BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !

Subject: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 May 14 - 12:25 PM

The home page of our cable company has much tabloid content.
Last week they headlined "Vegetables to Avoid."
The list:
Potato, corn, bell pepper, egg plant, spinach, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, kale and squash!

The main reason- some 35 kinds of pesticides are used on them. The "article" was written in a way that implied all 35 were used at the same time.
Some dietary cautions also were cited.

Pesticides used in commercial gardens are types that can be washed off or have decayed by harvest time. And nothing was said about organically grown vegetables, now available in most markets, or those one grows in the home garden.

Unfortunately, some people will take the scare at face value, and not think for themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 05 May 14 - 12:36 PM

Well, one would wash them thoroughly anyway before cooking & eating. And we grow quite a few of our own, without any chemicals. If you didn't ever eat veggies, you'd feel very much below par. They're good for you!

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 May 14 - 04:10 PM

I grow most of those items and eat all of them. As an organic gardener I don't worry about any of that. You can pick and eat things right out of the garden at my house with no concern for chemical pesticides. Eaten fresh, frozen, or canned, this is as healthy as can be.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: pdq
Date: 05 May 14 - 04:32 PM

...from MNN:



NEVER COMPOST:

Bread products: This includes cakes, pasta and most baked goods. Put any of these items in your compost pile, and you've rolled out the welcome mat for unwanted pests.


Cooking oil: Smells like food to animal and insect visitors. It can also upset the compost's moisture balance.


Diseased plants: Trash them, instead. You don't want to transfer fungal or bacterial problems to whatever ends up growing in your finished compost.


Heavily coated or printed paper: This is a long list, including magazines, catalogs, printed cards and most printed or metallic wrapping paper. Foils don't break down, and you don't need a bunch of exotic printing chemicals in your compost.


Human or animal feces: Too much of a health risk. This includes kitty litter. Waste and bedding from non-carnivorous pets should be fine.


Meat products: This includes bones, blood, fish and animal fats. Another pest magnet.


Milk products: Refrain from composting milk, cheese, yogurt and cream. While they'll certainly degrade, they are attractive to pests.


Rice: Cooked rice is unusually fertile breeding ground for the kinds of bacteria that you don't want in your pile. Raw rice attracts varmints.


Sawdust: So tempting. But unless you know the wood it came from was untreated, stay away.


Stubborn garden plants: Dandelions, ivy and kudzu are examples of plants or weeds which will probably regard your compost heap as a great place to grow, rather than decompose.


Used personal products: Tampons, diapers and items soiled in human blood or fluids are a health risk.


Walnuts: These contain juglone, a natural aromatic compound toxic to some plants.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 May 14 - 05:23 PM

Grow your organic own, like wot I try to do. If you can't, buy organic stuff. In my experience, organic cabbage and spuds are pretty good. Organic anything else is just as shitty as the non-organic stuff. I bought an organic chicken last week and it was as tough as old boots. I shall stick to my free-range corn-fed from now on. If you delve you might not like what's done to your grub before you buy it, but the plain fact is that hardly any of it is replete with nasty chemicals, so stop fretting. It ain't allowed any more. If it looks good, if it's fresh, if it tastes good, it's good.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 05 May 14 - 05:34 PM

And don't drink water, fish fuck in it.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: pdq
Date: 05 May 14 - 05:34 PM

The Lessons Of The Alar Scare

June 14, 1989 Chicago Tribune


The maker of the pesticide alar bowed to the inevitable by pulling it off the market. The decision has been applauded by everyone worried by the alar scare. But far from making our food supply safer, it only shows how vulnerable we are to unfounded panic.

The scare started when the CBS News program ``60 Minutes`` aired a segment publicizing claims that 6,000 preschoolers may eventually get cancer from residues of the pesticide in apples and apple juice. It got help from Meryl Streep, who showed up on Capitol Hill and on TV talk shows to lobby against alar.

The stampede was on. Schools yanked apples off their menus; parents threw out their apple juice. The EPA began the process of banning alar. Finally, Uniroyal Chemical Co. simply stopped selling it.

Will Americans be safer? Probably not. Biochemist Bruce Ames of the University of California at Berkeley, an expert in the field, writes in Science magazine that the risk of cancer from the alar residue in a glass of apple juice is less than the risk from the natural carcinogens in a single mushroom or peanut butter sandwich.

