Geoffrey Barst on tue 15 nov 05
Quite a lot of research has been done on this subject. Plastic chopping
boards, which can become scratched, seem to harbor bacteria in those
scratches even after rinsing, and cultures taken from a glass cutting
board used and rinsed in the same way have lower colony counts. It would
not be too great a stretch of the imagination to see that a smooth,
vitrified surface without crazing on a plate or dish should be less
inviting to bacteria than a crazed one. Interestingly, wooden chopping
boards seem to be bactericidal, as is mayonnaise! Everything is covered in
organisms anyway, and fortunately most of them are harmless, but let us
not forget how our life expectancy has increased with good hygiene. So
it's your choice whether you eat off crazed ware.
Geoff Barst
pdp1@EARTHLINK.NET on wed 16 nov 05
Well, certainly, I would be fairly cautious about serving or eating raw or
undercooked Havalena, Salmon, commercial Poultry and Pork and so on, or most
fresh Water Fish,
regardless of what sort of cutting board or platter it had been on...
Lol...
The term Salmonella I think does come from the initial association with the
Salmon Fish.
You know these things DO happen, too...
Was reading awhile back on some folks in Africa, who'd killed a somewhat
sheepish, if large/skinney and large-tusked Wild Boar.
Now, they also commented later on how all them little long greyish-white
wiggley-worms they were seeing in the muscles and elsewhere did kind of put
them off a little when they were butchering it, but they figured the price
was right, and it had been easy to kill. And they were thrifty with the
cooking fuel I guess, and...
So, them and theirs all ate of it a-plenty, and within a week or better,
well...
They realized they had excercised some error of judgement on that culinary
matter.
Eeeeeesh...
Phil
Las Vegas
Lee Love on wed 16 nov 05
Geoffrey Barst wrote:
>organisms anyway, and fortunately most of them are harmless, but let us
>not forget how our life expectancy has increased with good hygiene. So
>it's your choice whether you eat off crazed ware.
>
>
I agree Geoffrey. It is all about choice, including creative choice.
We all have different creative focuses. Some don't lend themselves
to total control as well as others.
You know, we've been over this many times before. It
always makes me split a gut when the glaze fundamentalist start calling
people who don't adhere to their "one true way" as being : lazy,
stupid, irresponsible, or a Luddite.
Often, they are firing in very controlled computered
electric or gas kilns, following industrial/commercial standards, and
don't understand the flexibility that is necessary if you are firing in
wood or in another vapor environment. People fire in these kinds of
non-industrial kilns exactly for the lack of control they have over the
firing process. The beauty is in the range and variety. Within this
range, you sometimes get very beautiful variations that would give
Kohler sinks nightmares, but they are exactly why we fire in these
situations. Sometimes, you get crazed, crawled or pitted surfaces.
And sometimes these are the best work. Sometimes, their only friend is
the shard pile.
Related to "germs", as has been mentioned here before,
recent research has shown that a "too clean" environment causes immune
deficiency. Could it be that the long life of the Japanese, who use
"crazed pottery" as much as any people in the world, owe their longevity
to the low level stimulation of bacteria in their crazed pottery?
Probably not. But it is just as valid an idea as the ideas about
unproven germ hazards of crazed stoneware. I believe it comes from
when we were young and when White Castle and McDonalds were pushing
stainless steel and white tiled kitchens and our mother's wouldn't let
us eat at "Greasy Spoons" because they weren't "clean."
The full article from The Cell magazine on sterile environments and
immune deficiency is here:
http://tinyurl.com/bqbct
Below is in "layman's terms":
http://www.scripps.edu/news/press/041504b.html
" "Autoimmunity has [traditionally] been considered a condition of too
much stimulation," says Scripps Research Immunology Professor Nora
Sarvetnick, Ph.D. "What we are seeing is that it is a condition of too
little stimulation."
In an article appearing in this week's issue of the journal /Cell/, Nora
Sarvetnick and her coauthors in the Department of Immunology assert that
we need a certain level of immune stimulation to fill the body with
immune cells. An understimulated immune system results in too few T
cells, and the body tries to correct this by inducing a vigorous
expansion of the remaining T cells, creating a more autoreactive
population."
