Posted on 09/09/2012 9:45:49 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
for dinner.
Last week, researchers from Stanford University published the results of the most comprehensive study to date on organic and conventional foods. Their conclusion? Organic foods have no more vitamins and nutrients than traditionally grown produce. I can’t say I’m surprised. Chicken is chicken, with the same nutritional content, whether it is organic, free range or mass-produced. But now scientists have confirmed it, perhaps we can begin to have a proper conversation about the food we put on our table.
The Stanford University team reviewed more than 200 studies which compared either the health of those who ate organic and conventional foods, or, more commonly, nutrient and contaminant levels in the foods themselves.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Yeah, all of your points are correct, but that certainly doesn’t mean that all modern pesticides are safe.
Also, what a number seem to be are hormone disruptors. That’s probably half of what’s turning modern American males into Democrats—with the other half being all the birth control pills in our water supply! ;-)
Creating certain strains of corn or wheat that are resistant to, say, Roundup is probably bad news in a couple of ways. That makes it easier for our seed supply to all be patented, uniform and tightly controlled, and that makes it easier to crank up the level of pesticides used—and the level residue that is in turn to be found on our food supply.
You don’t have to be a liberal to take issues of, yes, necessary pesticides into consideration.
Oh, and in the US at least, there have been pitched battles about the US government classifying foods with various levels of pesticides and such used as ‘organic’. Purists see it as deceptive advertising bought by big agriculture interests.
“vegan butter”. “””
This is the result of 40 years of our current American educational system. Tell me again why we think teachers are underpaid!!!!! Please use very small words—I went to a ONE ROOM SCHOOL thru the 7th grade.
I was raised on a dairy farm & this woman would have been in serious trouble saying such a thing in our farming community.
A lot. You eat 5,000-10,000 times the weight of naturally occurring carcinogens as you do pesticides. If the use of pesticides reduces pest attack on food, and the food produces less of these chemicals as a consequence, IT COULD BE HEALTHIER TO EAT FOODS TREATED WITH PESTICIDES than the "organic" product that tolerates a minimal amount of pest damage as part of their IPM program.
Given that plants continue to produce those pesticides in response to the trauma of harvesting, IT COULD BE HEALTHIER TO EAT FROZEN VEGETABLES than "fresh" organic produce simply because the time from harvest to blanching is so short in the process of packaging mass produced frozen vegetables. (Green Giant gets it done in as little as a half an hour).
The question is what is the safe, cumulative exposure to different pesticides.
It depends upon which part of the process you're talking about, whether for workers or for consumers. The fact that we ban pesticides means that there are few chemicals available, which means that the pests can get used to them, which means that we use more. It could actually be safer to use less of more toxic materials in rotation than to use more of a "safer" material because of adaptive genetics in pests. The EPA system doesn't allow for that.
If your goal is a minimally toxic food production and consumption system, taking into account BOTH naturally and synthetic pesticides, the EPA method of regulation is not the way to go. Remember too that many modern pesticides are formulated to emulate naturally occurring chemistry.
What are you, a Monsanto rep?
There's a big plus side for using Roundup (and the like) — soil conservation. No-till farming saves millions of tons of topsoil annually, and improves the soil in many other ways. No-till farming depends on the use of weed killers.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=no-till
As for what's “turning American males into Democrats” — birth control pills may have something to do with it (although that suggests that feminization and leftism go together; and that doesn't explain the growing number of very rational conservative women). If you want to mention hormones and birth control pills, you should also mention unfermented soy products. Soy milk, for instance, is loaded with so much phytoestergen that you'd be safer drinking ordinary milk, to wash down birth control pills.
“What are you, a Monsanto rep?”
ROFLMBO!!
Obviously, after all, what Carry_Okie stated can't possibly be true!
I welcome either of you to provide credible links to studies showing that it’s better we eat vegetables slathered in pesticides—because otherwise, left to their organic selves, the veggies will explode into more poisonous vessels of killer chemicals.
Yeah, I hear ya over the impacts of tillage techniques being a complicated subject.
Slathered? LOL! Your mind is made up.
We live in the histories richest country, food-wise. If you want to eat 'organic', please, be my guest. we've got more food than we can possibly eat.
Well, rather be the guest of friends and family of mine who grow 'organic, and are getting wealthy by doing so.
I've raised over 250,000 hogs, retired from that more than 25 years ago, but if I were raising hogs today I would give serious consideration to raising 'organic.
