Did anyone see the Fear FActor episode where they put a dead rat in a blender, and the 2 people races to see who could eat it first?
Could a person get physically sick or some disease from eating this?
It was the entire rat, fur, teeth, the whole enchalada!
I think that was the grossest thing I’ve seen, LOL
It was probably an ultra-clean disinfected lab rat. Not that that would make its intestines safer to eat, but you bet your ass there are umpteen doctors, lawyers, and network people watching to make sure the people who go on these shows 1) sign airtight release forms, and 2) aren’t in any actual danger anyway. They’re not about to do anything that is actually going to kill a contestant.
I have pet rats and they’re very clean (and smart, and loyal, and gentle, so no comments like “ewww, gross” please…). They bathe themselves about 10-12 times a day. A domestic rat probably poses less of a risk to ingest than, say, a dog.
I’m glad I never saw that episode. Poor ratties… 
The rat wasn’t deboned? Is it safe to eat bones, teeth, etc? Doesn’t seem like it would be safe.
Depends on if it was set to Puree or just Chop… :dubious:
If you’re eating the whole animal raw, it isn’t so much the cleanliness of it’s skin that you should be worried about, but the fact that you’re ingesting all of its gut flora including such lovely things as e.coli - even if it is a perfectly healthy, clean animal, eating the whole thing raw is quite likely to give you a bad case of food poisoning.
Of course we have similar bacteria already in our own guts, but a)we probably carry different strains to which we are adapted and b)even transferring our own gut flora from the bottom end to the top is asking for trouble.
It is possible to get sterile rats. these are animals that are bron via ceasarean and live out their lives in positive pressure cages drinking sterile distilled water and eating autoclaved food. The animals ocntain no microbes at all. Eating one of those wold be safe. I doubt a TV show would bother to obtain one, but they just might have.
Aside from that, yeah, it’s pretty damn dangerous. It doens’t matter how relatively clean a rat is it’s still crawling with bacteria inside and out. That alone makes it a no-no as Mangetout.
That’s made worse because ther are bones present that have been contaminated with faecal material. Flesh contaminated in that way would be bad enough consideing the bactaerial loads found in feces. But flesh tends to be digested relatively rapidly. Bones OTOH tend not to be digested at all. Anything that finds its way onto the bones will almost ceratinly make it into intetsines and has the potenital to start growing. Really not a good thing to have happen.
But it’s a bit like not wahsing oyur hands or leaving meat to thaw on a benchtop. Most of the time your will get away with it.
Nitpick: Is a blender powerful enough to “liquify” a rat? You may be aware how much force you need to, say, cut up meat for stewing. Are the tiny, even though sharp, blades at the bottom of the blender jar, and the motor itself, powerful enough to make * frappe aux rat*?
Maybe it was some kind of mock frog… I mean rat.
See this very recent thread on a similar stunt.
No TV company is going to, or would be allowed to, risk giving contestants anything that is not fit for human consumption. I would imagine that the rat had gone through a whole raft of processes, cleaning, sterilising, gutting and probably cooking to make it safe before hand. They’re not going to say that on the TV show though, are they?
Still gross though. What some people will do to get on TV and money.
I often suspect most of what Fear Factor does. For all we know the rats are mixed with alchohol or something that creates some sort of chemical sterilization reaction…
There’s just too much at stake for NBC to put their neck out there like that. As with movies, I think the fun in Fear Factor is the presentation. I’m sure the most dangerous part of the day filming is the contestants car ride from the hotel to the set.
I’m sure that the main factor of the show is: Fear (or revulsion as it may be) at the “idea” of the “stunt”. Reguardless of how “real” it is or isn’t… isn’t really the point. The point is: to highlight the fear/revulsion of the contestants and to fool the easily led sheep that make up thier viewing audience.
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Sho “If we took the bones out, it wouldn’t be crunchy, now would it?” dan
I see I also replied to a linked cite in this thread from a fear Factor Q from yesterday… (100 year old egg)… I meant to’ve posted it here… oh well.
are you kidding? I read once that The Price is Right, searches the audience before they let them in… and returns any found weapons on thier exit! :eek:
Ah, Fear Factor. Surely one of the finest meats of our cultural stew.:rolleyes:
I can’t see how eating the nervous tissue of the animal could be a good idea.
Were the critters purged beforehand? On second thought, I don’t want to know.
bugs rule. Especially the green filled kind.
Odds were the rats were cooked. Like most things on the show, they were probably dipped in boiling water for who knows how long. If done long enough (i.e., till the rats internal temp was ~212 farenheight) then all the nasty stuff would be killed, and the rat, at least on the outside, wouldn’t really look cooked.
I saw some behind-the-scenes show concerning Fear Factor and everything…from the foods they eat to the stuts they perform is actually done by a couple of people on the production staff first. There are also, of course, experts on hand with respect to he food to vouch for the safety of the meal.
It looked to me like the rats had been gutted and boiled.