It's a sentiment you'll hear in many places in the world. We're seen as narcissistic and hypochondriacal, and when it comes to diet and health, we're rather evangelistic too. It happens all the time. You'll meet someone and in the first few minutes they'll assault you with how they eat this and not that, which things are filled with this toxin and that, and how this causes cancer and that will make you impotent. Of course it's pretty safe to say that none of it's true, because nearly everything you read about health and nutrition is produced by scare mongers: diet book doctors, supplement pushers and others with mysterious agendas. Real science: valid conclusions from valid studies? They're often surrounded by as impenetrable a husk of gullibility as a coconut -- and besides, very, very few of us are trained to derive much from the edited data we're given. I read "studies show" and I can be sure there wasn't really a study that showed anything conclusive at all, but just a a stew of anecdote, speculation and salesmanship.
We seem to enjoy bogus information of all sorts and to inflict it on innocent victims ad libitum, without regard to how badly and long ago it's been debunked. Why else would we persist in our Low fat Vs. Low Carbohydrate, Vs. Low calorie feuds? Talk calorie consumption to an Atkins Man? Forget it, even if he weighs 400 pounds, he's sticking to the faith.A few years ago I went on a severely calorie restricted but balanced diet and lost about 50 pounds in a few months. Many annoying ailments seemed to disappear but wouldn't you know it, I couldn't show up slender at any old haunts without being lectured by one overweight person or another about how I should have gone on their diet instead. What else can it be but religion and you know how well religion and fact go together. Somehow the Atkins devotees annoy me the most with their carbcarbcarb and calories-don't-count cackling. It's pointless to point out the Twinkie diet in which a professor of Human Nutrition at KSU went on a reduced calorie diet of Twinkies and doughnuts and lost a lot of weight.
I ate a bit more sensibly but eating 900 calories a day of anything will produce results and I'm here to tell you. It's not the 5 calories of breadcrumbs on that fried chicken putting the pounds on you and eating the triple bacon chili cheeseburger without a bun isn't going to help much either. But listen to me lecture - it's like I've learned nothing. It's the calories, dummy. It's not the mysterious properties of grain or gluten or corn syrup or " processed" foods or any of "the seven foods you should never eat" or anything else on Fox News for that matter.
So says the medical profession and no I'm not talking about Dr. Atkins or Doctor Oz or Doctor Bonker for that matter. A recent meta-study published in The lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology says the data indicates that: whether it's high fat, low fat; high carbohydrate, low carbohydrate: there's no statistically significant difference. It's the calories, dummy. Will information like that ever get past the hucksters, the pill pushers, the hustlers wearing Dollar Store lab coats or gyrating in Yoga pants to pounding music? Hell no. They love to tell you information is being suppressed by evil giant corporation, but you know the Diet Guru industry is a huge one too and there's nobody holding them to any standards at all. Pills kill.
Eat half of what you do now and feel the difference -- and don't worry, be happy, Eat well but eat less.
I've lost 25 lbs counting calories since early Summer. Seems pretty basic: A calorie is a heat or energy unit,
ReplyDeletetwo things that we humans (or any mammal) use, even when sleeping. A lot of any excess beyond calories in/calories used tends to get stored as fat, as any hibernating bear will attest to. For whatever reasons, males
seem to burn up more calories than females, in my case from studying the charts about 2000 cal/day. So with
that target, I have successfully avoided a single day thus far over 1600 and have been averaging around 1200
cal/day. Heck, I even cheat sometimes...that donut can't be more than 95 cal, can it? Yep, time to cheat a bit-
"please pass the Twinkies"
Diabetes and diabetes drugs force people to manage their food intake level and type, if they want to control their diabetes. Diabetes is spreading throughout the world at the rate of hundreds of millions per year. Is this all chips or candy, no one thinks so. Calorie counting is great, but without regular exercise and fitness efforts, it's not likely to prolong life or increase quality of life. I recommend eating organic and avoiding high glycemic foods, but will it cause you to lose weight? Not in my experience. But the combination of eating good quality wholesome foods and exercise builds muscle mass, which is perhaps more important than some arbitrary weight number. I remember being tested for fat content, and it being much lower than the person testing me expected, which astonished her....at least by the look on her face. There is still something incredible to me about a fine wine, an incredible beer in Saltzberg, a beautifully prepared fish or steak on a boat sailing through the Danau valley, and a French cheese tray served in France....I could go on. Does that mean I have taste? Or that I just enjoy life....as long as I can put on muscle mass instead of fat....does it matter what I weigh?