A fool and his money are soon, and easily, parted, and it would be a disservice to myself and my family to turn down such money.
Here's a clue, idiot, companies like Monsanto LOVE guys like you, because they LOVE more regulations, all crocodile-tear protestations to the contrary. It is likely they who are behind these new regulations.
I know, you don't get it. But then, you quite apparently didn't comprehend above when I said that the regulations end up forcing farmers to use MORE pesticides that are MORE toxic. That is exactly what happened when the Ruckelshaus EPA ignored the science they'd paid for and banned DDT anyway. Meanwhile, they allowed organophosphate which is far more toxic, but you see, there were no approved substitutes. As the pests got used to more organophosphate and as the data climbed in terms of harm to workers, what do you know but Zeneca sold the patent to a shell company in Arizona.
SOS.
So I take it you haven’t a shred of evidence that we are better off with our veggies slathered in pesticides because left alone th ey’d be killing us with even more dangerous chemicals of their own making.
So I take it you haven’t a shred of evidence that we are better off with our veggies slathered in pesticides because left alone th ey’d be killing us with even more dangerous chemicals of their own making.
You can start here. It's the Cornell University page on the topic.
The family of naturally occurring chemicals to which you refer were dubbed "defensins" at the NIH, where my brother was working at the time back in the late 1980s (he's an MD-PhD in viral immunology, studying cancers that start from viruses such as HPV). An associate of his was growing meal worms on freeze-dried spinach v. the fresh stuff. Guess what? The meal worms eating the freeze-dried spinach grew to twice the size as those eating fresh spinach. The study was spiked by NIH bigwigs, not desiring to tell the public that "fresh" veggies (usually days old when eaten) carried long term health risks.
So I take it you haven’t a shred of evidence that we are better off with our veggies slathered in pesticides because left alone th ey’d be killing us with even more dangerous chemicals of their own making.
Your easy equating of the impact on the human body of what you refer to as “natural carcinogens” and what you call (but don’t limit your response to) “modern pesticides formulated to emulate naturally occurring chemistry,” leave room for about a million rebuttals in both biophysiological assessment and actual biochemistry, and holes the size of Saturn. It’s literally a matter of “where do I start”?
But if I WERE to start, it would be with your definitions of natural versus synthetic carcinogens, no doubt based on a presumption of natural analogue status based on statistical analysis of the number of structural molecular componants. And that’s not even getting into the definition of “natural.”
So yeah, you could easily be a Monsanto rep. Especially since few things in the history of humanity on this planet have killed more people than the banning of DDT, and NO company has made more money of of finding “replacements” for DDT than Monsanto - and yet you try to imply (with insults added to misdirect your utterly untenable point) that the banning went against Monsanto’s interests.
I'm really getting tired of your screaming and wailing. If you can't read my posts for what they say and not what you fear, if you can't wait for me to reply to your serial accusations that have NOTHING to do with what I wrote, the then go to my FReeper page you lazy scut and follow the links to the books I've written and look at the references.
The goal should be minimizing total toxicity, both natural and artificial, versus nutritional value. That is what I have been proposing for ten years. You don't know who I am. You don't know what I would prefer. You don't know what I've done or the risks I've taken and costs I've incurred to restore native plant habitat. You don't even know how to read without your vision being obliterated by your beliefs.
STFU and get a grip.
Guess who funds those studies? Guess who owns the politicians directing the funding? It looks to me more like you're the potential Monsanto rep. You know, the guys who rig one set of chemicals getting band for "chlorine chemistry" when they have newly patented fluorine analogues at the ready.
But if I WERE to start, it would be with your definitions of natural versus synthetic carcinogens, no doubt based on a presumption of natural analogue status based on statistical analysis of the number of structural molecular componants. And that’s not even getting into the definition of “natural.”
About which you know nothing, unless the name "Titus Lucretius Carus" means anything to you.
Especially since few things in the history of humanity on this planet have killed more people than the banning of DDT, and NO company has made more money of of finding “replacements” for DDT than Monsanto - and yet you try to imply (with insults added to misdirect your utterly untenable point) that the banning went against Monsanto’s interests.
Go read my posts on this thread again. All of them.
Folks died in this country after eating organic spinach. The spinach was fertilized with cow $#!+ that contained e-coli. Commercial fertilizer is much more sterile.
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