Does eating a rare steak = eating blood?

by neverendingjourney 54 Replies latest jw friends

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  neverendingjourney

  Leolaia:

  Thanks for the explanation. I wish that I had discovered that on my own or that a JW had explained that to me back when I was still a active. However, am I correct in understanding that the meat we buy off the supermarket shelf contains blood, even in very small amounts? That's how I understand it, but I'm not very informed on this topic. If so, it seems to go against the Society's strict prohibition on blood transfusions. If we're going to go ahead and eat small quantities of blood in our steak, what the hell, we might as well allow larger quantities of blood to be inserted into our bodies to save our lives. The approach on the blood in meat issue seemed to be a more modern, liberal approach to the blood doctrine, while the blood transfusion issue was and is a very legalistic, Pharisaic, fundamentalist approach. I could never reconcile the two positions in my mind.
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  cognizant dissident

  When I was a child I asked my mom about the bloody meat/steak also. She gave me the "it's not blood, it's just meat juice", story. I honestly believed that and never questioned it my entire life until I went to university and took first year human anatomy and biology for nursing. During our section on blood and blood vessels, someone asked the teacher (who had a doctorate in biology) why the the cut meats still bleeds days and weeks after the animal has been butchered and bled. Apparently, bleeding the animal does not allow all the blood in the tiniest capillaries to escape. Blood travels through capillaries one cell at a time, that is how tiny the capillaries are. After the meat has sat for a while or is cut again, the blood still trapped in the capilliaries can leach out of the cut or disintegrating/decomposing capillaries.

  Granted, it is not just blood. The blood is also mixed with other interstitial and extrastitial fluid leaking out of the muscle and organ tissue, and myoglobin as Leolaia pointed out. But there are definitely red blood cells in that fluid giving it the reddish color. A simple mircroscope and slide would reveal the truth of this to any witness. Red blood cells are very easily indentified even to a non-expert.

  I was so shocked by this "revelation" that all JW's had been eating blood all along. I honestly never knew this. I immediately realized that even if God did give the Israelites commands to bleed all their meat, it was only meant to be a symbol of the sacredness of the life they were taking. It was never meant to be a literal command that one must not injest one drop of blood. This was reinforced when we talked about how blood cells were formed in the bone marrow. I can remember many a witness greedily sucking every drop of marrow/blood out of the chicken bones they were eating. Yet, children with cancer had to die rather than receive bone marrow transplants. The "truth" just started to fall apart for me after that. Their doctrines fell one after the other, just like dominoes falling, click, click, click.

  Cog
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  Leolaia

  Yes, there is blood in meat ... that is why orthodox Jews go through great lengths to remove it. But the question remains how much blood tends to remain in our meat supply after draining, and this is still an open question. This is pretty dated, but Paul D. Warriss of the ARC Meat Research Institute wrote the following in "The Residual Blood Content of Meat," published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture in 1977:

  "There seems to be no unequivocal experimental evidence to support the widely held view that the efficiency of bleeding out of slaughter animals affects the eating or keeping qualities of meat. Neither are the effects of different slaughter procedures on bleeding efficiency clear, due partly to confusion over the relationship between the residual blood content of meat and the amount of blood lost at slaughter and partly to differences in the methodology used by various authors. As yet no really accurate and specific technique for determining whole blood in meat has been described".

  Another article by Warriss later in the year in the same journal ("Haemoglobin Concentrations in Beef") gave the results of one experimental study:

  Haemoglobin was used as an index of residual blood in beef muscles from various sources. Factors determining the amount of residual blood appear to operate in a similar way throughout the carcass musculature. Only one in 60 samples of M. longissimus thoracis et lumborum showed any evidence of poor bleeding and the increased blood content was very small. M. psoas major from cows and bulls contained significantly higher amounts of haemoglobin than those from steers, and in the case of cows this appeared to be due to their greater age, more blood being retained in the muscles of older animals. It is estimated that between 1.1 and 4.3% of the total blood volume of the live animal is retained in the musculature of a normal steer carcass and that the average residual blood content of normal butcher's meat is about 0.3%.

