Dangerous vegetables

I call misleading thread name.
I thought this was about the white house.
My bad!

reply to post by garyo



That is very interesting. I wasn't aware of the attempt to raise tomatoes prices. That is a very interesting coincidence.

This may be common knowledge... I saw a small documentary basically about growing corn. It talked about how they genetically modified the corn over the years from being all protien to being all starch.
Its worthless to the farmers and they cant make profit, but the government pays subsidies for them to grow it. It goes right to the soda companies and what not for making corn syrup.
They feed it to the cows wich is sent to your McDonalds. They said the cows would actually die if they werent for slaughter due to their feed. how is that humane? Good thing we have the FDA.

I was just thinking yesterday ironically about where do "wild" vegetables still grow?
Imagine seeing wild tomatoes growing, or sqaush. So exotic and prehistoric looking. Maybe its a blessing we still have these strains of fruits and vegetables with us today, but the domestication of everything is pretty scary.
I noticed some bulbs of garlic we had here at my house were FROM CHINA, no joke. Tomatoes and oranges from Cali I can understand. bananas from wherever...sure.
but to pay who knows how much money for oil and what not to ship some garlic from the other side of the freaking planet just does not make one bit of sense to me. Praise the almighty dollar. Bastards.

reply to post by stinkhorn

I have been to 7 3rd world countries,

I am very curious as to what 3rd world countries you have been to and why.

they are are filled with filth that we in the US would not tolerate because they are too lazy to dig a proper well.

How many wells have you dug?

The farms that hire them are all cheap assed bastards that refuse to pay a decent working wage and only have profit in mind, hell they make more percentage wise than the oil companies.

Again where is your data. You make these statements but don't provide a source.

they are slobs, they dont care and they are greedy bastards.

I am confused as to how a person who works manual labor for less then minimum wage could be called a "greedy bastard".

One thing I have learned is that those who are the most critical, hateful, and elitist are often the biggest hypocrites. I feel very sorry for your outlook on life. You have shown yourself to have a hatred for others as a result you must feel like others have a hatred for you. The world you live in must be a very sad and lonely one indeed. I wish you the best of luck in life.

reply to post by Mailman


Some very interesting points. I would be interested to see that documentry if you have a link.

Interesting thread.

My options:

1) Vegetables stuffed with pesticides, fertilizers, nitrates, and contaminant
ridden water?

2) Slowly succumbing to starvation over a period of weeks

Hmm, tough decision, but after long debate, I choose option 1.

lucky i raley get exposed to vegtables from the super market or fruit shops i grow my own vegtables in the vegi patch i have in my back yard

reply to post by harvib


I worked for the peace corps trying to help people learn to do things on their own, most of the time the people just stand around and let you do all the work. 3rd world countries, name them I have been there.

Here is an example of a greedy illegal alien...He came from el salvador, left his wife there because he could make more money in the US to build his mansion there, he was almost completed when the market for construction work started going dry, now he will head back to el salvador to his old job as a pharmacist until he could afford 12 more windows for his 7000 sqft home.

This example was written about the workers after Katrina and how they are coping with working in the US. I cant site a source since it was so long ago, but it is accurate and just 1 example. Greed comes in many forms, you dont have to be wealthy to be greedy, you can be dirt poor and still be greedy.

Aw, c'mmon folks, it aint that difficult. They have lousy sanitation in other countries where the food is grown and handled.

Originally posted by harvib
reply to post by stinkhorn

 

One thing I have learned is that those who are the most critical, hateful, and elitist are often the biggest hypocrites. I feel very sorry for your outlook on life. You have shown yourself to have a hatred for others as a result you must feel like others have a hatred for you. The world you live in must be a very sad and lonely one indeed. I wish you the best of luck in life.


So you seem to think that your observations hold more water than the true life experience that I have lived through. You are being critical of me right now, the irony. I really dont hate anyone, I am tired of trying to help people that really do not want to improve their situation and would rather spend their money on materialistic crap.

Once again, lets say you live in mexico, you make .25 a hour, but you know that right across the border you can make 3.25 an hour for the same exact work, what will drive you over the border to make more...GREED!

This is what you Americans get for payback when you mess with Immigration. I'm sure they'll get to the bottom of this. I know I wouldn't want to have some filthy person picking my tomatoes. Just maybe Dr. Hulda Clarks vegetable zapper really does back up to science. Washing fruits and vegetables just doesn't do the trick anymore. Someone's gonna flip the switch on the food decontamination business when thousands of people die from some crazy outbreak. I'm sure some rogue agent will be going green as soon as Washington gives the go ahead. Another perfect natural disaster to stem the economy. If more people die we might see a stronger dollar. And don't forget our enemies that are willing to use biotechnology down to the final Pick 4.

Go watch some genetic mutation videos. It's more interesting than nuclear physics. Bacteria and Virus have been shaping this world since the beginning. Maybe its just time they start coming around to do their work. The black plague of the plant world. So if they consume us to death that's not so bad but if they wipe out vegetation around the world. I'm going to be looking for something to eat or die from infection.

I heard on the news the other day that bush de-funded the FDA and now with all of the new food coming in from mexico is not getting checked by anyone! Tomato business is a 500M Dollar business. They banned all tomato's from Here and there until they figured out the tomatoes did come from mexico.
What I don't understand is why Bush is not protecting our farmers? Could you imagine growing food harvesting it just to have someone tell you that it's not useable?
HOW will you feed your family, and some guilt I'm sure, its just unbelievable.

