You are what you eat
Matt's comment to my previous post makes me want to elucidate the bigger view that I believe drugs like rBGH , and other additive and pesticides used on our food, fit into.
Matt makes good points: usually people do not become sick as a reuslt of drinking bad milk, because that milk has been pasteurized, and if our milk supply was cut in half because we stopped using rBGH then we would face the problem of making up a lot of milk that is no longer being produced.
At one time, farmers were not using rBGH and we were producing enough milk naturally to feed the nation. When the decision was made to start using the hormone, I don't think the long term implications were considered. Widespread use has now put us in the situation that if we chose to stop using rBGH, or to stop pasteurizing our milk, we would have some very challenging problems to solve.
We eat food to be nourished. While modern food additives, pesticides, hormones, and production techniques have allowed us to eat more food, they have not necessarily allowed us to be better nourished. In many cases, despite consuming more food, we are less nourished than we would be eating less food without the modifications. To use milk as an example, rBGH means the cow is producing twice the milk, but is not able to spare the nutrients (calcium for example) for that milk to be as nutrient dense as it would be otherwise. Then the milk is pasteurized, destroying all of the enzymes and probiotics in the milk, and changing the configuration of many of the protiens making them more difficult to absorb, if not altering them beyond recognition. After that we skim the fat from the milk, removing many healthy short chain fatty acids, and losing the vitamin A and D it contains. The homogenization process makes the milk smell atrocious, so deodorizing chemicals are added to hide the odor. Milk fats which are removed during homogenization also make milk's vitamins and minerals more available for absorption, an effect which is lost when the fat is removed. The milk we drink commercially has much less in common with natural milk than we think.
In the early 1930's Weston A. Price created a comprehensive documentation of the dietary and nutritional variation among dozens of primitive societies, as well as the average North American of the day. His book Nutrition and physical degeneration documents his studies and is still available at online bookstores. Among other things, he found that the food consumed by every single primitive society contained at least four times the vitamin and mineral concentration as analagous foods in the North American diet. Consider how much food we are now squeezing out of the same resources compared to what we did in the 30's, and you can imagine that food today is likely contains much less 1/4 of the nutrients it used to. Not only are we removing nutrients from our farmland faster than the bacteria and microorganisms that live in the soil can replenish them, but the rate of that replenishment is being reduced, as the same pesticides and antibiotics that protect the crops, are destroying the soil that feeds them.
I believe that for the first time in the history of this continent, we will see the quality of life of an entire generation significantly reduced from the generation before it. As baby boomers move further into retirement ages, I believe we will see diseases like arthritis, osteoporosis, digestive and gastrointestinal disease, and cancer changing the lives of our elderly more extensively than ever before. And I believe it will be largely a result of a lifestyle which allows highly processed foods, white flour, refined sugar, and food additives to constitute the bulk of it's food sources. If 30 is the new 20, then 60 will be the new 70.
In North America, we no longer face any type of food shortage. Nobody suffers because there are not enough dietary calories to go around. Many countries still face severe food shortage crises, but we have spent a great deal of ingenuity and effort to extend our food production capacity, and in North America we have done a very good job in producing enough. Now that we succeed so well in providing the voume of food our society needs, we are doing our society a disservice by allowing it to consume such a low quality of food.
Matt makes good points: usually people do not become sick as a reuslt of drinking bad milk, because that milk has been pasteurized, and if our milk supply was cut in half because we stopped using rBGH then we would face the problem of making up a lot of milk that is no longer being produced.
At one time, farmers were not using rBGH and we were producing enough milk naturally to feed the nation. When the decision was made to start using the hormone, I don't think the long term implications were considered. Widespread use has now put us in the situation that if we chose to stop using rBGH, or to stop pasteurizing our milk, we would have some very challenging problems to solve.
We eat food to be nourished. While modern food additives, pesticides, hormones, and production techniques have allowed us to eat more food, they have not necessarily allowed us to be better nourished. In many cases, despite consuming more food, we are less nourished than we would be eating less food without the modifications. To use milk as an example, rBGH means the cow is producing twice the milk, but is not able to spare the nutrients (calcium for example) for that milk to be as nutrient dense as it would be otherwise. Then the milk is pasteurized, destroying all of the enzymes and probiotics in the milk, and changing the configuration of many of the protiens making them more difficult to absorb, if not altering them beyond recognition. After that we skim the fat from the milk, removing many healthy short chain fatty acids, and losing the vitamin A and D it contains. The homogenization process makes the milk smell atrocious, so deodorizing chemicals are added to hide the odor. Milk fats which are removed during homogenization also make milk's vitamins and minerals more available for absorption, an effect which is lost when the fat is removed. The milk we drink commercially has much less in common with natural milk than we think.
In the early 1930's Weston A. Price created a comprehensive documentation of the dietary and nutritional variation among dozens of primitive societies, as well as the average North American of the day. His book Nutrition and physical degeneration documents his studies and is still available at online bookstores. Among other things, he found that the food consumed by every single primitive society contained at least four times the vitamin and mineral concentration as analagous foods in the North American diet. Consider how much food we are now squeezing out of the same resources compared to what we did in the 30's, and you can imagine that food today is likely contains much less 1/4 of the nutrients it used to. Not only are we removing nutrients from our farmland faster than the bacteria and microorganisms that live in the soil can replenish them, but the rate of that replenishment is being reduced, as the same pesticides and antibiotics that protect the crops, are destroying the soil that feeds them.
I believe that for the first time in the history of this continent, we will see the quality of life of an entire generation significantly reduced from the generation before it. As baby boomers move further into retirement ages, I believe we will see diseases like arthritis, osteoporosis, digestive and gastrointestinal disease, and cancer changing the lives of our elderly more extensively than ever before. And I believe it will be largely a result of a lifestyle which allows highly processed foods, white flour, refined sugar, and food additives to constitute the bulk of it's food sources. If 30 is the new 20, then 60 will be the new 70.
In North America, we no longer face any type of food shortage. Nobody suffers because there are not enough dietary calories to go around. Many countries still face severe food shortage crises, but we have spent a great deal of ingenuity and effort to extend our food production capacity, and in North America we have done a very good job in producing enough. Now that we succeed so well in providing the voume of food our society needs, we are doing our society a disservice by allowing it to consume such a low quality of food.
