[outcast]

Really? Nobody starves to death in India now?

I don't live in India, I live in China. In the going on 4 years that I have been here I have yet to see any starvation, instead there is food all around. Obesity is becoming a big problem now, because there is too much to eat.

A couple of thousand years is a quite a brief period in the history of a species. The humans that have eaten those things have suffered ill health as a result.

I think the entire european and east asian population might disagree with you. Take for example Japan, they eat huge amounts of rice but they have the longest average lifespan of any country in the world.

As those "foods" have taken over a greater and greater portion of our diet, the health effects have intensified. The archetypal 12 year old doritos muncher with type II diabetes is the inevitable end result.

Fallacy. People are living much longer now than ever before, and it isn't just because of medical advances. During pre-industrial times you would have cyclical periods of starvation because of climate variations. The rain does not always fall in the same amount every year, and once in a while you would get too much resulting in devastating floods, or too little and get crushing droughts, either way resulting in famine. Because Africa by and large has failed to modernize its agriculture, the result is periodic famine. If you want to go back to that, go for it, just dont drag the rest of us down with you.

[manu]

So it seems this thread has gotten somewhat off topic. I personally believe that rice is an essential food, esp. in the tropics. There use to be at least two hundred varieties in an area even 50 years ago, now it is hard to find even five different varieties. Then if a pest or disease comes, it goes right through the fields as it is all the same type. When you are using artificial chemicals as pesticides, and artificial fertilizers the natural immune systems of the plant become weaker. Also quality is more important than quantity. What is the use of five kilos of tomatos if it only has the vitamins equal to one good tomato. Most of the problems arise when instead of growing your own food you rely on some commercial farms to grow the food for thousands or millions. Quality goes down, quantity goes up. Anyway, it won't be long before either you are growing your own or you won't be eating much.

[yesplease]

Please enlighten me - what would be a good diet?

I'd take bugs and chicken feet over rice and beans any day. At least bugs have got some decent nutrients in them. Rice and beans is mass produced crap food. If you're trying to create the largest possible human population without any regard for their health, that's about the only reason I can think to feed people grain. Personally I think it's a pretty sick game.

While you may have enough wealth to eat many different staples, a lot of people in the world don't right now and didn't in the past. That isn't about trying to pump up population, but survive w/o as much wealth as the more privileged on the planet. Besides, it isn't as if beans and rice as staples preclude using other foods in order to reach a balanced diet, just that they provide calories in a far more cost effective fashion than almost anything else.

[Sixstrings]

Another might be a rice plant that produces an abundance of vitamins that are hard to come by in 3rd world diets.

You are aware of the rice story, are you not?

The catastrophe of pushing people off the land in favor of mega plantations of junk food like rice can't be repaired by switching to mega-plantations of genetically modified junk food.

SPG,

Isn't it true that the rice eaten in the Far East differs from what we eat in the US? What I mean is, the rice over there is eaten with the husk intact. Americans like their rice purdy and white, so the nutritious husk in removed.

In Asiatic populations, rice has been, and still is, a main source of nutrition. Thiamine, or vitamin B1, is contained in the outer husk and coating of the rice kernel. When the technology for polishing rice became available, people took to eating white rice in preference to brown rice, but that process removed thiamine, causing beriberi, or thiamine deficiency, in many people, as well as heart and nerve diseases.

Dutch physicians in Java and Japanese physicians particularly noted the occurrence of beriberi with edema, heart failure, neuropathy, and many deaths.
http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Pre-Sma/R ... Diets.html

And while we're on the topic Dr., do you have any recommendations for a good multivitamin? Would you say something like the GNC multivitamin is sufficient?

[smallpoxgirl]

Obesity is becoming a big problem now, because there is too much to eat.

Obesity is not just about having excess calories available. It's also about replacing food with starch. It's a sign of malnutrition as well. Mal- as in eating the wrong foods.

