Burritogate All Comes Down to Corn

Yes indeed. Nandrolone is actually a good ingredient in a designer cocktail, because you are allowed to have 2 microg/L in your urine. Unless one screws up...

Another possibility is of course that a testo cream was contimated with it, a known issue. But if true, that wouldn't exactly help her.

O.P., O.P., O.P. ... wrote:

If you want to move away from facts to a possible narrative: 1) Corn has nothing to do with it; 2) U.S. pork supply &/or wild boar have nothing to do with Houlihan case; 3) The rational most likely narrative is that Houlihan screwed up the micro-dosing. Houlihan, maybe while drinking beer or wine screwed up micro-dosing by accident or Houlihan got greedy and more than micro-dosed thinking she would not get caught.

You do know prosecutors in County Courthouses do not have to prove how alcohol got into the system of a drunk driver. If D.U.I. case does go to trial it is helpful for prosecutor to put together a timeline of drinking but never necessary and alcohol convictions, as I stated previously have a much greater degree of proof than Houlihan and her PED usage.

I want to stay with the facts.

Microdosing nandrolone doesn’t seem either rational or likely.

Microdosing alcohol is legal.

Like alcohol convictions, proving the source of the nandrolone is not necessary to convict, and is not sufficient to avoid a conviction.

Unlike alcohol — you correctly placed the burden of proof on the prosecution, whereas with nandrolone, the burden of proof is placed on the defense.

Why is no one stating the obvious? It could be corn but, Houlihan is from Iowa and that state is controlled by Big Corn. She knows if she squealed on Big Corn, then Big Corn could easily get to her loved ones. She took the fall for Big Corn to keep her family safe.

casual obsever wrote:

Thanks twoggle. Did they actually claim "the source was uncastrated pig meat"? Again, that was actually not included in Shelby's published statement.

Also, again, if the GC/C/IRMS results included a larger delta value, then it's highly unlikely to be "a false positive", and the arbiters' decision is very reasonable. Have you seen that value mentioned anywhere?

They did make that claim in the press conference according to my understanding starting at approx. 4:42 to approx 5:50:

But I can understand if someone disagrees.

I haven’t seen the Delta carbon-13 values for the endogenous reference compounds (ERCs) for Houlihan. Her lawyer says the Delta Carbon-13 value for her 19-NA was -23. So I don’t know how much greater than 3.0 will be the difference between the ERC and the 19-NA. But I do know that one person in the Hulsemann study on uncastrated meat consumption had a difference of 5.8. For Houlihan, it will probably be between 3.01 and ~7. If I were guessing, I would say the ERC value might be around -18 or -19.

Given the importance of this question generally, it is surprising there appears to be no research looking at nandrolone levels (or simply, normal male levels) in farmed pork being sold to the public, whether through supermarkets, restaurants, butchers, or other sources of meat. Why is that? Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough, but for right now, I suspect it's because most people don't actually want to know.

Greene (SH's lawyer) said they did run a bunch of tests, which I assume were inconclusive. I don't know what's required to accurately test cooked food for nandrolone, but like you said, it's probably not cheap and a positive result would not actually provide proof about what SH ate that day. It's hard to say what the actual probabilities are, in part because there's a stigma around intact male pork which producers and distributors would prefer not to talk about.

At the supermarket in normal times, I would guess the percentage of pork containing nandrolone would be extremely low (1/500?). In restaurants, which are not subject to the same stringent labeling requirements and often have "farm-to-table" sourcing relationships, I expect that number would rise. In food trucks selling offal or chorizo sausage, it might be even higher. My wild guess for the latter would be somewhere in the 1-5% range, but the actual result would all depend on the pig (and NUMBER of pigs) used in the sausage, and what parts of the pig(s) were used that day, which vary considerably in nandrolone concentration. So, in order to get a meaningful result, you'd probably want to test a hundred burritos over a multi-month period, and the result could still be scuttled if the restaurant's meat merchant decided to change from a local source to some other source in the Midwest while it was being studied.

tooloong wrote:

I didn't read all that. Too long. This is LRC. Bulletpoint it at least.