``It is possible,`` he says, ``that almost every plant product in the supermarket contains natural carcinogens.`` Apple juice contains 137 natural volatile chemicals, and only 5 have been tested for cancer-causing properties. Ames points out that farmers deprived of alar will have to use more pesticides of other kinds. Alar prevents apples from falling prematurely; more premature falling will permit more unhealthy mold toxins in apple juice.

Never mind the scientific evidence, says Consumers Union: ``It is not the size of the risk but its moral offensiveness that makes the public respond so strongly.`` In fact, what makes the public respond so strongly is that it gets information about one risk without getting the information needed to make sense of it.

The result is exaggerated fears leading to hasty actions that may leave us in greater peril, not less. Coping with risk is one of the endless government tasks of the modern age. Alar is a case study in how not to do it.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Bill D
Date: 05 May 14 - 05:38 PM

If it tastes good, it's probably illegal, dangerous or fattening.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: pdq
Date: 05 May 14 - 05:45 PM

Dr. Bruce N. Ames was a professor at UC Berkeley and is the leading expert in this field.



                              
here is what Dr. Bruce Ames has to say...

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: GUEST,#
Date: 05 May 14 - 08:19 PM

http://www.herballegacy.com/Lovett-Brown_Chemical.html

Life is a balance between what is 100% healthy for us and what will kill us. We die at the end of it all, but we couldn't get to that point without the very stuff that causes us harm: food, water, air. We are what we eat, drink, breathe. Besides, pharmacological companies, doctors, food stores will capitalize on the predicament. We will eat what is put before us and be glad for it. Remember, an apple a day will keep the doctor away, as if such a thing were possible. Doctors ARE away and I doubt they will be coming to any of us soon.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 May 14 - 09:10 PM

If it tastes good, it's probably illegal, dangerous or fattening.

Total bollocks, you cynical owld bastard! I grow my own organic veg (as much as poss, space permitting) and I do all the cooking. No convenience shite my end! On Saturday we had baked cod, caught in Cornish waters, with new potatoes from my garden baked in olive oil with garlic and rosemary. Yesterday we had free-range chicken pieces with pancetta and roasted red peppers. Tonight we had paella with chicken and spicy chorizo with pancetta and peas, cooked in my own chicken stock. If it tastes good to me, it's good. If it doesn't, I've mismanaged it (I'm no Gino or Jamie). That's because I've done it myself with the best ingredients I can get my hands on, and because my palate is properly attuned. None of it cost big money and none of it was dangerous or fattening. I know this because I've taken charge of my cooking, aiming for deliciousness above all, and I've lost three stones in nine months, without the hint of a diet book in sight.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Bill D
Date: 05 May 14 - 09:17 PM

Well, so much for paraphrasing an old joke. ☺

All of that sounds delicious,,
You eat well, and sanely... I'll be over...

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Rapparee
Date: 05 May 14 - 09:54 PM

I never drink water. Everyone who ever drank it died.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Bill D
Date: 05 May 14 - 10:55 PM

"Everyone who ever drank it died."

Not yet....

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 May 14 - 11:40 PM

Well, since all the healthy stuff is bad for me, I guess I'll just go back to eating pizza and hamburgers. Might as well enjoy myself on the way to the grave....

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Gurney
Date: 06 May 14 - 12:21 AM

Well. the only water on Earth is the water that's ALWAYS been on Earth. It just gets recycled by evaporation and rainfall.
Except for fossil water, which went underground millennia ago. I'm expecting someone to start selling that at a premium any day now.

They say that the water in the carafes in the British parliament has been through seven sets of kidneys since it was last rained down. I read that somewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 06 May 14 - 03:35 AM

Well I knit my own yoghurt and wear sesame seed shoes at all times - but I'm gloomily aware that those wholesome habits won't save me from the 'Grim Reaper' when the time comes!

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 May 14 - 03:02 PM

I have never worried about what I eat. Yesterday I enjoyed a "Greek" pizza made at an Italian restaurant near where I live- Cheeses, onions, black olives, etc.- wonderful.

When 2fer1 coupons for hamburgers for A&W, MacDonalds, etc., come around, I use them.

I eat pie or cheesecake or a cake and coffee to start the day because I like sugar to get myself awake (also I can't resist the bearclaws served at a local Starbucks).

So I might die before my time (90 now), but at least I enjoy my food.

