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 Polonius wrote:
to be fair, there was an aside about realizing that some people's dogs eat better than the author, which I suppose suggests some class awareness.

Although to some, class consciousness alone qualifies as "class warfare."

True, but it is kind of interesting that just mocking where the middle class squander money can be so sensitive an issue that some people will see it as class warfare, even when its mocking the more left aligned middle class.

 sebster wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
to be fair, there was an aside about realizing that some people's dogs eat better than the author, which I suppose suggests some class awareness.

Although to some, class consciousness alone qualifies as "class warfare."

True, but it is kind of interesting that just mocking where the middle class squander money can be so sensitive an issue that some people will see it as class warfare, even when its mocking the more left aligned middle class.

Well, I think it points out the uncomfortable truth that the upper classes don't want to get out: that higher taxes (which is what this always boils down to) wont' impoverish them. It will mean spending slightly less of luxury dog food.

I skip this aisle because I'm not rich enough to have dietary restrictions. Ever notice that you don't meet poor people with special diet needs? A gluten intolerant house cleaner? A cab driver with Candida?

This was the best line.

 Polonius wrote:
Well, I think it points out the uncomfortable truth that the upper classes don't want to get out: that higher taxes (which is what this always boils down to) wont' impoverish them. It will mean spending slightly less of luxury dog food.

In most cases I doubt that would even change. Once you get to a certain income the basics just don't matter - which is why people buy premium groceries that are generally no different than the better quality mid-range stuff - when you're a family with two six figure incomes dog food just can't impact your bank balance no matter how extravagant it gets.

The house payments, boat payments, and upgrading to the new model Lexus every few years - that's where the money goes. Even doubling the monthly grocery can't be the problem.

I was talking to a friend who's not doing great in their finances, despite her husband earning an income around 150k. She told me they were doing things to save - like buying a yoghurt maker. Seriously. Two luxury cars, a boat, and a mortgage not too far from a million dollars, and she thinks the yoghurt is where the money is going.

Unsurprisingly, they are also pretty adamantly opposed to an increase in income taxes...

 sebster wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Well, I think it points out the uncomfortable truth that the upper classes don't want to get out: that higher taxes (which is what this always boils down to) wont' impoverish them. It will mean spending slightly less of luxury dog food.

In most cases I doubt that would even change. Once you get to a certain income the basics just don't matter - which is why people buy premium groceries that are generally no different than the better quality mid-range stuff - when you're a family with two six figure incomes dog food just can't impact your bank balance no matter how extravagant it gets.

The house payments, boat payments, and upgrading to the new model Lexus every few years - that's where the money goes. Even doubling the monthly grocery can't be the problem.

I was talking to a friend who's not doing great in their finances, despite her husband earning an income around 150k. She told me they were doing things to save - like buying a yoghurt maker. Seriously. Two luxury cars, a boat, and a mortgage not too far from a million dollars, and she thinks the yoghurt is where the money is going.

Unsurprisingly, they are also pretty adamantly opposed to an increase in income taxes...

We all live extravagantly relative to some other group sebster, and shouldn't be so eager in raising the group above our's taxes.

 surixurient wrote:
We all live extravagantly relative to some other group sebster, and shouldn't be so eager in raising the group above our's taxes.

If they aren't paying enough we should. I'd be happy to go back to the Reagan era tax rates.

So we were at a donut shop the other day at around 8PM, and as we're picking ours out, I hear, "Do you have anything gluten free."

Sure enough, it was a skinny white girl with a Burberry scarf on. I couldn't help buy laugh on the inside.

 Ahtman wrote:

 surixurient wrote:
We all live extravagantly relative to some other group sebster, and shouldn't be so eager in raising the group above our's taxes.

If they aren't paying enough we should. I'd be happy to go back to the Reagan era tax rates.

If they aren't paying enough huh? How about if you aren't paying enough? Whose to say who is pulling their weight?

History and statistics?

 streamdragon wrote:
History and statistics?

Don't like things like facts get in the way of a good apologist.

 cincydooley wrote:
So we were at a donut shop the other day at around 8PM, and as we're picking ours out, I hear, "Do you have anything gluten free."

