Divorce Your Car --and get into a relationship with a Bike!



"bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Amy Blankenship wrote:
>> "Matthew Russotto" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>> Amy Blankenship <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>> People have evolved over millions of years to eat meat. We know that
>>>>> gathering activities by women in tribes could not provide enough
>>>>> calories
>>>>> to keep people from starving to death.
>>>> ...In the event that they're spending all their time savenging, which
>>>> we no
>>>> longer do. And keep in mind that these people did not eat a lot of
>>>> meat,
>>>> and much of the meat they did eat was in the form of worms and bugs.
>>>> Anyone
>>>> in favor of adding worms and bugs to the supermarket shelves because
>>>> we're
>>>> evolved to eat them? ;-)
>>> Actually, they are a significant source of protein and micronutrients
>>> among vegetarian Indians. As a meat eater I prefer not to consume any
>>> more than necessary, but as a vegetarian you might want to welcome
>>> those additions to your flour.

>>
>> I never said I was a vegetarian, though some might say I am. I don't eat
>> anything it would bother me to see dead by the side of the road. My
>> principal objections to the meat industry in this country, though, are
>> due to the way the animals are raised and the unsanitary conditions
>> during and after slaughter. It would curl your hair to know what happens
>> between having a live chicken and a chicken on your dinner table.

>
> I can tell you since I worked one whole day at a chicken processing plant
> for KFC when I went to Arkansas to visit my dad. The high school kids who
> work there grab the chickens out of the cage by the neck and twirl them to
> break their necks. Now comes the good part. Somewhere in the past one of
> them discovered that if you squeeze the **** out of a dead chicken, well,
> you really can squeeze the **** out of a dead chicken, about a 15 - 20
> foot squirt. They actually came to break covered in....you guessed it,
> chicken ****, because they had chicken **** fights with the dead birds.
> Now go to KFC and buy some chicken that has been processed by this
> wonderfully sanitary plant.
> Yuck.
> Bill Baka



I'd believe this ****, except that my father-in-law processed several
thousand birds per day in his plant and then marketed them to small
restaurants. There was nothing like this there. Further, my wife can but
up a chicken to this day in seconds, and so can can her friends. There is
nothing mysterious about it. It is not unsanitary, unclearn or cruel. Try
working on a family farm 12 hours per day and then getting on the school bus
at 7:30 Am having worked all night. None of the girls resents that to this
day, because they needed the money and it was real work.
 
"george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> Amy Blankenship wrote:
>>> "Matthew Russotto" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>>> Amy Blankenship <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>> People have evolved over millions of years to eat meat. We know
>>>>>> that
>>>>>> gathering activities by women in tribes could not provide enough
>>>>>> calories
>>>>>> to keep people from starving to death.
>>>>> ...In the event that they're spending all their time savenging, which
>>>>> we no
>>>>> longer do. And keep in mind that these people did not eat a lot of
>>>>> meat,
>>>>> and much of the meat they did eat was in the form of worms and bugs.
>>>>> Anyone
>>>>> in favor of adding worms and bugs to the supermarket shelves because
>>>>> we're
>>>>> evolved to eat them? ;-)
>>>> Actually, they are a significant source of protein and micronutrients
>>>> among vegetarian Indians. As a meat eater I prefer not to consume any
>>>> more than necessary, but as a vegetarian you might want to welcome
>>>> those additions to your flour.
>>>
>>> I never said I was a vegetarian, though some might say I am. I don't
>>> eat anything it would bother me to see dead by the side of the road. My
>>> principal objections to the meat industry in this country, though, are
>>> due to the way the animals are raised and the unsanitary conditions
>>> during and after slaughter. It would curl your hair to know what
>>> happens between having a live chicken and a chicken on your dinner
>>> table.

>>
>> I can tell you since I worked one whole day at a chicken processing plant
>> for KFC when I went to Arkansas to visit my dad. The high school kids who
>> work there grab the chickens out of the cage by the neck and twirl them
>> to break their necks. Now comes the good part. Somewhere in the past one
>> of them discovered that if you squeeze the **** out of a dead chicken,
>> well, you really can squeeze the **** out of a dead chicken, about a 15 -
>> 20 foot squirt. They actually came to break covered in....you guessed it,
>> chicken ****, because they had chicken **** fights with the dead birds.
>> Now go to KFC and buy some chicken that has been processed by this
>> wonderfully sanitary plant.
>> Yuck.
>> Bill Baka

>
>
> I'd believe this ****, except that my father-in-law processed several
> thousand birds per day in his plant and then marketed them to small
> restaurants. There was nothing like this there. Further, my wife can but
> up a chicken to this day in seconds, and so can can her friends. There is
> nothing mysterious about it. It is not unsanitary, unclearn or cruel.
> Try working on a family farm 12 hours per day and then getting on the
> school bus at 7:30 Am having worked all night. None of the girls resents
> that to this day, because they needed the money and it was real work.


I have no issue with chicken processed by small plants. But when you read
the USDA regs and see how many hours they are allowed to take to cool down a
corpse to refrigerator temperature, you can see there's a lot of leeway for
unsanitary conditions.

I do agree that the story is unlikely, because if the chickens are fed
properly their **** comes out more in clumps than streams. Hopefully no one
is submitting birds for processing where the **** would squirt.
 
"george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>>
>>> "bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>> Amy Blankenship wrote:
>>>>> "Jack May" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>> "Kevan Smith" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>>>>>> [email protected] (Matthew Russotto) wrote:
>>>>>>> Cholesterol is both. It harms you when you eat it, and there is no
>>>>>>> dietary necessity to eat it.
>>>>>> Tell that to the hawk that is using my back yard as a supermarket for
>>>>>> birds and squirrels.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> People have evolved over millions of years to eat meat. We know
>>>>>> that gathering activities by women in tribes could not provide enough
>>>>>> calories to keep people from starving to death.
>>>>>
>>>>> ...In the event that they're spending all their time savenging, which
>>>>> we no longer do. And keep in mind that these people did not eat a lot
>>>>> of meat, and much of the meat they did eat was in the form of worms
>>>>> and bugs. Anyone in favor of adding worms and bugs to the supermarket
>>>>> shelves because we're evolved to eat them? ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hunting and scavenging meat was required to provide enough calories.
>>>>>> Our millions of years of evolution as meat eaters would tend to make
>>>>>> meat eating more than just a simple choice.
>>>>>
>>>>> We are omnivores, which means we can choose. If you look around you,
>>>>> there's no shortage of calories in most developed nations.
>>>>
>>>> Also no shortage of processed food that is now working to shorten
>>>> people's lives. We are indeed omnivores but that part of evolution has
>>>> locked us out of being vegetarians in the natural world, since we can't
>>>> process grass the same way that cattle do.
>>>
>>> That is why we eat animals. They eat grass; we eat the animal which has
>>> processed the grass for us. Simple.

>>
>> That is the way it's *supposed* to work. But as you've often pointed
>> out, grass is not what most meat animals are fed these days. Grain is
>> among the more wholesome things they get.
>>

>
>
> True Amy. But whan can we do about it? Any ideas?


