So my unique friend Eli has gone with this all vegan, all natural, raw food diet complete with cleansing enemas and for all the trouble he's going to in order to stick with it, I'm left scratching my head and asking the question, why? He is not the first person that I've known that is into extreme diets either. But his excuses for eating healthy (and wanting to live in some Third World country in the southern hemisphere) are amusing enough to keep me interested with a "Is this conversation really happening?" face more than anything else. Unfortunately, the answer is yes: this conversation is happening. I've easily lost 20 minutes of my life in listening to the evils of:
1) Fukushima. The radiation spilling into the oceans is mutating all the fish and it's slowly going to kill us all unless we can move to a corner of the earth that's safe from Fukushima irradiated fish.
2) Anything that's exposed to over 115 degrees Farenheit experiences a change in which all the good enzymes, vitamins, and nutrients are destroyed.
3) Non-organic foodstuffs are filled with harmful chemicals. So only eat organic!
This last part (3) is especially annoying because organic food is incredibly expensive. To those of you who are turned off by chemicals, here is what the ingredients of four common foods would look like if they had labels on them like other stuff (images courtesy of chemist James Kennedy)
1) Fukushima. The radiation spilling into the oceans is mutating all the fish and it's slowly going to kill us all unless we can move to a corner of the earth that's safe from Fukushima irradiated fish.
2) Anything that's exposed to over 115 degrees Farenheit experiences a change in which all the good enzymes, vitamins, and nutrients are destroyed.
3) Non-organic foodstuffs are filled with harmful chemicals. So only eat organic!
This last part (3) is especially annoying because organic food is incredibly expensive. To those of you who are turned off by chemicals, here is what the ingredients of four common foods would look like if they had labels on them like other stuff (images courtesy of chemist James Kennedy)
THE LESSON: Don't be afraid of chemicals people. Our food is full of them.
I don't eat beef because of the crap they put into cows and admit we get organic fruits and vegetables when possible. (Some of those you really can taste the difference.) And we don't do canned foods. Won't go all crazy though. Too much effort.
ReplyDeleteSorry...I do buy organic when I can! Make fun of me if you'd like ;) I pay attention to the Dirty Dozen list and use that to guide my choices - because it IS expensive. My issue isn't with chemicals (although the ingredients you posted are fascinating, and a good point), but with man-made additives. Sometimes. And I'm with Alex - meats with added crap scare me.
ReplyDeleteAt the supermarket last Sunday I picked up a bag of frozen peas and saw it contained peas and salt. It's like WTF do you need salt on FROZEN peas for? Salt is a preservative but since it's frozen it's already preserved. The problem with the food industry was illustrated in that episode of "Breaking Bad" where they show that food lab where they're trying to make some kind of new condiment. The thing is they actually do that, sit around figuring out how to make food taste more appealing, which usually involves a lot of sugar, salt, and other unhealthy stuff.
ReplyDeleteI will buy organic if I have to eat it raw, like salads etc. Any thing I cook or has a skin (that I don't eat) is fine with me organic or not.
ReplyDeleteHowever, controlling bad cholesterol and sugar level in the blood, is much easier if we do not eat processed sugars and processed fats.
My husband is astounded after reading the ingredients of the three fruits and the egg.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter says that chemical or not, the more natural the better.
HI, Michael...
ReplyDeleteThis is very amusing...
Of course, NATURAL FOOD have chemicals.... The human body is made UP of chemicals...
However it's the ARTIFICIAL and MAN-MADE chemicals that cause most of our problems. And Pat is RIGHT... Why add salt to food... because it's additive .. like sugar. These are both natural, but not healthy for humans in mass doses. Check out HOW MUCH sodium is in processed foods, especially soups... You will be APPALLED.
I eat very healthily and back my own goodies because I DON'T WANT preservatives and other BAD chemicals in my food.
It's amazing. I ate everything in sight when I was in Colombia. They don't process their foods like we do. I LOST WEIGHT. I came back to the states, ate less and gained it all back ...
Obviously there is something to eating organically and more healthily.
I dont think you argue with the fact that the more they have tampered with our food, the fatter americans have become and cancer is everywhere and in far younger people. When i was a kid cancer in children was just really really rare. now? not so much? what has changed? our food. i cant afford to buy organic food but when i grow my own tomatoes the difference in the taste is incredible. im always like, what do they do to those tomatoes to make them look so good and taste so blah? answer? chemicals. why do i want chemicals that only make the food look good not taste better?
ReplyDeleteI admit it, I eat as much organic fruit and veggies as I can because I don't like how pesticides kill off the good insects (BEES) as well as the bad.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder about some of these very strict diets though. My thought is, that humans are omnivores. We have been given the gift of being able to eat just about anything. The problem is that we can be gluttonous. Eating properly means eating everything but in moderation.
The term natural and organic are very different. I don't know the reasons for most, but I know my reasons for eating at least 90% organic is to avoid harmful pesticides and chemical additives. Most conventional fruits and vegetables are exposed to so much chemical throughout the growing process, that they loose most if not all their nutritional value. I've stuck with it because of how much better I feel now, vs how I felt before. It does get expensive sometimes, but if you know how to shop carefully you can come up with a nice, inexpensive bill.
ReplyDeleteMy cousin lives in Fukushima, she teaches English to elementry school kids there. And so I get her side of the story everytime something new comes out about how terrible it is/was. Mostly, it's just fearmongering. Yes, it was bad, no its not as bad as the media would like you to think - they're salesmen.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your chats!
