Hype and Hysteria

I may be dating my self here, but does anyone remember Alar? The big Alar scare? Alar was a compound that was sprayed on apples to help them stay fresh while they were shipped. Some group came up with the conclusion that Alar causes cancer, and they put those findings out. People stopped buying apples, the apple market crashed, and thousands of orchards in Washington state went out of business. And then the rest of the story came out: You would have to eat around 300 bushels of apples a day before you consumed enough Alar to even THINK about getting cancer. Of course, any company that produced Alar was now halting production, and half the orchards that used it were either bankrupt or about to be. Lives were wrecked, because some group only put out half the story.

It seems that someone is finally taking notice about all the food scares.

Food safety is important, but it seems Americans wake up every week to another food scare.

Remember eggs? "EEEEK! EEGS HAVE CHOLESTEROL! EGGS WILL KILL YOU! Oops, wait, nevermind, it's GOOD cholesterol. Uh, move along, nothing to see here"

"Food phobias make news and I think anything that gets people panicked about the food supply is going to get on the news," said Susan Bowerman of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition. "But the bottom line really is that in most cases the things we're most panicked about are completely overshadowed by the benefits we get from eating the foods in question."

If we listened to every hysterical eco-group or food-backed scientist, we'll be doing nothing but drinking rain water and eating spinach leaves that we grew in our own organic manure.

But for every study that says a food will kill you, another says it's fine. And often these studies are paid for by groups who oppose industrial food production and agribusiness, or by companies who produce organic or free-range products.

Hmmmm, do you think that a group backed by a certain corporation might skew their results in a favorable way for said corporation? Gee, whoda thunk it? I'll bet that if I wanted to, I could grab produce off an organic grocery store's shelves and find crap like arsenic, lead, mercury, and other toxins in it. Would you like to hazard a guess why?

Because all those things occur in nature. The Silver Valley in Idaho doesn't have just silver. It was also a main bullet production facility for the USA in WWII, due to the high levels of lead that were found in the mines. They were literally pulling solid chunks of lead out of the ground. You still have to be careful where you plant your garden if you live there, otherwise you might grow your carrots in soil filled with lead. There are towns in the Southwest that have arsenic in the water supply, and it's there NATURALLY. There's no eeeeeeeevil company dumping arsenic into the wells, it part of the soil makeup.

The bottom line is this: You choose what you want to eat. I don't like beef that's been fattened up with hormones and crap, so I choose beef that's natural. After raising pigs when I was in highschool, I refuse to eat that fat filled crap in the supermarket. So I find a butchershop that has good pork. I'm picky about what I eat, but that doesn't stop me from eating a whole variety of foods. Every food has it's danger, but if you listen to the different so-called watchdog groups, you won't be eating or drinking anything. So piss on 'em. If you can, take a look at how many flip-flops they make on a certain food. First eating salmon was good. Then it was bad. Eggs were good, then bad, then good again. You have the whole-wheat crowd fighting the Atkins crowd. Piss on 'em all. Eat what you want, be aware of what's in it, and let those Chicken Little's run around squawking. You'll be happier for it.

On that note, I've got to get ready for the Meet, Greet, and shoot. Any Puget Sound readers who want to learn how to shoot are welcome. Check out Ari's post below for the details.