+1

Tastes Like Chicken wrote:

Interesting. Just out of curiosity, what is your background? And who is paying your bills these days?

If you want to know more, my username here is my Twitter handle. As a hobbyjogger, I have no connection to any running organization and thus do not have to worry about burning any bridges. I have absolutely no connection to SH, Nike, BTC, or any athletic organization.

Uncastrated boar seems highly dubious considering that not only does boar taint cause a signficantly unpleasant smell and taste that is released when pork is heated, but consumers find meat from boars objectionable in comparison with meat from castrated males. And yes, there is a difference (1).

Most male piglets raised in the U.S. are "barrows" or what's known as a castrated male. As has been identified and discussed ad infinitum, the vast majority of the pork consumed in the U.S. does not come from boars.

And, if they did, and even if some research suggests the naturally occurring hormones in the meat and organs from intact male pigs (boars) can impact nandrolone test results, the meat from those animals constitutes a very miniscule amount of the pork in circulation, readying for public consumption.

Not only is Nandrolone not approved for use in any food animal, federal regulations prohibit the use of added steroids to pork (2)

Let's run with the Houlihan story for a moment.

- Would a person readying to eat a burrito at a place they'd oft frequented consume it if this particular burrito had a noxious odor?

- Would an Olympic-level athlete on a watch list eat it if it the smell was putrid and the athlete could neither reasonably determine why nor determine if one of the prevailing consequences of eating revolting meat would be the likely outcome (adverse analytical finding; abdominal pain; diarrhea; fever; chills; headaches, etc.)?

- Would a food truck that prepared revolting burritos be noticeable by 'regulars' nearby?

- Has anyone unbiased to the outcomes come forth and mentioned that there are one or more particular food trucks eminating significantly unpleasant smells from time to time?

- Did any of those persons state this to be the case on/near the date that Houlihan was tested, if indeed it was the non-castrated meat (or chicken or cross-contaminated beef, or corn)?

So, Houlihan sneaks away with the girls, heads back to a favourite food spot, orders a burrito that's too greasy, consumes said burrito and implicates the squealing piggy in her ADRV post mortem.

That greasy burrito, if it existed, was probably fried. And fried foods for an Olympic-level athlete are extremely high in the wrong kind of fat, are extremely hard to digest, and can leave a person feeling very sluggish.

And, that seems so very unlike Houlihan.

In her own words:

My diet has probably been the biggest obstacle in my running. I used to eat terribly in high school and have slowly learned how to eat healthy. I'm still trying to tweak things and figure out what works best for me because everyone is different when it comes to food and different body types. An average day's meal for me would look like this:

Breakfast- yogurt with blueberries/strawberries and granola and some coffee.

Lunch- Usually two pieces of Avocado toast with an over easy egg on each. I'll usually include a smoothie too (banana, strawberries, yogurt, milk, spinach/kale for example).

Dinner- Some type of protein, usually chicken or salmon and once a week, steak. Paired with a bunch of roasted veggies (green beans/broccoli/brussel sprouts, bell peppers, onion, mushrooms, garlic) and sometimes rice or pasta.

One of my signature dinners is my fish (salmon) tacos with mango avocado salsa that I'll usually make about once a week. I got the recipe from Shalane's Run Fast Eat Slow book but I've added my own touches to it.

I might make some popcorn for a midday snack or some kind of fruit. If I'm craving dessert, I'll have an apple with peanut butter during the competition part of the year. Otherwise, ice cream all the way!! (3)

The castrated pig story smells more than contrived. Science says pig organs can trigger a false positive for nandrolone, but considering the enormous sequence of events to bring this to pass in the Houlihan case, where she retroactively stated “We concluded that the most likely explanation was a burrito purchased and consumed approximately 10 hours before that drug test from an authentic Mexican food truck that serves pig offal near my house in Beaverton, Oregon," I call bullsh%t on this one. Porksh%t to be precise.