ReplyDeleteThere is a hereditary aspect of diabetes that might make certain diets preferable to those with a genetic disposition, but I think this glycemic index isn't all that relevant, if it is relevant at all. I agree that the that Body Mass index is more of a tool to annoy and scare people than it is useful. Michael Jordan in his prime was deemed obese by that bit of questionable utility. You're right. There are many body types and calling any one of them "ideal" is an aesthetic thing, not a medical one. Exercise is obviously a good thing because it lets you eat more doughnuts.
DeleteI don't buy into the "organic" movement and of course to a chemist it simply means your food has carbon compounds in it which pretty much covers anything you're likely to eat on purpose. I haven't seen a shred of evidence that anyone's health is affected one way or another by eating "organic" foods and the pesticides permitted are no less toxic. It hinges on the idea that anything is OK if it occurs naturally, like arsenic and cyanide while anything produced through chemistry is bad. An interesting article in Forbes this summer called the whole thing an outright fraud and I tend to agree..
I did just read an article arguing that the placebo effect is far more potent today than it was a hundred years ago which suggests that we're effectively being trained to believe anything we're told by anyone in a white coat.
Eat Drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.
As a National Academy of Sport Medicine CPT, CES I can say the old adage you are what you eat is essentially true. What you put into your mouth will affect your overall well being.
DeleteEducation with respect to nutrition, proper diet, and exercise would go a very long way in helping folks to know what they should avoid or consume in moderation. Basically lots of leafy green veggies, legumes, nuts, berries, fruits, fish, and very lean red meat in moderation. Drink lots of water and avoid sugar, as well as processed foods. Occasional desserts are okay.
There certainly is a lot of hype on dietary supplements and it is advisable to do a lot of research before deciding to take them. In many cases you are simply wasting your money on the stuff. A good multi-vitamins and Co Q10 (especially for those taking statins) is all most folks need. Your doctor can advise you bases on your blood work if you are deficient in anything and need to supplement.
As to BMI, you are right. It is just one indicator and one used by insurance companies, erroneously so in many cases. Body fat numbers are by far more useful. Body fat below 4% and above 30% are unhealthy. As we age and lose muscle mass (1% a year for active folks and up to 4% for sedentary folks) ideal levels of body
fat rise as well. 17-18% is considered good for the someone in their 60's.
It is about quality of life and one should eat healthy, eat well, and eat to live rather than live to eat.
Oh, and regular trips to the gym at least three times a week are recommended. I have many octogenarian and even a couple in their nineties exercising at Prime Fitness where I work.
DeleteI'm still uncomfortable with the "processed" foods thing since it can mean anything you want it to. Is boiled water processed? of course it is. Chewing is processing. I keep asking what it is and why it's bad but I get no answers.
DeleteAnd don't forget the most important food groups -- Coffee and Chocolate -- and yes, you can do them together!
I'll be 71 this winter. I hate gyms and because it's always Summer here, I prefer my bicycle. I do long, fast rides every other day and laps in the pool. Helps a lot when you don't have a job. Work is bad for you you know.
DeleteSome interesting reading on neutrinos like studies: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/upshot/surprising-honey-study-shows-woes-of-nutrition-research.html?contentCollection=weekendreads&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-middle-span-region®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-middle-span-region
DeleteA neutrino walks into a bar.
DeleteThe bartender asks: "Are you from around here?"
The neutrino replies: "Nope, just passing through."
Since this natural watery habitat precludes cephalopods from enjoying a BBQ or open flame, I eat my food - not just raw - but alive as a matter of necessity. Table etiquette is a simple matter of “snatch, catch, and crunch.” Nevertheless, cephalopods measure fine cuisine by a higher standard: What dies in our mouths melts in our mouths, and our taste buds are finely attuned to the five stages - and flavors - of death and dying: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.
ReplyDeleteBon appetite!
