So what started out as a population of millions of bacteria, only a handful of which were resistant to penicillin, grows back to a population, which all (or almost all) are resistant to penicillin.

This absolutely is a huge problem. Antibiotics which are used to treat humans, are becoming ineffective due to routine use in farmed animals.
People (such as the World Health Organisation) ARE worried about this. But it is difficult to get industry to change, as feeding antibiotics (for example in drinking water) can help animals to grow bigger and quicker.