More of observation than debate

There are two very different lines of thought on this subject, yet not so different, and I want to make it clear that I agree that all human beings should try to get their NUTRITION from high quality fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and other such sources IF POSSIBLE.

Therein lies the rub... ALL food, including fruits and vegetables, today unless planted, grown and cared for meticulously in well maintained soil is very, very poor in nutritional content as illustrated by my previous posts. In some cases the fresh fruits and vegetables are so poor they are worse for us than no food at all. Look how fast they rot; they should not rot, they should dry. Do they taste like they did 30 -50 years ago? NO! I have provided reference links to this in past posts and will not do it again here. I also have several books here at home that also confirm this fact, including my old chemistry, botany and biology college texts from many years ago. Has it gotten better since then? To answer that question, no, it has gotten MUCH worse. We would easily have to eat 5 - 6 times the amount of food we would have had to eat 100 years ago to get the SAME amount of nutrition.

I do not disagree with Unyquity, Trapper or Hopinso in their observations and do NOT eat MOST processed foods; I do eat as fresh, organic and raw as possible. I also believe that eating clay, and/or "rock" is not what we were intended to do as a rule unless sick, and on that issue I also agree with them. So why do I do it? This post may not tell the whole story, but it does give a very good overview... in a nutshell, food grown and raised today does not cut it any more, unless perhaps you are fortunate enough to spend your life growing and raising your own, building your soil between every crop, rotating old world NON Genetically-Modified-Organisms seed. If you have animals for food, they also would have to graze on grasses grown on the BEST of soil, herbicide, pesticide and pollution free (not going to happen) to produce products for consumption; this is the whole bio-accumulation (good or bad) principle at work. For the record, organic foods DO contain pesticides and herbicides, just at a level 1/3 less than conventionally raised foods; that is unless the organics you are buying are conventionally raised. You did not know there was fraud in this industry too? Chlorine washes are also approved and used in organic produce packing and processing. We live in and breathe, drink, and eat pollutants every day, even IF we live in some remote outback location, do not kid yourself.

Previous posts on this subject addressed the FDA, the EPA and Calcium Hydroxide toxicity. My intention with my above post was to illustrate that the FDA as well as Europe (all countries have, but these are used for illustration) also have APPROVED CH use in processing foods AND as an additive and contradicts posts to the contrary. I suppose this could be the government right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing as it DOES show a conflict. In these cases where CH is used in food and drink, it does a few things... it helps stabilize the food and make the few nutrients that are available more absorbable and acts as a calcium supplement in fortified foods; Good? Bad? I am sure by sheer chance that a few of the ingredients on the FDA's GRAS list may actually be good for us.

In addition, the following two parts of my post seems to have been over looked or ignored. The first where the Europeans, when first introduced to corn and living off of the food as a staple became malnourished because they DID NOT use the nixtamalization process where Calcium in various forms was added to the food after harvest in processing in order to make the nutritional content of the corn more bio-available. Good? Bad? For Native Americans since 1200 - 1500 BCE it was a very GOOD thing.

I have spent time in Guatemala (my picture) and they STILL use this process there.

The second where calcium hydroxide is also used in organic food processing. Good? Bad? I do not have all the answers.

All in this discussion obviously voraciously, read, study and work real hard towards our own health goals and attempt, as best we can, to make the best choices given our current living conditions , AND we do our best to encourage and help others to do the same. Many of us walk similar paths and in some cases different... I do not think it makes one path right and the other wrong, just different.

There are very few if any points we would disagree on in an ideal world. In an ideal world with adequately available, perfect food, I would be right with Unyquity, trapper and hopinso, absolutely NO QUESTION. We would not be having this discussion. But we live in a far from ideal world, separated from Eden, and the European experience illustrates my point. Europe, as many other civilizations throughout history, have had a very hard time getting adequate nutrition from food staples even though they had MUCH BETTER soil available to them then, than we do today.

http://www.answers.com/topic/nixtamalization

Mesoamerica and North America

Earliest evidence of nixtamalization is found in Guatemala's southern coast with equipment dating from 1200–1500 BCE. The ancient Maya and the Aztecs used lime (calcium oxide) and ashes in creating alkaline solutions, while the tribes of North America used sodium carbonate(??), which occurred naturally, or ashes. It is noted that contemporary Maya use the ashes of burnt mussels. The process has not really declined in usage in the Mesoamerican region though there has been a decline in North America. Many North American Native American tribes, such as the Huron no longer use the process; however residents of the Southeastern United States still produce and eat hominy. The U.S. version of hominy is produced by whole maize grains, preferably white when eaten in the form of grits, mixed with scalding water mixed with a chemical solution, such as a mild lye or slaked lime (sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide solution), traditionally derived from wood ash, until the soaking forces the kernel to expand so the hull and germ split. The kernel is removed and dried. After drying, the whole kernels are soaked in water and a solution mixed with limestone or wood ash is used to expand the kernels, which are then boiled. It is also prepared into grits which are dried ground hominy.

Maize was introduced by Christopher Columbus in the 15th century, with it being grown in Spain as early as 1498. Europeans accepted maize within a generation, but they did not adopt the nixtamalization process, perhaps because the Europeans had more efficient milling processes and so did not need to remove the pericarp. However, without the process maize is a much less beneficial foodstuff, leading to outbreaks of pellagra and kwashiorkor in areas where it became a staple grain, such as certain regions of Italy and Africa. Because of this lack of understanding of the importance of the processing, maize suffered the stigma of being an unhealthy grain that could stave off starvation but lead to malnourishment. For example, this is why polenta was considered the poor person’s food in Italy until its more recent increase in status as gourmet food.

Interesting that without some form of shell, rock, or ash alkalizing agent the people became malnourished on corn in Europe.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/PublicComments/Sunset/Handling/FloridaCrystals.pdf

1. Calcium Hydroxide, Ascorbic Acid, Carbon Dioxide and
Enzymes have been determined by the National Organic
Standards Board (NOSB) to be consistent with the Organic
Foods Production Act (OFPA), its implementing regulations
and criteria for substances allowed in organic production
and handling.

When I majored in two areas of Science one of the biggest debates in our classes was where the non-science people (less than 5% of people in this country understand or have a Science education background) in government were making VERY POOR decisions that would cause future world wide generations to suffer based upon their scientific ignorance and the presentation of JUNK scientific evedince by the companies that would profit from their decisions.

This is still true today and will remain true in the foreseeable future. We must do, what we must do to get well and maintain health OR suffer, get ill and perish all while eating and getting fat on foods with little to NO absorbable nutritional content.

As illustrated in previous posts, people will read this and take what they want from it...

Get a refractometer and it will really open your eyes to the crap fruit and vegetables we eat... but then all you have to do is watch how it rots and does not dry to see that.

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