What percentage of U.S. lambs are infested with toxoplasma parasites?
Brain Parasites in Meat
4.7/5 - (13 votes)
Next up, lamb chops. The prevalence of the parasite Toxoplasma “in lambs destined for human consumption in the USA.” USDA researchers obtained the hearts of 383 lambs on the day of killing. So for those of you who think the USDA doesn’t have a heart? Wrong—they’ve got 383!
What do you think they found? Greater than 50% infested? Or less than 50%?
The good news is, it was less than half—only about 1 in 6 U.S. lambs are actively infected. The bad news is that 10% of Americans are currently infected with this brain parasite. That means, odds are, we all know people who have a battle going on inside their skulls, between their immune system and these Toxoplasma brain parasites—which have been linked to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Parkinson’s. But most people’s immune systems are able to keep them at bay.
Should our immune system start to seriously slip, though, they can infect our eyeballs. Here’s a closeup of the back of someone’s infected eye. This is what it looks like in the brain of an adult. And this is what these parasites can do to the brains of our children.
No one, but particularly not pregnant women, should eat undercooked meat.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by veganmontreal.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- J. P. Dubey, N. Sundar, D. Hill, G. V. Velmurugan, L. A. Bandini, O. C. H. Kwok, D. Majumdar, and C. Su. High prevalence and abundant atypical genotypes of Toxoplasma gondii isolated from lambs destined for human consumption in the USA. Int. J. Parasitol., 38(8 - 9):999-1006, 2008.
- Toxoplasma and schizophrenia. Yolken RH, Dickerson FB, Fuller Torrey E. Parasite Immunol. 2009 Nov;31(11):706-15.
Next up, lamb chops. The prevalence of the parasite Toxoplasma “in lambs destined for human consumption in the USA.” USDA researchers obtained the hearts of 383 lambs on the day of killing. So for those of you who think the USDA doesn’t have a heart? Wrong—they’ve got 383!
What do you think they found? Greater than 50% infested? Or less than 50%?
The good news is, it was less than half—only about 1 in 6 U.S. lambs are actively infected. The bad news is that 10% of Americans are currently infected with this brain parasite. That means, odds are, we all know people who have a battle going on inside their skulls, between their immune system and these Toxoplasma brain parasites—which have been linked to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Parkinson’s. But most people’s immune systems are able to keep them at bay.
Should our immune system start to seriously slip, though, they can infect our eyeballs. Here’s a closeup of the back of someone’s infected eye. This is what it looks like in the brain of an adult. And this is what these parasites can do to the brains of our children.
No one, but particularly not pregnant women, should eat undercooked meat.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by veganmontreal.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- J. P. Dubey, N. Sundar, D. Hill, G. V. Velmurugan, L. A. Bandini, O. C. H. Kwok, D. Majumdar, and C. Su. High prevalence and abundant atypical genotypes of Toxoplasma gondii isolated from lambs destined for human consumption in the USA. Int. J. Parasitol., 38(8 - 9):999-1006, 2008.
- Toxoplasma and schizophrenia. Yolken RH, Dickerson FB, Fuller Torrey E. Parasite Immunol. 2009 Nov;31(11):706-15.
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Title
Brain Parasites in Meat
LicenseCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Content URLDoctor's Note
Check out my videos on parasites and meat:
Chronic Headaches and Pork Tapeworms
Not So Delusional Parasitosis
Tongue Worm in Human Eye
Also check out my other videos on parasites.
For more context, check out my associated blog post: Adding FDA-Approved Viruses to Meat.
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