I guess it's all about if you like your chemicals natural or not. Organic foods are more expensive. Fresh fruits and vegetables are expensive, which I believe is the leading reason why low income people are more likely to be overweight than people with higher incomes. It's so much more expensive to eat healthy than unhealthy. As far as your friend going to live at the back of beyond, there are a lot of organic dangers out there, nasty things.
ReplyDeleteIsn't everything made of chemicals and minerals? I've long given up on the idea of living forever so I generally eat what I want--and it shows.
ReplyDeleteGM foods are the ones I worry about. Especially when the companies try to pass laws that mean they don't have to label food properly. What could possibly go wrong?
ReplyDeletemood
Moody Writing
I'm terrible, I admit it. I rarely eat organic food because it's so expensive. I'm big on natural fruits and veggies as opposed to canned or frozen but that's as healthy as I get.
ReplyDeleteI'm all in for modern technology making our foods better. GM foods are fine, additives are fine. Folks were eating pretty damned organically filled diets 200 years ago and had a life expectancy of 40 years. Didn't do then much good. AND organic foods are ecological disasters. We can't grow enough of them to feed the world. Farm land given over to them give smaller yields and require more work. We'd have worldwide famine if the whole world went organic.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Mike! Wheat and its bi-products worries me no end. It's supposed to be good for us, but scientists have modified its genetic makeup so it grows faster, which in turn is killing us slowly and I suppose that goes for everything we're eating. :(
ReplyDeleteEverything is chemistry, really. I too want to retire in a third world country, in some small rural village. When I'm in my 60s with my grey hair and long swishing skirts paired with peasant style shirts. Yes, I've thought this through. I can't wait for retirement! No kids. No partners. Just me and my writing. Sorry, went a bit off track with my comment. lol
ReplyDeleteWe don't eat much processed stuff, but we also don't eat a whole lot of organic stuff. Some of it, like milk, is virtually the same (as long as you already drink milk without that growth hormone), but organic milk is up to 3x more expensive. Milk is expensive enough at $5/gallon.
ReplyDeleteWe do, though, mostly stick to organic cocoa, but that's a slavery issue.
I think you've touched on an important point which is that people are often priced out of the organic food market. It's ironic, because organic food is really just what everyone used to eat pre-1950s before the advent of so many preservatives and genetically modified foods.
ReplyDeletethe produce most resistant to it are onions.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty much with you. I don't want to spend hours in store figuring out what is completely natural. Plus the expensive. Food tastes better without preservatives, but then it goes bad so much faster.
ReplyDeleteI eat a lot of organic and less and less meat. If I had started that way, I wouldn't have stuck. But I also eat chocolate :D
ReplyDeleteI agree with Michael Di Gesu and like Moody, I worry about GMOs too, which is why I buy mostly organic. Hell we even grow a lot of our own vegetables, like potatoes and green beans. We store our potatoes in crates and keep them in the garage and they'll last through most of the winter. We also can about 40 or so jars of green beans but that usually only lasts through February or so. Anyway, doing that actually reduces our food bill a bit, but yeah organic is expensive but I think it's worth it if you can foot the bill.
ReplyDeleteLike most of the commenters I eat mostly organic (though I'm no fanatic), but what I especially watch out for are things like eggs and meat -- I want cage-free, hormone/ antibiotic free chickens primarily because the caged ones from factory farms live in cruel conditions. Grass fed beef and free-roaming piggies also matter to me because I don't want hormones and other crap added to them and no cruel living conditions. But my biggest diet problem is eating enough vegetables, never mind organic or not. I gotta eat more veggies.
ReplyDeleteI don't even pay attention to whether stuff is organic or not - I just buy from my local green grocer, and from my local supermarket, and even though it does mean I sometimes pay more for things, at least I get to be lazy and only travel 'round the corner to do my shopping. :)
ReplyDeleteI see others beat me to the genetically modified point...
ReplyDeleteWhat is dangerous and what is not? At one time they said radiation wasn't dangerous. It all seems to be a bit in flux.
Put me in the eats organic side. Yes it's expensive, but the more people who eat it, the cheaper it becomes.
ReplyDeleteAs for the cost of milk mentioned in the comments, the price of milk depends on how close you live to the source. I'm in MN, so milk is cheap for us because a lot of it comes from MN or WI. Which is why we're anti "happy cows" campaign, because that would just jack up the milk price for us.
I grow a crap ton of my own food. If my neighbors weren't douches, i'd have chickens for my own eggs. My entire garden is organic and the difference in taste is incredible.
Growing my own food is the cheapest option of all, after your first set up cost.
So true. The only difference between organic and non-organic is that organic contains organic chemicals.
ReplyDeleteTo me, it's all about balance. I try to eat healthy, but not go crazy. I don't have a list of things I won't eat. My mother forced us onto an extreme diet, and it was miserable. Life isn't about extreme denial. We can only control so much of our food supply.
ReplyDelete“Don't be afraid of chemicals people. Our food is full of them.”—That’s right, Michael. Most of us perceive chemicals to have something to do with industrial products that we use. Anyway, I believe it is not exactly about what food we eat, it's in the amount that makes it good or bad for our health. Too much of anything is bad, deficiency is just the same.
ReplyDeleteHope Wallace