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BS: Food is just chemicals
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: autolycus Date: 19 Jan 08 - 05:07 AM Just to see if we can get terminological agreement, how about, rather than organic, drug-free? Ivor |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: GUEST,Shimrod Date: 17 Jan 08 - 04:06 AM How true, Rowan, how true! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Rowan Date: 16 Jan 08 - 10:05 PM BUT how can people go through life without knowing the basics of how the world works? No disrespect intended Shimrod, but I thought you'd been around for quite a while. An apposite bumper sticker from my past may be relevant and, at the same time, explain a lot of why we have inflation; "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!" Cheers, Rowan |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: GUEST,Shimrod Date: 16 Jan 08 - 06:15 PM What puzzles me is how someone can go through life without knowing that everything is composed of chemicals?! ... but then people in marketing departments don't seem to know stuff like that either (and they, in turn, must fool a lot of consumers) ... so perhaps there's more ignorance around than I thought? In conversation, the other day I just happened to mention the fact that I had met someone who didn't know the difference between a planet and a star. There was a 'deafening silence' and then I realised that a lot of the 'highly educated' people around the table didn't know the difference either! It makes you think ... BUT how can people go through life without knowing the basics of how the world works? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Stilly River Sage Date: 16 Jan 08 - 12:22 PM BT has to be used cautiously, never broadcast, because it does impact the butterfly population. It is used to kill caterpillars that destroy garden plants, and needs to be applied carefully. There is a BT, israelensis, that is excellent when added to water to kill mosquito nymphs and is not harmful to butterflies. There are, I suspect, lots of kinds of nematodes, beneficial and otherwise. There was no endorsement of those products listed for the entire world; they are what are used here in the lower Great Plains of the U.S. Follow the Dirt Doctor link for more information. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 15 Jan 08 - 02:28 PM Nematodes, esp. the root knot variety, are a serious pest. The growers of exotic plants must be especially wary, since some nematodes that don't cause too much damage in the garden are a threat to greenhouse plants. This area of Alberta was essentially nematode-free, but poor inspection of imported plants has changed that. With some garden crops, like tomatoes, nematode-resistant varieties are available. Alfalfa has been infected in the warmest part of the province, but resistant varieties and crop rotation help to control it. Most extension services provide information, of the many here is one from Missouri: Nematode control Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) offers a mixed blessing. It infects most butterfly and moth species as well as the caterpillers of garden and crop pests. It action has been engineered into a number of crop seeds sold as 'insect resistant.' Some of the loss of butterflies and moths needed for propagation of some plants has been blamed on Bt and its engineered actions in plants. Moreover, soil mixtures such as recommended by SRS may be effective in some climatic zones but not others. Use of molasses could be detrimental in cool climate areas. Careful testing is necessary since products of that type could encourage soil molds that rot roots. In our area, for example, bone meal causes mold problems unless it is confined to the bottom soil, otherwise roots may be destroyed. Lava and green sand (from volcanic materials) of course are good sources of minerals needed for most plant growth. In Hawai'i, I have seen new homes built in areas of lava rock and almost no soil. To pepare a 'soil,' the rock is crushed, and a little bagged soil added. Good plant growth results in what still looks like crushed lava. In Florida, I have seen field crops in soil that is mostly broken up limestone (rich in phosphate in that area). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: dick greenhaus Date: 15 Jan 08 - 01:01 PM If a definition isn't agreed upon by the people using it, it's meaningless. Like "Folk" |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Mo the caller Date: 15 Jan 08 - 11:38 AM In the UK the label to trust seems to be 'Soil Association". I take any other claims to being organic with a pinch of salt. I don't want factory farmed meat that happens to have been fed on organic grain etc. I prefer organic food, but I think animal welfare is more important, so buying e.g. soil association milk, will help. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Stilly River Sage Date: 15 Jan 08 - 11:04 AM Dry molasses, green sand, lava sand, worm castings, compost, potassium bicarbonate, vinegar, orange oil, nematodes, tricagramma wasps, Bacillus thuringengensis, soap, garlic/pepper tea. It isn't that difficult. Prepare the soil well and don't use toxic stuff to kill pests. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 14 Jan 08 - 07:41 PM Canada may have regulations in place by 2009. At present, only the note "organic" by the price label is seen- no certification or explanation. The NOP in the States seems mostly concerned with manuring practices, and purity of seed materials. It seems too complex for the novice to interpret without study. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Stilly River Sage Date: 14 Jan 08 - 05:25 PM The Dirt Doctor answers all of your questions about organic. Consumers and small organic farmers know a lot about what constitutes "organic." And there is a lot of evidence to support what they know. There isn't a huge budget to promote it, that's the difference between DuPont and the Dirt Doctor. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 14 Jan 08 - 05:16 PM What do consumers and small organic farmers call "organic?" The word has no meaning with regards to groceries. It seems to allow merchants here to put stuff on their shelves at twice the price- not all bad, because some varieties are showing up that were absent before, e. g., rosso tomatoes and fine Mexican blackberries. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Stilly River Sage Date: 14 Jan 08 - 01:14 PM It isn't meaningless, Dick, but it is subjective. What the industrial farmers would like to call "organic" to move into the Green Marketplace isn't the same as what consumers and small organic farmers would like to call "organic." SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: PoppaGator Date: 14 Jan 08 - 01:06 PM "Better Living Through Chemistry," as a corporate slogan hijacked by hippie demoinstrators in the 60s: I'm pretty sure that BEFORE this phrase was used ironically as an anti-corporate, anti-additive message, those buttons were first produced to promote the use of a chemical ~ LSD ~ as a positive was to achieve "better living." The organic-foods movement began a few years later. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: dick greenhaus Date: 14 Jan 08 - 11:27 AM Cancer is natural. So is curare. and foxglove. My point is that "Organic", when used to define food, is essentially meaningless. And will continue to be so until someone provides a legally-binding definition. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Stilly River Sage Date: 14 Jan 08 - 10:55 AM Dick said "Organic" foods have been defined as foods in which all the chemical additives are organic chemnicals. That's not right. Organic foods are raised with as few chemicals as possible, and those that are used are as benign to everything else as possible. Beneficial, even. "Organic chemcials" are not benign or beneficial when used near the food supply. Google search on "organic chemicals" For example: From a site called "Enviro Mysteries"
And from an Idaho Geology site (Portneuf Valley Groundwater Guardian, around Rapaire's corner of the world):
I don't want your organic chemicals anywhere near my organic food. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Grab Date: 14 Jan 08 - 09:25 AM and we are usually aware of them Actually no, we mostly *aren't* aware of them. Food scientists might be, or agricultural specialists, but you and I almost certainly aren't. Even with poisonous species/varieties (or the poisonous parts of those plants), time hasn't always been spent on finding out what the poison is, unless there's some benefit to be had from doing that. Eventually people probably will get round to doing this, but the sheer number of plant species/varieties in existence means it's not going to happen in your lifetime or mine. And remember that there are new discoveries all the time, so people might get all the way through the list and then find that they'd not checked for some particular feature which could be used as an additional ingredient for making the perfect souffle, say. :-) And herbicides and pesticides are man-made chemicals which can be/are harmful to us. ...and nor is that the case either. There are naturally-occurring herbicides/pesticides which are harmful to us, naturally-ocurring herbicides/pesticides which are not harmful to us, and man-made herbicides/pesticides which are not harmful to us. Also the quantity is relevant - for example, if you take care of your lawn, you'll know that lawn fertiliser will actually poison the grass if you put too much on. For us, vitamin C is a great example of that - don't eat fruit and you get scurvy, but eat too much and you get chronic diarrhoea. Graham. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Marilyn Date: 14 Jan 08 - 08:28 AM Q - you said that buying bottled water is a waste of money because tap water is just as safe. I can't argue about the safety of tap water as I assume it MUST be safe but I sure can argue on the grounds of taste. Where we used to live the tap water tasted foul, sort of musty. It was probably SAFE to drink but was undrinkable because of the foul taste. Boiling it to make tea or coffee didn't get rid of the taste either. We tried filtering it and the really foul taste was gone but the water still didn't taste very nice so we bought bottled water, even for making hot drinks. We moved house to another area and our tap water here is really good - every bit as good as bottled water so we don't need to spend all that money any more. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: GUEST,PMB Date: 14 Jan 08 - 03:17 AM Drug free cannabis? I'd go for "unadulterated" or perhaps "grown in pure shit". |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: autolycus Date: 13 Jan 08 - 11:15 AM OK. Drug-free? Ivor |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: catspaw49 Date: 13 Jan 08 - 08:49 AM Yeah.......We have such a wonderful way of "loading" words. WE get warm fuzzies over certain words because of the image, right or wrong, the present to us. Why is an Apple Pie so much better because it says "Amish Homemade Natural Organic Apple Pie?" Lessee here......."Natural" and "Organic" are explained above but didja' know there is a caste system of sorts amongst the Amish? We have the equivalent of poor filthy white trailer trash Amish around here and the last thing I want is anything they make in one of their homes! They're nice folks and all but this bunch has a lot to be desired in the hygiene department. But true to form there are umpteen things sold around here with "Amish" in the name that have NOTHING to do with anything Amish at all. Remember the old days when sales dropped the product was relabeled "New." When they got even worse it became "New and Improved." Now its Amish or Australian which boost sagging sales. Spaw |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: autolycus Date: 13 Jan 08 - 06:14 AM As an alternative to 'organic', how about 'drug-free'? Or 'natural'? Ivor |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Wolfhound person Date: 13 Jan 08 - 05:17 AM We have a household joke "Have you ever seen an inorganic loaf?" In chemistry - organic is the study of substances based on carbon. Inorganic (= not organic) is everything else - tin, lead, arsenic, nitrogen calcium etc etc. So inorganic food is largely not possible, since our metabolism is designed to run on carbon based substances. Supermarkets don't seem to realise the idiocy they have perpetrated - all food can be said to be organic. But no, I don't eat E-numbers if I can avoid them. Paws |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 12 Jan 08 - 05:06 PM A number of the bottled waters have traces of minerals that are toxic; this is normal for all water taken from aquifers or other natural sources. Tap water is as safe as the bottled waters. Unless one wants fizz or some other property, or needs to carry water in the desert or jungle, bottled waters are a waste of money and materials. I remember friends from an area in west Texas where the water was high in fluoride concentration; no tooth cavities but brown discoloration. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Rapparee Date: 12 Jan 08 - 04:51 PM I once saw an analysis of Perrier Water -- on the bottle label; it was up in Canada, I remember. Among the chemicals you'd expect (hydrogen, oxygen, dissolved calcium salts) was arsenic. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Rowan Date: 11 Jan 08 - 10:32 PM All living and nonliving things are constituted from chemicals; some chemicals we find desirable and others we regard as undesirable. Lots of plants, for example, produce a range of chemicals we like (starches, sugars, flavours etc) and some produce chemicals we can use, in small doses and with care; aspirin, atropine and quinine are just the first three off the top of my head. Many of the flavoursome ones are really part of a plant's armoury (read chemical warfare against being eaten by insects and larger herbivores) and, although small doses are pleasant to us, larger doses can be harmful and downright toxic. They're all natural but we've gone to a lot of trouble to synthesise them in quantities and versions that are useful to us and lots of 'uninformed' people regard these latter as (automatically) bad because they're not natural, even though they may be identical. But they're all chemicals. Cheers (and bon appetit!), Rowan |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: bobad Date: 11 Jan 08 - 07:52 PM Better Living Through Chemistry From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The phrase "Better Living Through Chemistry" is a variant of a DuPont advertising slogan, "Better Things for Better Living...Through Chemistry." DuPont adopted it in 1935 and was their slogan until 1982 when the "Through Chemistry" bit was dropped; in 1999 it was replaced by "The miracles of science". This phrase became popular as culture shifted from mod to hippie in the later half of the 1960s. Protesters would show up for a rally, perhaps to protest a chemical plant, wearing DuPont propaganda buttons, which bore this slogan. Protests in the 1960s didn't all revolve around the Vietnam War; Dow Chemical and DuPont were common targets, as people disliked the "artificiality" they represented. The phrase "Better Living Through Chemistry" was used on products that were not affiliated with DuPont to circumvent trademark infringement. This transmutation is now more commonly used than the original. This statement is used for commentary on several different topics, from the promotion of illegal drugs, to the praise of chemicals and plastics, to the criticism of the same, sarcastically. This phrase is sometimes associated with Aldous Huxley's book Brave New World, though it does not actually appear in the text of the book. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 11 Jan 08 - 07:34 PM "All vegetables, fruits and meats are organic, as well as ourselves, the consumers. A better term or terms are needed to indicate those foods that are raised pesticide-free or herbicide-free, etc. When one sees the word "organic" applied to a food product, some explanation of just what the vendor means is necessary. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: dick greenhaus Date: 11 Jan 08 - 06:05 PM "Organic" foods have been defined as foods in which all the chemical additives are organic chemnicals. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: autolycus Date: 11 Jan 08 - 05:39 PM Thank you for those. So some 'natural ' foods are harmful to us, and we are usually aware of them. Otherwise 'naturally-occurring' chemicals are not. And herbicides and pesticides are man-made chemicals which can be/are harmful to us. That's what I'm getting from you. Ivor |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: Grab Date: 11 Jan 08 - 05:33 PM That's the shape of it, Autolycus. And not all things "natural" and "unfertilised-by-chemicals" are good for you either. Remember that "natural" and "unfertilised-by-chemicals" is where you'll find deadly nightshade, foxgloves, yew, deathcap mushrooms, poison ivy, and so on. Some creatures can eat them OK, but humans ain't amongst that select group. Nature certainly is a mother, but in the other sense... Graham. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: PoppaGator Date: 11 Jan 08 - 04:05 PM Everything on earth (and elsewhere) is made out of chemicals. Not just food ~ you and me, too. Lotsa stuff occurs naturally. Some other stuff is man-made in a laboratory. Sometimes people use the word "chemical" to refer to the latter category only. That may be common usage, but it is not strictly accurate. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Food is just chemicals From: GUEST,MarkS Date: 11 Jan 08 - 04:01 PM Sure, foods are made up of the same combinations of elements as everything else, mostly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and trace amounts of all the rest. The "chemical" problem comes up when our foodstuffs are treated with a harmful chemical substance such as an insecticide, herbacide, or misapplied fertilizers. These can then be hazardous. Mark |
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Subject: BS: Food is just chemicals From: autolycus Date: 11 Jan 08 - 03:25 PM I've been told that natural unfertilised-by-chemicals pears are just chemicals. I'm not a scientist so I'm asking for scientists' help to clarify. Thanks. Ivor |
