As an amateur gardener/orchardist (I'd be broke trying to do this commercially)
it's HARD work! Let me chime in as
a dentist/healthcare person who has another take on this whole question. The
hype you read in the news is just that...it makes good copy and sells papers
etc. But it does nothing to help the public become smarter consumers. There
is no attempt to educate, just frighten, in a sensational way.. As we age (I'm
61 ) we start to see our colleagues and family lose their health and we double
our efforts to put off what seems to be the inevitable.
We are impacted by environmental toxins in a variety of ways.
Things like Kaolin are particulates which may be non toxic in casual contact,
but which our bodies cannot readily clear from places like lungs, which then
becomes more of a local irritant causing local inflammation. So, the body
recognizes a foreign body and sets about trying to clear it.and one does
not expect cancer from this in the short term at least. Consider any sort of
dust or gritjust thinking of getting a lung full is repulsive...and our
bodies do not like this. This is more a mechanical sort of injury/insult.
Things like OP pesticides are normally detoxed by the liver (read about the
cytochrome p450 enzyme system), which
when working well clears the pesticide from our body by turning the offending
chemical into something less toxic/more flushable. Imagine we have a certain
capacity to detox at so many grams chemical per day. This is a rather absolute
capacity above which we become and stay toxic due to liver overloadthe body
cannot clear more than so much period. This load now represents what we might
consider the cancer causing potential in a person.
Now add small amounts of many chemicals (sometimes hundreds at a time from
divers sources) and now we have the scientists telling us that a particular
chemical is below some set toxic level while we ignore ALL the other chemicals
which are simultaneously being detoxed by our livers. We NET/NET are in a
state of toxicity while the geniuses doing the research are ignoring the
obvious. This is the argument for organicoverall reduction of multiple
irritants in all forms to allow the body to keep itself in a less than toxic
state.thus reducing the overall chance of disease/cancer which we all dread.
Food additives such as MSG which are KNOWN neurotoxins are in most conventional
prepared foods. They are intentionally labelled to disguise their
presence...yet they hurt our children the most. Look this upit's a fact.
There are others (eg bovine growth hormone which many people avoid).
Estrogen mimicers and other chemicals act on the RECEPTOR sites in nearly every
cell in the body, thus turning on and off the activity intended ONLY for real
hormones. They are imposters sending false messages to our genes which excite
them to activity which is abnormal and in some ways are the pathways to some of
the various cancers we are so full of these days. Soy is a source of many
hormone look alikesagain something really bad for our children, since
eating this stuff introduces outside sources of female acting hormones which
affect our male children by making them develop small sex organs, and our girls
have the onset of menses at age 10 or earlier...this is not normal!
One of the biggest controversies of out time has been the use of Artificial
female hormones (HRT) when the real human identical hormones (available
everywhere) have been ignored due to the profit potential of the artificial
type.
We have paid a heavy price for this and the ladies have suffered for it.
So, you have a tiny summary of a subject covered by many thousands of pages.
Remember, the public perceives a threat given the amount of information at
hand. We need to keep working on a better way to produce food with fewer
inputs, and less toxic materials
Thanks for listening to me.
Karl W. Olson, DMD
assistant clinical professor
UCONN School of Dental Medicine
and amateur growerspots on all my fruit
-Original Message-
From: almarap...@aol.com
To: apple-crop@virtualorchard.net
Sent: Sun, Jul 25, 2010 7:39 am
Subject: Re: Apple-Crop: RE:..and causes you to be fat too!
Comment: There has been many note able comments made about organic apple
production, and this is quite common on such a controversial subject. I find
this very similar to diverse and many times erroneous opinions on religion,
politics, the economy, etc. Please remember that it is not unusual for
opinions to readily change when people reach a level of understanding which
allows them to see most of the components within a complex equation such as
organic perennial fruit production.
I have a friend who's favorite saying is, Caution...beware of stepping
on your own tongue.
Jim Koan
Michigan
Commercial conventional apple grower for twenty years
Commercial organic apple grower for
