Body Worlds… and now you know where sausage comes from
Posted November 6th, 2008 by Howard TaylerGunther van Hagens’ “Body Worlds 3″ exhibit is in Salt Lake City for the next couple of months. I took it in with Sandra Thursday morning.
Wow.
We bought the (very thick!) book in the Leonardo Museum gift shop afterwards. I’m sure that after I’ve read it I’ll be able to tell you all kinds of interesting things about the exhibit that I was unable to learn in person.
My favorite part… I was admiring the unraveled length of digestive tract, and there were three high-school girls standing next to me. One of them said “Weird. It looks like sausage.”
Me: “That’s because that’s how they make sausage.”
Her: “What?”
Me: “Sausage. They take a length of sheep’s intestine, stuff it with ground meat, and twist it off every six inches or so.”
Her friend: “Didn’t you KNOW that?”
Her: “No…” She grimaces, obviously torn. “I LIKE sausage.”
Me: “People who like sausage shouldn’t learn how it’s made.”
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November 6th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
And people who respect the law. . .
Rock on, Howard!
D.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Mind, most sausage is not made that way anymore. Artificial casings made from collagen or cellulose (or on sausages like dry salami where you aren’t supposed to eat the casing, plastic) dominate the market. You really only see the natural kind on boutique products, especially since they don’t tend to keep as well.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
On various occasions, I’ve taken haggis to conventions.
Eventually (actually, generally sooner) someone will say:
“Haggis?? Eww! Do you know what’s in that?”
To which the obvious reply is, “YES. Do YOU know what’s in an Oscar Mayer weiner?”
November 6th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
“People who like sausage shouldn’t learn how it’s made.”
I don’t understand that attitude, myself. It’s sheep’s intestine. What’s wrong with that?
November 6th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
For anyone who wonders about Body Worlds: GO SEE IT!
It was in Denver a few years back and I, my A&P class, and (especially) my (then 6 y/o) son loved it.
Of course, he received a special treat and got to visit the anatomy lab at the CU Hospital first.
See it. Kids love it. Adults with any sense of curiosity or wonder love it. Just see it!
D.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Haven’t been, but if there’s that much fun to be had splashing collateral damage across innocent teenage bystanders’ appetites… it’s a must see the next time it’s up here!
I’ve always wondered about the truth to the urban legend that most people who work in meat processing plants are vegetarian. Heh.
You’re a mean man, Howard. Good job!!
November 6th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
A lot of commercial brands of sausage have gelatin casings as well. I know that’s what Alton Brown used on Good Eats when he demonstrated making one’s own sausage. The natural variety of casings are awkward to work with by comparison.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
I only buy the boutique sausages myself. Judging by the way they handle, cook, and burst, I’m pretty sure they’re using naturally-occurring organ-ick material for the casing.
But I could be wrong.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Most good sausage down here is made from pork guts, not sheep guts. Well, some is made from deer guts. I don’t know that they make anything from cow guts, except perhaps salami.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Oh - Most farmers and slaughterers aren’t vegetarian. It’s a job, and they need to eat. In fact, I’d say that you’d find a smaller percentage of veggieheads in those occupations than just about anything else. They’re too close to reality.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Bookworm: I do hope you don’t mean to imply that vegetarians aren’t grounded in reality… I’m vegetarian — mainly because meat flat-out smells like ‘dead thing’ to me, not food…though this might be why I’m grounded in reality and others are not. ( I also know a few who did it because their bodies stopped digesting it right, and they did not like meat enough to put up with the…various side effects. )
Vegans, though, I wonder about. Everybody whom I’ve known who has dealt with milk cows has been clear that Bossie likes having her teats milked. (One suspects it might be wise to ask a nursing woman how she would feel if left with full breasts. From a safe distance. With a nice, thick wall between whomever is asking and her, just in case she feels the need to ensure one doesn’t develop a desire to experiment…)
November 7th, 2008 at 12:20 am
I can put that urban legend to rest…. used to be a manager with Wendys; at one point, I did a month at one across the street from a meat packaging plant. Smelled *awful*. However…. easily half of our lunch rush consisted of employees from the plant across the street.
…
*resists urge to yell “myth busted”*
November 7th, 2008 at 1:41 am
Does Sandra like the English Delicacy Black Pudding, too? It’s a type of sausage as well.
November 7th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Scene: My High School, many years ago….
Random Idiot: ” o/~ Oh, I wish I were a Oscar Meyer weiner! o/~ ”
Me: “That can be arranged.” [Cue Psychotic Smile and Suggestive
Rubbing Of Pocket Knife*]
[*: Yes, this was sufficiently Long Ago that kids could carry pocket
knives in school.]
