Slashdot Mirror
FDA Backtracks On Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Proposal
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The FDA recognized, 35 years ago, that feeding animals low-doses of certain antibiotics used in human medicine — namely, penicillin and tetracyclines — could promote antibiotic-resistant bacteria capable of infecting people who eat meat, and proposed to withdraw approval for the use of those antibiotics in animal feed. Instead of acting upon the proposal, the FDA has now withdrawn it. Although admitting that it continues to have 'concerns' about the safety of the use of antibiotics in animal feed, the FDA says that it will just continue to rely on 'voluntary self-policing' by the industry, the same method which hasn't worked out too well during the past 35 years, as antibiotic use in livestock and antibiotic resistance have continued to rise throughout the entire period."
FDA continues to admit it's useless and just likes to thrash its arms about in a non threatening manner. I guess I'm not surprised.
Bet you it leads back to Industry.
Unfortunately they will eventually spread their antibiotic-resistant bacteria around, and the rest of us will be doomed as well.
Trying to dissprove the concept of "tragedy of the commons"?
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Yet another consequence to greed. View the documentary 'Food Inc.', they show how the food industry have become afraid of the public opinion by creating laws against criticizing food producers and totally dedicated to generate more profit by lowering quality standards and so on..
If enjoying the wonderful taste of a wood roasted tenderloin filet spreads the antibiotic-resistant bacteria around and in the process kills everyone, I am OK with that. We all die eventually, and if others can die for my happiness, cool! :)
You know how to tell if someone is a vegetarian?
They will tell you.
Meat gets antibiotics. Vegetables get synthetic fertilizer. No food source can feed the planet without modern agriculture techniques.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I am also a vegetarian and you need to realize that antibiotics are also sprayed on citrus fruits and vegetables.
As a veterinarian this is finality a topic on Slashdot I am qualified to talk about. However, rather than get into the details I am going to punt this one :)
Here is a four-part series on the struggle over the use of antibiotics in the livestock industry, the threat of antibiotic-resistant pathogens and the veterinary profession’s role in safeguarding animal and public health.
http://news.vin.com/VINNews.aspx?articleId=18645
I think the more apt comparison would be, vegetables get pesticides. And yes, even organic food get pesticides.
Other than the summary - is there any reference that this promotes 'bacteria capable of infecting people who eat meat'? Or does it promote bacteria with resistance to the antibiotics in use that can affect everyone?
http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=85455 Many other growers use antibiotics on fruits and vegetables. In fact, antibiotic resistance likely comes more from excessive use in ranching and agriculture rather than direct use in humans IMHO.
"I didn't spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called 'Mr.Evil,' thank you very much!"
The FDA is looking out for the best interests of America's citizens. NOT!
The planet can't support "modern agricultural techniques" which is right up there with military intelligence on the oxymoron list.
This summary might be the most misleading I've ever seen on slashdot.
For one thing, the FDA has almost no authority in many of their jurisdictions; they can recommend things, but in most cases have no power to change policy or punish reckless companies. This is especially true with meat and produce. Do some googling about dirty slaughterhouses and meat packing plants and you'll find accounts of the FDA actually pleading with meat packers and state health districts to stop distributing meat from plants that had floors, walls, and packing equipment test positive for wide varieties of serious food-borne pathogens. The same goes for packing plants that had open holes in the walls and ceilings, or rodents literally scurrying underfoot on the packing line. The FDA had absolutely no authority to mandate closure of those plants, and still doesn't as far as I know.
They shouldn't have withdrawn their recommendation against antibiotics in feed (saying the right thing is never wrong in science), but that recommendation never affected policy in the first place; it's total bullshit to imply, quite strongly, that the FDA just doesn't care anymore and thinks it's totally fine for meat producers to inspect themselves.
They don't think it's fine; they fucking hate it. At least the scientists do, and the field inspectors do. The FDA does have a lot of senior management who, by many internal accounts, dedicate themselves solely to rubber-stamping industry proposals - and harassing any pissant scientist who objects. If this new policy is half as blase or half as scientifically ignorant as the linked article implies, and indeed came about to dodge a lawsuit, you can bet it came from some ass-covering prick at the top who doesn't represent the viewpoints of even 10% of the FDA staff.