Sure enough, it was a skinny white girl with a Burberry scarf on. I couldn't help buy laugh on the inside.

Yeah, the box

*read following in gangsta voice

"Listen lady, I sell donuts not cardboard. You want any of dat ovapriced health food crap they got it in aisle 4."

As someone that has cut gluten out of my diet for legitimate reasons*, neurotic rich white yuppies that won't eat gluten due to the advice of nutso "health experts" really piss me off. They have absolutely no reason to do it, and yet they persist in their self-delusion, making everyone else that actually have sensitivities to it, from the mild to people with celiac disease, look like trendy fools. The only people that take it seriously any more are companies looking to cash in on a trend.

~Tim?

*Turns out that gluten, or the substances usually found alongside it, had been causing/aggravating the nasty, deep, and painful zits that I had to deal with for years. Now I just get blackheads and "regular" acne, which nothing has been able to dislodge. And yes, I shower every day.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:
As someone that has cut gluten out of my diet for legitimate reasons*, neurotic rich white yuppies that won't eat gluten due to the advice of nutso "health experts" really piss me off. They have absolutely no reason to do it, and yet they persist in their self-delusion, making everyone else that actually have sensitivities to it, from the mild to people with celiac disease, look like trendy fools. The only people that take it seriously any more are companies looking to cash in on a trend.

~Tim?

*Turns out that gluten, or the substances usually found alongside it, had been causing/aggravating the nasty, deep, and painful zits that I had to deal with for years. Now I just get blackheads and "regular" acne, which nothing has been able to dislodge. And yes, I shower every day.

To be fair, the one nice thing trends like this actually will do for you is make the food overall cheaper and readily available. If they're "popular", more people will carry them.

Watching newlyweds get in a fight at whole foods while trying to get some from a vegetarian is one of the whitest things I've ever done.

Thats awesome.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Polonius wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
to be fair, there was an aside about realizing that some people's dogs eat better than the author, which I suppose suggests some class awareness.

Although to some, class consciousness alone qualifies as "class warfare."

True, but it is kind of interesting that just mocking where the middle class squander money can be so sensitive an issue that some people will see it as class warfare, even when its mocking the more left aligned middle class.

Well, I think it points out the uncomfortable truth that the upper classes don't want to get out: that higher taxes (which is what this always boils down to) wont' impoverish them. It will mean spending slightly less of luxury dog food.

Fair point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cincydooley wrote:
So we were at a donut shop the other day at around 8PM, and as we're picking ours out, I hear, "Do you have anything gluten free."

Sure enough, it was a skinny white girl with a Burberry scarf on. I couldn't help buy laugh on the inside.

"Yes. The coffee."

Just wanted to say thanks for sharing the article in the OP. I found it very entertaining. I don't shop there. I like my publix.

 surixurient wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

 surixurient wrote:
We all live extravagantly relative to some other group sebster, and shouldn't be so eager in raising the group above our's taxes.

If they aren't paying enough we should. I'd be happy to go back to the Reagan era tax rates.

If they aren't paying enough huh? How about if you aren't paying enough? Whose to say who is pulling their weight?

Well, it's complicated. Wealth, of course, is relative. A person on food stamps and section 8 in East Cleveland today is incredibly wealthy compared to a person in an African slum. Or a harlem tenement 100 years ago.

One of the ways we look at it is to look at disposable income. That is, you look at a persons income and family size, and take away essentials like food, rent (or mortgage), car, etc. And you look at how that remainder is spent. A family with no remainder should, in theory, pay little tax (and in practice rarely does, see the infamous 47%). A family that has money for a vacation and nicer house pays some. A family with luxury cars and private school for kids pays more. Etc.

You can tell about a person's financial status by the decisions he has to make. For me, my choices are really between a nicer apartment and building my IRA. I'm clearly doing pretty well. My friend, who doesn't have student loan payments and makes more, was wondering what country to visit on vacation, or if he should buy a new car a year earlier. He's doing a bit better. My roommate has to pick between saving for a new car (because credit is not an option) and paying off old debts. He's doing not so great.

