Snake Meat

I was watching the Learning Channel last night and they had a documentary on snake meat in China. They claim that it raises the body’s temp. and metabolism. Basically, it is claimed to be thermogenic. Can anybody validate this or chime in with their two cents?

It’s quite common for individuals to eat tiger balls as well :-).

The chinese have a saying (make that about 2million) that the only thing they don’t eat that has legs is a chair and the only thing they don’t eat that flys is a plane, and that’s about right.

I’m not saying it can’t be true, but… there’s a terrible problem in China of publishing all kinds of stuff that is absolutely irreproducible. They just don’t have anything like the standards for peer-reviewed journals that we have. If you are a big honcho somewhere and want to write an article about how, for example, Dung Hah Ho extract (which you never define what it is) “improves chi, liver function, and blood cholesterol” it WILL be published.

Worse, among your own staff, colleagues, or your graduate students if you are in academia, if you’re the head cheese none of them will dispute you! They will nod their heads, bow, and go along with whatever crap you pronounce. Doing otherwise would be “disrespectful.”

Good science CANNOT be done this way. Others in your team have to be free to tell you you’re wrong, or they think you’re wrong, whenever they think so… no matter how smart you are, when it comes to cutting edge science, you ARE going to need correction or argument from your colleagues. If they’re just “yes men,” for sure
you will continue in wrong ideas that can’t stand up to contrary argument (that’s never heard.) And if the “reviewers” are likewise
“yes men,” then all kinds of crap gets published.

I estimate no more than 10% of Chinese medical articles to have any validity whatsoever.

Reminds me of how we always tell women that a certain substance “is chock full of protein” :slight_smile: I’m going to start telling my GF it’s thermogenic instead, and site some chinese abstract.

Bill, do you really beleive in the North American journal system? How many contradicting articles are published every year? How many of the experiments are performed correctly, and how many leave out all the important details?

That the American system is imperfect does not mean that the Communist Chinese system cannot be worse. It is, by far.

Particularly, I believe, because of the element that their culture (as with also
the Japanese culture) strongly dissuades dissent within the research group, and almost requires conformity. Including conformity to what has long since clearly (to all outsiders) been clearly erroneous.

Not that this does not exist to some extent within American science as well, but nowhere near as badly, since in American hard science it generally is not considered a hideous social affront to express a different opinion or argument.

I have eaten lots of snakes, along with a lot of worse things, during four years of travel in and out of China, and never had any thermogenic effect. I have seen non-Chinese throw up from drinking the snake’s blood though. That’s as good as thermogenic!