November 7th, 2008 at 2:09 am
It is an interesting substance to work with, although I had a bit of difficulty figuring out how to make the twists that seperate the links to stay the way I wanted them the first time I ever made sausage with intestines.
And though I worked with some cooks who are off-set by working with large amounts of raw meat, I’ve never even felt the urge to go vegetarian (all the time, at least, as I enjoy my vegetables and do eat many meals that are vegetarian in nature). After so many hundreds and thousands of pounds of raw meat that I’ve worked on in so many various forms, it has become, as Bookworm mentioned, just a job. I don’t even really think of it as blood pooling on my work surface as much as just some dark red liquid (unless I am thinking of natural thickeners) for the most part anymore.
November 7th, 2008 at 2:40 am
- Forward-facing, stereoscopic vision
- Canines
- Vesitigial claws
- Non-functioning appendix
- GI tract that can actually digest and derive nutrition from meat
This list tells me that this body was not evolved to be a vegetarian. That said, I really like this one bumper sticker I once saw:
“I’m not a vegetarian because I love animals. I just HATE plants!”
Last (and most relevant to this blog) quote:
“Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made. ”
– Otto von Bismark
November 7th, 2008 at 4:14 am
Rob Jones: I don’t have a problem with blood of food animals, but I’m squeamish about human blood. I do think of both of them as blood, but the latter comes from something that talks.
DeeJaye6: The vestigial claws could just mean that our ancestors lived in trees, and stereo vision is handy for jumping from one branch to another, but you’ve got the rest right. We clearly have the teeth and intestines of omnivores.
We also have the instincts of omnivores. Omnivores are more susceptible to food poisoning than herbivores and carnivores, and humans (and rats) have some fairly fastidious hygiene instincts to compensate, and a tendency to blame sudden illness on what we recently ate. The down side of the latter is a lot of hypochondria about imagined food allergies. The down sides of the former include:
* Oppressive religious notions of uncleanness which use the same instincts, so, for example, the Untouchables are actually disgusting to the higher castes.
* Squeamishness about recycled water, even in the face of drought. (I’m thinking of the city of Toowoomba, in particular.)
(Re: the bumper sticker) I’m pretty sure more plants have to die to feed the meat than would to provide a vegetarian the same nutrition. But a vegetarian who prepares their own meals gets to torture the plants personally.
If anyone tries to tell me “meat is murder”, I’m gonna call them an animal chauvinist. Unless they’re a fruitarian, of course.
(Re: Bismarck) I’m sorry, but how does someone not accustomed to a strict vegetarian diet watch sausages being made and not think “Yum!”?
November 7th, 2008 at 4:45 am
Samsaid:
>
Hmm… Possibly because, when Bismarck said that (sometime in the second half of the 19th century), food hygiene laws were pretty much non-existent and sausages were “that which you used in order to make a profit off of everything that you would otherwise throw away because it was somewhat rotten/dirty/unusable/all of the above, making sure to hide the taste with lots of spices”.
Also, I am *sure* that in those days it would not have been unusual to have the occassional rat falling into the mincing machine.
So, I can see Bismarck’s point…
Just my 2 eurocent!
JoseB
November 7th, 2008 at 4:46 am
ARGH… I meant to quote what Sam said, which was:
[[ (Re: Bismarck) I’m sorry, but how does someone not accustomed to a strict vegetarian diet watch sausages being made and not think “Yum!”? ]]
So, my comment above was related to that :P
November 7th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Ah. I still disagree with Bismarck.
I wouldn’t eat a 19th century sausage if I hadn’t seen it being made.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:43 am
I do love a bit of black pudding, although I will admit that I didnt know what it was made of when I first started eating it.
its made from blood and fat and a few other little odds and ends that dont really sound all that nice, but when fried and as part of a full english breakfast really do go down nicely..
November 7th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Howard - how is it that life keeps presenting you with perfect “moments” like these? That’s awesome.
Body Worlds is also here in Houston. I really need to go. Maybe on my next weekday off…
November 7th, 2008 at 7:22 am
@ Snicker: Life is like a large discount store with no mirrors, no cameras, and no plainclothes security. I am like a kleptomaniac.
Opportunities are everywhere. I just see them before most other folks do, and then I steal them.
November 7th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Makes me think of something i heard that some UN guy (from India i think it was) suggested: that schools have a day when they only had vegetarian options.
was supposed to be environmentally friendly.
November 7th, 2008 at 7:54 am
I’m the grandson of a butcher–meaning I learned about natural casings and what goes into hot dogs before I entered middle school. Because of that, I adopted this attitude:
Meat is meat. How is eating a cooked intestine any grosser than eating ground-up muscle, or a cooked rump?
November 7th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Am I the only one that looks at Bodyworlds and thinks “Those used to be people”?