I could pay more in taxes. It would come out of my entertainment and eating out budget, but I could do it. And I already pay a lot of federal income taxes. But, you know, I can afford it more than most, and others can afford it more than me.

Due to high unemployment, taxing the poor won't accomplish much. Minimum wage shakes out around $13,000 a year, so I don't know how much we can take out. Middle Class wages have stayed stagnant or receded in real dollars for about 20 years, so raising taxes on the middle class is touchy (either with higher rates or eliminating many deductions). Of course, high earners have seen their incomes rise dramatically. They already pay more, but they're the only ones rich now. So, they should pay even more.

 d-usa wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Homeopathy, as a part of a complete medical regimen, is helpful and effective. Homeopathy can also hurt if it is not done correctly.

Of course I'm just a person working in the medical field, what do I know.

I don't know, that would depend what "working in the medical field" is. The Reiki touch-healer at the local woo-factory uses that same phrase.

Homeopathy is not efficacious. It cannot be shown to be efficacious in trials. It has no credible mechanism of action. Tests of homeopathic tinctures and pills show that, statistically, there is almost certainly no active ingredient whatsoever in any particular dose. Homeopathy is directly responsible for thousands of deaths in Africa resulting from its advocates persuading people to stop taking clinically proven HIV-AIDS medications. It is a blight on humanity. "Alternative medicine" that demonstrably works is called "medicine", the rest is snakeoil.

Just to make sure you saw my follow up post:

 d-usa wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Homeopathy, as a part of a complete medical regimen, is helpful and effective.

So is any other placebo. That doesn't mean that we should pretend that it's anything but a scam.

Of course I'm just a person working in the medical field, what do I know.

Sorry, but if you think that homeopathy does anything then that casts serious doubt on your professional skills.

I don't know what got me thinking about osteopathy but that was not the term I had in my head. Sorry about that.

I was thinking more about different alternative therapies in general and not homeopathy. Some of the stuff like simple vitamins and minerals have been shown to be quite effective for different things. Probiotics are now used in hospitals on a regular basis. Different herbal remedies have also shown to be an effective adjunct to more conventional treatments.

Yep, my bad, I need to get into the habit of finishing the thread before I do the whole "SELF RIGHTEOUS MODE: ACTIVATE!" shtick

EDIT: OK, I finished the thread this time - SELF RIGHTEOUS MODE: ACTIVATE

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I was thinking about this the other day, not Whole Foods or organic food in particular, just the modern ideas about gluten intolerance and lactose intolerance.

These certainly do exist as medical facts with scientific explanations, but OTOH wheat and milk have been core staples of the indo-European diet for thousands of years, so it is a bit surprising that these diseases have become common problems in the last few decades.

I assume that some third factor is involved. It has been suggested, for instance, that the modern growth of immune problems like nut allergy, is caused by the modern very clean lifestyle that does not allow infants' immune systems to be challenged and develop in a normal way.

I think some of it, though, is people wanting to have an interesting problem in their life. Like people who are allergic to WiFi.

While I'm not a food chemical expert by any means, perhaps there are many different things that could be in your "third factor"

I agree with many of your theories, like the overly "clean" lifestyle. But what about things like GMO foods? or rBST (or whatever those 4 letters are in the bovine chemical for milk/cows)? The various dyes that Im *sure* went through a ton of government testing and the plethora of preservatives found in many food items that people in the US regularly get. Theres an article floating around on the interwebs that a friend of mine posted to her FB page about 10 different "food" items that were banned in other countries but are somewhat pushed here.

Emphasis mine. I don't like where this is going, because that phrase, "what about things like GMO foods?", doesn't usually bode well.

GM foods are perfectly safe for human consumption. Everything we eat today is based on "modified" food; compare "natural" wheat or corn to the stuff that grows on a "certified Organic" farm sometime. We've been crossbreeding strains of plants to achieve more resistant crops with better climactic adaptation and higher yields for centuries now; the humble banana used to be a bitter, unpleasant fist-shaped lump with huge black pips in it until we got our hands on it. All we're doing by using modern methods of GM is skipping the need for decades of crossbreeding, as well as allowing us access to traits contained in plants we couldn't previously combine. If you take a gene from a tomato plant(or anything else) and splice it into a potato plant to make the latter more resistant to a disease, you don't suddenly change how the human body digests and absorbs nutrients from food, but you may well find you've made it substantially less necessary to douse the potato plants in chemical fungicides on a regular basis.

