Soda vs Cement

[BailOut]

Originally Posted by GeneW

Sodium benzoate is a preservative that inhibits the growth of dangerous bacteria and fungi. It's found naturally in some fruits. It's very effective at keeping acidic foods free of dangerous growths.

Sodium Benzoate + Vitamin C = Benzene

From http://www.curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1181971:

although sodium benzoate occurs naturally in some foods, it is the much higher concentrations within soft drinks that are causing alarm, especially when combined with Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C)

It is simply not worth it. I like to keep my DNA intact when possible, thank you.

Originally Posted by GeneW

Purer ingredients tend to reduce spoilage. Pure ingredients are easier to purge of bacteria and fungi during the process of concentration. "Natural" ingredients contain enzymes and reducing sugars that can corrupt stored foods.

In my experience organic items last much, much longer both in storage and once opened than do their highly processed counterparts that are packed with preservatives. However, even if you are accurate it begs the question of why so much storage is "needed".

Originally Posted by GeneW

Pure Sucrose is a wonder food. If you keep it dry and away from air it stores very well. In contrast Turbinado (dried cane juice) and brown sugars are more fragile and do not store as well. Alas, the price of Sucrose is "supported" by Congress, hence the use of corn based fructose syrups that are well tolerated by many consumers.

Again I question the "need" of such extensive storage.

Originally Posted by GeneW

Artificial flavorings are aldehydes that are engineered for a certain taste. Considering that "natural flavors" are relatively scarce, fragile and often seasonal artificial flavors reduce the cost and increase availability of some tastes for more people.

I have no idea why anyone would think that natural flavors are scarce but things are seasonal for a reason. Creating highly synthetic alternatives is simply silly.

Originally Posted by GeneW

Artificial sweetners are subject to reasonable amounts of testing

They are? By who? Where? When?! Would that be the same FDA that allows things like Splenda on the market even after it is proven that even moderate usage of it has the potential to cause cancer?

Originally Posted by GeneW

However it's everyone's right to go to a Health Food store and pay half again more or double for something

Pay for it with your wallet or with your health and the health of the planet. The cost of things most often goes far beyond what one pays at the register. You make the call.

Originally Posted by GeneW

I'm not being hard on you Brian but don't you think there was a reason that so many moons ago the Food Industry wanted longer shelf lives and a wider market?

The "Food Industry", like almost every other corporate venture, cares not one whit for you, your family or the world we live on. They care only about profits from quarter to quarter and lobby extremely hard - even threaten and hurt people - in order to keep the truth behind most of the things they do a secret. This is why not a single study linking long term exposure to industrial and synthetic chemicals used in "food" manufacturing to human health has ever been published.

If you have no problem with any of that then, by all means, go drink your artificially sweetened and preserved soda and eat your bleached bread and your dyed cheese and wipe your ass with chlorine bleached paper. They will love you for it.

[SilverBack]

So I guess it's possible to dissolve a tooth in cola then? Or is that just the cavity working?

[BailOut]

Originally Posted by k r a y z e e . j o j o

So I guess it's possible to dissolve a tooth in cola then? Or is that just the cavity working?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBus..._Uses_For_Cola regarding the Mythbusters "101 Uses for Cola" segment, where they tried to dissolve a tooth overnight:

The tooth did start to dissolve, indicating that with enough time it could be completely dissolved

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by BailOut

Sodium Benzoate + Vitamin C = Benzene

Supposed to do that, Brian. That's how it works. Benzene is found in Evian and in most water. It's also airborne, you probably breathe it in on your long commutes to work.

Originally Posted by BailOut

It is simply not worth it. I like to keep my DNA intact when possible, thank you.

You probably get more DNA damage from sunshine. No kidding.

I bet you also get a good heaping helping of benzine just driving down the highway, because incomplete combustion will seed it all through the air. Catalytic converters in combination with ethanol also generate formaldehyde, a far more potent carcinogen than benzine.

IF you eat organic you may or may not be consuming fungi which generate carcinogens naturally. Modern farming methods can eliminate the fungus but organic farmers... well, I don't know how they do it.

Originally Posted by BailOut

In my experience organic items last much, much longer both in storage and once opened than do their highly processed counterparts that are packed with preservatives. However, even if you are accurate it begs the question of why so much storage is "needed".

If you're a food processor the aim is to make enough to product to keep the doors open. Store owners prize shelf life, reduces waste. Consumer prize quality, which also hinges on shelf life.

The longer that food can be stored the less waste of it.

While organics will work if you leave them in their natural state when you turn them into bread, pasta and other "processed foods" they have short shelf lives. That's the reason that the industry did all of that refining! It costs money to refine food, so there had to be a damn good reason to do it!

If you're a poor person - not all of us work in IT - then it behooves you to have decent quality food, not whatever spoiled crap is seconded off to you.


I swear, Brian, you've had it too well for too long. You've lost touch with people and what they have to do to make it out here.

