Raw Food Diet

Yes, but you said it was "radioactive". I think that is an error on your part. That is what I am commenting on.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Mercury is not radioactive in its pure form, but it can become radioactive. What I was pointing to was that it was cumulative, just like radioactive materials.Everytime you get a sunburn, you expose yourself to radiation. But one or two times won't cause any lasting damage. But if you expose yourself more and more, you run the risk of skin cancer.Most people are also unaware that smoking causes radiation, via radon. An unlit cigarrette causes no radiation. As soon as you cause a chemical reaction, such as burning, you inhale those fumes, which are both toxic and radioactive, in to your lungs. So aside from the hundreds of carcinogens, you can add radiation to the mix too.

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"It is better to shun the bait, than struggle in the snare." -Ravi Zacharias

You're conflating two separate phenomena, here.Some toxins chemically bind so strongly to various tissues in the body that the body has no active means of eliminating them. We call these toxins "bioaccumulative", because they not only build up throughout your body, they build up going up the food chain.Dioxin is the famous example. It's an organochloride that can bind with fats and is highly toxic. Let's say that there's dioxin in the water. Algae individually absorb 1x amount of the dioxin over their short lifetime.Fish eat the algae over their moderate lifetime, and the dioxin binds to their fats, nearly permanently. Over their lifetime they absorb 1 million "algae amounts" of dioxin.An eagle eats the fish from that water. The eagle eats many fish over its lifetime, and the dioxin from the fish binds to its fats. After a month of eating the fish, the eagle has 60 "fish amounts" of dioxin, or possibly 60 million "algae amounts" of dioxin. It's killed by you.You eat the eagle. In one sitting you consume more than 60 million algae amounts of dioxin, because you're eating the dioxin that was contained in one eagle that ate 60 fish that each ate 1 million algae that all ate the dioxin. And now it's in your body, and the only way to get it out is to flood your digestive tract with Olestra (the diarrhea-causing synthetic fat that used to be in no-cal potato chips) and try to pull some of the dioxin out by osmosis.People die that way. Viktor Yushchenko, the president of Ukraine, was the victim of an assassination attempt several years ago by dioxin poisoning, and he still has a large amount of it in his system.Some heavy metals are like that, too. Mercury is one because, similarly, it binds to fats and the body can't get rid of it. Mercury is not typically a health danger because of its radioactivity, because its radioactive isotopes are rare and typically short-lived. It's a health danger because of its chemical activity in the body. (Interestingly, dimethyl-mercury is one of the most potent nerve toxins known to exist, and the molecule is so small that it can easily pass through most protective gear. A famous chemist died from acute poisoning when a single drop of the stuff passed right through her rubber glove and into her body.)Radioactivity is different. A fair number of radioactive isotopes pass right through the body. But the damage that radioactivity can do to your body can accumulate in the DNA of your cells, even if the source of the radioactivity is removed. This is also true of the damage done by the UV rays of the sun to your skin.Unlike the other toxins I mentioned, radioactivity doesn't bioaccumulate on its own. A fish exposed to radiation that is then eaten by a bird that then you eat doesn't expose you to radiation. And your body does have the ability, to some degree, to repair the damage done by radiation over time. Chemical reactions can't cause radioactivity. The radon and polonium isotopes in cigarettes are present whether they are lit or unlit, and their radiation can be detected. These isotopes are present in all plant products grown with phosphate fertilizers. They're generally harmless in foodstuffs, because as alpha radiation sources, the low-energy alpha particles they emit are blocked by the epithelial cells in your skin and alimentary canal.Inhaled, however, radon gas and vaporized polonium isotopes can do damage to the lungs, which explains some of the carcinogenic effect of smoking.

How am I conflating two separate phenomena? All I said was that, like radioactivity, mercury accumulates in the body. You then went in to an inordinate amount of reasoning that basically ended in you agreeing. Okay, then I should have been more explicit. Being in the same room with an unlit cigarette won't transfer all those nasties in the same way that ingesting it, or inhaling the smoke will. Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : No reason given.

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"It is better to shun the bait, than struggle in the snare." -Ravi Zacharias

Did you read what I wrote? Radioactivity doesn't accumulate in the body. The damage from it to one's genetics can accumulate, but the body can repair the damage over time, as well.Radioactivity isn't anything like heavy metal accumulation in the body. They have different sources, cause different damage, and one bioaccumulates while the other does not. How is one "like" the other?

At the risk of dragging this topic far off topic, this will be my last transmission in this vein.Isotopes can accumulate in the body. Some are metabolized, but some bind in organs or in bone, and can cause all sorts of ailments. But really, aren't we saying the same thing? Isn't that precisely why the doctor places a lead blanket on the patient who is getting x-rays so all those gamma rays aren't permeating your body, except in the targeted area?But if you'd like to prove me wrong, take a bath using water from the municipal water plant at Chernobyl.

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"It is better to shun the bait, than struggle in the snare." -Ravi Zacharias

Isotopes are already in the body. But, yes, some pernicious isotopes are the isotopes of heavy metals, and they can bioaccumulate in the way that I've described. In addition to their chemical toxicity, they would have radioactive effects, as well.It would be like a one-two punch. Toxic in two different ways. X-rays are x-rays, they're not gamma rays. But they can have the same ionizing effect that gamma rays can. Of course, light can do that too. Prove you wrong about what? I'm not saying that dioxin and radiation are safe; I'm just saying that you're talking about two different modes of toxicity as though they're the same thing, and they're not.

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Mercury is cumulative, like most radioactive materials.

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Mercury is toxic, but it ain't radioactive.

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Certainly things like exercise and lack of stress are also big factors in being free of disease. However, it often seems to be the case that when indigenous people switch over to a Westernised diet, they start developing the same diseases that are plaguing the Western world.