(1) Banon S, Andreu C, Laencina J et al. Fresh and eating pork from entire and castrate heavy males. Food Qual Pref 2004;3:293-300

(2)

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/policy/food-safety-acts/poultry-products-inspection-act

(3)

https://ia.milesplit.com/articles/217304/shelby-houlihan-shares-her-daily-food-diary

Hahaha, yes. Let's not forget that CAS unanimously did not buy her story about her beef burrito contaminated with several ounces of uncastrated boar offal. Unanimously, so even the arbiter hand-picked by Nike's lawyers did not fall for it.

Houlihan herself was so smart to mention neither "uncastrated" in her story nor that she ordered beef, so the public won't realize how unbelievable her story is:

"We concluded that the most likely explanation was a burrito purchased and consumed approximately 10 hours before that drug test from an authentic Mexican food truck that serves pig offal near my house in Beaverton, Oregon,"

Last but not least, here for example we learned:

https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/07/07/shelby-houlihan-says-a-burrito-ended-her-olympic-career-we-set-out-to-find-it/

"“Buche is not extremely popular but it sells,” says Jenny Saldanas, owner of Cocina Mexico Lindo. She sells nine carnitas burritos for every buche burrito, and says she has never heard of nandrolone—or Houlihan’s claims. “We purchase from legitimate meat providers....They are well recognized and work under all rules and regulations.”"

One key piece of info that always seems to get away from this discussion: Shelby had her gallbladder removed when she was young. Knowing people who have had same, a person with no gallbladder typically can't eat pork or similar fried food without diarrhea or other digestion problems because they don't have the gallbladder-filtered bile to effectively digest it.

moultonk wrote:

Tastes Like Chicken wrote:

Interesting. Just out of curiosity, what is your background? And who is paying your bills these days?

If you want to know more, my username here is my Twitter handle. As a hobbyjogger, I have no connection to any running organization and thus do not have to worry about burning any bridges. I have absolutely no connection to SH, Nike, BTC, or any athletic organization.

Thanks for answering. And my apologies for impugning your integrity by suggesting you are a paid shill. I didn't meant to do that. I honestly was interested in your expertise, not your interest, and should have made that clear.

Nice try Shelby.

Kenneth Copeland, verified millionaire wrote:

Before we move further into this discussion around boar meat which may "sow" doubt (lol I couldn't help myself) in Shelby's positive test, I would just like to remind everyone that uncastrated pig meat/protein is illegal in the US food supply and virtually non-existent here. The "pork burrito" defense is outlandish at face value, even without considering the fact she and Jerry have provide zero evidence she even ate a pork product.

This statement is categorically false. Uncastrated meat is entirely legal and common in the food supply, particularly in areas or countries where small-scale farming is practiced, but also in larger countries like the US. For example, in an article referenced by Twoggle, it says that 2.8 million piglets went uncastrated in France in 2019 out of a total of 23.5 million. That's 12%! ("Deadline looms for French pig farmers on castration choice").

rekrunner wrote:

twoggle wrote:

Here is an editorial I put together based primarily on various posts I have made (with help from ideas from others’ posts). Hope there aren’t to many typos!

https://twoggle.github.io/DopingFiles/Article.html

That was amazing. Well done.

+1000

Now that I've had a chance to get through it all, I completely agree with Rekrunner! Thank you Twoggle for getting all these arguments and references together in one handy place, which allowed me to learn a lot of new details. Believe it or not, I had never heard of the "Portlandia" show and that scene in the restaurant ("Colin the Chicken") is priceless (and not too far from reality, according to the comments)!

I want to clarify for anyone coming into this discussion that Casual Observer is referring to Twoggle's externally-hosted paper, "Houlihan, Burrito-Gate and the Problems of Sports Drug Testing", and not my original post that started this thread.

