Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
6 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,808 Year: 3,065/9,624 Month: 910/1,588 Week: 93/223 Day: 4/17 Hour: 0/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Raw Food Diet
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 2 of 93 (424245)
09-26-2007 11:04 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Max Power
09-26-2007 10:33 AM


Humans have been evolutionarily selected for to eat these types of food.
We can prove this wrong simply by observing the changes in our teeth. We're abundantly evolved, at this point, to cook and prepare our food.
This time period is much longer than the time we have been eating cooked and other "dead" foods.
This is irrelevant.
Raw organic foods contain more nutrients and caloric density and therefore will give you more energy.
This is false. There's no difference in nutrients or calories between organic and "regular" produce. Indeed, organic produce is often deficient in nutrients as a result of the poorer, non-fertilized soil its grown in and the plant stress that comes as a result of greater pest activity on non-pesticide treated crops.
He explains that food enzymes which help you digest are killed when you heat food and therefore it costs you more energy to digest cooked food.
This doesn't make any sense. For the first part, it's unlikely that an organism would help you eat it by producing enzymes that would break itself down for you. For the second part - enzymes are catalysts, which means that when they help promote chemical reactions (like the ones that break down food) they are not themselves consumed in the process. You have your own enzymes for digestion.
And even if the claim was true - isn't that a good thing? If you're using more energy to digest your food, isn't that reducing the net calorie gain you get from the same amount of food? And wouldn't that help you fight obesity?
He cites experiments about mice with significant caloric depletion in their diet that live longer.
Life expectancies for actual human beings that live under starvation and malnutrition conditions are less than one-half as long as humans who live in Western countries. Across the world, the largest causes of death are almost all vitamin deficiencies.
Starvation is not healthy for you, regardless of what is true in mice. We are not mice.
He distrusts the FDA (worried that the food and drug responsibilities are controlled by the same people) and big businesses in the food market.
It's actually the USDA that monitors produce and meat production, and they're the ones that certify farms as "organic" or not. So unless he grows it all himself, he can't escape government involvement in the food he eats.
He also believes pretty firmly in the conscious living life style. He hates the big factory farms and all of the extra energy used in transporting goods etc.
Well, I can't argue with that. We do use a lot of fossil fuels getting those Guatemalan strawberries up here in January. On the other hand, not all of us can afford to eat local.
Ultimately, what do you think about the raw organic food diet?
There's actually a large number of nutrients in some foods, like corn, that can't be accessed except by cooking. And it's unsafe to eat raw meats or shellfish.
"Organic" has never been shown to have any positive benefits that hold up to scrutiny. The popular conception that "organic" means "no pesticides" is fundamentally false. There are a number of spray pesticides that organic farmers are allowed to use (like Bt toxins or actual Bt microbes), and many organic farmers are forced to use crop cultivars that express natural pesticides to deal with insects. (Indeed most synthetic pesticides are based on compounds that were originally discovered in plants.)
Natural pesticides are often no less toxic for being "natural." Eating organic produce can result in the ingestion of more pesticides, simply because the plant is expressing these toxins throughout its structure and fruit, whereas the spray pesticides of conventional agriculture, which are applied under rigorous safety protocols only after their mammalian toxicity has been established, can simply be washed from the surface of the produce.
I'd rather wash it off than eat it. My wife is pursuing her PhD in agricultural entomology, and the universal consensus among a wide variety of professionals - from plant breeders to Integrated Pest Management experts to limnologists and water experts - is that organic foods are strictly a high-priced placebo.
Can it be done successfully, do you think it will help with depression (or hurt for that matter)?
Nothing in the diet will help, as far as I know. If managing his diet gives him something to think about besides himself and his depression, that could help. It could be a kind of cognitive behavioral therapy. He needs, though, to be under the care of a mental health professional if he's really grappling with depression. There's no excuse for going it alone, and it's dangerous.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Max Power, posted 09-26-2007 10:33 AM Max Power has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 7 by Max Power, posted 09-26-2007 1:25 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 8 of 93 (424328)
09-26-2007 3:15 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Max Power
09-26-2007 1:25 PM