Me? I'm doing okay but I don't forget what it's like to be hungry. To not know where my next meal is coming from. I bet our posters from the "third world" know this one real well.

You ever been hungry, Brian? No, not when you were out on the trail or in the bush, but you're out of money and you don't know what you're gonna do.

That's hungry. A few million kids will go to bed hungry tonight, and their parents will hurt too.

Thank God for white flour and white rice.

Originally Posted by BailOut

I have no idea why anyone would think that natural flavors are scarce but things are seasonal for a reason. Creating highly synthetic alternatives is simply silly.

No, the synthetic alternatives were wonderful. They gave flavor to so many things in life. They made good food CHEAP. Even the poor could afford some flavor, instead of just the well to do.

Some modern food processing bugs me, such as feed lots, lariage (that's how long the animal sits starving while it waits to be "processed", and of course my personal gripe, putting antibiotics and hormones into perfectly healthy animals.

Other things, like no till farming, and other modern methods are great. They make food cheap and plentiful. If genetic engineering were handled a bit more reasonably I'd be for it too.

Originally Posted by BailOut

They are? By who? Where? When?! Would that be the same FDA that allows things like Splenda on the market even after it is proven that even moderate usage of it has the potential to cause cancer?

Oh. Well, Congress has a law on the books that any substance that causes cancer in even minute amounts must be banned.

So either the FDA isn't doing their job, they've been "bought off" or the evidence is still weak.

Be nice if in fact the FDA was so easy to sway that they would move a little faster approving drugs.

I am not convinced about Splenda, but then again, I don't use it. I do know some diabetics who swear by it.

You know anything about diabetes, Brian?

Originally Posted by BailOut

Pay for it with your wallet or with your health and the health of the planet.

Tell me something, Brian, why do you drive dozens of miles each day to work? That alone makes a bigger impact upon the environment than my consumption of refined foods.

Why don't you move close enough to work so that you don't have to drive, so you can ride a bike or walk to work?

Why are you working in IT? Why aren't you living off of the Grid if you're so worried about "the health of the planet"? Why are you consuming electrical energy online?

You don't have to live like Ted Kaczinski, but really, Brian... there's no place close to your job? You have to drive THAT FAR to get to work?

Please don't lecture me about trivialities like food content while you're commuting, taking vacations and road trips, and living miles upon miles from your place of work. I live close to my job. I don't take vacations, ever. They're a waste of money, time and energy.

I live simple. Even today my idea of luxury is a book. I may drive thirty miles in one direction and visit friends. I don't go off on ski trips, road trips, visiting far away places, and so on.

I eat very little meat. I have a garden (Do you have a garden?).

Originally Posted by BailOut

The "Food Industry", like almost every other corporate venture, cares not one whit for you, your family or the world we live on.

I think you're talking non-sense. I work for a huge Corporation and every time I turn around I have to listen to "sustainable" and "global warming" and listen to a lot of Green Horseshit.

If anything Corporations love Environmentalism. Keeps their competition down, where it belongs.

Now small business, that's another story. I worked for several small firms. To those guys it's the Bottom Line. How else do you grow big if you're not paying attention to things?

Originally Posted by BailOut

If you have no problem with any of that then, by all means, go drink your artificially sweetened and preserved soda and eat your bleached bread and your dyed cheese and wipe your ass with chlorine bleached paper. They will love you for it.

In turn, Brian, enjoy your expensive prepared organic foods, your long commute each day to work, your vacations, your Road Tours, your well paying job (you probably earn more money than 98 percent of the human race) and don't you think about what "The simple folk do". They'll get along. They always have, haven't they?

...except all of those kids who died in Africa from Malaria because of the DDT ban. Why sweat over thirty million dead people? They weren't white and malaria is a "natural population control", right?

Yeah, I like to bring that up from time to time. Three times more people than were killed in Nazi death camps, silently, one mosquito bite at a time. They were probably too poor to buy their kid a coffin, just put him or her into the ground. Maybe they were even well nourished enough to shed a few tears.

Thank God for white flour, refined sugar, cheap rice, heirloom beans, black eyed peas, and just a touch of DDT to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

Gene

[supmet]

Originally Posted by GeneW

So either the FDA isn't doing their job, they've been "bought off" or the evidence is still weak.

Be nice if in fact the FDA was so easy to sway that they would move a little faster approving drugs.

Good decision removing the part where you said you don't think cigarettes cause cancer. You don't want to come off as that kind of crazy.

oh, and the FDA? bought off? neeeeever.

Lester Mills Crawford (born March 13, 1938) is a former Commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Dr. Crawford resigned from the FDA in September, 2005, two months after his approval by the United States Senate. On October 17, 2006, he pleaded guilty to conflict of interest and false reporting of information about stocks he owned in food, beverage and medical device companies he was in charge of regulating."[1] He received a sentence of three years of supervised probation and a fine of about $90,000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Crawford