Support small farms that produce this way instead of trying to wipe them out
:)
 
george conklin wrote:
> "bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> I can tell you since I worked one whole day at a chicken processing plant
>> for KFC when I went to Arkansas to visit my dad. The high school kids who
>> work there grab the chickens out of the cage by the neck and twirl them to
>> break their necks. Now comes the good part. Somewhere in the past one of
>> them discovered that if you squeeze the **** out of a dead chicken, well,
>> you really can squeeze the **** out of a dead chicken, about a 15 - 20
>> foot squirt. They actually came to break covered in....you guessed it,
>> chicken ****, because they had chicken **** fights with the dead birds.
>> Now go to KFC and buy some chicken that has been processed by this
>> wonderfully sanitary plant.
>> Yuck.
>> Bill Baka

>
>
> I'd believe this ****, except that my father-in-law processed several
> thousand birds per day in his plant and then marketed them to small
> restaurants. There was nothing like this there. Further, my wife can but
> up a chicken to this day in seconds, and so can can her friends. There is
> nothing mysterious about it. It is not unsanitary, unclearn or cruel. Try
> working on a family farm 12 hours per day and then getting on the school bus
> at 7:30 Am having worked all night. None of the girls resents that to this
> day, because they needed the money and it was real work.


Too bad you can't believe this **** because it is true. I was on
vacation from my real job and decided to give Arkansas work a try while
I was there. There, meaning Clarksville, maybe the town that spawned the
song "Last train to Clarksville". As to the high school kids that worked
there, they were always getting in fights at break and lunch time
because half the kids were from Clarksville and half from a neighboring
town with a rival high school football team.
As to sanitation, well, it got better once the birds were de-feathered
and gutted. They went through a cold water tank that did a rapid cool
down on the carcass then got rough cut and deposited on the line where I
worked. 8 hours of grabbing breasts off the line and cutting them in
half with my thumbs barely missing the saw on each pass. I got to
thinking this was pretty dangerous and then noticed that a lot of the
'supervisors' were missing a thumb, all or part thereof. About every 15
minutes a cleanup guy would hose down the floor under our feet thus
washing the blood and guts into a drain under the lines conveyor belt.
As far as real work goes, that one day of play for pay convinced me that
my cushy electronics job wasn't really that bad after all. My hands felt
ready to fall off my wrists after 8 hours of high speed chicken handling.
It kind of reminded me of that "I love Lucy" bit they did with the
chocolate candy line. If we were keeping up the line lead guy would
speed it up just a hair, thinking nobody would notice, and kept trying
that until we started missing a few pieces.
Sure glad I don't actually live in Arkansas.
Bill Baka
 
Amy Blankenship wrote:
> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
>> I'd believe this ****, except that my father-in-law processed several
>> thousand birds per day in his plant and then marketed them to small
>> restaurants. There was nothing like this there. Further, my wife can but
>> up a chicken to this day in seconds, and so can can her friends. There is
>> nothing mysterious about it. It is not unsanitary, unclearn or cruel.
>> Try working on a family farm 12 hours per day and then getting on the
>> school bus at 7:30 Am having worked all night. None of the girls resents
>> that to this day, because they needed the money and it was real work.

>
> I have no issue with chicken processed by small plants. But when you read
> the USDA regs and see how many hours they are allowed to take to cool down a
> corpse to refrigerator temperature, you can see there's a lot of leeway for
> unsanitary conditions.
>
> I do agree that the story is unlikely, because if the chickens are fed
> properly their **** comes out more in clumps than streams. Hopefully no one
> is submitting birds for processing where the **** would squirt.
>

Maybe squirt was not the exact way it came out since the kids had more
like what looked like pigeon **** on them in clumps. Like I said they
must have really squeezed the birds. Some of those kids were pretty big
country boys, quite literally. For a time line this was back in 1985.
As for cooling the birds I think it was a brine bath they were cooled in
so the water would actually be less than 32 degrees F.
One day was not enough time to scope out the whole show, but I got a
fair if not complete look at life on the line.
Bill Baka
 
"Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
>> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>>
>>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>
>>>> "bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>> Amy Blankenship wrote:
>>>>>> "Jack May" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>>> "Kevan Smith" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>>>>>>> [email protected] (Matthew Russotto) wrote:
>>>>>>>> Cholesterol is both. It harms you when you eat it, and there is no
>>>>>>>> dietary necessity to eat it.
>>>>>>> Tell that to the hawk that is using my back yard as a supermarket
>>>>>>> for birds and squirrels.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> People have evolved over millions of years to eat meat. We know
>>>>>>> that gathering activities by women in tribes could not provide
>>>>>>> enough calories to keep people from starving to death.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ...In the event that they're spending all their time savenging, which
>>>>>> we no longer do. And keep in mind that these people did not eat a
>>>>>> lot of meat, and much of the meat they did eat was in the form of
>>>>>> worms and bugs. Anyone in favor of adding worms and bugs to the
>>>>>> supermarket shelves because we're evolved to eat them? ;-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hunting and scavenging meat was required to provide enough calories.
>>>>>>> Our millions of years of evolution as meat eaters would tend to make
>>>>>>> meat eating more than just a simple choice.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We are omnivores, which means we can choose. If you look around you,
>>>>>> there's no shortage of calories in most developed nations.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also no shortage of processed food that is now working to shorten
>>>>> people's lives. We are indeed omnivores but that part of evolution has
>>>>> locked us out of being vegetarians in the natural world, since we
>>>>> can't process grass the same way that cattle do.
>>>>
>>>> That is why we eat animals. They eat grass; we eat the animal which
>>>> has processed the grass for us. Simple.
>>>
>>> That is the way it's *supposed* to work. But as you've often pointed
>>> out, grass is not what most meat animals are fed these days. Grain is
>>> among the more wholesome things they get.
>>>

>>
>>
>> True Amy. But whan can we do about it? Any ideas?

>
> Support small farms that produce this way instead of trying to wipe them
> out :)
>


Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's population to
death. That is not a solution except for death.
 
george conklin wrote:
> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> >
> > "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > news:[email protected]...
> >>
> >> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >> news:[email protected]...
> >>>
> >>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>> news:[email protected]...
> >>>>
> >>>> "bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>>> news:[email protected]...
> >>>>> Amy Blankenship wrote:
> >>>>>> "Jack May" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>>>>> news:[email protected]...
> >>>>>>> "Kevan Smith" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
> >>>>>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
> >>>>>>>> [email protected] (Matthew Russotto) wrote:
> >>>>>>>> Cholesterol is both. It harms you when you eat it, and there is no
> >>>>>>>> dietary necessity to eat it.
> >>>>>>> Tell that to the hawk that is using my back yard as a supermarket
> >>>>>>> for birds and squirrels.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> People have evolved over millions of years to eat meat. We know
> >>>>>>> that gathering activities by women in tribes could not provide
> >>>>>>> enough calories to keep people from starving to death.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> ...In the event that they're spending all their time savenging, which
> >>>>>> we no longer do. And keep in mind that these people did not eat a
> >>>>>> lot of meat, and much of the meat they did eat was in the form of
> >>>>>> worms and bugs. Anyone in favor of adding worms and bugs to the
> >>>>>> supermarket shelves because we're evolved to eat them? ;-)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Hunting and scavenging meat was required to provide enough calories.
> >>>>>>> Our millions of years of evolution as meat eaters would tend to make
> >>>>>>> meat eating more than just a simple choice.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> We are omnivores, which means we can choose. If you look around you,
> >>>>>> there's no shortage of calories in most developed nations.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Also no shortage of processed food that is now working to shorten
> >>>>> people's lives. We are indeed omnivores but that part of evolution has
> >>>>> locked us out of being vegetarians in the natural world, since we
> >>>>> can't process grass the same way that cattle do.
> >>>>
> >>>> That is why we eat animals. They eat grass; we eat the animal which
> >>>> has processed the grass for us. Simple.
> >>>
> >>> That is the way it's *supposed* to work. But as you've often pointed
> >>> out, grass is not what most meat animals are fed these days. Grain is
> >>> among the more wholesome things they get.
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> True Amy. But whan can we do about it? Any ideas?