I don't think it's a fair criticism of Twoggle's article to say it has editorial bias, when any advocate or attorney would also be biased as a function of doing their job properly. The American court system, at least, is adversarial in nature and does not require that attorneys present a fair and unbiased interpretation of the facts, though they are usually most convincing when they do. If WADA feels that Twoggle's arguments have weaknesses, they should come out and say what they are. That's on them.

Twoggle has spent more time looking at the legal and procedural issues of the case on WADA's terms, whereas I'm more interested in just figuring out what the lab and AIU were thinking, as well as being amenable to throwing out the system altogether. In my view, the first positive test should simply be the start of a discreet investigation into finding out what caused it, which should end with no room for doubt at the end of it.

All that said, like Casual Observer, I wouldn't characterize the GC/C/IRMS Test as being "40% False-Positive" but rather point out the delta (that is to say, the difference in C13 values between the 19-NA and the athlete's body) is a meaningless test when the source of nandrolone is suspected to have come from pork. What we'd really want are reference compounds from the pig's body, but of course it's not lying around anymore and ingestion of it is not enough to leave recognizable traces in the athlete's urine. At least that's my understanding of it. It's also true that for the A sample in December, WADA's testing rules state that "GC/C/IRMS analysis is mandatory on Samples in which the concentration of 19-NA is estimated between (≥) 2.5 and (≤) 15 ng/mL" which it was in SH's initial test, so it's not like they would have prevented themselves from seeing those numbers and drawing some initial conclusions.

But I agree with Twoggle that the lab's rules and understanding of the situation should definitely have caused them to start looking at the pharmacokinetics of this suspected ingestion of nandrolone, rather than summarily decide it was exogenous in origin. The fact that they waited 5 weeks before telling SH the result of the test, thus making some pharmacokinetic tests difficult at that point, is on WADA, not SH. To reiterate what I said in my original post, the reason they decided it was exogenous may have been because they expected to see Carbon-13 levels in the 19-NA consistent with a confined factory-raised pig if her story was true, but instead they saw Carbon-13 levels consistent with a wild boar. And she never claimed to have eaten wild boar.

Shelby was banned for four years for a reason. People smarter than nearly everyone on this board already spent months on this.

tarckstar wrote:

Shelby was banned for four years for a reason. People smarter than nearly everyone on this board already spent months on this.

Healthy skepticism of authority is always the correct choice

Mary had a little pig wrote:

Uncastrated boar seems highly dubious considering that not only does boar taint cause a signficantly unpleasant smell and taste that is released when pork is heated, but consumers find meat from boars objectionable in comparison with meat from castrated males.

Most male piglets raised in the U.S. are "barrows" or what's known as a castrated male. As has been identified and discussed ad infinitum, the vast majority of the pork consumed in the U.S. does not come from boars.

Boar taint exists on a continuum. Some people can't smell it, and the majority of uncastrated male pork does not contain it, so we're left with a relatively small percentage of male pig meat that is problematic for consumers. And even if it does contain boar taint, there are pork products which can disguise it. For example, not just spicy sausage, but tainted pork can be mixed with the meat and byproducts of many other pigs at the same time in sausage. Of course meat processors know all the tricks of the trade and how to deal with such meat. If it's legal and they can find a way to sell it, they will.

A burrito can contain a lot of ingredients and it's unlikely there was any bad smell emanating that would have caused a hungry Shelby to stop consuming it. For me though, it's not even about Houlihan's case anymore. I just know there's a lot more uncastrated pork in the food systems of Europe, Africa, parts of America, and other countries than has been recognized by athletes, coaches, fans, and WADA, and that therefore, the chance of false positives is greater than has yet been accounted for.

As to the question of how bad tainted pork smells and whether it gets into the food supply, I find this article from a pig farmer more convincing than most academic studies, when he says for example, "We’ve steadily been harvesting boars here on our farm, and thus far have had no complaints."

If a boar gets a hormonal boost from eating corn, what about people? Should people eat more corn?

The ancient Mesoamericans already are considered geniuses for breeding the stuff out of ordinary blades of grass. Were they even smarter than we thought?