The issues with GM foods are issues of corporate corruption and draconian overreaching intellectual property laws, not food safety, and focusing on the misinformation spread about by that particular brand of consumer that is essentially a walking talking embodiment of the "appeal to nature" fallacy actually ends up serving the interests of those corrupt corporations, because governments well know that GM foods are necessary to the continuing survival of humanity and so will never ban them, and meanwhile the corporations are able to drown out any criticism of their business practices by lumping those kinds of legitimate issues in with the hemp-wearing tie-dye organic-loving "Frankenfoods" foolishness.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Homeopathy, as a part of a complete medical regimen, is helpful and effective. Homeopathy can also hurt if it is not done correctly.

Of course I'm just a person working in the medical field, what do I know.

I don't know, that would depend what "working in the medical field" is. The Reiki touch-healer at the local woo-factory uses that same phrase.

Homeopathy is not efficacious. It cannot be shown to be efficacious in trials. It has no credible mechanism of action. Tests of homeopathic tinctures and pills show that, statistically, there is almost certainly no active ingredient whatsoever in any particular dose. Homeopathy is directly responsible for thousands of deaths in Africa resulting from its advocates persuading people to stop taking clinically proven HIV-AIDS medications. It is a blight on humanity. "Alternative medicine" that demonstrably works is called "medicine", the rest is snakeoil.

Just to make sure you saw my follow up post:

 d-usa wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Homeopathy, as a part of a complete medical regimen, is helpful and effective.

So is any other placebo. That doesn't mean that we should pretend that it's anything but a scam.

Of course I'm just a person working in the medical field, what do I know.

Sorry, but if you think that homeopathy does anything then that casts serious doubt on your professional skills.

I don't know what got me thinking about osteopathy but that was not the term I had in my head. Sorry about that.

I was thinking more about different alternative therapies in general and not homeopathy. Some of the stuff like simple vitamins and minerals have been shown to be quite effective for different things. Probiotics are now used in hospitals on a regular basis. Different herbal remedies have also shown to be an effective adjunct to more conventional treatments.

Yep, my bad, I need to get into the habit of finishing the thread before I do the whole "SELF RIGHTEOUS MODE: ACTIVATE!" shtick

If homeopathic remedies never work, and are just serious wastes of money, then why do they have a place in various country's medical systems?

When I was stationed in Germany, my wife and I had a couple German Doctors who, if one of us had a mild case of something, usually the first thing to try briefly, was a herbal or homeopathic remedy... I think that the theory here being that, most people THINK they have something serious, and go see a doc, the doc in turn may simply see a high level of stress, "prescribe" a homeopathic/herbal solution for stress, tell them to try it for their issue and see if it worked. Obviously, there are cases where actual medicine with it's crazy side effects are warranted, but here in the US those cases are 100% of the time.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Homeopathy, as a part of a complete medical regimen, is helpful and effective. Homeopathy can also hurt if it is not done correctly.

Of course I'm just a person working in the medical field, what do I know.

I don't know, that would depend what "working in the medical field" is. The Reiki touch-healer at the local woo-factory uses that same phrase.

Homeopathy is not efficacious. It cannot be shown to be efficacious in trials. It has no credible mechanism of action. Tests of homeopathic tinctures and pills show that, statistically, there is almost certainly no active ingredient whatsoever in any particular dose. Homeopathy is directly responsible for thousands of deaths in Africa resulting from its advocates persuading people to stop taking clinically proven HIV-AIDS medications. It is a blight on humanity. "Alternative medicine" that demonstrably works is called "medicine", the rest is snakeoil.

Just to make sure you saw my follow up post:

 d-usa wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Homeopathy, as a part of a complete medical regimen, is helpful and effective.

So is any other placebo. That doesn't mean that we should pretend that it's anything but a scam.

Of course I'm just a person working in the medical field, what do I know.

Sorry, but if you think that homeopathy does anything then that casts serious doubt on your professional skills.