People are living much longer now than ever before, and it isn't just because of medical advances.

That's just not true. Life expectancy for westerners hasn't changed appreciably in a long time and the number one killer is heart disease induced by malnutrition. Read accounts of what happened to the Indian tribes when they were converted from a diet of food to a diet of starch and oil. It sure wasn't an improvement in their health.

While you may have enough wealth to eat many different staples, a lot of people in the world don't right now and didn't in the past.

When you're a subsistence farmer wealth has nothing to do with it. You plant it. It grows. You eat it. Wealth only come into play once you've been pushed off the land and made into a consumer. Starch is very convenient to feed to consumers. You can dry it, ship it, puff it, bake it into bread, roll it into pasta. That's it's only redeeming quality. Food has to be hand processed. It spoils quickly. It doesn't amen itself well to rolling off the assembly line into the gullet of a consumer quite so easily.

People don't have enough wealth for it because they've been programmed as consumers. They don't have enough wealth to simultaneously eat food and buy plasma TVs and they've been taught that the latter is more important.

And while we're on the topic Dr., do you have any recommendations for a good multivitamin? Would you say something like the GNC multivitamin is sufficient?

I'd just go with a generic store brand. I get mine at Target, but I don't think they're any better than anybody else. It's easy to pay a lot for a slick label, but they all have basically the same stuff inside.

[outcast]

When you're a subsistence farmer wealth has nothing to do with it. You plant it. It grows. You eat it.

So what do you do when you don't have enough? Die?

Let me present another piece of evidence:




Notice all of those western countries that use large scale industrial agriculture have rather long life spans. The african countries that depend on "pure" subsistance agriculture have very short life spans and often have malnutrition and famines. Coincidence?



I think those people might disagree with you about how great subsistance agriculture is.

Life expectancy for westerners hasn't changed appreciably in a long time

In 1900 the life expentancy in the US was between 45 and 50, as of 2008 it is 78. That's quite an appreciable change.

Obesity is not just about having excess calories available. It's also about replacing food with starch. It's a sign of malnutrition as well. Mal- as in eating the wrong foods.

Not always. Most of the obese people still eat about the same amount of rice as they did before, but what changed was suddenly they had as much of everything else as they wanted, eating many times as much meat and vegetables as before.

[yesplease]

While you may have enough wealth to eat many different staples, a lot of people in the world don't right now and didn't in the past.

When you're a subsistence farmer wealth has nothing to do with it. You plant it. It grows. You eat it. Wealth only come into play once you've been pushed off the land and made into a consumer. Starch is very convenient to feed to consumers. You can dry it, ship it, puff it, bake it into bread, roll it into pasta. That's it's only redeeming quality. Food has to be hand processed. It spoils quickly. It doesn't amen itself well to rolling off the assembly line into the gullet of a consumer quite so easily.

People don't have enough wealth for it because they've been programmed as consumers. They don't have enough wealth to simultaneously eat food and buy plasma TVs and they've been taught that the latter is more important.

Holy ideological traincrash smallpoxgirl!

Even subsistence farmers interact with others and can have poor growing seasons, so wealth does have at least something to do with it, but that's kinda irrelevant I suppose. Anyhoo, there have been many many people with a healthy diet using starchy staples like rice and beans a long time before we even conceived of plasma TVs. It seems like you're turning a bunch of views into one huge sociopolitical message, which is fine and all I suppose, but probably not accurate IMO. I suppose there are people who would rather eat a relatively poor diet in order to get a new TV, or some other product, and that's their choice. Assuming they've all be programmed seems to be a stretch at the very least. If it was really that easy, we wouldn't even be here talking about all sorts of wacky things IMO.

[smallpoxgirl]

Let me present another piece of evidence:

Cool map. You don't happen to have one showing the percentage of diet composed of starch do you?

[outcast]

Cool map. You don't happen to have one showing the percentage of diet composed of starch do you?