I would suggest that those little crustaceans you find around deep sea vents are very tasty and far more digestible after a few minutes in that hot mineral water. Nothing warms you up in cold water like a hot meal. Many Octopeople I know do an annual tour of the mid-Atlantic ridge going from vent to vent like humans do pub crawls.
DeleteBut you know, that Kübler-Ross thing is just too neat and tidy and fits the model more than one psychologist suggests as the basis for misleading people for fun and profit. That being a a plausible story and an anecdote. It never has seemed to describe anything like what I've experienced at all maybe because I'm not the 'acceptance' type in general, but my attitude resembles my attitude toward Freud. It goes down better with some drugs and your eyes closed. I'm not a broad spectrum person and anger or depression pretty much describe the world of Fogg. A depressing thought I guess, and it pisses me off!
I was raised on the Mediterranean diet, since both parents were from Italy. But my father loved his red meat -- and lots of it -- because he was one of 8 children growing up in the small paesa in Sicily, and the family's diet was mostly pasta (homemade because ready made did not exist then), veggies, beans, cheese (homemade), fish (when they could get it -- they lived in central Sicily), and very little meat.
ReplyDeleteSo Papa ate a lot of meat when he arrived here in the Land of Plenty. And he never was sick. He lived to 80 years old, never having been in the hospital or having to take a pill for any malady. He probably would have lived longer but for his smoking habit. He died suddenly, in his home, from an aneurysm in the abdominal aorta.
When he came home every evening, he took a small glass of red wine (homemade) "to open up the appetite," and then a regular-sized glass of wine with his meal. Nothing was done in excess -- I never saw my Papa drunk -- happy? Yes. Drunk? No. We bambini were given small glasses of red wine mixed with water ("because it was good for the blood"), and no one thought it was scandalous or abusive to have children drink watered-down wine with our meals. It was as natural as eating our Italian bread with olive oil instead of butter.
So I was raised on what is generally accepted as the best diet, I was a runner for 30+ years, running in 10K races and even a half-marathon, was active in sports, practiced some sort of meditation, and had a positive (but never always) rather than depressive attitude. So all of that would suggest a healthy life, yes? Ha.
I've learned through bitter experience that eating healthily, exercising, and keeping one's mind positive has almost no affect on the DNA one's parent gives her offspring. Maybe I would have gotten sick sooner had I not done all "the right things." Who knows? I don't. At this point, I'm not sure about much of anything.
Except wine and chocolate, and they make me happy.
I read that Jacky Onassis said about being diagnosed with Cancer: "for this I did all those push ups?"
DeleteLast July we went to our friend Dotty's 100th birthday party. She isn't known for diet fads, exercising or eating right and she has a martini every evening. Why her? She's lucky and so was her husband who lived to 105. I big study in Iceland some years ago argues that the most significant factor in longevity are genetics and there's much to argue that luck may be a prime factor. Besides wine and chocolate are good for you - so is coffee say the scientists and not the people who own Holey Foods.
The DNA is certainly part of the equation, and the one beyond a persons control. It just seems sensible, at least for me, to do the things that we know won't have a negative impact.
DeleteHaving said the above, I certainly have been guilty of partaking of the
unhealthy from time to time. Everything in moderation, nothing to excess is perhaps the most reasonable approach. But moderation and excess are no doubt subjective terms. It depends on ones perception.
I think it's more than that. The incidence of diabetes is growing geometrically around the world. The underlying cause is not a sudden genetic trait being exposed. It has to do with the food that we eat, and what is placed in it. In some cases, additives are meant to make us eat more of the particular food, in others, we don't know what longterm effects are.
DeleteSweet Jesus - "in some foods" yes and you can't extrapolate from that and yet you do. It also has to do with how much we eat and developing countries eat more. You're not giving us science, you're giving us speculation and worse other people's unfounded speculation.
DeleteFrom Harvard Medical School: A related condition called gluten sensitivity or non-celiac gluten sensitivity can generate (similar) symptoms.
DeleteGolly gee Mr. Science, next thing you'll tell me that since bananas give me heartburn, no one should eat them. Look, evidence that people have non-allergic sensitivities to food and other things is scarcely a solid foundation for a billion dollar industry pushing the idea that gluten and all sorts of other things are killing us. I think it's obvious that food and diet marketing has gone way overboard and that the wheels of modern commerce are greased with bullshit. It's become a religion complete with a catechism, dietary restrictions, commandments and intolerance of heresy. You can't argue anyone out of their religion. Oh ,yes I know, it's not you, it's me - tu quoque right?