Yea, it’s fascinating on a technical level, but extremely disturbing on another level.
November 7th, 2008 at 8:58 am
DancesWithBikers: No you’re not. I was both fascinated and disturbed by the exhibition.
November 7th, 2008 at 9:33 am
I not only love sausages, I’ve made my own. I also love haggis.
If we weren’t meant to eat animals, why are they so delicious?
November 7th, 2008 at 9:43 am
@csadn: Actually it’s Oscar Mayer, same spelling (but different pronunciation) as my last name. And you can guess one of my nicknames in high school. (Didn’t mind it so much when my girlfriend used it, as she preceded it with “Milord” as a reference to Heinlein’s “Glory Road”.)
As for Body Works, definitely worth seeing. I took anatomy in college so none of it was really new to me, but the preservation and display techniques sure beat the stuff sitting in jars of preservative that we had in our anatomy museum, and my kids enjoyed it. OTOH, at school in the lab itself we could also touch and get a feel for e.g. the sponginess of lungs. The one time I creeped myself out in lab was examining a partially dissected forearm/hand; the hand was intact and the muscles and tendons in the forearm exposed, and by tugging on the tendons you could make the hand and fingers flex. There’s something very personal about hands, almost as much so as faces; after a couple of minutes of this disembodied hand wiggling and flexing, that was enough.
As for them once being people: this is just the part that’s left, like cast-off skin cells or hair clippings. My Dad donated his body to the local medical school, and my Mom and my parents-in-law will be doing the same (my father-in-law is a doctor). My wife and I will too, and we’ve signed our organ donor cards — once I’m done with my body, I’m done with it, right?
— Alastair
November 7th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Saw Body Worlds 2 when it was in Denver. I would have to agree that it was quite amazing, though the high temperature in the exhibit hall detracted a bit from the experience. If you go to such things, try to go at a less busy time to avoid the crowds and their body heat.
November 7th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I’ve seen the original exhibition in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Amazing. The really great part were all the groups of students of medicine being lectured at the exhibits. I learned a lot about anatomy. One of the profs mistook me for one of his and started asking questions. Wasn’t smoked out until he asked for the Latin name of something.
Did BW3 include all those smoker lungs, too? I think they were trying to scare people into non-smoking.
You really need time for that exhibition - and try to find a town with a medical school.
November 7th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I was raised as a lacto-ovo (”Life is too short not to eat ice cream”) vegetarian, so discussions about sausage, haggis, and such are strictly academic to me. (I did once see “vegetarian haggis,” which raises the obvious question, “Why bother?”)
Just the same, I still get a kick out of the brilliantly written song “Carrot Juice Is Murder” from the album Russell’s Shorts by the Arrogant Worms.
(Excerpt: “Salads are only for murderers; cole slaw’s a fascist regime. Don’t think that they don’t have feelings, just ’cause a radish can’t scream.”)
–GS
November 7th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
The disturbing bit isn’t that they’re people. (ok, it’s a little freaky). It’s that some of the cadavers may have been obtained a little shadily.
As in, people donated their bodies “to science” thinking they’d be experimented on or practised on by med students, but instead they ended up in a traveling art show. Also, there are apparently some shows that use imported chinese cadavers of unknown voluntary-ness.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Meh- worked in a butcher department for 5 years- the first week I went vegetarian, then you get used to it, and I eat more meat than I sued to (as do/did my colleagues back then). You learn to love quality meat, the texture etc.
Vegetarians are people who need to rebel, and for some odd reason choose to rebel against our evolution an base nature. Doing so is their right, but claiming our evolution is not to omnivore is just plain old retarded and refusing to see the truth.
Also, sausages made with real-deal stuff as opposed to synthetic crap always have and always will taste better to me. Even knowing what they are, they just make the sausage 110% meat, nothing else, and they have the right consistency to boot.
…
Nomnomnom! *pads off to the kitchen to make sausages*
November 7th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
curse you all, there’s no sausage in the house and you’ve made me hungry!
November 7th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Greyscribe: Plants do scream when injured. But we don’t notice because their screams aren’t sounds, they’re smells – which attract predators of herbivorous insects.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
@Zippthorne: When the Body Works exhibit was here in Mpls-St Paul there were a number of questions about the Chinese cadavers. They said the permission documents were going to be reviewed and any they couldn’t authenticate would be remove from the exhibit.
“Vegetables aren’t Food. Vegetables are what Food eats.” Ed.
November 7th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Yeah, the chain-of-custody on the cadavers for BW3 is fairly air-tight. If there have been problems then they’ve straightened ‘em out.
November 7th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
The first thing you learn in survival training is that, with the exception of a couple of lizards and a couple of fish, animals are edible.
99.8% of the plants on this planet are toxic or utterly non-nutritious.