Do you? You know even if you dont eat that much startch you can still get fat from eating too many other calories.

EDIT: And I see you dogded my point about famines.

[rattleshirt]

The areas of low life expectancy are the same areas which have suffered from centuries of resource theft by the areas with high life expectancy.
rant on/ An example would be that Central Africa there is a large fishery for Nile Perch...good protein for the for the populace of malnourished starving people you might think? Nope, it gets sold to Europe and the money is largely diverted to armed gangs which use it to buy more weapons. Look at D.R. of Congo, the country has rich land, and a history of feeding central Africa, but they also possess resources that the developed world wants so outside forces sponsor armed groups in order to obtain them and the country is a starving, disease-riden, poverty-stricken shambles. You want to know why people are being killed and raped (not really the right term it is far more brutal than mere rape), look at your cell phone and other electronic devices. If you feel you can't live without your electronics at least use them up and don't be replace them with the latest thing all the time. /rant off

[jupiters_release]

Schmuto,

Are you familiar with the Ermakova study?

From page 41 at pdf link.

Ermakova’s first surprise came when her pregnant rats started giving birth. Some pups from GM-fed mothers were quite a bit smaller. After 2 weeks, 36% of them weighed less than 20 grams, compared to about 6% from the other groups.

But the real shock came when the rats started dying. Within three weeks, 25 of the 45 (55.6%) rats from the GM soy group died, compared to only 3 of 33 (9%) from the non-GM soy group and 3 of 44 (6.8%) from the non-soy controls.

[outcast]

That study was debunked.

[jupiters_release]

That study was debunked.

paid subscription access article??

[rattleshirt]

#1- Just to see one article they wanted $32.
#2- On the genetic engineering of crops and pollen contamination "It is a fist in the eye of God"
#3- No I am not religious. Some times it is the only way to make a statement strong enough.

I am not only opposed to gene tampering, but also to corporate attempts to control conventional food supply. If you cannot feed yourself, you are not free. You are always dependent and an important question becomes, On whom are you dependent? Can you trust them?

Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and their like have demonstrated time and again they can not be trusted. It is time we used the power we have to push government at all levels to act against the thieves, murders and liars who have come to control so much of the food supply. Start at whatever level seems most vulnerable to grassroots pressure where you are, wether that be local, state, federal (probably local). If they don't do what you want at the local level vote them out and support anti-corporate candidates, if you can find some. Just as important if not more so is to grow your own food and save your own seeds. At least know your farmer and help them move to being as little dependent on Corpgov as possible.

[outcast]

That study was debunked.

paid subscription access article??

I forgot, nature magazine isn't free. Hold on, I'll see if it was reposted elsewhere.

[Vogelzang]

AAEM = American Academy of Environmental Mafiosi

Without new methods of producing food, more people will starve.

[smallpoxgirl]

Without new methods of producing food As long as human populations exceed sustainable levels, more people will starve.

Fixed it for you.

[rattleshirt]

I notice no one has responded to my Historical and Continueing Exploitation explanation of the map previously posted.

Also that the article has not been forthcoming. Not to mention for the article to be of value we would need to be able to read the responses and counter-responses to it.
Not that I care...corporate (or other centralized) control of food production is simply unacceptable no matter what.

[outcast]

Without new methods of producing food As long as human populations exceed sustainable levels, more people will starve.

Fixed it for you.

BS. The single greatest cause of famines throughout history has been climactic instability. You still dodged me about that, what do you do when you don't get enough rain (or too much rain)?


Ok, here are some excerpts from the article.