I don't know what got me thinking about osteopathy but that was not the term I had in my head. Sorry about that.

I was thinking more about different alternative therapies in general and not homeopathy. Some of the stuff like simple vitamins and minerals have been shown to be quite effective for different things. Probiotics are now used in hospitals on a regular basis. Different herbal remedies have also shown to be an effective adjunct to more conventional treatments.

Yep, my bad, I need to get into the habit of finishing the thread before I do the whole "SELF RIGHTEOUS MODE: ACTIVATE!" shtick

If homeopathic remedies never work, and are just serious wastes of money, then why do they have a place in various country's medical systems?

If curing illness by trepanning the skull to allow the evil illness-causing daemons out never works, then why was it such a popular medical procedure among respected doctors for so long?

If bleeding the patient using leeches or needles in order to rebalance their humours and biles to cure their illness never worked.....

If giving people tinctures of mercury to cure their STDs never worked.....

Human beings are extremely easy to mislead; our ability to recognise patterns and extrapolate from them is doubtless extremely advantageous, but it also leaves us vulnerable to attributing significance to events totally unrelated to the question at hand. That's why we devised the scientific method. Homeopathic nonsense has a place in many nations' medical systems because politicians are cowards too afraid to tell people that their personal beliefs are contrary to reality, and in most cases that's perfectly harmless and fine, but not when it comes to healthcare.

When I was stationed in Germany, my wife and I had a couple German Doctors who, if one of us had a mild case of something, usually the first thing to try briefly, was a herbal or homeopathic remedy... I think that the theory here being that, most people THINK they have something serious, and go see a doc, the doc in turn may simply see a high level of stress, "prescribe" a homeopathic/herbal solution for stress, tell them to try it for their issue and see if it worked. Obviously, there are cases where actual medicine with it's crazy side effects are warranted, but here in the US those cases are 100% of the time.

Three things.

1. Equating homeopathy -ie the process of using a mystical ritual(which is what it is, regardless of how often its practitioners try to legimitise the practice by using rational-sounding terms like "process") to repeatedly dilute the original ingredient with water until, statistically speaking, there is not a single molecule of active ingredient left in the solution- with medicinal herbs is not advisable. A lot of "herbal remedies" are bunk, certainly, but not all of them, lots of herbal remedies are where we originally discovered the chemical compounds that form the basis for modern drugs afterall.

2. It's worth remembering that those lists of "crazy side effects" you see on packaging and in adverts are simply a list of every single negative effect experienced by people during the clinical trials, in any amount. If two people in a 10,000-person study get a rash while testing Examploflex tablets, then "rash" goes on the list on the packet, by law. Many medications do indeed have substantial side effects, but for the vast, vast, vast majority of people the disease is most definitely worse than the cure.

3. It is widely accepted that prescribing patients a placebo is ludicrously unethical in any situation outside of a clinical trial. Even if homeopathic remedies could be shown to be more effective than a conventional sugar pill(which they can't be, because that's what homeopathic tablets are; sugar pills), it would still be wrong for a doctor to prescribe that to a patient as a treatment when they know for a fact it will have no effect. If people are stressed, they need to be given genuine advice on how to manage their situation, or proper medication if they develop a genuine diagnosable anxiety disorder, not sugar pills-by-another-name and a pat on the head. The two main problems with the modern medical system are a lack of time for doctors to engage with patients and explain things to/comfort them, and a pathological cowardice on the part of doctors to actually use the authority of their knowledge to tell patients to "stop whinging, go home, drink plenty of fluids, and come back if you're not better in a few days" instead of immediately reaching for the prescription book and loading them up on antibiotics or homeopathy or whatever else.

The problem with the homeopathic medicine world is that a lot of it is pure quackery, and as a result, the small fractions of homeopathic remedies that do work (swedish bitters for taking down inflammation from acne/cold sores, for example) have their reputations completely overshadowed by the generations upon generations of snakeoil peddlers, from now back to ancient times.

~Tim?

So, Yohdrin, if homeopathic is not the correct word to use for taking herbs and/or more "natural" means of fighting infections/illness, then what is the proper term for it?