  I guess whether this is an acceptable amount depends on one's own standards. Those who eat kosher care about it a lot, the Society doesn't give the matter a single thought.

  I posted some rather brutal links here last year on slaughterhouses and how animals are really slaughtered (inhumanely) and what most JWs don't realize is that in many cases, animals are killed by strangulation. The Society makes such a big deal about the scripture in Acts that says "abstain from blood" but that very same passage also says "abstain from things strangled", and apparently this is of no concern at all to the Society.
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  cognizant dissident

  Leoleia:

  I actually believe that it is totally irrelevant how much blood is left in the meat. 1% or .3%. The society has said in the past that Christians would not accept and contaminate their bodies with one drop of transfused blood. Amount is not the argument. They have never answered the question as to why it is permissable to eat drops of blood left in the meat from properly bled animals and yet is not permissable to inject one drop of blood into our veins by way of trasfusion to save a life. I am referring to pre 2001 blood doctrines.

  When the 2001 blood articles came out outlining permissable minor fractions and forbidden major components the whole thing just became ludicrous to me. (A fraction and a component are synomous yet the society tries to differentiate the usage. This is theocratic wordplay at it's finest and would be laughable if people were not DYING over this nonsensical drivel!) Arguing the percentage of blood left in the meat falls into the same category. It is a distinction without a difference.

  Cog
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  Axeman

  Yes it does if your straining out gnats and swallowing Camels. It is not about eating blood but respect for the giver of life You can kill an animal but you can't claim its life That belongs to God. So symbolicly( is that a word ) you achknowledge this by pouring it out on the ground. Blood represents life only when a life is taken that is one reason why the WT ban on transfusions is crap No one has to die to donate blood. If you make blood the focus like the WT does you come up with ridiculous sanctions like the one in a WT question from readers which banned the use of leeches in medical procedures because they eat blood.
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  cognizant dissident

  Also great points Axeman. Banning leaches. Absurd! Do no witnesses stop to ask themselves if Jehovah didn't want leaches to eat blood then why would he have made them? Or when witnesses refuse to buy cat or dog food with blood by products in it do they ask themselves how wild cats and dogs bleed their kill before they eat? It is just insanity! I equate banning blood transfusions with "drinking the kool-aid" now. So JW's are proving themselves a cult by agreeing in advance and putting it in writing that they will drink the kool-aid if asked.

  Cog
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  Crumpet

  Thanks for the scientific clarifrication Cog Dis! I bought the whole meat juice theory as well and my favourite steak is bloody fillet.

  If I cut my tongue or bite my cheek while eating and I end up swallowing some of my own blood, haven't I sinned against Jehovah?

  Yep I used to wonder this too as well as did John the Baptist bleed the locusts he lived off when he roamed the desert?
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  cognizant dissident

  Bleed the locusts! LOL. Crumpet is funny! Also little kids are smarter than the average witness!

  Cog
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  horrible life

  When I was in hygiene school, I had a woman with horrible gum disease. I was cleaning, and she would continue to dab her gums with a tissue. OVER and OVER. I kept telling her, to leave it, and I would rinse her. I wasn't getting anywhere, with her hand reaching up, her head lifting off of the chair, and then looking at the tissue. OMG Then it hit, she is a JW. I asked her, YEP, I was right. I didn't tell her I used to be.

  I made an excuse, and went to tell my instructors what was going on, and I was going crazy. They came over to watch, and told her to relax, that I had everything under control, and was she in any pain. She told them no, that she was a JW, and not allowed to eat blood. The instructors told her, I couldn't work on her if she continued her lift,dab, and look habit. She couldn't stop, so they asked her to leave. Thank GOD!!
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  cognizant dissident

  Great story Horrible Life. I thought of a great question for that dub. So what do JW's do who have ulcers and are bleeding right into their stomachs! For god's sake! Get out the stomach pumps STAT! They are eating blood!

  Cog (I crack myself up sometimes)