> >
> > Support small farms that produce this way instead of trying to wipe them
> > out :)
> >

>
> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's population to
> death. That is not a solution except for death.


I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.

A couple of points about this discussion.

Frist, food is much safer today than at any time in history. There is
no study that disputes this. Sure there are al osrts of issues with
additives, pesticides, etc. but the negative impacts of these is far
less than the positive efects of refrigeration and rapid
transportatiion to market.

Second, while I will not be trapped into arguing for fried foods and
other choices that are sub optimum the reality is that many of the
dietary problems in modern society as a much related to (non dietary)
life style as to what is consumed. For example, in a study of Eskimo
and Inuit societies it was found that the traditional diet was
extremely high in fat. It has a been a long time since I read the study
so I'm not sure what the exact number was but the tradtional diet had
over 50% of its calories from fat. Yet there was virtually no obesity
nor heart desease nor diabetes. Why? Because in the tradional
lifetstyle these folks perfomred lots of hard, physical, labor in very
low temps and without large amounts of fat in the diet they simply
could not do so.
Obesity and heart desese and diabetes struck these people with the
advent and adoption of the snow mobile. As the amount of physical work
went down drastically without a change in diet bad things began to
happen.
Similar findings have been show in other societies such as the Masai as
well as tribes in the Amazon and South Pacific.

The point is that biologically humans are quite able to eat and
flourish when their diet is linked in a postive way with life style. If
one wants to be sedentary then perhaps the solution is massive caloric
deprivation.

Anyway, poor life style choices far outweigh mass farming as a cause of
human misery.
 
"george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>>
>>> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>
>>>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>
>>>>> "bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>> Amy Blankenship wrote:
>>>>>>> "Jack May" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>>>> "Kevan Smith" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>>>>>>>> [email protected] (Matthew Russotto) wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Cholesterol is both. It harms you when you eat it, and there is no
>>>>>>>>> dietary necessity to eat it.
>>>>>>>> Tell that to the hawk that is using my back yard as a supermarket
>>>>>>>> for birds and squirrels.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> People have evolved over millions of years to eat meat. We know
>>>>>>>> that gathering activities by women in tribes could not provide
>>>>>>>> enough calories to keep people from starving to death.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ...In the event that they're spending all their time savenging,
>>>>>>> which we no longer do. And keep in mind that these people did not
>>>>>>> eat a lot of meat, and much of the meat they did eat was in the form
>>>>>>> of worms and bugs. Anyone in favor of adding worms and bugs to the
>>>>>>> supermarket shelves because we're evolved to eat them? ;-)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hunting and scavenging meat was required to provide enough
>>>>>>>> calories. Our millions of years of evolution as meat eaters would
>>>>>>>> tend to make meat eating more than just a simple choice.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We are omnivores, which means we can choose. If you look around
>>>>>>> you, there's no shortage of calories in most developed nations.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also no shortage of processed food that is now working to shorten
>>>>>> people's lives. We are indeed omnivores but that part of evolution
>>>>>> has locked us out of being vegetarians in the natural world, since we
>>>>>> can't process grass the same way that cattle do.
>>>>>
>>>>> That is why we eat animals. They eat grass; we eat the animal which
>>>>> has processed the grass for us. Simple.
>>>>
>>>> That is the way it's *supposed* to work. But as you've often pointed
>>>> out, grass is not what most meat animals are fed these days. Grain is
>>>> among the more wholesome things they get.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> True Amy. But whan can we do about it? Any ideas?

>>
>> Support small farms that produce this way instead of trying to wipe them
>> out :)
>>

>
> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's population to
> death. That is not a solution except for death.


Polly want a cracker?
 
In article <[email protected]>,
Amy Blankenship <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>"bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>
>> Trans fatty acids? Direct cholesterol intake, I.E. eggs?

>
>Commercial eggs are bad for you, but pastured eggs are high in good
>cholesterol and low in bad cholesterol. I've lost about 4 lbs since my hens
>started laying.


The eggs you buy in the store come from hens same as the ones from
your barnyard; they're not manufactured products. Nutrient content
varies depending on the feed, but cholesterol content is fairly
constant.

>> good for an exercise oriented body. The obesity plague is a definite
>> problem with many people developing diabetes early on.

>
>This is largely because processed starch is more easily converted to sugar
>by the body.


The glycemic index of white bread is 100. The glycemic index of wheat
bread is 99. Processing isn't the issue.
 
In article <[email protected]>,
bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>future due to the junk food plague and the fact that people actually
>think that sitting at a computer all day is *work*. Work is BTU output
>actually doing something like our parents did.


Hey, I'm a second generation computer geek. Anyway, if you want to
get strict about it, BTU output is neither necessary nor sufficient
for work.
 
"gds" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> george conklin wrote:
>> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>> >
>> > "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> > news:[email protected]...
>> >>
>> >> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> >> news:[email protected]...
>> >>>
>> >>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> >>> news:[email protected]...
>> >>>>
>> >>>> "bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> >>>> news:[email protected]...
>> >>>>> Amy Blankenship wrote:
>> >>>>>> "Jack May" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> >>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>> >>>>>>> "Kevan Smith" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> >>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>> >>>>>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>> >>>>>>>> [email protected] (Matthew Russotto) wrote:
>> >>>>>>>> Cholesterol is both. It harms you when you eat it, and there is
>> >>>>>>>> no
>> >>>>>>>> dietary necessity to eat it.
>> >>>>>>> Tell that to the hawk that is using my back yard as a supermarket
>> >>>>>>> for birds and squirrels.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> People have evolved over millions of years to eat meat. We know
>> >>>>>>> that gathering activities by women in tribes could not provide
>> >>>>>>> enough calories to keep people from starving to death.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> ...In the event that they're spending all their time savenging,
>> >>>>>> which
>> >>>>>> we no longer do. And keep in mind that these people did not eat a
>> >>>>>> lot of meat, and much of the meat they did eat was in the form of
>> >>>>>> worms and bugs. Anyone in favor of adding worms and bugs to the
>> >>>>>> supermarket shelves because we're evolved to eat them? ;-)
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Hunting and scavenging meat was required to provide enough
>> >>>>>>> calories.
>> >>>>>>> Our millions of years of evolution as meat eaters would tend to
>> >>>>>>> make
>> >>>>>>> meat eating more than just a simple choice.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> We are omnivores, which means we can choose. If you look around
>> >>>>>> you,
>> >>>>>> there's no shortage of calories in most developed nations.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Also no shortage of processed food that is now working to shorten
>> >>>>> people's lives. We are indeed omnivores but that part of evolution
>> >>>>> has
>> >>>>> locked us out of being vegetarians in the natural world, since we
>> >>>>> can't process grass the same way that cattle do.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> That is why we eat animals. They eat grass; we eat the animal which
>> >>>> has processed the grass for us. Simple.
>> >>>
>> >>> That is the way it's *supposed* to work. But as you've often pointed
>> >>> out, grass is not what most meat animals are fed these days. Grain
>> >>> is
>> >>> among the more wholesome things they get.
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> True Amy. But whan can we do about it? Any ideas?
>> >
>> > Support small farms that produce this way instead of trying to wipe
>> > them
>> > out :)
>> >

>>
>> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's population to
>> death. That is not a solution except for death.

