What would it take to have edible non-therapod dinosaur meat in a world where humans and dinosaurs have coexist since human civilization? Or would the human body or creativity find a way to eat dinosaur meat? It's my understanding that lots of dinosaur meat would be deadly due to build up of heavy metals from their diet. Edit: I'm looking at the implications of dinosaur ranching and if Dinosaur meat is edible, then it can be sold. You don't have to like it to eat it. Also if it isn't consumable for humans, then the market is smaller and resevered as feed for carnivous dinosaurs.
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15$\begingroup$ Archosaurians are some of the most popular sources of meat in the world, and are have a very wide variety of preparation and cooking techniques. Where are you expecting the heavy metals to come from, by the way? Pollutants like that get concentrated at the top of food chains, but they're much less of a problem if you eat herbivorous species. $\endgroup$– Starfish PrimeCommented Mar 19 at 11:21
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$\begingroup$ Tbh I couldn't remember which dinosaur the article was talking able, could have been t rex. $\endgroup$– Sage GrantCommented Mar 19 at 11:40
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8$\begingroup$ Yeah, eating apex predators who live in an industrialized world is probably not too healthy, but you don't get to be an apex predator without a large ecosystem of tasty things underneath you. Those t-rexes would be large, dangerous competitors for humans, and as such they'd have probably gone the way of most other awkward and potentially edible megafauna in earth's recent history: into the cooking pot, and thence into extinction, some time before sufficient industrialization occurred to pollute their food sources. $\endgroup$– Starfish PrimeCommented Mar 19 at 11:49
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9$\begingroup$ "due to build up of heavy metals from their diet" -- Why would you think that??? The only reason WE on earth have a problem with predator meat in the oceans(!) is that we dumped so much of our industrial garbage there for centuries, and, more importantly, all the coal that we burned, releasing a huge amount of heavy metals into the atmosphere, most of it ending up in the oceans. Otherwise we would not have that problem. $\endgroup$– MörreCommented Mar 19 at 14:57
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4$\begingroup$ the heavy metal thing is about ONE region in north America where glaciation removed much of the heavy metals, dinosaur meat would have the same metal content of other wild game. $\endgroup$– JohnCommented Mar 19 at 19:53
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2 Answers
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Why was dinosaur meat toxic to modern humans?
The claim that dinosaur meat would be toxic has to do with Cretaceous soil conditions. As the claim goes, at the time, there should have been higher concentrations of heavy metals in topsoil which worked thier way up the food chain. If this is true, and you were to go back in time, then yes, most food would slowly kill you from heavy metal poisoning, not just the dinosaurs.
However, if in your setting, dinosaurs just never went extinct, then by today's time period, they should be no more toxic than other terrestrial megafauna. So large herbivorous dinos should be safe to eat like elephants or mooses, but large predators may be a bit toxic like eating tigers, but you'd have to eat a lot of it over a long time period to notice the effects.
Managing a Heavy Metal Rich Diet
Just in case that does not answer your question, I will also answer it under the assumption that in your setting, dinosaurs simply DO have elevated heavy metal in thier meat.
DISCLAIMER: THIS POST IS FOR WORLD BUILDING PURPOSES ONLY, IF YOU ARE SUFFERING FROM HEAVY METAL TOXICITY OR YOU FEEL TEMPTED TO CONSUME LARGE AMOUNTS OF HEAVY METAL RICH MEAT, PLEASE SEEK THE MEDICAL ADVICE OF A LICENSED PROFESSIONAL.
As we were all told when we were little, once you get a heavy metal in your system, it's yours forever... except that this is not 100% true. It's just that the common Westernized diet is so full of highly processed and fatty foods that it makes us really bad at handling heavy metals. Although our bodies can not naturally purge heavy metals very well, there are foods that we can consume that contain compounds that bind to heavy metals protecting us from thier harmful effects, helping us heal form the damage they cause, and allowing us to flush them from our system.
If your people were to eat a diet rich in minimally processed versions of these foods, then they would be naturally protected from the levels of heavy metal buildup that you would expect the dinosaur meat to contain. Below are the most likely types of toxic metals you could get from eating too much dino meat and common foods that would help keep your people alive and healthy if also consumed as staples of their diet.