But it could have first produced the enzyme, then we evolved a way to utilize that enzyme to break it down.
Food isn't that hard to break down, honestly. Your teeth do a great job of mechanical destruction and homogenization on their own. You don't need any "special" enzymes to do the job, the ones you have are fairly universal.
Chemically, the structure of living things depends on, in general, three kinds of polymers:
1) Proteins, which are broken down by the low pH of gastric juices and pepsins, which work on all proteins because they target the peptide bonds that connect amino acids.
2) Sugars. Starches are polymers of sugars, these are rendered into their base sugars by amylases (which can be found in your saliva.) Some sugars, like chitin and cellulose, are indigestible by humans.
3) Lipids, which form cell membranes in addition to being energy storage reserves in most organisms. These are digested by lipases produced by the pancreas.
Presuming a healthy adult, there's no need for special enzymes from your food to digest your food. Indeed, cooking food often unlocks the nutrients by breaking down some of the structures your body doesn't have the capacity to digest on its own or doesn't digest well, like collagen or cellulose.
It's not cooking food that makes you expend more energy in its consumption, increasing the amount of chewing you have to do.
We are talking about maximizing as much energy as possible per food unit.
Then he should be eating saturated fats from animals. Pound for pound they're a much more energetic food source than anything vegetable, which is why people have obesity problems in the first place; they're maximizing the energy of their food units.
He's actually going for getting a ton of vitamins (which he believes to be a major asset of organic foods) and minimizing calories.
He's wrong. There's no more, and often less, vitamins in organic produce than in conventional produce.
Do you notice how the purveyors of organic foods will tell you that their produce is "healthier", but they never say specifically how?
It's because there's no health benefit that they can legally claim. They're enjoined from making claims of specific health benefits by the government, because any specific claim that isn't supported by the science is false advertising. And the science supports no claim of greater nutrition, and often supports a conclusion of less nutrition because of greater crop stresses during the growing season.
His distrust for the government is more important because he believes that the levels of pesticides and other chemicals put in our foods are set too high because there are incentives be it to keep people sick or just because lobbyists have pushed them too high.
Ask him how his tinfoil hat fits these days. This is just a ridiculous conspiracy theory.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by Max Power, posted 09-26-2007 1:25 PM Max Power has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 10 by Kitsune, posted 09-26-2007 5:12 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 17 of 93 (424384)
09-26-2007 7:20 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Kitsune
09-26-2007 5:12 PM


Can I ask what your source is for this info?
It's pretty common knowledge among the agroscience community, so I've most recently heard it directly out of the mouths of experts who have worked in fields like agronomy, plant breeding, and IPM (integrated pest management) for decades.
A quick google search shows me the following papers:
Organic agriculture: does it enhance or reduce the nutritional value of plant foods?
Organic food: nutritious food or food for thought? A review of the evidence
Nutritional quality of organic food: shades of grey or shades of green?
This isn't peer-reviewed, but it's the article I had in mind most recently when I was reading about the subject:
Organic food exposed
In particular:
quote:
However, some of the compounds present at higher levels in organic food are actually natural pesticides. According to Bruce Ames, a variety of insect-resistant celery had to be taken off the U.S. market in the late 1980s because its psoralen levels were eight times higher than normal and caused a rash in people who handled it. There was a similar story with a naturally pest-resistant potato variety that ended up being acutely toxic because of its high levels of solanine and chaconine - natural toxins that block nerve transmission and cause cancer in rats. Organic farmers who rely on 'naturally resistant' plant varieties may also be producing plants with high levels of 'natural' toxins. And in this case, 'natural' is not likely to mean better. Think of Abraham Lincoln's poor mother, who died after drinking the milk of a free-range cow that had grazed on a snakeroot plant.
Regardless of how it is grown, the nutritional content of fruit and vegetables is more likely to be affected by freshness or varietal differences. One study reported by Magkos tried to narrow things down by growing the same variety of plums in adjacent fields, with one using organic and the other conventional methods: the conventionally grown plums contained 38 per cent more of the potentially beneficial polyphenol compounds than the organically grown ones did.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Kitsune, posted 09-26-2007 5:12 PM Kitsune has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 21 by Dr Jack, posted 09-27-2007 5:31 AM crashfrog has not replied
 Message 22 by Kitsune, posted 09-27-2007 6:52 AM crashfrog has not replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 48 of 93 (424585)
09-27-2007 2:36 PM
Reply to: Message 47 by Hyroglyphx
09-27-2007 1:41 PM