DeleteWe are made to be afraid of everything we don't understand in order to extract a lot of money from us. That goes for electric fields and non-ionizing radiation and Rock and Roll and the safer the world gets the more we need to pump up the volume - pump up the volume. If all these scares had much validity to the general public it would manifest itself more apparently than is argued for.
And yes, I read C.P. Snow about public and private science 50 years ago and God help me Karl Popper too. I don't need to be talked to in such a condescending fashion. Unwarranted extrapolations and interpolations and the gerrymandering of evidence doesn't make for good science and basing iron clad certainties on hot air doesn't either. And despite your protest about not being the one arguing here you're beating this thing to death. Go spend money at Holy Foods and lead your glutenfree, non GMO, hipster-Halal life, because the sky is falling! Studies show!
I gave you two examples of medical institutions, Harvard Medcial School, with its reference to gluten sensitivities, which you called hogwash speculation when I mentioned it ad hoc, and the Mayo Clinic, with its reference to the particular problem of gluten/fiber on diverticulitis, to counter your argument that it only affected those with celiac disease....which you ignored. I don't think the food industry is labeling food for fun, I think it is because the public demands to know what's in it. If you think the public should just eat whatever is given to them, you should indeed move to China....it may be cheaper, and not a waste of time with all those silly labels, but who knows what you are getting?....but you don't care....you trust them.....if it's food-like, or found where the food is, or found in food growing in polluted areas, it's still food, right?
DeleteNon-allergy sensitivities abound, yet everything we buy in the store is not labelled this free and that free. The atmosphere of fear and trembling that now surrounds daily life is not derived from need or reason. It's a business. If you insist Gluten is making the world sick that's your business. If you see a difference between natural water and processed water, it's your business. I don't give a shit and I suggest it speaks of you and your ego prompting you to continue thls loggorhoeic extravagance. Kiss my gluten.
DeleteIt generally costs more to eat healthy...Gluten notwithstanding.
DeleteSee: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16414422
That doesn't mean not eating healthy is a good outcome.
Unless money means more that health outcomes....which for some....it does.
Maybe this is more about semantics: Eating healthier (as defined by ncbi) versus eating healthy (also as defined by ncbi). Like climate science, the model one can be using may not be sensitive enough to determine if a weather event is caused precisely by climate change in one locale compared to another locale with a different type of weather event. The model strength may leave room for ambiguity. So I would say, eating healthy, means a certain set of things to me, with my physical constraints....which Mr. Fogg says is irrelevant....if it is not already in literature as being healthier than some standard as yet undefined by him....which I find to be inconsistent and contradictory....but there you go....that's semantics for you....and inductive versus deductive reasoning.....when we should all be using both.
DeleteWell, there's always the fallback position of learning from the bees. Having organic gardens and att least some organically raised food crops, leaves at least some areas not covered with neonics. That protects bees from colony collapse. So, eat organic, and have have organic gardens, or wave goodbye to the bees and ther beneficial insects, like Monarch butterflies.
DeleteSpeaking from the science side, the glycemic index is especially useful for those with something called insulin resistance. Where your cells are not recognizing the function of insulin as a normal transport mechanism for the sugar from food or liver production into your cells....which is why it builds up in your blood even if you have a functioning pancreas. Additionally, broader supplementation is proving to be more and more necessary, especially as one ages, because foods are becoming less and less broad spectrum nutrified....there are example cases of cattle dying in grass fields because the grass no longer contains the nutrients necessary to sustain life. In my particular case, I have a problem with calcium buildup and peripheral oxidative stress, so I supplement with vitamin K2, which keeps calcium dissolved in blood instead of precipitating in arteries and veins to cause heart attacks by blocking blood flow, and Nexia, which promotes healthy small nerve fiber function (along with near infrared and red LED light treatments that promote nitric oxide production), and I exercise 6-7 days per week and my wife still out works me 6:1), for at least 30 minutes, although the new recommendations are for 5 days per week and 45 minutes...I figure I'm working toward that particular goal.