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Well, they also tend to switch to the western diet because they live a western lifestyle, and that would include all of the stress, smoking, lack of physical exertion, etc. Kind of hard to separate them out.I'd be surprised if there were examples of native people who had a western diet but lived the rest of their lives like their great, great, great grandparents did.Again, I am quite sure that the paleo diet is a good diet.

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It's so easy to dismiss these things because you're not satisfied that they've been proved.

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Who says I'm dismissing anything?

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(I have to say, BTW, it sounds like the way you eat is already a lot healthier than the way most people in the US eat. I'm assuming that's where you're from?)

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Yes, I'm living in the US, and yes, I do believe that my diet is a lot better than the average American's. I rarely go to the big local "MegaMart" but when I do, I just marvel at the enormous quantities of utter crap that people fill their shopping carts (and presumably themselves) with.There I am with my truckload of vegetables, meat and fish, with maybe a bottle of oil or vinegar, some cat food, some fruit, some cheese, and probably some granola, and nearly everyone else has the liters of Coke, hotdogs, Doritos, lousy pastry, cake mixes, instant side dishes, tons of cheap, nasty ice cream, and pounds and pounds of hamburger.Not that I don't sometimes eat all of those things (not the cheap icecream or pastry, ever), but only every once in a while, and usually only a little bit. I don't feel good if I indulge too often, or with too much.

I don't think such a diet would actually make someone live longer, it would just seem like it.

Technically it can be, it has a few known radioactive isotopes, but they're all pretty unstable so they're all but unknown in "the wild." They have to be manufactured by nuclear chemists.(I got this information from the Wiki article about mercury, which lists its isotopes and their half-lives, if any. All but one of them have half-lives under a few days.)

Sounds great. Last time I was in the US, I was looking at the breads in the local supermarket (my husband has it, not me). Every single one contained high-fructose corn syrup or a similar sugar. I picked up a packet of tortillas, and the list of ingredients read like a lab experiment. No wonder people are getting ill, if something as simple as that has been turned into a non-food.It isn't as bad here in the UK, but it's bad enough.Much of the "ice cream" sold here has never seen any milk in its life. Even in the days when I ate ice cream, I avoided that stuff, which probably constitutes about 80% of the ice cream sold here, if you look in the shops. I remember one time my husband and I bought soft-serve ice cream cones from a van. They were oddly lightweight and yellow-coloured. I accidentally dropped mine on the ground and it did not melt. How scary is that?Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

Happily, I live in a part of the country that has lots of farms and where people are really into outdoor activities, fitness, and eating all-natural and locally-produced food. So, even though there are lots of crappy choices to be had at the supermarket, there are also lots of wonderful foods in all categories.

And they probably have twice as many meals there as you, at about half the price of everything that's in your cart.That's part of the problem. I mean, I live here in Nebraska, one of the biggest beef states in the country, and it still costs an arm and a leg to buy anything but 90/10 ground beef. Fish? Forget it. It's either freezer-burned to death or $25 a pound. Vegetables? Potatoes and onions are about all I can keep fresh for any period of time, and it's simply too expensive to rush out to the store every few days for one or another vegetable. And canned is generally so much cheaper.Fruit? Again, it's either super-expensive or the quality just isn't worth it. The strawberries I buy usually have mold on them the day after I bring them home from the store.In regards to soda and stuff, I guess we could drink less here, or not at all, but the water from the faucet is somewhat vile (as is common in Midwestern states) and I've never found water to be all that refreshing. Juice and stuff isn't any better for you or cheaper, and I can hardly drink beer all day. Bottled water is just retarded.I'm just saying that, sure, Americans could eat better food, but they're not just making that decision because of a corn-syrup addiction, there's real economic trade-offs to eating "better" foods. It means going to the store more often for foods that simply can't be kept, it means generally getting less meal for your money, and a lot of the time that's not supportable on most people's paycheck.On the other hand, I love reading you talk about food, as always.

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And canned is generally so much cheaper.

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If you can't do fresh, frozen is much better than canned, BTW. In some cases, frozen is actually better than fresh, nutritionally, because it was frozen within hours of picking, while fresh vegetables are often trucked around and stored for days before it gets to your market.

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I'm just saying that, sure, Americans could eat better food, but they're not just making that decision because of a corn-syrup addiction, there's real economic trade-offs to eating "better" foods. It means going to the store more often for foods that simply can't be kept, it means generally getting less meal for your money, and a lot of the time that's not supportable on most people's paycheck.

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Well, my response to the idea that people can't afford to buy good quality food is to call bullshit.Dried beans and peas are incredibly cheap and also incredibly nutritious. So is brown rice and other whole grains. Carrots, parsnips, beets, sweet potatoes, cabbage, and cauliflower all keep a long time and are all very nutritious. Most kinds of green leafy vegetables like collard greens, kale, and mustard greens are the cheapest kinds of fresh things in a typical market, and they are also very nutritious.Processed side dishes in a box, hot dogs, Coke, and pre-made pastry are all very expensive compared to everything I listed above.

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Fruit? Again, it's either super-expensive or the quality just isn't worth it. The strawberries I buy usually have mold on them the day after I bring them home from the store.

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I found this link to the Lincoln, NE food Co-Op. The prices of their monthly specials look pretty cheap to me, and they enphasize locally-produced food, which should help a lot with your quick spoilage problem.Lastly, people afford what they want to afford. How many of those same people who can't "afford" quality food have cable TV, a cellular phone, and fancy rims on their car? How many of them spend thousand and thousands of dollars a year on alcohol and cigarettes? Or designer clothing and shoes?

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On the other hand, I love reading you talk about food, as always.

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Thanks, Froggy.