Bioaccumulation and Radioactivity
What I was pointing to was that it was cumulative, just like radioactive materials.
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.
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.
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 47 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-27-2007 1:41 PM Hyroglyphx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 49 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-27-2007 3:49 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 50 of 93 (424611)
09-27-2007 5:22 PM
Reply to: Message 49 by Hyroglyphx
09-27-2007 3:49 PM


Re: Bioaccumulation and Radioactivity
All I said was that, like radioactivity, mercury accumulates in the body.
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?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 49 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-27-2007 3:49 PM Hyroglyphx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 51 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-27-2007 6:43 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 52 of 93 (424627)
09-27-2007 6:50 PM
Reply to: Message 51 by Hyroglyphx
09-27-2007 6:43 PM


Re: Bioaccumulation and Radioactivity
Isotopes can accumulate in the body.
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.
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?
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.
But if you'd like to prove me wrong, take a bath using water from the municipal water plant at Chernobyl.
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 51 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-27-2007 6:43 PM Hyroglyphx has not replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 56 of 93 (424668)
09-28-2007 2:31 AM
Reply to: Message 53 by nator
09-27-2007 9:26 PM


Re: Diet
Mercury is toxic, but it ain't radioactive.
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.)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 53 by nator, posted 09-27-2007 9:26 PM nator has not replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 59 of 93 (424765)
09-28-2007 1:22 PM
Reply to: Message 54 by nator
09-27-2007 9:48 PM


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.
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 54 by nator, posted 09-27-2007 9:48 PM nator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 60 by nator, posted 09-28-2007 9:53 PM crashfrog has replied
 Message 69 by Chiroptera, posted 09-30-2007 1:25 PM crashfrog has not replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 61 of 93 (424849)
09-28-2007 11:56 PM
Reply to: Message 60 by nator
09-28-2007 9:53 PM


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.
It depends on application and vegetable, in my opinion. For instance I've found it impossible to make stir-fry with frozen vegetables, but canned bamboo and water chestnuts work just fine. On the other hand steamed brussel sprouts seem to work just fine from the freezer.
My aunt swears that canned tomatoes are far better for salsa because of the higher acid content and lower sweetness. She does make a tasty salsa so I find myself in agreement.
Well, my response to the idea that people can't afford to buy good quality food is to call bullshit.
You can if you like, I guess, but there's a number of studies out there that make a conclusive link between poverty and poor diet, particularly as it relates to cost per energy density, and one study found that the healthy diet comprised nearly half of the sample population's food budget, compared to less than a third for the "least healthy" diet (based on WHO nutritional guidelines.)
So there's abundant evidence that obesity is linked with poverty, and that it's the result of individuals seeking to reduce food expenditures by maximizing the energy density of their foods.
Dried beans and peas are incredibly cheap and also incredibly nutritious. So is brown rice and other whole grains.
The other issue in relationship to poverty is time. The poor are generally working very long hours, and the long preparation times of the foodstuffs you mention - dried beans and lentils have to be soaked for hours before cooking - can be prohibitive.
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.
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. Although it's difficult to justify driving all the way across town, with gas 3.50 a gallon here, just to shop at a grocery store. But, I'll see if they can't meet some of my needs.
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?
Funny, I think I've heard Republicans ask the same thing about the poor. These people aren't minimizing the cost-per-unit-energy of their food in order to afford rims; they're doing it to afford the rent.
And I must just be driving past all the third-shift data entry ladies in Manolo Blahnks too fast to notice, I guess.
Sorry, a little fun at your expense. But seriously, you're coming off a little tone-deaf, here. Kind of like the rich dog guy in Lucky Ducky:

This message is a reply to:
 Message 60 by nator, posted 09-28-2007 9:53 PM nator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 62 by nator, posted 09-29-2007 7:59 AM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 63 of 93 (424946)
09-29-2007 12:16 PM
Reply to: Message 62 by nator
09-29-2007 7:59 AM