Obviously, I am trying to keep this in the realm of things that actually do work (and ironically, leeches have begun to come back for certain sicknesses, but are completely clean and sort of lab grown)

 sebster wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Dont know how "organic" labels affect the price of your food Seb, but where I'm at, probably a good 80% of the food at my "local" whole foods is at the same price, or cheaper than the non-specialty grocers.

Organic labels are a premium pricing strategy. It's one of the more famous bits of food marketing of the last few decades. That 'organic' can considerably increase the price of a food item despite the term having no real meaning in most places is kind of famos.

But I'm not really all that interested in arguing about a nitpick in my original post. Pretend that throwaway line wasn't there if you want, and put in something about superfoods or some other piece of food nonsense if you want.

Overheat,Atleast, Organic is thought to be better for the environment aswell. But that is only true for family farms(BUY LOCAL) if you buy from the supermarket it is quite likely from a horrible farm with the same practices as others. Likee setting crops on fire in the midden of the field to prevent spread, "Organic PEsticides". Organic label is very lax.
That said, I prefer Organic from the lcal farmers market out of principle. I dont think there is anything wrong from GM except the laws surrounding them

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
So, Yohdrin, if homeopathic is not the correct word to use for taking herbs and/or more "natural" means of fighting infections/illness, then what is the proper term for it?

Obviously, I am trying to keep this in the realm of things that actually do work (and ironically, leeches have begun to come back for certain sicknesses, but are completely clean and sort of lab grown)

Herbal Remedies is the term you tend to see on their packaging around here, and that's a term I'd be happy to see legally defined and enforced through regulation in order that it includes only those things with a measurable effect and excludes all the snake-oil. Unfortunately, just like "big pharma", the "all natural" health market is worth a lot of cash(a large proportion of all the homeopathic remedies on sale in the UK, for example, are made by one massive multi-billion-pound French corporation), and the businesses involved know well that their interests lie in maintaining a zone of regulatory and evidential uncertainty within which they can cultivate their brands around the "appeal to nature" concept in their marketing.

Any such legal framework would also have to be crafted extremely carefully and be combined with an extensive public information campaign, because the last thing we need is such a move legitimising anti-vax idiocy or any of other other woo that clings to the edges of the "natural medicine" idea.

 Alfndrate wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I was thinking about this the other day, not Whole Foods or organic food in particular, just the modern ideas about gluten intolerance and lactose intolerance.

These certainly do exist as medical facts with scientific explanations, but OTOH wheat and milk have been core staples of the indo-European diet for thousands of years, so it is a bit surprising that these diseases have become common problems in the last few decades.

I assume that some third factor is involved. It has been suggested, for instance, that the modern growth of immune problems like nut allergy, is caused by the modern very clean lifestyle that does not allow infants' immune systems to be challenged and develop in a normal way.

I think some of it, though, is people wanting to have an interesting problem in their life. Like people who are allergic to WiFi.

There's an old Lewis Black joke about how we know nothing about health, he then asks the audience if milk is good for us and gets a variety of answers. The joke then goes on about how scientists in New Zealand have determined that kids are drinking too much milk. and then proceeds to say something about what kid somewhere is a milk junkie.

There was something I learned way back in my 7th grade science class that humans are one of a small group of animals that drinks milk beyond infancy, and that drink the milk of another animal, and that humans grow more intolerant to lactose as they age. Now I've seen older people drink milk well into their 90s (the oldest man I know who was 96 the last time I saw him) had a bowl of cereal with 2% milk every morning while he worked at camp.

Health is different for everyone

Yup. Different cultures who do not consume as much milk have a higher percentage of lactose intolerance because it never was a deciding factor, evolutionnarily, for them to make sure they used milk as a source of protein and carbs. Most adults will shut down lactase production if they forego from milk products for a while. They'll start up again, but it'll take a bit and the first few doses will be harder to digest. I for one need my chocolate milk after I run. It's just my thing. And Quebecer's blood is part-poutine, so cheese curds are in our DNA, you could say.

