My wife never understands why I argue on the internet...
There's some good stuff in this thread. I homemake a lot of things that we use, and we make an effort to buy local and in season, to preserve, and to develop relationships with the actual people who grow the food that we but. I respect some of the ideals in this thread, but I'm really bugged by a few things:
Oh, and there's plenty of information available to show organic is "healthier". For example, US Lamb is injected with a growth hormone that is directly linked to breast cancer. NZ and Aussie lamb is hormone free, organic. Would you honestly rather have an antibiotic, hormone injected piece of meat as opposed to the latter?
I use all organic, naturally derived hormones when injecting my livestock. I also feed them offal from the previous slaughter. Would you eat my lamb?
It seems pretty obvious to me that something organic, is healthier.
That's called the Appeal to Nature fallacy.
Makes me wonder how much shipping goes into having every vegetable under the sun available to me at wall mart in the heart of a mid-west winter. If everyone bought local organic, we would save BILLIONS on fossil fuels. Heck, it's one of pro arguments for it.
The shipping cost is huge. I heard someone say that the In&Out cheeseburger is the quintessential product of the industrial age. No other time in history would have fresh meat, sliced tomato and onion, and cheese all on the same plate. Still, shipping costs are a reason to buy local, not organic. Someone already pointed out that "organic" farming has very high opportunity costs- an additional point is that "organic" pesticides (such as spraying plants with oil) are non-discriminatory and may have a large impact on the populations of beneficial insects.
In my opinion the FDA is exceptionally questionable. One example of many; They consider high fructose corn syrup "natural". HFCS is a molecularly compromised sugar that is found no wear in nature. It's synthetically made from a corn base, and can't be metabolized as easily as sucrose. Our bodies just don't know what the hell to do with it. But alas, it's natural.
This is by far the least sensible thing that you've said. HFCS is no more "synthetic" than the maltose that you extract from grain. It is composed of fructose and glucose sugars in approximately the same amounts as honey- the reason that the Chinese and others use HFCS to stretch honey is
because they are so similar.
Your "easily digested" sucrose is simply glucose and fructose bound together; rather than being easier to digest, it takes the body an extra step to cleave the di-saccharide bond. There is no such thing as a "molecularly compromised sugar". That's not even an actual term- if a sugar were molecularly compromised, it would no longer be a sugar.
I also do not use any Teflon in my brewing/cooking...
That seems unnecessarily cautious... As long as you keep it below 500 degrees, Teflon is one of the most inert substances that we have ever been able to make. I'd be less worried about cooking on Teflon than on copper or aluminum (aluminum has been casually linked to neuro problems, for example).
- We have planted hops and I think some 2-row barley is not far off in the distance either, as well as other adjuncts that we use. ie. Irish moss, heather flowers. We do not use any chemicals or unnatural items to produce these things.
Cool. I grow hops, and grew buckwheat this year. Next year I think I'll do more buckwheat and some barley.