But poor people do smoke at higher rates than people who are in a higher economic category.
Sure. A lot of the time, substance use (and abuse) is a coping strategy for stress and sleep deprivation. I'm all for keeping in mind the dangers of smoking, but a lot of people don't do it because they like it, they do it because they're self-medicating with nicotine.
Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 62 by nator, posted 09-29-2007 7:59 AM nator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 64 by nator, posted 09-30-2007 7:40 AM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 67 of 93 (425108)
09-30-2007 1:10 PM
Reply to: Message 64 by nator
09-30-2007 7:40 AM


Finally, I wonder how it is that we got on the subject of poor people?
To tell you the truth I'm not sure, since according to the research, minimizing cost per unit energy is a shopping strategy employed at nearly every economic level short of "very affluent."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 64 by nator, posted 09-30-2007 7:40 AM nator has not replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 68 of 93 (425109)
09-30-2007 1:17 PM
Reply to: Message 66 by nator
09-30-2007 12:35 PM


Ice cream, Doritos, soda, packaged side dishes, boxed pastry, and booze, etc. are ALL luxury items. But, I see them (in lieu of better choices) in lots of people's carts, lower income and otherwise.
And to return to my point, the reason you see so many carts loaded with those foodstuffs - which you implied you found incomprehensible - is because those foods minimize cost per unit energy.
Even if people are doing it to have rims and cigarettes, that's the shopping strategy that they're pursuing. It's an effective and common strategy. So it's not incomprehensible at all. Those people are going home with more food at less cost than you were. Apparently they think the money is better spend on something else. Admittedly, it's hard to argue; even a pair of rims lasts a lot longer, and provides more enjoyment (to a car guy, at least) over time than one good meal.
The foodie lifestyle is all very well and good until you realize how much of your paycheck is heading right into your mouth. It's the price you pay, literally. Some people decide that it's not worth it, or don't have the culinary aptitude to take advantage of better foods.
It's not the choice you would make, and I'm more inclined to lean in your direction, but I can see the utility of their strategy, too. I'm still surprised that it's incomprehensible to you. I'd eat barbecue from the plastic bowl for three months straight if it meant I could save up enough scratch for a new motherboard.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 66 by nator, posted 09-30-2007 12:35 PM nator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 70 by nator, posted 09-30-2007 5:00 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 74 of 93 (425142)
09-30-2007 5:59 PM
Reply to: Message 70 by nator
09-30-2007 5:00 PM


The problem with food in this country is not getting enough energy, it's getting enout nutrition.
Nutrition doesn't make you not hungry. People are minimizing their cost per unit energy because they're trying to not be hungry, not because they're making an effort to eat balanced meals.
I mean, obviously. If they were eating off the food pyramid, they'd wind up with a shopping cart that looks like yours. But that's not their goal at all. Their goal is to be full based on a minimum expenditure.
And I'm not sure I believe you when you say that my cart is so much more expensive than "their's".
Don't take my word for it, read the research. The consensus of sociology is that you maximize the unit energy of your food shopping with the highly processed foodstuffs you're complaining about.
5# turkey drumsticks @ $1.29/#---------$6.45
3# 93% lean ground beef @ $.93/#--------2.79
5# Jonagold apples @ $.69/#-------------3.45
3# brussels sprouts @.99/#--------------2.97
Dole bagged salad 3 for $5--------------5.00
I don't understand how you eat if that's more than five or six days worth of food for you and another person. Compared to ten days of mac and cheese and Rice-a-roni? (I'm figuring from "meals for two people" because that's my frame of reference, and because my recollection is that you and Zim don't have kids.)
I know that when people come up to my lane, and their cart is filled mostly with vegetables and fruit in season, they are going to get a lot more food for their money than someone who clears us out of icecream, liters of Coke, and frozen entrees.
Well, I eat, and I do the shopping and the cooking, and all I know is that I can't buy fresh vegetables unless I'm going to use them within three days, and if I expect to get seven days worth of meals out of one trip to the store without breaking the bank or losing stuff due to spoilage, I'm carrying out a fair bit of ground beef and hamburger helper.
And Coke is delicious. I can't defend soda, I know, but I make no apologies for drinking it. The water everywhere I've lived is vile. In fact there's little less I'd rather put in my mouth than the bitter, flat, metallic taste of pure water. Even from the bottles it's awful. Even the nanopure/DD water - pure enough to use for genetic research - it's just not at all refreshing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 70 by nator, posted 09-30-2007 5:00 PM nator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 75 by nator, posted 09-30-2007 6:11 PM crashfrog has replied
 Message 77 by Kitsune, posted 10-01-2007 4:45 AM crashfrog has not replied
 Message 83 by Jazzns, posted 10-01-2007 2:09 PM crashfrog has not replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 76 of 93 (425145)
09-30-2007 6:36 PM
Reply to: Message 75 by nator
09-30-2007 6:11 PM