ReplyDeleteYes, of course, for diabetics it's important to avoid blood sugar spikes. It's important for people with celiac disease to avoid gluten too, but not for others, despite what the diet doctors might way. A recent and very, very large meta-study published this summer concludes that none of the claims about problems with gluten have any merit. Think that will make a difference to the huge Gluten-Free industry? Wheat producers don't care, they make money from selling you gluten free stuff. Truth withers away while the bullshit never dies.
DeleteI think it's easy to use the latest study as the best one. However, in terms of gluten, I think there is a relative curve of food sensitivity that is missed by the all (celiac disease) to none (no celiac disease). That may come with further studies. But can you answer the question of why food manufacturers are having to put more nutrients into foods to make them wholesome?...Is it just bending over to public bs ideas....or is it because the soils offer less nutrition, and the artificial way nutrients and flavoring and coloring and taste are being put back into the foods (I.e. supplementation) have meant less tastiness....maybe it's just a question of knowing the difference exists to be able to tell the difference?
DeleteIt was a meta analysis of hundreds of studies over a period of years like others that show milk doesn't promote phlegm production and sugar doesn't promote hyperactivity and cell phones don't give you cancer etc. I'm a skeptic. I can't help it. There's no evidence I've seen for that speculation about a sliding scale and it sounds defensive -- it must be possible because the conclusion is true. The burden of proof is always on the person making the allegation and so far and in both cases I see only special pleading.
DeleteSo far everything I've seen that argues that this protein has any negative effects, comes from people making money from selling diet products. The only argument I see comes from people who insist they feel better which is nothing like evidence.
Like Celiac disease itself the causes of this war on wheat are unclear. There is a genetic disposition to it but many with that gene don't get it. Trauma can trigger it as it does with other autoimmune diseases, but there's just no credible evidence that eating gluten all day will harm anyone.
I've argued the war on wheat with a number of people over the years. I recently was rebuffed by someone telling me that conclusive studies with mummies prove it's unhealthy. I looked into it partially because I've had a lifelong interest in Egyptology and of course there was no study, just a book by a diet doctor selling gluten free stuff. His argument was that because the newly identified mummy of Hatshepsut seemed to be a bit fat and had a dental abscess, it could on;y be due to eating "pastries" while ordinary Egyptians were thin and didn't eat wheat? Can you even make pastries out of Emmer and Rye? It's a false dilemma as no mention of the fact that being carried around in a sedan chair or having a genetic predisposition had anything to do with some excess pounds or that perhaps she wasn't scrupulous about dental hygiene. False dilemma and a conclusion based on a pathetically inadequate sample don't lead to "studies show."
No evidence and of course ordinary Egyptians ate prodigious quantities of bread and beer as archaeology and the literature demonstrates. No evidence at all that they had an obesity problem either. . Only carbohydrates give you dental abcesses, says he - which is nonsense. It's a common problems with lions and with primitive people who eat local and seasonal and organic.
But the burden of proof is on those who propose such things and what we have is suggestions and allegations and sometimes truly bad arguments. Like the argument about Pharaohs being fat from wheat when they likely ate less of it than peasants and we only have one chubby mummy as evidence. There were no studies with mummies. There will always be studies with mummies.
I'm only trying to apply scientific method here in an area where it's all but absent and belief stems from the desire to believe and where the public is always afraid of the new and looking for a scapegoat and to make a buck from it. . I just tend to favor evidence although of course consensus changes.
If US farms suffer from soil depletion of trace elements it might indeed affect taste and nutritional value, but how many cases of malnutrition do we have? Has anyone done any science? There is nothing more subjective than taste De Gustibus and all that. Again, no evidence exists that "organic" proponents are healthier.
And as to knowing there is a difference creating the ability to sense it - that's the placebo effect. I've been told I have to believe in God before I believe in God. I'm sure that's true, but it's not an argument for God or any of his alleged attributes.
DeleteDo you believe in Truth? Can you sense it? Did you have to know it existed to know to think about its possibilities? Per the inverse, if a blind man has no experience with color, and gets a retina/cones transplant that allows him to see colors, can he learn which color is which....without it being the placebo affect?