While gluten is certainly not necessary for survival (it can easily replaced by other proteins) it arguably did a lot to facilitate long distance travel, at the dawn of human civilization. We've had it in our food for a long, long time and it's just part of so many cultures. Can you say French without baguette? Italian without pasta? It's a conscious choice. One that may make sense for some people, not for many. I find it objectionnable when others vocalize their judgement of my eating habits as if their choices were the best for everyone. Which I don,t think Alf did here, just so no one thinks I am accusing him of.

I think some of us are getting tired of "fad" diets, because that's what most of them end up being, and a lot of people seem not to realize this when they are actively proselytizing to the hoi polloi. Sorry if I'm late to the party, it was a crazy day at work.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
So, Yohdrin, if homeopathic is not the correct word to use for taking herbs and/or more "natural" means of fighting infections/illness, then what is the proper term for it?

Obviously, I am trying to keep this in the realm of things that actually do work (and ironically, leeches have begun to come back for certain sicknesses, but are completely clean and sort of lab grown)

Herbal Remedies is the term you tend to see on their packaging around here, and that's a term I'd be happy to see legally defined and enforced through regulation in order that it includes only those things with a measurable effect and excludes all the snake-oil. Unfortunately, just like "big pharma", the "all natural" health market is worth a lot of cash(a large proportion of all the homeopathic remedies on sale in the UK, for example, are made by one massive multi-billion-pound French corporation), and the businesses involved know well that their interests lie in maintaining a zone of regulatory and evidential uncertainty within which they can cultivate their brands around the "appeal to nature" concept in their marketing.

Any such legal framework would also have to be crafted extremely carefully and be combined with an extensive public information campaign, because the last thing we need is such a move legitimising anti-vax idiocy or any of other other woo that clings to the edges of the "natural medicine" idea.

And the worse part is, no one, to my knowledge, has ever denied that nature is the greatest inspiration for medicinal compounds used as remedies. Sure some stuff is completely synthesized, I guess, but nature was the inspiration. Homeopathy is about extreme dilutions and water memory, and nothing else. If you do not believe in that, then you don't believe in homeopathy. Boiron sells oscillococcinum to the tune of millions every year, out of a single duck's liver. Anecdote: I spent a miserable summer waiting for Saballia to kick in for my allergies. The instruction on the box said to take 4 tablets every hour until relief occured. To my allergy addled mind, it just meant, buy as many as you can while hay fever is going on, please? And buy them my parents did...

 surixurient wrote:
We all live extravagantly relative to some other group sebster, and shouldn't be so eager in raising the group above our's taxes.

First up, you've probably made an assumption about my own household income that isn't true. Second of all, my point had nothing to do with extravagance meaning someone somewhere 'should' pay more tax. My point was on the ridiculous nature of claims made by wealthier people that higher taxes would put greater pressure on their incomes.

To clarifty, if a guy with an upper middle class income says that tax increases shouldn't fall on him because he personally doesn't want to pay more, and would prefer to continue upgrading his luxury car every few years, that's a fair comment. Whether other people agree or not is up to them.

But if that person says that tax increases shouldn't fall on him because he can't afford to pay more, he's either lying, has terrible budgeting skills, or most likely some combination of the two.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Overheat,Atleast, Organic is thought to be better for the environment aswell. But that is only true for family farms(BUY LOCAL) if you buy from the supermarket it is quite likely from a horrible farm with the same practices as others. Likee setting crops on fire in the midden of the field to prevent spread, "Organic PEsticides". Organic label is very lax.
That said, I prefer Organic from the lcal farmers market out of principle. I dont think there is anything wrong from GM except the laws surrounding them

Yeah, absolutely. Stuff bought direct from farmers, at farmer's markets and the like - great stuff. We've got a local market that sets up every Sunday and the fresh produce is awesome.

But a jar in a store with 'organic' written on it- that could mean anything, and most likely means nothing other than a marketing position taken by the retailer.

What annoys me is how difficult it is to "grow your own" in the city. I've been trying for two years now to set up my own hydroponic garden, but have been foiled at every turn. The local council refuse to allow me to set one up in an allotment even if I could get one, because apparently that would be "wasting" space that someone else could use to grow things the "proper"(read: old fashioned, inefficient) way.