- Lead: Tomatoes, Tea, Ginger, Garlic, Cilantro, Milk Thistle Seeds
- Cadmium: Onion, Curry, Grape, Cilantro, Milk Thistle Seeds
- Mercury: Tea, Rhubarb, Grape Seed, Cilantro, Milk Thistle Seeds
- Nickel: Carrots, Potatoes, Onions, Milk Thistle Seeds
- Zinc*: Corn, Rice, and other Cereals.
- Iron*: Mustard Greens (including Spinach, kale, etc.), Rhubarb, Strawberries, Beets, and Edamame beans
- Arsenic**: Mustard Greens (including Spinach, kale, etc.), Milk Thistle Seeds
- Aluminum**: Turmeric, cilantro, parsley, curry, garlic, Milk Thistle seeds
* While too much zinc or iron can be toxic, they are also important parts of your biology. These foods can reduce the harmful effects of too much of these heavy metals, but you don't want to avoid these metals entirely either.
** Technically transitional metals, not a heavy metal, but similarly toxic
Milk Thistle Seeds are generally considered the best universal heavy metal detox supplement and can be drank as a tea, or consumed like a grain, but there are a wide range of diets that could easily add up to the same effect as long as they are rich in a wide range of herbs, fruits, and vegetables.
https://www.agqlabs.us.com/heavy-metals-in-foods/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4303853/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6853017/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3654245/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9588316/
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/hemochromatosis-diet#dietary-factors
https://blog.biostarus.com/foods-that-fight-metal-toxicity/
https://www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/11/15/2018
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/aluminum-toxicity-health-mahdavi-d-c-q-m-e-b-c-i-m-ahp-yogi
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5$\begingroup$ Do you have any useful papers showing that those foods are effective at removing heavy metals from humans in vivo? I see a lot of promotion from exceedingly dubious pseudoscientific sources (which often go hand in hand with the notion of "detoxing") but not so much actual research. There is evidence that the plants can protect themselves from metal toxicity, but that's a long way from doing the same job to things that eat them. $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 19 at 14:32
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3$\begingroup$ @StarfishPrime sorry, was not saving my links, but yes, most of this is coming from research papers that cited the exact active compounds and described thier mechanism of defense... but I thought that would be too much detail for WorldBuilding purposes. Some stuff did come from articles, but I only included the stuff that appeared reputable (like written by a doctor, containing citations, and giving some explanation of the mechanism of defense). The only one I did not dig very deep into is the Milk Thistle Seeds, only because I know I've researched it more heavily in past for other questions $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 19 at 14:50
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2$\begingroup$ @StarfishPrime I've added citations from browser history. There were a lot of dead end and less reputable searches to dig through that I did not use that I tried to exclude; so, it's possible the citations are not 100%, but this should be more than enough to establish the general thesis that eating certain foods helps purge and protect your body from toxic metals. $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 19 at 15:04
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4$\begingroup$ Lets not go as far as "purge" ;-) Some of those papers are interesting, but there's plenty of "works in rats!" and the occasional followup "...but no better than placebo in humans". Also, given the presence of stuff like tomatoes and potatoes and onions and garlic, it might be worth easing off the "western diet" there... $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 19 at 15:16
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2$\begingroup$ @j4nd3r53n But when people are around there are flowering plants so we should not read too much into the exact choice of era. It may be possible that the dinosaurs remain because temperature did not fall and similarly CO2 levels did not fall and there was enough tasty foliage for them to eat and have a happy cold-blooded co/existence with evolving mammals/humans.. $\endgroup$– KalleMPCommented Mar 20 at 17:22
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We already eat dinosaur meat in large amounts, every time we eat chicken, turkey and other birds, as those birds are the more direct descendant of dinosaurs.
In some places you can also enjoy crocodile or snake meat, if you want to step in distant relatives' realms.
So I think that if you stick eating bird's ancestors you should be in rather safe territory.
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$\begingroup$ I'm aware we eat birds, I'm looking at the other side of the family, like hadrosaurs and triceratops. Would they be different from birds? $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 19 at 11:41
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3$\begingroup$ @SageGrant are crocodiles and snakes not different enough? $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 19 at 11:46
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$\begingroup$ @SageGrant if you want to get a taste of crocodile, check out a mongolian grill, you might be lucky and they offer it like cangoroo. $\endgroup$– TrishCommented Mar 19 at 18:48
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1$\begingroup$ They say that sharks and Coelocanths are also from dinosaur times but probably not of the T.Rex family and Coelocanth is reputedly not very tasty. $\endgroup$– KalleMPCommented Mar 20 at 17:24