Random nutrition rant

[enigmania]

Does anyone else suspect that the effectiveness of glucosamine supplementation has something to do with people not eating enough tendons or sinewy bits or bone marrow or all the other parts of animals that don't come in nicely stripped packs or aren't as tasty/easy when food is abundant? I am a hypocrite because I don't eat those parts. But I tried

Comments

[asher63]

I'll get back to you on it.

[pastinaceous]

Do those bits contain lots of glucosamine? That kind of thing would definitely be hard for me to get since almost all the meat I buy comes without bones.

I think giblets are a bit of a pain to deal with. Healthy, but annoying to prepare.

[enigmania]

I don't know if they have lots; I was kinda assuming since it's used in building cartilage and such that those parts contain some amount of it or similarly-usable substances. I can't find much internets info though. Apparently you can also produce it via corn fungus!

They usually produce it from shellfish shells, right? Maybe we just need to eat more bugs, or "land shrimp".

[pastinaceous]

I think you're right that it mostly comes from shellfish. I've also heard of gelatin being used to promote joint health. I think I'd rather eat jello than gnaw on some bones and tendons.

[bnbn]

you and your stupid giblets.
i swear to god, you should be a barbarian,
hunting in the forrest in a loin cloth
and having "roast sparrow heads" as your favourite food.

[enigmania]

Did I ever tell you about the medidtation I did at the centre where we were to consider and be aware of various internal organs? Somehow I started thinking of mine as a pile of warm sleeping kittens. Voltron of kittens!

[malwae]

I think the glucosamine is primarily from tendons and ligaments, not so much from the odd internal organs. That's one of the (rather odd) things I learned in acupuncture school; nutritional therapies for sports injures like torn tendons included eating things like beef tendon soup. You can get it at Vietnamese pho places... basically the tendons are cooked forever and turn into something kind of like a noodle.

[enigmania]

The giblets were kind of a tangent... Are tendons available for purchase in asian food stores?

[malwae]

Probably... you can usually get any weird animal bit you want at asian grocery stores. Fun places.

I think most of the glucosamine sold nowadays comes from sharks, which is kind of a problem because shark populations are dropping more dramatically since the stuff was shown to help with connective tissue diseases. Not sure if there's anything special about shark cartilage in comparison with cow cartilage.

[enigmania]

My googling seems to indicate it generally comes from the shells of shellfish; my bottle warns of shrimp and crab contents.

[dukexmachismo]

Probably. I'm a big fan of rich homemade broths for exactly that reason, even if it does smack vaguely of sympathetic magic.

[enigmania]

I need to make more broths. I'll toss bones and things into a freezer bag for it and then never get around to using them.