>
> I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.
>
> A couple of points about this discussion.
>
> Frist, food is much safer today than at any time in history. There is
> no study that disputes this. Sure there are al osrts of issues with
> additives, pesticides, etc. but the negative impacts of these is far
> less than the positive efects of refrigeration and rapid
> transportatiion to market.
>
> Second, while I will not be trapped into arguing for fried foods and
> other choices that are sub optimum the reality is that many of the
> dietary problems in modern society as a much related to (non dietary)
> life style as to what is consumed. For example, in a study of Eskimo
> and Inuit societies it was found that the traditional diet was
> extremely high in fat. It has a been a long time since I read the study
> so I'm not sure what the exact number was but the tradtional diet had
> over 50% of its calories from fat. Yet there was virtually no obesity
> nor heart desease nor diabetes. Why? Because in the tradional
> lifetstyle these folks perfomred lots of hard, physical, labor in very
> low temps and without large amounts of fat in the diet they simply
> could not do so.
> Obesity and heart desese and diabetes struck these people with the
> advent and adoption of the snow mobile. As the amount of physical work
> went down drastically without a change in diet bad things began to
> happen.
> Similar findings have been show in other societies such as the Masai as
> well as tribes in the Amazon and South Pacific.
>
> The point is that biologically humans are quite able to eat and
> flourish when their diet is linked in a postive way with life style. If
> one wants to be sedentary then perhaps the solution is massive caloric
> deprivation.
>
> Anyway, poor life style choices far outweigh mass farming as a cause of
> human misery.
>


Except that the poor lifestyle we are supposed to live today is
correlated with much longer life expectancy. When the study which showed
that you had to be about 50 lbs overweight before life was shorter was
published, the establishemnt went nuts. They live on a crisis-per-day
syndrome. But yes, you are right that we have safer food today than ever
before. The textbook we use in Human Societies mentions that 75% of the
world would die if we all went back to small-scale farming, so that figure
is established well enough to be a standard exam item.
 
"george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "gds" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
>> george conklin wrote:
>>> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> news:[email protected]...
>>> >
>>> > "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> > news:[email protected]...
>>> >>
>>> >> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in
>>> >> message
>>> >> news:[email protected]...
>>> >>>
>>> >>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> >>> news:[email protected]...
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> "bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> >>>> news:[email protected]...
>>> >>>>> Amy Blankenship wrote:
>>> >>>>>> "Jack May" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> >>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>> >>>>>>> "Kevan Smith" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> >>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>> >>>>>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>> >>>>>>>> [email protected] (Matthew Russotto) wrote:
>>> >>>>>>>> Cholesterol is both. It harms you when you eat it, and there is
>>> >>>>>>>> no
>>> >>>>>>>> dietary necessity to eat it.
>>> >>>>>>> Tell that to the hawk that is using my back yard as a
>>> >>>>>>> supermarket
>>> >>>>>>> for birds and squirrels.
>>> >>>>>>>
>>> >>>>>>> People have evolved over millions of years to eat meat. We
>>> >>>>>>> know
>>> >>>>>>> that gathering activities by women in tribes could not provide
>>> >>>>>>> enough calories to keep people from starving to death.
>>> >>>>>>
>>> >>>>>> ...In the event that they're spending all their time savenging,
>>> >>>>>> which
>>> >>>>>> we no longer do. And keep in mind that these people did not eat
>>> >>>>>> a
>>> >>>>>> lot of meat, and much of the meat they did eat was in the form of
>>> >>>>>> worms and bugs. Anyone in favor of adding worms and bugs to the
>>> >>>>>> supermarket shelves because we're evolved to eat them? ;-)
>>> >>>>>>
>>> >>>>>>> Hunting and scavenging meat was required to provide enough
>>> >>>>>>> calories.
>>> >>>>>>> Our millions of years of evolution as meat eaters would tend to
>>> >>>>>>> make
>>> >>>>>>> meat eating more than just a simple choice.
>>> >>>>>>
>>> >>>>>> We are omnivores, which means we can choose. If you look around
>>> >>>>>> you,
>>> >>>>>> there's no shortage of calories in most developed nations.
>>> >>>>>
>>> >>>>> Also no shortage of processed food that is now working to shorten
>>> >>>>> people's lives. We are indeed omnivores but that part of evolution
>>> >>>>> has
>>> >>>>> locked us out of being vegetarians in the natural world, since we
>>> >>>>> can't process grass the same way that cattle do.
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> That is why we eat animals. They eat grass; we eat the animal
>>> >>>> which
>>> >>>> has processed the grass for us. Simple.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> That is the way it's *supposed* to work. But as you've often
>>> >>> pointed
>>> >>> out, grass is not what most meat animals are fed these days. Grain
>>> >>> is
>>> >>> among the more wholesome things they get.
>>> >>>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> True Amy. But whan can we do about it? Any ideas?
>>> >
>>> > Support small farms that produce this way instead of trying to wipe
>>> > them
>>> > out :)
>>> >
>>>
>>> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's population to
>>> death. That is not a solution except for death.

>>
>> I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.
>>
>> A couple of points about this discussion.
>>
>> Frist, food is much safer today than at any time in history. There is
>> no study that disputes this. Sure there are al osrts of issues with
>> additives, pesticides, etc. but the negative impacts of these is far
>> less than the positive efects of refrigeration and rapid
>> transportatiion to market.
>>
>> Second, while I will not be trapped into arguing for fried foods and
>> other choices that are sub optimum the reality is that many of the
>> dietary problems in modern society as a much related to (non dietary)
>> life style as to what is consumed. For example, in a study of Eskimo
>> and Inuit societies it was found that the traditional diet was
>> extremely high in fat. It has a been a long time since I read the study
>> so I'm not sure what the exact number was but the tradtional diet had
>> over 50% of its calories from fat. Yet there was virtually no obesity
>> nor heart desease nor diabetes. Why? Because in the tradional
>> lifetstyle these folks perfomred lots of hard, physical, labor in very
>> low temps and without large amounts of fat in the diet they simply
>> could not do so.
>> Obesity and heart desese and diabetes struck these people with the
>> advent and adoption of the snow mobile. As the amount of physical work
>> went down drastically without a change in diet bad things began to
>> happen.
>> Similar findings have been show in other societies such as the Masai as
>> well as tribes in the Amazon and South Pacific.
>>
>> The point is that biologically humans are quite able to eat and
>> flourish when their diet is linked in a postive way with life style. If
>> one wants to be sedentary then perhaps the solution is massive caloric
>> deprivation.
>>
>> Anyway, poor life style choices far outweigh mass farming as a cause of
>> human misery.
>>

>
> Except that the poor lifestyle we are supposed to live today is
> correlated with much longer life expectancy. When the study which showed
> that you had to be about 50 lbs overweight before life was shorter was
> published, the establishemnt went nuts. They live on a crisis-per-day
> syndrome. But yes, you are right that we have safer food today than ever
> before. The textbook we use in Human Societies mentions that 75% of the
> world would die if we all went back to small-scale farming, so that figure
> is established well enough to be a standard exam item.


Cool. Make students' grades contingent on swallowing misinformation whole
without questioning it. No wonder you're so invested in believing and
making others believe it's true. Because if it's not, you've miseducated a
*lot* of students, and have written records of that fact.
 
"Matthew Russotto" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Amy Blankenship <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>"bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>news:[email protected]...
>>
>>> Trans fatty acids? Direct cholesterol intake, I.E. eggs?

>>
>>Commercial eggs are bad for you, but pastured eggs are high in good
>>cholesterol and low in bad cholesterol. I've lost about 4 lbs since my
>>hens
>>started laying.

