Gene Hikes the Appalachian Trail

Tag: food

  • Worst Fear: Alpha-gal Syndrome

    The idea of spending five months walking with a heavy pack on, sleeping outside in all types of weather, and foregoing the comforts of home can sound scary. It definitely does scare me on occasion when I think about it. But, like, it scares me in a good way. Like, an I believe this will be challenging but I can handle it, kind of way. There are other things about the trail that scare me in a different way.

    I am a very risk averse person by nature. I’ve never been on a roller coaster, I’ve never scuba dived. I’ve only been outside the continental United States twice (once to Montreal and once to Puerto Rico). The reason I never take risks is because I always play out the absolute worst thing that can possibly happen over and over in my head until I’m convinced it will. Do I want to stand on the edge of this moderately high building? No, because the exact second I decide to stand there I will get hit by a minor vortex that lifts me over the edge and drops me onto a giant pile of broken concrete and rusty safety razors and horse dung. The very fact that nothing like this has ever happened to me just reinforces the idea that my abundance of caution is the reason why.

    I have several very specific fears about things that may happen to me on the Appalachian Trail. They range from the plausible to the irrationally unlikely. But rest assured that wherever on that continuum they lie, I remain equally concerned about them. Perhaps writing them out here in my blog will help to allay my fears. For my first specific fear I have something that is very real and even likely to occur. Fortunately, it is also easily preventable with care and discipline.

    My first fear (that is first chronologically, not first in terms of the amount of heebie-jeebies it gives me) is alpha-gal syndrome. Alpha-gal syndrome is an allergic disease caused by a tick bite. Being bitten causes you to develop an allergic reaction to galactose-α-1,3-galactose (also known as alpha-gal). That carbohydrate is found in the meat of most mammals, which means once you get it you will no longer be able to eat beef, pork, or most other meat. Alpha-gal is not found in humans, so Soylent Green would still be okay to eat. In the worst cases, people with the syndrome are not able to consume dairy like milk or yogurt either.

    The idea of an allergic reaction to alpha-gal is not unknown. What is scary is the idea of becoming allergic to the molecule after you eat it and it circulates in the bloodstream. Alpha-gal is the main reason why pig organs are rejected during transplantation into people. Our antibodies attack the carbohydrate and cause the organs to fail. Fortunately, scientists are engineering xenotransplants which lack that molecule.

    Unfortunately, that does not matter with alpha-gal syndrome. When the tick bites you it can take up to several months to develop the reaction. The exact mechanism is not clear. The same tick could bite two people and one can get the syndrome and the other won’t. Once you have it, a few hours after you eat red meat the allergic reaction begins. No more steak or ice cream or hot dogs, for the rest of your life.

    Which specific ticks can cause this? Way too many. Lone star tick, blacklegged tick, and western blacklegged tick are all known or suspected to cause it. Where is the lone star tick located? Why, the eastern United States of course. Isn’t that where the Appalachian Trail is? No shit. When are they most active? April to September. Well, fuck my life.

    public enemy number one

    As horrific as this is, it can be easily prevented. Permethrin is a miracle compound. Our Army uniforms were impregnated with it and I can proudly say I never got a tick bite despite sleeping on exposed ground many, many times across the southeastern United States. It is also critical to frequently check yourself and each other for ticks when you have a chance. They like to hide in your underarms and between your legs, just like many perverts you encounter.

    There are not many things worse than getting alpha-gal syndrome as far as I’m concerned. As scary as it is, practicing good hygiene and insect prevention is the key to making sure it does not happen to me. There are more than a few other scenarios I will go over in the coming months that are in some ways even more scary than this. I can’t wait to tell you all about them.

  • Churning And Burning

    By this point, there is a good to great chance you have seen one of the viral TikTok videos about making butter while you run. There are quite a few out there by now, but I believe this one here is the O.G.

    @momcallsmebirdy

    Churn🧈 and burn 🔥 baby!!! We woke up yesterday and wondered “can you churn butter and run at the same time?” Well, there you have it! Is this an original experience asking for a friend. #churningbutter #farmlife #runningwhilemakingbutter #trailrunning

    ♬ suara asli – Gado-Gado Semesta (Gagas) – Visnarey

    The science behind why this should work is fairly simple. Milk is an emulsion of fats in water. Since fats and water are famous for not getting along well, it is easy to agitate the mixture enough to separate the fat from the water. The up-down and side-to-side motion of running a good distance can be used to do just that. Pour some heavy cream into a bag. Run long enough to agitate the bag sufficiently. Separate the fatty part (butter) from the watery part (buttermilk). Profit.

    With that in mind I bought some heavy whipping cream from Walmart.This shit cost me $2.96 for a pint. That comes out to $23.68 for a gallon. With prices like that I’m surprised no one is blocking a strait or something to control the supply.

    I poured the cream into a one-gallon storage bag and then put that bag into another bag. Got to double bag it to prevent any little accidents from running around nine months from now. No salt added to the bag because I prefer unsalted butter. If you disagree, you can add 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of salt either at this step or after the run.

    Me trying so hard not to make the obvious jokes about filling a bag with my delicious cream.

    I slipped that bag into the back of my hydration carrier and took off. I went for a six mile jaunt around town. Once I got back I checked out the results of my exertion.

    It is tough to tell from the picture, but my results were less than stellar. What I found was something definitely solid, but not very solid. There also was essentially no separation and no liquid phase. Whatever I had made was not cream anymore, but was also not butter. I scooped it into an 8 oz container and pondered what had transpired.

    This looks like whipped cream instead of butter. But the ultimate test for any food is the taste test. So I pulled out some brown bread I had also bought from Walmart and smeared this abomination all over it.

    Buttered bread and chocolate milk. Two-thirds of the ideal post-run meal.

    Okay, it actually tasted very good. Tasted enough like butter that in a blind taste test I would have said it was butter. I have no illusions that it is butter or that I could use it in any recipe in lieu of butter, but it does have some value.

    So the whole thing was a failure but not a complete and total failure. Somewhere between “success” and “failure”. A “suck-ure”. From my past life as a molecular biologist, I know all about having experiments go tits up. The important thing is to go over what happened, do research, and try again with some tweaked variables.

    Here are some of my observations:

    • The heavy cream I used was ultra-pasteurized and contained polysorbate 80. Ultra-pasteurized cream is more difficult to separate than pasteurized cream. Polysorbate 80 is a powerful emulsifier that helps heavy cream stay as heavy cream at a wide range of temperatures and other stresses. So, you know, it basically exists in the cream to stop me from getting it to separate like I want.
    • I pulled the cream out of my fridge, shook it up for about 5 seconds, and poured it into the bag. I should have let it get somewhere between 60 and 65 degrees before starting my run.
    • I ran on only improved roads for the entire time, so my up-down and side-to-side movements were limited. I should mix in some trail running to get a good slosh going. Six miles should have been more than enough time, but I could stretch out to seven or eight next time.

    In summation, I was not able to create butter while running. Next time I try (which, I do not know when that will be) I will use a different kind of cream warmed to room temperature and run longer over a rougher trail. I also should have done three minutes of Google searching before I decided to try this. Now I need to go and clean up all this shit in my kitchen.