DeletePer my reference to a range of gluten effects, I would say that before the research into celiac disease, no one gave the hypothesis that it existed much credence. Much of the problem, to my recollection, was that different symptoms were being correlated without the knowledge of how they could possibly be connected. Medical science works slowly, at so first skepticism, then speculation, then some data collection, then theory of treatment...then more data collection....because elucidating the action mechanisms goes beyond treatment. People with diverticulitis should avoid fibers, and avoiding fibers with gluten seems to improve immune/inflammatory food response...that's doesn't mean they have celiac disease, but avoiding it is mostly about the relative scale of fiber/gluten inflammation discomfort vs the extreme illness of celiac disease....thus...the range of sensitivity and discomfort related to other conditions, not just celiac disease by itself.
DeletePeople with diverticula should eat more fiber, not less, in order to avoid diverticulitis.
DeleteAll these are classic defensive arguments and full of logical solecisms. There is no evidence these statements about gluten that I've seen. Efforts to explain why are speculative at best.. Reasoning by analogy is poor reasoning and no better than the analogy itself. Could be and Might be arguments are an effort to make someone prove a negative and not part of a reasonable debate. The power of suggestion is enormous and if you read the award winning work of Kahnemann, we will defend against a loss far more vigorously than we will seek what it was we lost. I think that's the case here.
Not according to the Mayo Clinic. See: http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/diverticulitis-diet/art-20048499
DeleteAs far as defending losing arguments, that might be true if one us wasn't arguing. I'll let one guess as to who that is.
Also, to be a frivolous logic chase, one's premise must be wrong. My premise is that foods are being contaminated and denutrified to such an extent that artificial nutrients are having to be added, both facts. My premise is that fibrous gluten affects people over a range of sensitivities, from celiac to diverticulitis, and there may be more, both facts and speculative reasoning. If your premise is that you can't discuss anything rational without following your rules of order for the discussion, and facts don't matter, either, then you and I will really not be able to talk about anything, except maybe how's the weather up there?
Delete"As for type 2’s causes, there’s a general consensus that obesity and inactivity are important factors. But some experts believe there could be other triggers, too, like high-fructose corn syrup—found in everything from soda to cereal to salad dressing—which can affect insulin resis-tance in animals." From the people's pharmacy.
DeleteSome experts believe? You're passing this off as science? Some experts believe in Atlantis and ancient aliens and that Krishna is lord. You know we have come a long way from the findings that diet fads like low fat or Low Carbohydrate and others all produce similar results with the Low Carb diets slightly worse. How, if you're not evading anything did we get on Corn Syrup? If it "causes" Diabetes why does the disease continue to climb while HFCS consumption has declined for the last 15 years?
DeleteI read an article in The Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, that pretty much debunks the pop science behind this argument "
"The fructose hypothesis is based largely on epidemiologic data that do not establish cause and effect. All too often, we have been led astray by confusing associations with cause and effect. With the fructose argument, we are in danger of repeating mistakes frequently made in the past by basing judgments on insufficient evidence. Perhaps the American poet and philosopher George Santayana41 summed up this danger most succinctly when he stated “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2909536/
It';s fairly long and detailed but apparently as with all matters of faith, the Gospel According to Whole Foods will persist long fter we're all dead.
I don't think you really understand science. Speculation is part of that process. Does that mean just because we speculate a relationship doesn't exist, as in pre-hypothesis testing, that that the null hypothesis has been proven? No, speculation is the heart and soul of science....skepticism is only the expression of the null hypothesis....if it is healthy....in some cases, skepticism that prevents speculative science from proceeding....is unhealthy....like some food additives.
DeletePart of the process doesn't mean thta speculation is science. Science is a system of investigation. Speculation is not investigation. It's sitting on one's ass making proclamations and drawing conclusions which is the opposite of science. If you will not understand this, you will keep saying silly things which ought to embarrass you.
DeleteScience starts with speculation, an idea(s) about which a study would be central to. I'm not saying speculation by itself is the full gamut of scientific endeavor. I'm saying that if you blocked all speculation, you have no more science. Because speculation means questioning and proposing alternative null hypotheses....you have to have the unproven thoughts first, before you can design a study, so you can design it correctly.
Deletehttp://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/going-gluten-free-just-because-heres-what-you-need-to-know-201302205916
DeleteArticle above references that a range of symptoms similar to celiac disease but lacking the intestinal damage can also occur as a result of gluten sensitivity.....I'm sure that's just speculative because you haven't heard about it.