Have a nice thick steak picked out for dinner tonight, and a potato. I might add a tomato, red onion and fresh spinach salad, drizzled with olive oil- probably won't have room for dessert.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: GUEST
Date: 06 May 14 - 10:13 PM

Oi've got a scarecrow and he'm the leading expert in 'is field too. Don' think any of the wurrums can match him as a philosopher, and the only other thing been in the fiekd was that courtin' couple from opposite the churruch, and they didn't stay long. Why, 'e just stans there arl day an thinks an never says owt.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 May 14 - 11:30 PM

PDQ, that list is just plain wrong. It's old fashioned "old wives tale" thinking. The only exception is personal waste - it has never been considered compostable material, it's odd to see that on your list. Things that go into the sewer or packaged as biohazards aren't destined for the compost.

If you have a good compost pile going and it is turned over and watered enough it is hot enough to break down all of those items fairly quickly. I regularly put food and dog droppings in the pile. No point in pouring milk on it, that's better in water on the garden itself. The main thing about too much food in the compost or garden is that it will attract mice or rats. I use dog hair scattered around in the garden to repel that kind of pest.

Tough weeds (except for poison ivy) can go in the compost. I am careful to not put toxic things in the compost - I don't want seeds from the Jimson seed sprouting in the back yard because the dogs graze, and that makes them sick if they get into the seedlings. Poison ivy goes in plastic bags and goes to the dump, because if I accidentally come into contact with the vine later, before it breaks down, I break out.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: pdq
Date: 07 May 14 - 04:16 PM

The list I posted of things not to be composted is a very good list.

Has both science and common sense behind it.

Gardners should copy it to their gardening file.

You may want to add tomato and tomatillo as poor plant choices since they require high temperature and lots of humidity to break down. Most people will get seedlings from including them in compost.

I have lots of clean leaves that blow in the yard each year. I take a reasonable amount and compost them. Only coffee grounds and sometimes the last of a pot of coffee are added.

Leaves from fruit trees should be avoided, even so, since they harbor numerous pests that overwinter in the cospost pile. Period.

Cardinal rule: compost no fecal material from human, cat, dog, monkey or carniverous sources.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 May 14 - 04:34 PM

Like I said, it's a bad list and that "science" is obsolete. You are offering misinformation.

Compost

Compost Making

Compost Tea

Composter Bin Newsletter

What do you think the process of composting is? It is decomposition. And if you water and turn it, it is decomposition at temperatures that cause steam to rise off of the pile in cold weather. By the time it has broken down into a dark brown soil-like material any of those pests or bugs are long gone. Very efficient. I turn my compost, and water it occasionally, but I also let it sit for a long time since I have a very large lot and can let a pile sit and start a new one for the next year's yard and kitchen waste.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: pdq
Date: 07 May 14 - 04:36 PM

"period" belongs after the last line...about composting carnivor feces.
Chicken manure, on the other hand, is great stuff but is too "hot" to used without composting.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 May 14 - 11:41 PM

"Carnivore feces" is a nonsensical distinction. Shit is shit. You can ignore that old list and put everything in the compost. You're liberated from the old mores and folkways of gardening. Science supports composting many more things than people used to separate out.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 08 May 14 - 04:21 AM

Have just checked with my sis (doctor) and she says never ever put faeces of any species in the compost heap if you intend to put the compost on food-growing areas of the garden, She says that there are innumerable bacteria which are NOT killed by the temperature inside a compost heap. E Coli for example. On the contrary they'd multiply beautifully and you'd have sacks (literally) of trouble.

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 May 14 - 12:02 AM

No, I'm sorry, I still disagree. Your sister is incorrect. E coli doesn't have a medium to grow in as the compost breaks down whatever manure is in the heap. The whole world would have died by now because manure is TRADITIONALLY used in compost and then in gardening. She's not thinking through the whole process.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Ed T
Date: 09 May 14 - 08:03 PM

fish and health? 

Subject: RE: BS: Don't Eat Vegetables !
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 May 14 - 10:44 PM

This reminds me of the misinformation in all of those mattress commercials - the "if it's over 8, time to replace" stuff along with all of the nonsense about sweat and mites and bacteria making the mattress weigh more. I researched it once, the contrarian in me thinking those ads are full of shit.

It turned out that on one occasion someone speculated about that and it went into print. The fact that the speculated idea has been completely and thoroughly debunked doesn't keep the mattress companies from saying it as loud and often as they can. Their school of thought is that once it's in print, no matter how bogus, if it suits your ad campaign, use it. Very few seem to be interested in debunking it. Maybe turning it in to the state attorney general in the state where they're based?

SRS