>
> The eggs you buy in the store come from hens same as the ones from
> your barnyard; they're not manufactured products. Nutrient content
> varies depending on the feed, but cholesterol content is fairly
> constant.
>
>>> good for an exercise oriented body. The obesity plague is a definite
>>> problem with many people developing diabetes early on.

>>
>>This is largely because processed starch is more easily converted to sugar
>>by the body.

>
> The glycemic index of white bread is 100. The glycemic index of wheat
> bread is 99. Processing isn't the issue.


That's standard processed wheat bread. Real wheat bread is when you mill
the wheat berries just before baking. Got any figures on that?
 
In article <[email protected]>,
"george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote:

> >> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's population to
> >> death. That is not a solution except for death.

> >
> > I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.


No, it's not. Where do you think 75% (actually more) of the world's
population gets its food now? From small farms. Large scale
agribusiness farming is the purview of economically developed countries
which feeds a fraction of the world's population regularly, and which
does provide emergency capacity when food production fails in
ecologically difficult areas due to drought, flooding, fires, etc. In
the latter case, large scale farming does save lives. However, 75% of
the world's population is not all going to suffer such catastrophes at
once.

There are arguments in favor of small farming as well, in terms of
controlling crop disease epidemics, pest control, animal health,
ecological diversity, soil conservation, use of ecologically appropriate
cultivars, etc. Large scale farming is massively energy inefficient and
is viable so long as cheap petroleum is available. If memory serves, in
the U.S. it takes about 16 calories of energy input to provide one
calorie of food on your table. By comparison, hunting and gathering is
of necessity a 1:1 ratio over time (else the hunters and gatherers would
have starved to death).

> > Obesity and heart desese and diabetes struck these people with the
> > advent and adoption of the snow mobile. As the amount of physical work
> > went down drastically without a change in diet bad things began to
> > happen.
> > Similar findings have been show in other societies such as the Masai as
> > well as tribes in the Amazon and South Pacific.


Sedentary lifestyles are unhealthy. That's not exactly news. It is the
same phenomenon as seen in the U.S. of course, which has developed over
75-100 years. The effects are dramatically noticeable among relatively
isolated groups that get rapidly introduced to technology and "modern"
foods.

> > The point is that biologically humans are quite able to eat and
> > flourish when their diet is linked in a postive way with life style.


Well, yes, of course. Eat a nutritionally balanced diet and not too
many calories for your lifestyle. Yup. As is quite clear, though,
humans can survive for long periods on a suboptimal diet due to being
omnivores.

> > If one wants to be sedentary then perhaps the solution is massive
> > caloric deprivation.


I'd say that's the wrong phrasing. It's simply that intake needs to be
balance with expenditure. If I sit at a desk all day long in air
conditioned comfort, I only need 1800 k-calories per day to keep my body
weight constant. If I eat lunch at Burger King, I would be close to
meeting that caloric need in a single meal. When I ride my bike 375
miles/600 km in a weekend, I need a few more k-calories (13,000 or so
just for riding, plus basal metabolism k-calories).

> > Anyway, poor life style choices far outweigh mass farming as a cause of
> > human misery.


That's true to an extent, but there are both individual choices and
social factors to be considered. Social engineering in the U.S. has
predisposed us to eat high calorie, high fat, low fiber diets with
predictable health consequences.

> Except that the poor lifestyle we are supposed to live today is
> correlated with much longer life expectancy. When the study which
> showed that you had to be about 50 lbs overweight before life was
> shorter was published, the establishemnt went nuts.


50 pounds overweight is not unusual in America. I've been there myself,
now I'm only 5 pounds overweight after resuming bicycling and changing
my diet pretty dramatically. The study you cite was not definitive.

> They live on a crisis-per-day syndrome. But yes, you are right that
> we have safer food today than ever before.


We have less acutely dangerous food but not necessarily safer food. The
recent E. coli outbreak shows, however, that modern food is not "safe"
in an acute sense. Dangerous bacterial contamination from poor
practices has been the bane of modern food production. The events are
rare but widespread when they do occur. Listeria contamination in meat,
as well as E. coli in meat and vegetables; also hepatitis in some
vegetable products, have hit the news in the past 10 years. There are
also issues of longer term food safety- contamination with pesticides
and synthetic chemicals, prion diseases, and possibly safety issues with
genetically modified organisms (the latter not having yet been
demonstrated "in the wild" as it were. With any luck it never will be).

Heart disease and diabetes are more prevalent than at any time in human
history. That is in part due to food not being safe, although this is
not food safety as it is normally thought of. In this case it is the
overavailability of poor food choices.

> The textbook we use in Human Societies mentions that 75% of the
> world would die if we all went back to small-scale farming, so that figure
> is established well enough to be a standard exam item.


That "well-established" figure may simply be propaganda serving a
specific policy end. Who paid for the studies, and who wrote/paid
for/sponsored the textbook? Textbooks an excellent tool for creating a
skewing the student's world view in a way that profits somebody. Read
everything with a grain of salt (and perhaps you already do).

Perhaps you should read Michael Pollan if you haven't. _The Omnivore's
Dilemma_ is a good starting point.
 
Matthew Russotto wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>> future due to the junk food plague and the fact that people actually
>> think that sitting at a computer all day is *work*. Work is BTU output
>> actually doing something like our parents did.

>
> Hey, I'm a second generation computer geek. Anyway, if you want to
> get strict about it, BTU output is neither necessary nor sufficient
> for work.


Yeah right,
I am an engineer who does a lot of crunching numbers and my work comes
out of my brain except for maybe lifting a computer or two once in a while.
If you think 'work' does not involve BTU or calories expended then you
are just fooling yourself into an early "Push up the daisies" scenario.
Bill Baka
 
Tim McNamara wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>>> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's population to
>>>> death. That is not a solution except for death.
>>> I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.

>
> No, it's not. Where do you think 75% (actually more) of the world's
> population gets its food now? From small farms. Large scale
> agribusiness farming is the purview of economically developed countries
> which feeds a fraction of the world's population regularly, and which
> does provide emergency capacity when food production fails in
> ecologically difficult areas due to drought, flooding, fires, etc. In
> the latter case, large scale farming does save lives. However, 75% of
> the world's population is not all going to suffer such catastrophes at
> once.


75% of the world's population is surplus anyway. I just read where the
United States is going to top 300 million around October 15. Compared to
the country (this one) I grew up in that is about 150 million too many.
We are paving over everything, quite literally. I went to visit the
houses I grew up in, back in Illinois and all the corn fields I grew up
playing in are now built over with housing or "Condo-fields". If we keep
replacing corn with people we are going to be in deeper **** than we are
now. Rolling the global population to about 1 billion (max) and keeping
it there with some no growth thinking is about the only way the human
race will be here in another 200 years. I think we are setting ourselves
up far a mass plague or starvation that is going to thin out the
population. We just plain doesn't need so many people.
>
> There are arguments in favor of small farming as well, in terms of
> controlling crop disease epidemics, pest control, animal health,
> ecological diversity, soil conservation, use of ecologically appropriate
> cultivars, etc. Large scale farming is massively energy inefficient and
> is viable so long as cheap petroleum is available. If memory serves, in
> the U.S. it takes about 16 calories of energy input to provide one
> calorie of food on your table. By comparison, hunting and gathering is
> of necessity a 1:1 ratio over time (else the hunters and gatherers would
> have starved to death).
>
>>> Obesity and heart desese and diabetes struck these people with the
>>> advent and adoption of the snow mobile. As the amount of physical work
>>> went down drastically without a change in diet bad things began to
>>> happen.
>>> Similar findings have been show in other societies such as the Masai as
>>> well as tribes in the Amazon and South Pacific.