It has everything to do with GM. Tomatoes don't taste the same, also corn. GM rice doesn't cook up right and is hard in the middle, also bad taste.
Recently I was in a Safeway and saw some little red new potatoes. I love them. I cooked some and one hour after I ate them, I became severely sick. I could taste the solanecea for four days.
I order potatoes from a farm in Idaho, the potatoes I grew up on that taste good.
Online you can order "organic" produce that tastes right.
Be informed; boycot GM.

I should have mentioned I'm an "extreme gardener" and save seeds so I can know what I'm eating. GM is ruining our food and is heading toward a monopoly because GM seeds are sterile, intentionaly.

reply to post by stinkhorn

Once again, lets say you live in mexico, you make .25 a hour, but you know that right across the border you can make 3.25 an hour for the same exact work, what will drive you over the border to make more...GREED!

I couldn't feed my family on 3.25 an hour can you??? So by your definition greed and wanting to provide basic nessesities for your family is synonomous.

You mentioned you worked in the peace corp. Did you have such a disdain for people before you joined? What caused you to become so jaded. How do you think these people you view as "lazy and filthy" became that way. In what ways are you diffrent? Do you think it's a racial, culturual, or some other factor. What do you think can be done to help these people live a better quality of life?

reply to post by Alikospah


GM is very scary. Who do we think we are to change what God or millions of years of evolution has created (whatever the case may be ) I have heard that untouched seeds are becoming harder to find. Also if there is a field of non GMO food pollen from a GMO crop can cause the non GMO crop to become GMO. Therefore as more and more fields are bing grown GM we will almost have to grow non GMO in a completely sterile enviroment. Very sad.

contaminating/poisoning our air,water and food supplies should be against the cosmic laws imo.

that is just not fair for proper soul evolution

reply to post by Skipper1975


I would imagine it is. Hence the price that we are paying for doing so.

reply to post by Karlhungis


I agree, we do have an option, we can stop buying from big retail stores and start buying into our local growers.

While here in GA tomatoes were taken out of the shelves, it was plenty tomatoes at the local market.

I eat them and I am fine.

Perhaps supporting the locals is better for the health.

There is a tendency in this day and age to always try to find a scapegoat to lay blame on. Something or someone that the "powers that be" can hold up and say, " Here's the guilty party! Everythings under control! Now go buy some tomatoes, or bananas, or an I-pod, or anything .... please!"

In my opinion we are beginning to see the resulting unintended consequences of of our handling of a number of factors.

Whiteraven's post provides a good look at how it was almost everywhere in America outside the cities as little as 1 generation past. You knew where your food was from. Even in the cities most of your produce and meats and milk came from someplace right outside town. We had a very much agricultural based economy and it had worked well since before the revolutionary war.

Have you ever noticed in a drive through the country how the small towns are spaced about 5 miles apart? In many places there will be little more than a cluster of old houses and a 4 way stop left anymore. All that remains of a once bustling small town. My point is, most of the food only traveled less than 5 miles to market. And since we had been an agricultural society for better than 300 years the farmers had a great deal of understanding passed down through the generations of good farming practices. Such as being careful how and when you use raw manure from the barn to fertilize the garden and fields, and using crop rotations to deter diseases, weeds and pests, rather than relying on chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.

Indoor plumbing and the benefits it provides have only become a widespread innovation rather recently, mostly after WW2. Prior to this a bath was a rather rare occurance, once a month if you were lucky, once a week if the people around you were lucky. The effect though, was that you were exposed to germs on a regular basis and built up an immunity to them. They were for the most part local germs as well, because people and produce just didn't move very far or very fast. Automobiles got bigger and faster and it became easier to get produce to markets where the price was higher. But a farmer has things to do like water and feed livestock, a morning wagon ride to town with a load of veggies and eggs was one thing, a 5 day trip to the bigger cities is another, thus the middlemen come in, adding another set of germy hands to the produce. After ww2 they built the Eisenhower Freeway system and suddenly we could go coast to coast in record time. Of course the germs went with us at record speed as well.

Rewind a bit to the discovery and subsequent widespread use of penicillin. Hailed as a miracle cure and overused to the point of being almost useless now for many of the germs it once killed, because... surprise! ...surprise! the germs have an immunity system just like us.

So the perfect germ storm begins to come together. Produce that once was picked only hours before by a farmer a couple miles and most likely only touched by his hands, became produce picked many hundreds or even thousands of miles away and touched by many hands, then left to cultivate a healthy bacterial colony while the produce is in transit. Bodies that were once regularly exposed to germs on a daily basis and had a healthy immunity built up are being washed with "anti-bacterial" soap (as if soap wasn't antibacterial all along) rather regularly, so we are less exposed to the germs and our natural immunity is decreased. Then as a coup-de-grace our overuse of antibiotics has bred new and improved germs, stronger, faster and more deadly.

We have been brought to this point by a whole host of things that I will boil down to only economics and greed for the purpose of this post. But when I see some sort of quasi-official on the news saying " We caught Juan taking a dump in the tomato field, he's been deported. Go buy some tomatoes everythings swell!".

I'll just shake my head and go water my garden.

Lurker