That point you're missing is that the number of people who are spending money to avoid symptoms they're not likely to have exceeds by many orders of magnitude the number of people who actually show such symptoms. I would suggest that you go perform a sex act with yourself, but apparently you're an old hand at it. 親親我的屁股 Jim boy
DeleteAs far as, organic vs non-organic, my first concern is to limit non-natural food items in my diet, because we don't know what they are or are not doing to us.....although we can guess. The second, is taste. I lived in Europe, where foods were not treated like manufacturing items for mass assembly. I guarantee that if you go there, and sample what they eat (except for the English of course), you will find that wholesome taste's better than our watery processed stuff...and you can eat a lot less of it and be full...room for thought anyway.
ReplyDeleteSubjective measurements. If you ask me what the best tasting beer I've ever had is, I'll recall a bottle of Sands I had at Billy Joe's in Grand Bahama, standing in warm pristine water watching the rays glide by at my feet. Beer critics say it's awful beer and yes, I know it's better in Bavaria, but then Bavarians are now buying Bud Lite. . Sure the Calamari tastes better at an open air restaurant overlooking the Aegean but really. The old saw that we see things not as they are but as we are are applies to taste as well. No scientific study has ever supported the claims of the "back to nature" or Organic farming advocates. If it's a factor in health I think it's a very, very minor one. Just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteAnd what is artificial food or unnatural food? Fresh I can understand, but the rest of it sounds like marketing talk.
Penn and Teller, tow of my favorite iconoclasts did a TV show in which patrons of a restaurant were approached by the "water sommalier" who convinced them they could choose water from a certain slope in the Himalayas and from equally exotic locations. Water which was more "natural" and pure than tap water. Of course the customers agreed they could taste the subtle differences but of course it was all City water and out in the back alley, an obese man in a tank top was filling the galvanized buckets from a hose.
ReplyDeleteThey did the same thing with "organic" vegetables at a Green market and of course, despite raves about the better taste, they were all plain ordinary veggies.
Science? Well. . . but then it's more so than all the claims I've seen for the high priced stuff.
Maybe part of this is about where you live, and what experiences you have had. Sometimes if you have basically good food transport over short distances and never eaten beef filled with antibiotics, you can feel there is no difference, and be backed up by Forbes. I just got lucky living in Europe several times, and the US several times, and I either had my taste buds change, or saw food become less and less quality in the US, until the organics started hitting the markets, or both. I think personal experience counts for a lot, when science is saying a lot of different things, but I try to read the science not funded directly by the food industry....of course that assumes there is any other kind of science being funded...given the current state of Congress and its war on science and its threatened existence as an objective arbiter with unwanted facts at its disposal.
ReplyDeleteDo we know that those alleged antibiotics make it through the cooking process if they are present at all? I suspect common wisdom needs some confirmation here. I take nothing on faith - not even faith.
ReplyDeleteI've eaten my way around the world too. Taste is very subjective and sometimes site specific. I've also read convincing articles about wine conoissieurs not being able to tell red from white under some circumstances.
I can't say much about beef. I'm a fish person and yes it tastes better when you catch it yourself. I can't argue about freshness or the strange nature of US eating habits. I live right on the coast and there is a local fishing fleet and everyone fishes, but in the fancy restaurants they fly in the fish from New Zealand and act all hipsterish about it.. Crazy. I also hear tourists say the Mahi Mahi is better than Dolphin which they refuse to order., It's the same fish. De gustibus non est disputandum.
Somehow I've also noticed that things that tasted great when I was 7 don't seem quite as good at 70. Some things I can't eat any more too. Why is that?
Chinese food in China? Hugely better than in Chinatown but is it the cook or the ingredients? Maybe both?