Neuroscientist Irina Ermakova of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow made news headlines two years ago when she reported that rats fed diets containing glyphosate-tolerant genetically modified (GM) soybeans gave birth to pups with low survival rates or stunted growth1. Though these findings have yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal and contradict publications in the literature, they have been widely disseminated and discussed over the media and internet

I.E. Rats, weighing from 180 g to 200 g, were kept in a vivarium with a reversed light-dark cycle (12 a.m. to 12 p.m.). Each day, females and males in every cage received dry pellets from a special container placed on the top of their cage. Animals were also provided with 200 ml of drinking water per rat per day. After 2 weeks on the different diets, three females from each group were mated with two healthy males of the same age, who had not been exposed to the soy flour supplements. First one male was placed with a female in the cage for 3 days, and then another for 3 days. To minimize infection risk to females, invasive tests to determine sperm count and quality were not determined. Upon delivery, all females were transferred to individual cages, and the amount of soy supplement was increased by an additional 1 g for every pup born. Laboratory chow and water were available ad libitum during the experimental period, for all animals. When rat pups could feed themselves, the daily dose of soy supplement was increased to 2–3g for each pup. All rats ate their soy portions well.

B.M.C., L.V.G., A.M. and V.M. Ermakova notes that the ration of soy supplement "was increased to 2–3 g" per day when rat pups could feed themselves and adds that "all rats ate their soy portions well." Setting aside the fact that the statement may indicate that the normal ration was inadequate to meet the animals' needs, quantitative intake is again not reported. What's more, it is not clear whether pups were weaned and removed from the dams. It is also not stated whether the litters were balanced with regard to number of pups and gender. It is normal practice to compare results from litters adjusted to equal size (usually eight pups, four females and four males) to avoid differences in nursing.

I.E. is the authors name from the original article, the other initials are the people from the journal reviewing her methodology.

And this one was the responce to the results:

B.M.C., L.V.G., A.M. and V.M. Pup mortality is usually reported at day = 0 or day = 1 and day = 21. The timing and causes of death are not reported. The data in Tables 1 and 2 show that 8.1% of pups died in the control group. The typical mean pup survival observed for Wistar rats is greater than 99% plusminus 2 at day = 1 and 99.5% plusminus 1 at day = 21 (ref. 14). The abnormally high incidence of pup mortality in the controls indicates poor animal stewardship possibly arising from poor animal husbandry and/or dietary deficiency.

Basically her methodology doesn't hold up.

Also that the article has not been forthcoming. Not to mention for the article to be of value we would need to be able to read the responses and counter-responses to it.

I've been busy lately with real life.

[smallpoxgirl]

BS. The single greatest cause of famines throughout history has been climactic instability. You still dodged me about that, what do you do when you don't get enough rain (or too much rain)?

I don't doubt that's true. Living at 10 times the stable carrying capacity and depending on intensively cultivated crops of annuals obviously exacerbates that problem tremendously. Wild humans had a number of options during a drought- they could hunt more as animal numbers fall of less quickly than plant foods. They could use dried meat and pemican which they stored in large quantities for lean times. They could dig tubers and use other perenial plant parts that are less affected by adverse climatic periods than annual crops are. Of course the last and most obvious option is that they could pack up their belongings and travel to somewhere else where food was more plentiful.

None of this, of course, has much to do with us or the assertion that humans should or shouldn't eat grain. The basic argument for it is that you can produce more calories of grain per unit input of energy/land/etc than you can calories of foods: meat, vegetables, fruit, etc. This would seem to suggest that eating a starch based diet, despite it's deleterious health effects, might reduce competition for food. Unfortunately the error of this logic is readily apparent. Expanding the food supply doesn't decrease starvation at least not for more than a few years. Humans, like virtually all animals, will breed and expand their populations to fit whatever food source is available. Eating grain simply adds efficiency to our food supply. The inherent evil of efficiency is that it always decreases the robustness of a system and makes it more susceptible to failure. Starch eaters are in fact MORE susceptible to the whims of climate than food eaters. They are dependent on a very small number of calorie sources and have reproduced to the point where even a small change in the availability of grain can push a large number of people into starvation. Expanding the population by feeding people starch instead of food is just an insane game that desperately needs to be phased out.