"The cleaner everyone is, the less stimulation their immune system
gets," says Sarvetnick. "Their immune system tends to be incomplete"
The article, "Immune insufficiency generates autoimmunity" is authored
by Cecile King, Alex Ilic, Kersten Koelsch, and Nora Sarvetnick and
appears in the April 16, 2004 issue of the journal /Cell/. After April
16, the article will be available online at: http://tinyurl.com/bqbct.
--
Lee Love
in Mashiko, Japan http://mashiko.org
http://seisokuro.blogspot.com/ My Photo Logs
"Human subtelty will never devise an invention more beautiful,
more simple or more direct than does Nature,
because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous."
--Leonardo da Vinci
Ron Roy on thu 17 nov 05
I eat off crazed dinnerware regularly but I don't think there is "nothing"
there - in the cracks - I know different. If you can smell fish on crazed
ware for weeks after there has to be something there.
The question is - is it a problem for some people?
Do those of you who think there is no problem think it's OK to store food
in crazed ware?
Do you think it's OK for those with compromised immune systems to eat off it?
Is it OK to feed infants off it?
I happen to think it is an advantage in a small way for heathy people - it
may help keep our immune systems stronger.
But all the wishful thinking among us is not going to prove there is
nothing there.
RR
>Quite a lot of research has been done on this subject. Plastic chopping
>boards, which can become scratched, seem to harbor bacteria in those
>scratches even after rinsing, and cultures taken from a glass cutting
>board used and rinsed in the same way have lower colony counts. It would
>not be too great a stretch of the imagination to see that a smooth,
>vitrified surface without crazing on a plate or dish should be less
>inviting to bacteria than a crazed one. Interestingly, wooden chopping
>boards seem to be bactericidal, as is mayonnaise! Everything is covered in
>organisms anyway, and fortunately most of them are harmless, but let us
>not forget how our life expectancy has increased with good hygiene. So
>it's your choice whether you eat off crazed ware.
Ron Roy
RR#4
15084 Little Lake Road
Brighton, Ontario
Canada
K0K 1H0
Phone: 613-475-9544
Fax: 613-475-3513
claybair on thu 17 nov 05
Phil....
Not only in Africa.
Forty years ago I was on vacation in Maine.
I went deep sea fishing with my dad.
We caught many cod. One of the hands on deck gave
directions for cleaning the fish. He said " Run the fillets
under cold water until all the worms come out.".
I did as he suggested... they did come out..... I did make
a fish stew..... we couldn't eat it.
We just were so grossed out from viewing of those little white
parasitic worms wriggling out of that beautiful fillet ruined that meal!
My dog relished it!
We even set a place for her at the table and took a picture of her.
She was freaked out that she was sitting on a chair at the table!
We got a great "What am I doing up here... I'm supposed to be on the floor!"
look on her face.
I recently found out that many fish including salmon have
such parasites..... gee I might have been happier
when I didn't know!
Gayle Bair - I still can't eat cod!;-)
Bainbridge Island, WA
Tucson, AZ
http://claybair.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Clayart [mailto:CLAYART@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG]On Behalf Of
pdp1@EARTHLINK.NET
Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 11:37 PM
To: CLAYART@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG
Subject: Re: Bacteria & cracks in glaze
Well, certainly, I would be fairly cautious about serving or eating raw or
undercooked Havalena, Salmon, commercial Poultry and Pork and so on, or most
fresh Water Fish,
regardless of what sort of cutting board or platter it had been on...
Lol...
The term Salmonella I think does come from the initial association with the
Salmon Fish.
You know these things DO happen, too...
Was reading awhile back on some folks in Africa, who'd killed a somewhat
sheepish, if large/skinney and large-tusked Wild Boar.
Now, they also commented later on how all them little long greyish-white
wiggley-worms they were seeing in the muscles and elsewhere did kind of put
them off a little when they were butchering it, but they figured the price
was right, and it had been easy to kill. And they were thrifty with the
cooking fuel I guess, and...
So, them and theirs all ate of it a-plenty, and within a week or better,
well...
They realized they had excercised some error of judgement on that culinary
matter.
Eeeeeesh...
Phil
Las Vegas
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