Your taste buds are affected by age, and some can even be destroyed over time and by certain foods. World-wide there is a wide array of food quality issues. Your local fish, if you are talking about inshore Florida, should not be consumed daily, or even more than two days per week, because of lead and Mercury accumulating in them, similar to warnings about South American wild caught fish....would it affect your health if you did it.....the simple answer is actually yes. As far as taste is concerned, if you ate at the local diner or at home for your whole life, would you have any idea about what a New Orleans chef or other culturally prepared food might taste like?....and could you enjoy the difference both the new ingredients and their quality of preparation might make, as well as, the quality of the ingredients?....without it being a placebo effect? I think it's too simple to miss the richness of the breadth of experience by dismissing that it exists. Or that it is only rich because someone else says so, or because of some psychologically self-delusional/implanted idea....I believe that is a combination of compartmentalized and minimalist thinking....I could try to prove it, but we would have to agree on the initial premise from which it springs and the guidelines for data perameters....and for that you'd have to agree to posit within the framework of phenomenology....I.e. that our experience is in fact potentially a true one.
ReplyDeleteReally this is getting to be like Space Invaders -- I keep having to shoot down fallacy after fallacy, distraction after distraction until there are too many of them and I give up. I give up. I lost a friend over his inflexible belief in vaccines causing autism. I'm not going through it again.
DeleteThe power of suggestion isn't something I invented. It's demonstrably a very powerful tool and it's been the bane of history -- the reason we don't have only one religion or none at all for that matter.
Skepticism is the mother of science. Empiricism it's father. "Potentially" anything is possible but using that to save an argument is a departure from argument because it conflates plausibility and probability and possibility quite equivocally.A closed mind rejects evidence, an open mind demands it., You've got it backwards.
.I'm not pretending anything, much less that a premise without supporting evidence must be valid because I can't prove it is doesn't. It remains that these food prohibitions have an origin in marketing and there is no scientific evidence for the claims any more than the claims that God doesn't want you to eat cheeseburgers.. The burden of proof is not on me.
I'm not the one arguing for a fallen world or using hazy, artificial and malleable terminology, like 'natural' and 'organic' Avoid walking under ladders or stepping on cracks just to be sure, because you never know.. It's another case of Pascal's Wager which is a false dilemma among other things and I wonder if old Blaise realized that it's also dangerous because it asserts that there is no difference between true and false. There is. 73 and SK as we telegraphers say - bye bye and I'll say no more.
Putting my points into a lump with the anti-vaccine people is over-generalization. Since I have medical and scientific data I could point you to, in addition to my opinions. Understanding what pesticides are being put into our foods, or antibiotics, for that matter, is better than putting our heads in the sand....see Monsanto Mexican field workers dying. And while the jury is out, going organic, and avoiding inflammatory gluten fiber for those with diverticulitis is proscribed by Mayo Clinic, not just me....which made my point that it wasn't just a celiac disease issue....which was your point. I do realize that my deductive and experiential reasoning is maddening for those who have certain fixed opinions, but it was not my intent to madden, only make personal observations that may be relevant to a conversation.
DeleteAnything you don't agree with is fixed? Sorry, there are no rules of argument, but there are rules of logic, but as I said I'm done with this.
DeleteGoodbye
All very interesting reading.
ReplyDeleteNatural, non genetically modified food substrates are far and away the best choice.
Unfortunately much of the earth does not provide the same level of mineral and nutrients it once did, the result of soil depletion.
As to meats in the USA? Hormones ingested by beef, pork, chicken, turkey, etc, to make livestock grow bigger, plumper, faster have not been a positive development.
I'm an equal opportunity predator that eats on a first catch, first crunch basis. IOW, I get it while the gettin' is good.
ReplyDeleteI worked with and around pesticides used for public health here in Florida for over 30 years. My expertise is in those particular pesticides, but that work required a general expertise in what makes pesticides toxic, and how they operate on the biosphere (including humans). No matter how safe a pesticide is, when used properly as-labeled, it is important to always know and appreciate the limits of what we know and what we don't, about their short term and longterm use. Eating some of them in one's foods, since they are now being incorporated into GMOs, is not something recommended to be done intentionally, so I avoid them by eating non-gmo organic. Does that mean that will allow me to escape their effects, no, no more than we can escape dioxin, or mercury, or arsenic, which is making its way into our wildlife and drinking water, and then into us....does that make everything ok, because it's just the chemistry we know now, or we knew 20 years ago....Nope....because chemistry and biochemistry is evolving, with new differentially applied discoveries every day as we plumb the world around us to deeper and deeper depths of knowledge.
ReplyDeleteBully for you but there's not one iota of evidence here for anything I said there was no evidence for, but if you think you made a point that's fine with me.
ReplyDelete