>
> Sedentary lifestyles are unhealthy. That's not exactly news. It is the
> same phenomenon as seen in the U.S. of course, which has developed over
> 75-100 years. The effects are dramatically noticeable among relatively
> isolated groups that get rapidly introduced to technology and "modern"
> foods.


This reminds me of an anecdote that I read once somewhere. You see
really, really fat people, and you see really, really old people but you
never see really fat and old people. I saw Rose Kennedy on television
last night at 104 and she was skinny. You just don't make it much past
70-75 by being a sedentary porker.
>
>>> The point is that biologically humans are quite able to eat and
>>> flourish when their diet is linked in a postive way with life style.


Only until we fish the oceans out of healthy fish and pave over just a
bit too much farmland.

>
> Well, yes, of course. Eat a nutritionally balanced diet and not too
> many calories for your lifestyle. Yup. As is quite clear, though,
> humans can survive for long periods on a suboptimal diet due to being
> omnivores.
>
>>> If one wants to be sedentary then perhaps the solution is massive
>>> caloric deprivation.

>
> I'd say that's the wrong phrasing. It's simply that intake needs to be
> balance with expenditure. If I sit at a desk all day long in air
> conditioned comfort, I only need 1800 k-calories per day to keep my body
> weight constant. If I eat lunch at Burger King, I would be close to
> meeting that caloric need in a single meal. When I ride my bike 375
> miles/600 km in a weekend, I need a few more k-calories (13,000 or so
> just for riding, plus basal metabolism k-calories).


That is an extreme example. Maybe 1/100,000 people put out that much
energy for the weekend. If you sit at a desk all day you should only
need about 1,500 calories a day unless you are over 6 feet tall and have
more mass to support. Maybe 1,200 for the average woman.
I have to envy you that you can take the entire weekend for riding and
not have to worry about wife/kids/house/car or whatever. I am married
with all of the above and it is only rarely that I can sneak out for a
12-14 hour marathon ride/hike on a weekend. There is always something to
be done at home, since it is my home and not just a rented bachelor pad.
>
>>> Anyway, poor life style choices far outweigh mass farming as a cause of
>>> human misery.

>
> That's true to an extent, but there are both individual choices and
> social factors to be considered. Social engineering in the U.S. has
> predisposed us to eat high calorie, high fat, low fiber diets with
> predictable health consequences.


I would add here that poor lifestyle also includes having 4 or more kids
and then wondering what happened to your life because you always have to
be doing something to support the kids. The diets are still of our own
choosing, like whether mom wants to cook or just gives the kids money to
go to McJunk. Sit down restaurants have the same problem since they are
cooking to be listed on the 5 star gourmet listings if they can and
healthy food rarely makes the gourmet list.
>
>> Except that the poor lifestyle we are supposed to live today is
>> correlated with much longer life expectancy. When the study which
>> showed that you had to be about 50 lbs overweight before life was
>> shorter was published, the establishemnt went nuts.

>
> 50 pounds overweight is not unusual in America. I've been there myself,
> now I'm only 5 pounds overweight after resuming bicycling and changing
> my diet pretty dramatically. The study you cite was not definitive.


50 pounds overweight is pretty definitive to me since that is where I am
right now due to too many things other than biking I had to take care of
this year. Also a friend who ambushed me over the weekends and his idea
of lunch was a Chinese all you can eat buffet. Chinese is good, sort of
and I ate about 2 plates of Broccoli and a plate full or steamed fish
and shrimp but still managed to gain weight with that as the only meal
of the day. I think the Wok oil on the stir fry Broccoli got me.
>
>> They live on a crisis-per-day syndrome. But yes, you are right that
>> we have safer food today than ever before.

>
> We have less acutely dangerous food but not necessarily safer food. The
> recent E. coli outbreak shows, however, that modern food is not "safe"
> in an acute sense. Dangerous bacterial contamination from poor
> practices has been the bane of modern food production.


I can attest to that since the only 3 times I have gotten sick in the
last 30 years have been due to food poisoning and non of those cases was
and fun at all. I used to eat off the 'Roach coaches' that frequent the
S.F. Bay Area, but now I avoid them like the plague.

The events are
> rare but widespread when they do occur. Listeria contamination in meat,
> as well as E. coli in meat and vegetables;


Yeah,
Just go to Mexico far enough beyond the border and eat anything with
local vegetables thrown in. I did and got a bad case of "Montezuma'a
Revenge".

also hepatitis in some
> vegetable products, have hit the news in the past 10 years. There are
> also issues of longer term food safety- contamination with pesticides
> and synthetic chemicals, prion diseases, and possibly safety issues with
> genetically modified organisms (the latter not having yet been
> demonstrated "in the wild" as it were. With any luck it never will be).


Genetically modified foods are and have been a fact of life for hundreds
of years through selective breeding and grafting of orchard trees.
Don't fool yourself that just because a scientist did it in a lab it is
any different, cause it ain't what grows in the wild.
>
> Heart disease and diabetes are more prevalent than at any time in human
> history. That is in part due to food not being safe, although this is
> not food safety as it is normally thought of. In this case it is the
> overavailability of poor food choices.


Heart disease is due to people becoming more and more spoiled through
technology, plain and simple, with McJunk food coming in a close second.
>
>> The textbook we use in Human Societies mentions that 75% of the
>> world would die if we all went back to small-scale farming, so that figure
>> is established well enough to be a standard exam item.


And a 75% reduction in global population would be bad (("*how*"))?
6 billion is already way too high. Global destruction has begun, well 40
years ago, and just keeps growing. There will be a breaking point, maybe
at 10 billion, maybe at 15, but it is coming. Population growth cannot
keep going exponentially. City dwellers may have no appreciation of the
outdoors but it is damned nice to be able to be the only person sitting
in a forest under a nice waterfall with no people for miles around.
At one with nature and out of cell phone range.
Bill Baka
>
> That "well-established" figure may simply be propaganda serving a
> specific policy end. Who paid for the studies, and who wrote/paid
> for/sponsored the textbook? Textbooks an excellent tool for creating a
> skewing the student's world view in a way that profits somebody. Read
> everything with a grain of salt (and perhaps you already do).
>
> Perhaps you should read Michael Pollan if you haven't. _The Omnivore's
> Dilemma_ is a good starting point.
 
In article <[email protected]>,
Amy Blankenship <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>"Matthew Russotto" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>>
>> The glycemic index of white bread is 100. The glycemic index of wheat
>> bread is 99. Processing isn't the issue.

>
>That's standard processed wheat bread. Real wheat bread is when you mill
>the wheat berries just before baking. Got any figures on that?


Unless some magic occurs during a delay between the milling of the
flour and the baking of the bread, it makes no difference. Not
surprising, really; the digestible carbohydrates in whole wheat bread are
exactly the same as those in white bread; the only difference is the
removal of indigestible fiber.
 
"Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
>> "gds" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>>
>>> george conklin wrote:
>>>> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>> >
>>>> > "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> > news:[email protected]...
>>>> >>
>>>> >> "Amy Blankenship" <[email protected]> wrote in
>>>> >> message
>>>> >> news:[email protected]...
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> >>> news:[email protected]...
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>> "bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> >>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>> >>>>> Amy Blankenship wrote:
>>>> >>>>>> "Jack May" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> >>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>> >>>>>>> "Kevan Smith" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> >>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>> >>>>>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>>> >>>>>>>> [email protected] (Matthew Russotto) wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>>> Cholesterol is both. It harms you when you eat it, and there
>>>> >>>>>>>> is no
>>>> >>>>>>>> dietary necessity to eat it.
>>>> >>>>>>> Tell that to the hawk that is using my back yard as a
>>>> >>>>>>> supermarket
>>>> >>>>>>> for birds and squirrels.
>>>> >>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>> People have evolved over millions of years to eat meat. We
>>>> >>>>>>> know
>>>> >>>>>>> that gathering activities by women in tribes could not provide
>>>> >>>>>>> enough calories to keep people from starving to death.
>>>> >>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>> ...In the event that they're spending all their time savenging,
>>>> >>>>>> which
>>>> >>>>>> we no longer do. And keep in mind that these people did not eat
>>>> >>>>>> a
>>>> >>>>>> lot of meat, and much of the meat they did eat was in the form
>>>> >>>>>> of
>>>> >>>>>> worms and bugs. Anyone in favor of adding worms and bugs to the
>>>> >>>>>> supermarket shelves because we're evolved to eat them? ;-)
>>>> >>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>> Hunting and scavenging meat was required to provide enough
>>>> >>>>>>> calories.
>>>> >>>>>>> Our millions of years of evolution as meat eaters would tend to
>>>> >>>>>>> make
>>>> >>>>>>> meat eating more than just a simple choice.
>>>> >>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>> We are omnivores, which means we can choose. If you look around
>>>> >>>>>> you,
>>>> >>>>>> there's no shortage of calories in most developed nations.
>>>> >>>>>
>>>> >>>>> Also no shortage of processed food that is now working to shorten
>>>> >>>>> people's lives. We are indeed omnivores but that part of
>>>> >>>>> evolution has
>>>> >>>>> locked us out of being vegetarians in the natural world, since we
>>>> >>>>> can't process grass the same way that cattle do.
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>> That is why we eat animals. They eat grass; we eat the animal
>>>> >>>> which
>>>> >>>> has processed the grass for us. Simple.
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> That is the way it's *supposed* to work. But as you've often
>>>> >>> pointed
>>>> >>> out, grass is not what most meat animals are fed these days. Grain
>>>> >>> is
>>>> >>> among the more wholesome things they get.
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> True Amy. But whan can we do about it? Any ideas?
>>>> >
>>>> > Support small farms that produce this way instead of trying to wipe
>>>> > them
>>>> > out :)
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's population
>>>> to
>>>> death. That is not a solution except for death.
>>>
>>> I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.
>>>
>>> A couple of points about this discussion.
>>>
>>> Frist, food is much safer today than at any time in history. There is
>>> no study that disputes this. Sure there are al osrts of issues with
>>> additives, pesticides, etc. but the negative impacts of these is far
>>> less than the positive efects of refrigeration and rapid
>>> transportatiion to market.
>>>
>>> Second, while I will not be trapped into arguing for fried foods and
>>> other choices that are sub optimum the reality is that many of the
>>> dietary problems in modern society as a much related to (non dietary)
>>> life style as to what is consumed. For example, in a study of Eskimo
>>> and Inuit societies it was found that the traditional diet was
>>> extremely high in fat. It has a been a long time since I read the study
>>> so I'm not sure what the exact number was but the tradtional diet had
>>> over 50% of its calories from fat. Yet there was virtually no obesity
>>> nor heart desease nor diabetes. Why? Because in the tradional
>>> lifetstyle these folks perfomred lots of hard, physical, labor in very
>>> low temps and without large amounts of fat in the diet they simply
>>> could not do so.
>>> Obesity and heart desese and diabetes struck these people with the
>>> advent and adoption of the snow mobile. As the amount of physical work
>>> went down drastically without a change in diet bad things began to
>>> happen.
>>> Similar findings have been show in other societies such as the Masai as
>>> well as tribes in the Amazon and South Pacific.
>>>
>>> The point is that biologically humans are quite able to eat and
>>> flourish when their diet is linked in a postive way with life style. If
>>> one wants to be sedentary then perhaps the solution is massive caloric
>>> deprivation.
>>>
>>> Anyway, poor life style choices far outweigh mass farming as a cause of
>>> human misery.
>>>

>>
>> Except that the poor lifestyle we are supposed to live today is
>> correlated with much longer life expectancy. When the study which showed
>> that you had to be about 50 lbs overweight before life was shorter was
>> published, the establishemnt went nuts. They live on a crisis-per-day
>> syndrome. But yes, you are right that we have safer food today than ever
>> before. The textbook we use in Human Societies mentions that 75% of the
>> world would die if we all went back to small-scale farming, so that
>> figure is established well enough to be a standard exam item.

>
> Cool. Make students' grades contingent on swallowing misinformation whole
> without questioning it. No wonder you're so invested in believing and
> making others believe it's true. Because if it's not, you've miseducated
> a *lot* of students, and have written records of that fact.
>


It is a refereed textbook in the 10th edition. Sorry about that. Other
articles think that figure may be too low.
 
"bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Tim McNamara wrote:
>> In article <[email protected]>,
>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>>> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's population
>>>>> to
>>>>> death. That is not a solution except for death.
>>>> I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.

>>
>> No, it's not. Where do you think 75% (actually more) of the world's
>> population gets its food now? From small farms. Large scale
>> agribusiness farming is the purview of economically developed countries
>> which feeds a fraction of the world's population regularly, and which
>> does provide emergency capacity when food production fails in
>> ecologically difficult areas due to drought, flooding, fires, etc. In
>> the latter case, large scale farming does save lives. However, 75% of
>> the world's population is not all going to suffer such catastrophes at
>> once.

>
> 75% of the world's population is surplus anyway


So volunteer to eliminate the problem with your personal action. Stop
complaining.
 
In article <[email protected]>,
bill <[email protected]> wrote:

> Tim McNamara wrote:
> > In article <[email protected]>,
> > "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >>>> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's
> >>>> population to death. That is not a solution except for death.
> >>> I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.

> >
> > No, it's not. Where do you think 75% (actually more) of the
> > world's population gets its food now? From small farms. Large
> > scale agribusiness farming is the purview of economically developed
> > countries which feeds a fraction of the world's population
> > regularly, and which does provide emergency capacity when food
> > production fails in ecologically difficult areas due to drought,
> > flooding, fires, etc. In the latter case, large scale farming does
> > save lives. However, 75% of the world's population is not all
> > going to suffer such catastrophes at once.

>
> 75% of the world's population is surplus anyway. I just read where
> the United States is going to top 300 million around October 15.
> Compared to the country (this one) I grew up in that is about 150
> million too many. We are paving over everything, quite literally. I
> went to visit the houses I grew up in, back in Illinois and all the
> corn fields I grew up playing in are now built over with housing or
> "Condo-fields". If we keep replacing corn with people we are going to
> be in deeper **** than we are now. Rolling the global population to
> about 1 billion (max) and keeping it there with some no growth
> thinking is about the only way the human race will be here in another
> 200 years. I think we are setting ourselves up far a mass plague or
> starvation that is going to thin out the population. We just plain
> doesn't need so many people.


I suspect that there are points of agreement that we could find, but
there are also points of disagreement. For example, your claim that 75%
of the population is "surplus." Of course, that gives you a 4:1 chance
of being one of the surplus ones. ;-) I agree that there is
overpopulation not only in America but around the world as well. I
cannot bring myself to call anyone "surplus," however. They have every
bit as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as I
have.

In terms of whether we need so many people, the answer is "yes." A free
market capitalist system is dependent upon a continually enlarging
market (e.g. more customers) for long term sustainability. Of course,
ecologically the population is not infinitely expandable, which is
something I think you are getting at in your post.