I tried setting one up in my tenement's communal back green, but the wee coven of mercilessly negative and whinging pensioners that believe they run the place ruined that idea.

Not to mention that it's virtually impossible to get your hands on the latest GMO seeds that are engineered to be better suited for hydroponic growth with artificial light as a member of the public.

It's so frustrating; with one old shipping container, some hydro equipment and the right seeds, I could be producing vegetables to feed several families for almost nothing in terms of cost -I mean literally so cheap I could afford to give them away- and with very little effort. But nooo, "it's an eyesore", "allotments are for people to grow things properly", "I'm a cretinous luddite that thinks computers are magical boxes run by faeries and your fancy techno-farm terrifies my tiny little mind"

 Yodhrin wrote:
What annoys me is how difficult it is to "grow your own" in the city. I've been trying for two years now to set up my own hydroponic garden, but have been foiled at every turn. The local council refuse to allow me to set one up in an allotment even if I could get one, because apparently that would be "wasting" space that someone else could use to grow things the "proper"(read: old fashioned, inefficient) way.

I tried setting one up in my tenement's communal back green, but the wee coven of mercilessly negative and whinging pensioners that believe they run the place ruined that idea.

Not to mention that it's virtually impossible to get your hands on the latest GMO seeds that are engineered to be better suited for hydroponic growth with artificial light as a member of the public.

It's so frustrating; with one old shipping container, some hydro equipment and the right seeds, I could be producing vegetables to feed several families for almost nothing in terms of cost -I mean literally so cheap I could afford to give them away- and with very little effort. But nooo, "it's an eyesore", "allotments are for people to grow things properly", "I'm a cretinous luddite that thinks computers are magical boxes run by faeries and your fancy techno-farm terrifies my tiny little mind"

Why do you need permits? Its not even a farm or garden. Its just potted plants with a really intense watering schedule.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
What annoys me is how difficult it is to "grow your own" in the city. I've been trying for two years now to set up my own hydroponic garden, but have been foiled at every turn. The local council refuse to allow me to set one up in an allotment even if I could get one, because apparently that would be "wasting" space that someone else could use to grow things the "proper"(read: old fashioned, inefficient) way.

I tried setting one up in my tenement's communal back green, but the wee coven of mercilessly negative and whinging pensioners that believe they run the place ruined that idea.

Not to mention that it's virtually impossible to get your hands on the latest GMO seeds that are engineered to be better suited for hydroponic growth with artificial light as a member of the public.

It's so frustrating; with one old shipping container, some hydro equipment and the right seeds, I could be producing vegetables to feed several families for almost nothing in terms of cost -I mean literally so cheap I could afford to give them away- and with very little effort. But nooo, "it's an eyesore", "allotments are for people to grow things properly", "I'm a cretinous luddite that thinks computers are magical boxes run by faeries and your fancy techno-farm terrifies my tiny little mind"

Why do you need permits? Its not even a farm or garden. Its just potted plants with a really intense watering schedule.

The allotments are actually owned by the council, they just assign you a small plot of land if you want one and there are some free, so they get final say on what you put there. The back green is communally owned by all the couple of hundred flats in the tenement block, and you need planning permission to put "large powered structures" in gardens, which combines to mean that if even a handful of people who live in the tenement block object to the council when you apply, they block you. Anyway, before long I'll either have the job I want and thus enough money to escape these misanthropic old hags, or they'll have died off and ceased to be a problem anyway

 Yodhrin wrote:

The allotments are actually owned by the council, they just assign you a small plot of land if you want one and there are some free, so they get final say on what you put there. The back green is communally owned by all the couple of hundred flats in the tenement block, and you need planning permission to put "large powered structures" in gardens, which combines to mean that if even a handful of people who live in the tenement block object to the council when you apply, they block you. Anyway, before long I'll either have the job I want and thus enough money to escape these misanthropic old hags, or they'll have died off and ceased to be a problem anyway

We have a local plot a few blocks south of me that's just a community "grow" plot. Not sure what you have to do to get into it, but it's basically just little old ladies' flowers and a few of the local hippie types growing their own potatoes and veggies. I suspect they're not quite as uptight though, but that's mostly just based on out laid back the atmosphere in general is here.