Ash Burton wrote:

Moderation is key, but not with poison. I'll be the sheep feeding my daughter organic food, You can be the sheep feeding your kids McDonald's. I can live with that.

Who said it was poison? Like I keep saying, no one has a fucking clue what is or isn't good for you as it changes every month. No one still has any idea whether wine or chocolate is good or bad for your heart. No one even knows if organic is necessarily better or if raw vegetables are better than cooked ones. Red meat? The jury is still out on that one despite what your gay veegan friends say. And like Sathien said, the jury is also still out on organic farming because, unlike the tried and tested safe pesticides we've been using for 40 years, using raw manure as fertilizer and whatever they use to keep pests off of the produce can have some unintended side effects.

And nothing you eat from the supermarket can be called "poison" regardless of your retarded feelings toward preservatives. Let's try to argue without hyperbole, ok? I'm happy taking my kids to McDonald's in moderation and spending half the money on grocery bills than you do just so you have the satisfaction of buying the word "organic". It's all the same stuff and just another thing for rich white people to worry about as they scare other people into believing this nonsense, who can't really afford that lifestyle.

I won't argue that some foods make you feel crappy, like soda and fast food, but that's not because it's poisonous or full of nonexistent "toxins". Caffeine is a drug and a stimulant, that when it wears off, makes you crash a bit. Soda also is a diuretic and dehydrates you quickly, so you're going to feel a bit off if you don't rehydrate yourself for a few hours. That's not because of the "toxins" people, it's because it's full of sugar like lemonade and caffeine like coffee.

As for fast food, you're really surprised that eating a bunch of fried food and grilled red meat makes you feel heavy, sluggish, and tired? How do you feel after a big Thanksgiving dinner? Charged up and ready for Volleyball? No, you feel like chillin' and sleeping. Is it because the turkey is filled with preservatives and added flavors? Of course not. You'd feel the same way if you fried an organic eggplant in organic flour batter and consumed a pork chop made fresh from your own pet pig.

Come on people, stop gettng duped by the media and marketing people who are experts at making people pay twice as much for the same fucking food! Everyone constantly moans about additives, pesticides, and preservatives but none of you have any idea if they are bad for you or even what those terms mean. All you know is what you've heard and you trust it blindly without applying some independent thought and common sense.

Ash Burton wrote:

HFCS - Not a poisen? Ok how about Mercury? Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.

Well if you bothered to look past The Washington Post and educated yourself a little bit better past the sensationalism, you'd have found quite a more sobering take on it from other souces, like WebMD.

"But the researchers aren't telling people to avoid those products or other items containing high-fructose corn syrup, and they aren't sure what form of mercury those products contained.

"Wallinga and colleagues caution that their list was "just a snapshot in time; we only tested one sample of each product. That clearly is not sufficient grounds to give definitive advice to consumers.

"An FDA spokesperson tells WebMD...the new research on mercury in high fructose corn syrup doesn't provide enough information or analysis because it focuses on total mercury levels and the potential levels of exposure are extremely low, the spokesperson notes."

So there you go. Another source tells you that it's nothing to worry about and while the study did find some mercury contamination, it's not of the dangerous type, and not enough to cause any concern. Basically, the study only found what it wanted to find as most studies do and the media picks and chooses which "facts" it wants to report in order to spin the story one way or another.

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It's amazing how you try to say that we are being duped by the media and whatever, but what do they have to gain? Would it not make more sense to just not worry about it? I bet it would for Kelloggs, Pepsi, McDonalds & Friends.

What do they have to gain from scaring everyone about Swine Flu? What do they have to gain by reporting on shark attacks off the coast of Florida or someone's botched surgery?
Because it sells newspapers, that's why.

I'm not saying don't worry about what foods you eat and let the companies do whatever they want, but this whole organic movement has gotten out of hand. And every day, it's something new that we should be afraid of; yesterday it was Aspartame supposedly leading to brain cancer, today it's HFCS. Tomorrow, it'll be gelatine and the next day plant stabilizers. It's all a load of nonsense and sensationalism.

Just moderate your own diet and stop pretending that everything man-made and artificial must therefore be bad and that eating only natural ingredients somehow means you're "healthier" simply because they are "natural".

According to archaeology, when prehistoric humans were hunter-gatherers only living from natural ingredients, they only lived to an average age of about 32. Something to chew on.

Well my take is that, again, people are reading into that study what they choose to. After reading it, I didn't exclaim "HFCS is bad for you, see?!" like you did. No, I took the time to critically read what the article is actually saying; that HFCS has been shown to be more fattening than regular sugar (sucrose) in excess, in rats.

At the end of the article, it says as much:
"Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic."

Excessive consumption. We've been talking all this time about the importance of moderation for any food. If you only eat nuts, you're going to experience some health problems and gain a lot of weight. If you eat ridiculous amounts of vegetables, and only vegetables, you will experience health problems at some point.

Of course HFCS is more fattening than sugar. It's a syrup made from a starch. That study just confirms as much, and only confirms it when talking of rats. It may be the same for humans, but this particular study doesn't confirm that theory. But even if it did that doesn't mean that, in moderation, HFCS is "bad for you" or is the sole factor in obesity. It all depends on your genetics, metabolism, other aspects of your diet, how much you exercise, etc. Also, the definition of "obese" has changed radically in the last 30 years to where now apparantly they are saying 1/3 of adults are considered obese. Really? 1/3? When you walk around your town, would you say 1 in 3 people is obese? I don't see that.

I do maintain my position that moderation in anything is key, and that most of these "studies" just find what they want to, and the media extrapolates what they want to and then everyone takes it as fact. I maintain that organic foods are potentially more dangerous than regular foods and completely unnecessary seeing as how the average life expectancy continues to rise, despite what people think about artificial ingredients. All of it is just a load of nonsense for people with no real problems (poverty, starvation, animal attacks) to have something to worry about and feel as if they are controlling their own health, which they aren't. Just relax and enjoy.