And very few wild plants yield enough calories to suffice if you’re scavenging (unless you’re a trained hunter-gatherer, of course).
So, first task: Kill an animal. Second: Eat it. Bonus: Wear its skin.
As I see it, eating plants is cowardly. They can’t fight or run, you rip them from the ground, toss them into fridge colder and darker than any dungeon, then torture them to pieces and cook and or eat them.
Hunting animals puts them in a position where they can run, get lucky, or with quite a few, gore, bite or kick you to death in return.
Conversely, since cows will let you walk up and shoot them, and the 6th will stare at you as stupidly as the 1st, they are not demonstrating animal intelligence and are morally merely motile plants.
The same applies to turkeys and chickens.
yum!
November 7th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Conversely conversely, crabs and lobster will eat you given even half a chance. They’ll even sometimes injure you after death.
An utterly guilt-free food.
November 7th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Ryo Hoshi - I mainly meant the militant vegetarians, which includes (but is not exclusive to) Vegans. I do know at least one person that had to drop meat almost completely from her diet because of digestive issues.
MadMike has a point - plants are _toxic_. Many of the things we eat regularly are from plants that are lethal. (Potatos are the tubers of a toxic plant, rhubarb leaves are poisonous, but we eat the stems, plantains aren’t good for the system until cooked, and castor oil is made from a bean that contains enough ricin to make a child seriously ill, if not dead.
MadMike - you’ve obviously not dealt much with wild turkeys. They RUN. Guineas aren’t quite as stupid as their domesticated brethren.
“Donated to science” is a pretty catch-all term. I’d say that the BodyWorlds exhibits are very science oriented. It may be considered ‘art’, but it teaches a LOT - and it’s getting to more people than would be going through chiropractors school and dismantling their own bodies.
November 7th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
**coughcough** Actually, one of the most common digestive problems has to do with issues surrounding meat processing. ( You DID notice that I mentioned some people who went vegetarian because their bodies did NOT digest it properly? )
The general theory is that early humans were what’s called ‘opportunistic carnivores.’ We, and other apes, were geared to eat meat on the occasions we got it. If a species does it enough, they become omnivores.
Now for the rest of the evidence given… Forward-facing, stereoscopic vision and canines are standard for our branch of mamallia — as I noted, most are opportunistic carnivores, but still considered offically herbavores. Vesitigial claws, as has been already observed, may simply be for other purposes. (Obviously, the person who put this on the list has never been clawed by a bunny.)
Now for the last: “Non-functioning appendix.” It’s a myth; we merely spent a rather long time finding out that it did have a rather important function…if I remember correctly, it’s the closest we get to a ‘backup drive’ for the intestinal bacteria.
On plants screaming: Um. We do sense it. To translate a recent scientific paper on receptors in the nose for things other than strictly scent…we can smell danger, and we do it by ’smelling’ plant-distress pheromones.
November 8th, 2008 at 1:46 am
AJWM: Considering I don’t eat their stuff, are you surprised I
wouldn’t know how they spell it?
(Funniest Thing I’ve Ever Seen: A OM Weinermobile pulled up just
outside an “adult novelties” store. I Kid You Not. :) )
On Body Worlds: I’ve seen too many unplanned version of what
they show there for it to have any interest for me. :P
November 8th, 2008 at 7:35 am
@Bookworm: In support and expansion to what Bookworm said about wild turkeys. My friend Bob was walking on a nature trail by the Minnesota River in Eagan and came face to face with a gang of wild turkeys. The Tom charged Bob and flew up to head level, Bob is 6’ 2”, flaying with its wings and pecking which Bob parried with his fists and forearms. Bob hit the Tom away repeatedly and the Tom kept attacking. It was only after Bob landed a really good punch which knocked the Tom to the ground was he able to disengage and execute a Retro Grade Advance to the Rear. A week after the encounter Bob still had bruises and scabs from the peck marks and wing strikes. Wild dinner can take care if it’s self and you too it you’re not careful.
Just a tidbit of food for thought. Cape Buffalo are regarded as more dangerous then Lions.
November 9th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Mmm, sausage…
I saw the competing BODIES exhibition this spring in NY. Great stuff, especially the the method of separating systems from the rest of the body, e.g. veins vs. arteries. One of the best bits was that the “smoker lung vs. non-smoker lung” table was accompanied by a huge plexiglass box with an invitiation to leave your cigarettes there, had you been affected by what you saw. There must’ve been at least a one cubic meter of smokes there.. :D
I also noted that nearly all bodies were pretty short and many with features intact looked at Asian. Subsequent research online pointed toward less than totally aboveboard sources, particularily in China.
November 9th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Domestic turkeys of course. You know: The tasty plant we bred from wild turkeys.