> > Sedentary lifestyles are unhealthy. That's not exactly news. It
> > is the same phenomenon as seen in the U.S. of course, which has
> > developed over 75-100 years. The effects are dramatically
> > noticeable among relatively isolated groups that get rapidly
> > introduced to technology and "modern" foods.

>
> This reminds me of an anecdote that I read once somewhere. You see
> really, really fat people, and you see really, really old people but
> you never see really fat and old people. I saw Rose Kennedy on
> television last night at 104 and she was skinny. You just don't make
> it much past 70-75 by being a sedentary porker.


I work with the elderly. I go to two nursing homes a day, five days a
week, and have done so for 16 years. The current elderly are pretty
much pioneers- no generation has lived as long on average as they are
living. Few of the centenarians I have met are particularly happy about
it. They have often outlived their siblings, friends and most of their
children. Their physical abilities are often limited, and of course
nursing home life presents a number of problems (as well as a number of
opportunities). I do see some elderly folks (>90 and even 100 years
old) who are overweight, but on average I would say that the very old
have tended to not be overweight. In terms of aging, into and past the
8th decade there is a tendency to lose significant muscle mass and
subcutaneous fat, which is part of why the very old tend to be skinny.
If you look at their family photos, they tended to be of average build
in middle age.

On the other hand, I haven't seen all that many ultra skinny people live
long lives. Being underweight doesn't seem to be of benefit either.

Overweight is like any other risk factor. Some people win the lottery
and don't have problems, others get the whammy. I know people who have
smoked for 80 years and are hale and hearty. I know people who have
smoked for 10 years and have had lung cancer. We can give odds for
populations but not for individuals. At least, not yet. As the
relationships between the environment and one's genetics becomes better
known, we may eventually be able to identify individual risks.

> >>> The point is that biologically humans are quite able to eat and
> >>> flourish when their diet is linked in a postive way with life
> >>> style.

>
> Only until we fish the oceans out of healthy fish and pave over just
> a bit too much farmland.


The former is fairly close to having happened already. Fish stocks have
declined dramatically, and commonly eaten fish now were considered "weed
fish" just 10 to 20 years ago.

My grandfather was a farmer. The family farm in Michigan has been in
the family since 1878. My grandfather used to get really irked by good
farmland being turned into suburbs. I've inherited some of that
attitude. I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, where suburban sprawl is
quite remarkable. Where New York City went vertical, Chicago went
horizontal. I live in St. Paul MN now, where suburban sprawl continues
apace. An oversight body, the Metropolitan Council, was created to try
to manage this problem but is of course a little more than a political
football.

> >>> If one wants to be sedentary then perhaps the solution is massive
> >>> caloric deprivation.

> >
> > I'd say that's the wrong phrasing. It's simply that intake needs
> > to be balance with expenditure. If I sit at a desk all day long in
> > air conditioned comfort, I only need 1800 k-calories per day to
> > keep my body weight constant. If I eat lunch at Burger King, I
> > would be close to meeting that caloric need in a single meal. When
> > I ride my bike 375 miles/600 km in a weekend, I need a few more
> > k-calories (13,000 or so just for riding, plus basal metabolism
> > k-calories).

>
> That is an extreme example. Maybe 1/100,000 people put out that much
> energy for the weekend. If you sit at a desk all day you should only
> need about 1,500 calories a day unless you are over 6 feet tall and
> have more mass to support. Maybe 1,200 for the average woman. I have
> to envy you that you can take the entire weekend for riding and not
> have to worry about wife/kids/house/car or whatever. I am married
> with all of the above and it is only rarely that I can sneak out for
> a 12-14 hour marathon ride/hike on a weekend. There is always
> something to be done at home, since it is my home and not just a
> rented bachelor pad.


Oh, yes, my example was quite extreme. I only do it once a year as part
of the local brevet series (200, 300, 400 and 600 km rides, see
www.rusa.org). I was hoping to illustrate by exaggeration. I am 6'4"
tall, also, so I tend to think in slightly larger numbers regarding
food. However, during times when I am not getting much exercise- and my
work, while not done at a desk, is still within what I would call
"sedentary"- I have to be very careful about what I eat to prevent
weight gain. Calorie dense foods must be avoided.

> >>> Anyway, poor life style choices far outweigh mass farming as a
> >>> cause of human misery.

> >
> > That's true to an extent, but there are both individual choices and
> > social factors to be considered. Social engineering in the U.S.
> > has predisposed us to eat high calorie, high fat, low fiber diets
> > with predictable health consequences.

>
> I would add here that poor lifestyle also includes having 4 or more
> kids and then wondering what happened to your life because you always
> have to be doing something to support the kids. The diets are still
> of our own choosing, like whether mom wants to cook or just gives the
> kids money to go to McJunk. Sit down restaurants have the same
> problem since they are cooking to be listed on the 5 star gourmet
> listings if they can and healthy food rarely makes the gourmet list.


And restaurants tend to serve a *lot* of food on the plate- about 50%
more than is reasonable.

> >> Except that the poor lifestyle we are supposed to live today is
> >> correlated with much longer life expectancy. When the study which
> >> showed that you had to be about 50 lbs overweight before life was
> >> shorter was published, the establishemnt went nuts.

> >
> > 50 pounds overweight is not unusual in America. I've been there
> > myself, now I'm only 5 pounds overweight after resuming bicycling
> > and changing my diet pretty dramatically. The study you cite was
> > not definitive.

>
> 50 pounds overweight is pretty definitive to me since that is where I
> am right now due to too many things other than biking I had to take
> care of this year. Also a friend who ambushed me over the weekends
> and his idea of lunch was a Chinese all you can eat buffet. Chinese
> is good, sort of and I ate about 2 plates of Broccoli and a plate
> full or steamed fish and shrimp but still managed to gain weight with
> that as the only meal of the day. I think the Wok oil on the stir fry
> Broccoli got me.


The amount of oil used to stir fry one dish is dramatic- not
infrequently nearly a cup of oil. When I stir fry at home it's a
tablespoon of oil in the wok!

<snip>

> > vegetable products, have hit the news in the past 10 years. There
> > are also issues of longer term food safety- contamination with
> > pesticides and synthetic chemicals, prion diseases, and possibly
> > safety issues with genetically modified organisms (the latter not
> > having yet been demonstrated "in the wild" as it were. With any
> > luck it never will be).

>
> Genetically modified foods are and have been a fact of life for
> hundreds of years through selective breeding and grafting of orchard
> trees. Don't fool yourself that just because a scientist did it in a
> lab it is any different, cause it ain't what grows in the wild.


There is a difference between selective breeding and hybridization, and
sticking fish genes in a tomato.

> > Heart disease and diabetes are more prevalent than at any time in
> > human history. That is in part due to food not being safe,
> > although this is not food safety as it is normally thought of. In
> > this case it is the overavailability of poor food choices.

>
> Heart disease is due to people becoming more and more spoiled through
> technology, plain and simple, with McJunk food coming in a close
> second.


Well, there is some evidence that strenuous exercise can overcome the
effects of diet. The Inuit example cited earlier in the thread being
one such situation. When Will Steger and crew went to the North Pole a
decade or so back, they were studied medically. Their diet was hugely
laden in saturated fats- the equivalent of eating a stick of butter per
person a day, IIRC. But their blood lipids profiles didn't change due
to the exercise and extremity of the environment. In the temperate
zones living the sedentary lifestyle that most Americans live, that type
if diet is going to be disastrous for most people.