I’m a descendant of generations of farmers and a relative of working farmers. Your claim that organic farming uses more pesticides than GM farming is somewhat disingenous, since it’s cherry-picking a specific class of argricultural chemicals in order to exclude things like glyophosate herbicides, and since you’ve admitted that you glossed over issues of scale. All that being said, I’ll also admit that my experience as an organic gardener does not really model the economic realities faced by gigantic agribusiness conglomerates. I don’t have to sell my produce so the human labor involved in squishing potato beetles is not a problem for me.
Celiac disease seems to correlate strongly with consumption of food produced by industrialized populations. Therefore, it would be wiser for me not to take the advice of a person suffering from celiac disease when she’s telling me it’s perfectly safe to eat industrially processed foods. I know for a fact that my ancestors who did not eat the diet she says is safe, did not develop celiac disease; I know for a fact that she (and several other people I know) eat highly processed, industrially treated foods with no such history of safety and have developed celiac disease. This proves absolutely nothing - but it does indicate a trend that I would be wise to note. I can gamble based on no proof at all, or play it safe based on the historical data available to me. Scientifically, it’s an easy choice. Believing her claims as to what is safe to eat would be as dumb and unnecessary as believing those of the Food Babe, although granted the links and information provided by Science Babe are fundamentally more informative and useful.
I wasn’t being disingenuous or glossing over anything, I wasn’t thinking that home vegetable growing and small-holding were relevant to our discussion as they represent a tiny fraction of world’s agricultural output, and thus not particularly relevant to the potential global health risks we’re talking about. My only farming experience extends to growing herbs and chilis, though dealing with aphids is annoying enough, I can’t imagine having to deal with the fuckers by hand and wouldn’t mind getting my hands on something more effective than neem oil to get rid of them.
You couldn’t possibly know for a fact that your ancestors didn’t have celiac disease, which has been around for thousands of years (since we first started milling wheat probably), it is almost entirely genetic in origin and has nothing to do with dietary factors (other than the ingestion of gluten) as far as anyone can tell. You must be getting confused with the current gluten intolerance fad, which correlates strongly with ignorance.
I’m not claiming that I know things I don’t. I’m saying that the absence of evidence of harm is not proof that something is harmless, and empirical observation and assessment of probabilities using the scientific method tells me I should take advice on diet first from my mother and dead last from anyone with digestive disorders of any sort, regardless of their genetic makeup and regardless of how ridiculous my mother’s explanations for her dietary recommendations might be.
In reality Mom’s explanations aren’t ridiculous, but the point is her dietary recommendations would still be worth following even if her reasoning was bunk. My mom’s close to ninety and she’s in great health (although my dad’s dying from Parkinson’s caused by “perfectly safe” chemicals) so it would be foolish to disregard her advice.
Blood tests & cameras up the poop chute are how we diagnose Celiac Disease. Those are more common in industrialized populations than otherwise, and far more common for us than for our ancestors past 1-3 generations back.
Wheat, Barley & Rye/their forebear’s have been around & eaten even before there were permanent settlements & the genetic predisposition to Celiacs has likely been as well.
You said “I know for a fact that my ancestors who did not eat the diet she says is safe, did not develop celiac disease”, lots of your ancestors (and you can’t just count your parents, a sample size of two is not applying the scientific method correctly) who lived before the industrialized processing of food did in fact get celiac disease, you do not know for a fact that they didn’t, but we know that a certain percentage of people (especially those of european descent, less data for asians) are celiacs. Celiac disease has been attested to as far back as the Greeks (which is where the name comes from). My mother is a Celiac btw, and she grew up on a farm in Ireland, not eating industrially processed food, they weren’t able to diagnose her condition as a child but thankfully it went away for most of her life until about 15 years ago when it was finally diagnosed after returning again.
I’m sorry to hear about your dad, but I can’t see how you can know the cause of his Parkinsons either, even if there was a six-fold increase in someone’s chances of getting the disease from those chemicals that wouldn’t rule out other causes in his specific case. You mention the scientific method, but I don’t think it means what you think it means.