You can get 3 good-sized hamburgers out of a pound of meat, and there were three pounds on my list.
I just made hamburgers last night, actually, and out of 1.65 lbs of meat I got 5 burger patties, and I ate two and my wife at one, and I have the last two in the fridge for a quick dinner tonight (because I'm wiped from walking to the drugstore to take care of a sick wife.)
So, 1 lb hamburger is part of one dinner for two people. Three pounds is three dinners.
Five pounds of turkey legs yields around 4 pounds of meat for casseroles or sandwiches or burritos, plus you have the bones to make soup with.
How many legs is that? Two? Three? Two would be one dinner for two people. The third, roasted, plus the bones from the other two would make a good stock, but there'd only be enough of it for soup for two when you decided to use it.
And of course, for both of those meals (and the hamburger, too) you're using some of the salad - you have to, because it's not going to keep otherwise. Plus, you're talking about a meal that takes, say, 45 min to prepare, plus another several hours of watching the pot if you're rendering the leftovers for stock. I mean, you've just committed your evening.
One box of pasta roni and one box of Kraft Mac n Cheese per person, per day is all you would eat, even allowing for maybe cereal or oatmeal in the morning?
I can't eat breakfast. It makes me sick to eat before about 10 in the morning.
But, no. One box of rice-a-roni feeds both of us (because it's mostly carbs, so you feel full), especially with a beer or soda (the expansion of the carbonation also leads to a feeling of fullness.) One box of mac and cheese is lunch for both of us. Neither one of those meals takes more than ten minutes to prepare. If we're hungry again later, I make some popcorn (at the stove, to keep the oil and salt down).
I'm not saying that it's the way I want to eat. It's the way my wife grew up eating, so she doesn't seem to mind, and it has advantages - we feel full for cheap. We don't engage our entire evening cooking and cleaning. I can feed us both and only dirty one pot. I can save my attention and money to make something a little more special, later in the week.
How fast can you eat 3 pounds of brussels sprouts and five pounds of apples and three bags of salad mix?
Not fast enough to have eaten them before they go bad. I guess the brussel sprouts could be frozen, but a two pound bag of those is like one meal for the both of us.
Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 75 by nator, posted 09-30-2007 6:11 PM nator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 79 by nator, posted 10-01-2007 6:59 AM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 82 of 93 (425211)
10-01-2007 9:49 AM
Reply to: Message 79 by nator
10-01-2007 6:59 AM


Oh, and about your saying that Coke is "refreshing" and water isn't. Water is, biologically, the most refreshing thing mammals can drink.
That doesn't make it any more pleasant. After a big glass of water I'm choking on the awful taste and a fair bit of mucus, like my throat is closing up.
The acid in Coke cuts through that stuff. Same with lemonade or juice.
I think I've shown that if one shops carefully, one can buy a LOT of highly nutritious food for around the same amount of money as processed junk, if not less.
I don't think you've shown that, honestly. My gut feeling is that you wound up with six days of food compared to ten, which is consistent with the vast weight of sociological data on the issue.
But, yeah, you're right about the rest of it. My only point was that there actually are advantages where the processes stuff does win out over the other stuff. It's not incomprehensible that people are buying those things; they're marketed to fill a need.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 79 by nator, posted 10-01-2007 6:59 AM nator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 85 by nator, posted 10-01-2007 6:49 PM crashfrog has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024