Quote: (11-27-2013 06:36 PM)Vicious Wrote:
Quote: (11-27-2013 05:18 PM)kingjuice Wrote:
Be wary of the pleb and hippies for they love attributing causality when it doesn't exist.
The people defending Monsanto and their ilk seem to come back to the phrase "there is no evidence of..."
A lack of scientific evidence (even if we were to ignore the studies presented in this thread) only says that we have yet to prove something with current scientific knowledge. That is not akin to saying something is safe.
When science discovers why a traditional food has a positive benefit I am highly interested. But when a traditional food purported to have some positive benefit has no known scientific cause, I will in no way take that as a cue not to try it in my diet.
Science can be a great supplement, but ignore the lived experience of generations -- old wive's tales to some -- it may be your losee.
I have following to be true, all of which were passed on to me from an 80 year old Ukrainian woman from a village:
Onions and garlics are good for colds. [
science]
Watermelon is a natural viagra for men. [
science]
Sitting on cold concrete will provoke a UTI. (no science or food here)
The list goes on...
Article on food folk remedies
In short, I have had better results with these folk traditions over our scientific assessment of what is good for us. These assessments (the food pyramid for example). My ideas about GMO are colored by this experience.
Ukraine has amazing bread. I was told to stop eating so much... "everyone knows bread is not good for you" and at the same time forced to eat a little bread with my soup "you need the bread to counteract the soup fats".
Historical cultures have rich ideas of the relationship of food to the body. That is why GMO is such a hard sell in places like Ukraine where people do not have blind faith in big business and big medicine.
In the U.S. we have very little food culture at least at the natural cultural level. We take a profoundly scientific view on most things...
except our almost blind, pseudo-religious belief in the current state of scientific knowledge.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! A little short from David Lynch's
Eraserhead that introduces new, improved chickens.
"Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact."
"Want him to be more of a man? Try being more of a woman!"
"It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to time."
Balzac, Physiology of Marriage