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I grew up on a farm, and worked on many farms through the '60s, ancient times. My family still owns 3 farms, though I am not involved in managing them. I also have friends who are farmers, and we talk about chemicals a lot. I have a pesticide applicator's license.
I lost an uncle and a neighbor to brain cancer. I'm pretty sure that both of them died because of the chemicals they were using. Of course, a farmer gets a much more concentrated dose than the consumer, but still....
I buy organic root vegetables, because I know what they do to the soil to raise them. I do not buy frozen or canned carrots. OTOH, I don't care where my squash come from. Tomatoes are part of the nightshade family, and their natural toxins will kill any bug that attacks them. The toxins don't show up in the fruit.
I raise my own organic apples, plums and cherries. I don't drink commercially prepared apple juice or juice mixtures because of the chemicals they use. Grape juice is OK.
One thing that drives me nuts is the Frankenfoodie movement. I am a firm supporter of GMO foods, because they reduce the amount of chemicals necessary to raise a crop. Those chemicals that show up as residues in your vegetables, meat, water, soft drinks and processed foods. GM foods are actually safer for human consumption and the environment than many conventional crops.
If you live in a city, your biggest threat of pesticide exposure comes from you, or your neighbor. I have visited people where you could actually smell the pesticide in their house because they can't stand bugs, and seen people use mountains of chemicals just to maintain a lawn. What this world needs is a good roundup-ready lawn grass. I firmly believe that most people don't even read the label while spraying bug killer around, sometimes even in their kitchen! Then they breathe, eat and drink huge concentrations of the stuff. You should certainly never let your children play in a neighbor's yard without knowing what they use to maintain it.
You can buy hormone free milk but you have to look hard to find it. Anyone who has had a female cancer that was estrogen sensitive like breast cancer or ovarian cancer should probably be even more careful than anyone else. You don't mess around with hormones without getting the consequences in most cases. I say this from experience and the experience of friends.
There is no such thing as hormone free milk. rBGH is identical to the BGH the cow produces naturally. It's the same stuff, and there is no way to get milk free of it unless you drink goat's milk, and then you are drinking Caprine Growth Hormone.
Margins of dairy farms are so slender that many dairies decline to use expensive artificial hormones like rBGH. Dairy cows have been bred to be so productive they have to be milked every 8 hours. Feed and animal comfort are very important, since an unhappy cow does not like to give milk. Many people think confinement cow operations are inhumane, and indeed, people would not like it, but a cow is a herd animal that is never so happy as when it is in a big herd of its own kind with all the food it wants in front of it. And no flies.
Thanks for sharing this video. It is horrifying and definitely NOT for the faint of heart.
I have seen videos like this before, and have tried to be vegan and vegetarian a few times in the past, but have always failed. Seeing this gave me the push I needed to try again. Will definitely be sharing.
There is no such thing as hormone free milk. rBGH is identical to the BGH the cow produces naturally. It's the same stuff, and there is no way to get milk free of it unless you drink goat's milk, and then you are drinking Caprine Growth Hormone.
Margins of dairy farms are so slender that many dairies decline to use expensive artificial hormones like rBGH. Dairy cows have been bred to be so productive they have to be milked every 8 hours. Feed and animal comfort are very important, since an unhappy cow does not like to give milk. Many people think confinement cow operations are inhumane, and indeed, people would not like it, but a cow is a herd animal that is never so happy as when it is in a big herd of its own kind with all the food it wants in front of it. And no flies.
So long as the cows produce the hormones, and they aren't being suplimented. Where I buy my milk, they do not suppliment or use antibiotics and the milk costs no more than at the grocery store. And the milk tastes wonderful. Given that our water supply is contaminated with hormones, doing what we can to avoid it is important.
I would be more concerned with anti biotics in milk. If cows are kept in such a way they have to be treated with them to stay health then something is wrong. With the growth of untreatable infections and the virtual lack of any new anti biotics in ten years, we need to keep whatever potency is left in what we have and not nullify it.
Why the Russians know these potatoes cause cancer, but you don't
The rats they fed GMO potatoes suffered more serious organ and tissue damage than rats fed non-GMO potatoes. And Greenpeace says it was even worse than what the Russians reported. Half the rats in the trial died. They had to take the results from those that survived. That's a breach of normal scientific practices. It skews the results in favor of GMO. But they still found that they caused fatal cancer.
Nope; not concerned at all. Life's too short to be worrying about this chemical or that growth hormone. No one is promised tomorrow. You never know when you'll "get your ticket punched." People die every single day in vehicle accidents, tornadoes, random shootings, in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc.
Can a pesticide-free, growth-hormone-free diet protect you from a distracted/texting driver? What about a random shooter? No? I just think that there are bigger dangers to your lifespan than pesticides and growth hormones, so I don't lose a second of sleep over either – whatever will be will be .
Yeah. Aside from being against commercial farming and the way animals are treated, I gave up meat for that very reason, along with all processed foods.
Guess what? I feel better for it and weird how my acne problem totally went away.
I can't give you any more rep points right now, but good on you for making vegetarianism work!
I always fail after about three weeks, but I'm going to try again.
My concern is all the food that's coming from China. According to many articles I've read, their processing standards are not regulated properly like in the US so you don't know if you're getting the actual products that are claimed on the package or not. They have many polluted lakes where fish are harvested and the water used to irrigate their crops. Apparently this knowledge is local, but we in the USA may never hear about it until someone gets very sick and/or there's a recall. Food Safety in China News - Breaking World Food Safety in China News - The New York Times
Why the Russians know these potatoes cause cancer, but you don't
The rats they fed GMO potatoes suffered more serious organ and tissue damage than rats fed non-GMO potatoes. And Greenpeace says it was even worse than what the Russians reported. Half the rats in the trial died. They had to take the results from those that survived. That's a breach of normal scientific practices. It skews the results in favor of GMO. But they still found that they caused fatal cancer.
No data on the diets, and rats prone to developing mammary tumors on unrestricted diets developed mammary tumors -- including the controls.
"David Spiegelhalter of the University of Cambridge said the methods, statistics and reporting of results were all below standard. He added that the study's untreated control arm comprised only 10 rats of each sex, most of which also got tumors."
The "study" was flawed. Some of the rats were fed raw potatoes, which are toxic to rats. There were too few rats used to reach a conclusion, all the rats developed the same condition, which was not cancer and occurred due to deficiencies in the diet.
I've begun to suspect that many of the problems with obesity and related illnesses in modern society are not simply a matter of over-consumption, but has to do with the food itself. My family's roots are in Puerto Rico and the American South; and back in the day, people had no real concept of nutrition, eating greasy food cooked with lard, everything fried, eating as much as they could get their hands on etc. But in my family and elsewhere I know of people who lived like that and lived into their 90's, and were much more active than people today (which I think is the other side of the coin- modern man's sedentary lifestyle is very bad).
I'm no biologist so I can't say for sure, but the artificiality of modern food does trouble me ... though obviously not too much as I eat my fair share of McDonald's.
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