You’re completely dodging my point, is it on purpose?
I discussed my great-great-grandfather’s diet and health with my father just last night. But since I know little of my great-great-grandmother’s family on my father’s side, and little of my mother’s family prior to the late 19th century, I will confine my comments to the last three generations. I personally knew my great-grandfather, and my grandfather (who was born in 1899) and my mother personally knew her own grandparents and is or was in contact with all their very large brood of offspring. Nobody in those lineages suffered from any of the symptoms of celiac disease. Is that precise enough? I have four large books of my family history going back to the 16th century that I could presumably provide as documentation, but you’ll have to come to my house to read them.
None of the ancestors I know about had anything resembling Parkinson’s, either. But my father is a retired rocket scientist, quite literally, and in the course of his career as a chemical engineer he was repeatedly exposed to every single one of the solvents that were recently shown to increase one’s chance of Parkinson’s sixfold. TCE in particular - he used to clean everything with that stuff, for decades. Yet, when he was exposed, the best scientific minds in the country (including his) could correctly say that there was no proof that these chemicals would harm him in this particular way. I cannot say with 100% certainty that his Parkinson’s is due to these toxins, but it’s basically unsupportable to claim that it wasn’t.
Anyway, back to my answer to your question: Following dietary advice from someone without digestive disorders, in the absence of more complete information, makes more sense than following the advice of someone who has a digestive problem we have only recently begun to study. It also makes more sense than following the recommendations of people who apparently believe that propylene glycol is safe to eat simply because we can’t prove it isn’t safe.
[quote]You mention the scientific method, but I don’t think it means what you think it means.
[/quote]
We certainly don’t seem to have the same definition. I am skeptical of things that are not strongly proven. Food safety is not strongly proven until at least a thousand years of solid data is available, in my opinion - I would prefer not to eat anything that people of my genetic line haven’t eaten for at least six or seven generations, but sometimes you know those fancy New World veggies are just so damn tasty I can’t help myself.
@FunkDaddy, moderation in consumption has no known lethal dose. Use moderation with flamboyant disregard and you’ll be just fine
I just felt I should chime in as someone who has a very real gluten issue that is not at all celiac in nature. I don’t yet know the underlying cause of my problem with gluten, but I assure you it is not ignorance.
There are bound to be some genuine conditions out there, that don’t seem to be well understood, but in most cases it looks to be pretty faddish at the moment.
Adding a few generations doesn’t really help you case any, you seem to be ignoring the more salient point, that celiac disease has been around for thousands of years, long before the advent of industrialised processing of food.
Following dietary advice from someone without digestive disorders, in the absence of more complete information, makes more sense than following the advice of someone who has a digestive problem we have only recently begun to study.
This is completely illogical, you really don’t seem to get how science works at all, you have more faith in anecdote.
Of my local, meatspace friends, one is actually celiac and three others have found gluten problematic enough for them in various ways that they now avoid it. But yeah, it’s totally just a fad.
I’m always wary when I hear people diagnosing themselves of this and that, it’s the same thing you hear from people who claim homeopathy works, but for all they know the cold they think they just cured themselves of would’ve gone away by itself. Health and diet are incredibly complicated things, it’s not so easy to figure out what’s going on even in well designed double-blind trials, yet people are often so easily convinced themselves about what causes things based on very little actual evidence.
I get that. Some people need the backing of the Merck Manual before they accept that something is valid.
In my case it was a matter of noticing that when I do X, Y happens. When I don’t do X, Y doesn’t happen. The times that Y happened without my having done X, it turned out there was some X that I hadn’t been aware of. That, to me, is some fairly sound science, even though my white lab coat is only ever used on Oct. 31st.
But by all means, continue to be “wary” until CNN informs you that Science™ has been updated.
People who base their income on their reputation (which is garbage) I do not feel bad for. She is harmful to science and public health, and sadly, like most hucksters, will never be lacking for cash. She can cry herself to sleep on a bed of dollar bills.
