Well, it’s time to roll out the ol’ “One bad apple” aphorism again. Apparently there exists a recent study from a small group of researchers connected to Stanford University — an otherwise somewhat reputable institution — that raises more than a few eyebrows everywhere.
What were they thinking?
In case you blinked, these researchers came up with a study that said, in effect, eating organic food is no better than eating food grown conventionally.
If that sounds a smidge counterintuitive, it’s because . . .
Wait for it . . .
It is.
Look folks, the simple fact is conventionally grown foods in America are treated with pesticides. Here’s an interesting quote from Wikipedia:
Although there are human benefits to the use of pesticides, some also have drawbacks, such as potential toxicity to humans and other animals. According to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, 9 of the 12 most dangerous and persistent organic chemicals are pesticides.
And, conventionally grown meat in America comes from beef, pork and chickens that were raised on feed that was chock full of antibiotics. Sadly but logically, there appears to be a distinct connection between large populations ingesting antibiotics, and bacteria mutating around the antibiotic efficacy. In other words, the antibiotic don’t work no more. As a matter of fact, some bacteria, (aka gonorrhea), have become extremely resistant to treatment, and have lots of folks around the world quite concerned.
Baby boomers (aka Me!) have grown up in an age of miracle medicines. (I can still remember lining up to get my sugar cube that prevented me from getting polio.) But we, the humans, are poisoning our own well. We’re over-applying anti-bacterias and causing the little buggers to mutate on a huge scale.
My point is, if that’s happening with meat . . . and it is . . . it’s also probably happening with everything else that’s getting sprayed with pesticides.
It just doesn’t make sense. Eating stuff that’s been treated with poison, year after year, for decades, can’t do good things inside us. At some point something inside our body will hit the proverbial wall. How about an analogy?
Glad you asked.
Cigarette smoking would’ve never gotten off the ground if, after smoking one cigarette, the smoker dropped dead. Sure, some folks wouldn’t make the connection — it’s okay to admit you know people like that — but most would. However, smoking doesn’t work that way. It takes time; years and years. We all have different bodies that respond to poisons in different ways and at different times, but sooner or later we all respond.
We all, eventually, respond.
The fact that some people smoke for 100 years and don’t die from cancer just means something else beat cancer (or something intimately connected to all that inhaled smoke) to the finish line. But for most smokers, there comes a tipping point deep inside before they drop dead from something else; a point when their body flips a switch. There’s that one cigarette too many that sends their DNA or whatever over the edge; the disease fuse ignites and the fat lady starts singing. (Choose whichever metaphor you prefer.) If we could detect which cigarette seals the deal, somebody would get really rich from that. But we can’t detect a process so well hidden. The “getting there” process, however, is well known and understood.
It comes from ingesting poison into our body.
For most people, that’s only allowed to go on for so long.
And when you see the fat lady walk over to the microphone?
It’s probably too late.