So ultimately, the FDA doesn't have the mandate, the funding, or the legal prerogative to do even one-tenth as much as the scientists and lower-management would like - and which organizations like the NRDC expect them to do. The politically appointed senior management pull bullshit like this, and people like the NRDC and the submitter use corruption at the highest levels to denigrate a lot of dedicated, well-meaning scientists by calling the whole organization a bunch of lazy sociopaths.
If you want safe food and better drug testing then don't piss on the FDA: you should bitch at Congress about the fucking pro-corporate morons they appoint to lead the FDA, and about the shitty laws and budgets that leave the FDA with not even half the money and authority they need to do the job we expect of them.
Meat gets antibiotics. Vegetables get synthetic fertilizer. No food source can feed the planet without modern agriculture techniques.
Considering mankind has survived without antibiotics and synthetic fertilizers for thousands of years, this is a rather distorted view, and is debatable given the greed and corruption behind the corporations that tell us we "need" these things in our food.
FDA seeks to invest in foodborne illness prevention, medical product safety and countermeasures $4.3 billion request reflects a 33 percent increase from FY 2010 enacted budget
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is requesting a budget of $4.3 billion to protect and promote the public health as part of the President’s fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget — a 33 percent increase over the FDA enacted budget for FY 2010. The FY 2012 request covers the period of Oct. 1, 2011, through Sept. 30, 2012.
“FDA protects and promotes the health of all Americans through every stage of life,” said Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., commissioner of food and drugs. “The breadth of this mandate means that FDA responsibilities continue to grow. The new budget contains new resources so that FDA can fulfill its growing responsibilities to the American public.” http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm243354.htm
It is a supreme falsehood that a government's responsibilities and resources must grow. Bureaucracies like the FDA may be immune to democracy, but the politicians who seek to grow them are not.
As I understand it this is how it works, they give cows and pigs antibiotics in low doses so they won't get sick in the crowded feeding yards. There is not a problem with the bacteria in cows and pigs being resistant because properly handling and cooking the meat will kill the bacteria, and sick animals are treated before they are slaughtered. However the antibiotics are still in the cows and pigs and are passed on to the consumer, at those low doses bacteria will not be completely eliminated and can become resistant to them. Once the person is sick they will spread the more resistant bacteria to anyone they come in contact with. So it's not a problem that the vegetarians are immune too, vegetarians can't make the bacteria any stronger, but still can get the illness.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Exactly :)
Raw organic fruits and a little bit of green veggies (oragnic, of course) is all you need.
People using html in email should be shot.
What idiot thinks that "voluntary self-policing" works in any for-profit business? There are two fundamental problems with that plan: (1) businesses will only "volunteer" to do what benefits them, not the public, and (2) many businesses are surprisingly short-sighted and will only "volunteer" to do things that help their industry or their business in the short-term.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Can't, need proteins to code shaders.
Only veggies I touch are coffe.
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Other than the summary - is there any reference that this promotes 'bacteria capable of infecting people who eat meat'? Or does it promote bacteria with resistance to the antibiotics in use that can affect everyone?
It's the second, of course: meat-eaters aren't a unique class of person vulnerable to completely different pathogenic illnesses than those who don't eat meat.
On the other hand, animals and animal products are an excellent way of acquiring any pathogenic illness that isn't transmitted by sex or air, and they're still the number one source of novel diseases. Anthropologists have pretty well established that major plagues usually jumped directly from animals, often livestock, into humans. They didn't call it swine flu for the nasty imagery.
The powerful connection between animal products in the food supply and infectious disease must be what they're really getting at - and the reason they don't want to risk making animal-borne bacteria any stronger.
On the other hand, public discomfort with antibiotics has, in the last few years, created a market (albeit small) for organic meat. While it isn't available everywhere, many people do have a choice to "opt out" regardless of the FDA's lack of action.
Let's not forget that although humans "survived" there was horrible survivability rates and people were dieing very young constantly.
Following your google search, I read the first three articles referencing food-related shutdowns. Every one, even the ones entitled "FDA shuts down" or claiming that the FDA "ordered" someone to stop production, ultimately acknowledged that the company "agreed" to cease production and signed a "consent decree" with the FDA.
So it's still exactly as I read in Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan books: the FDA finds violations and they have to whine, beg, and invoke publicity campaigns to get dirty producers to shut down or improve conditions. They still can't force anyone to do anything most of the time.
So anyway, thanks for playing, and judging by your second paragraph it's time for your thorazine, so please follow the nice nurse to your bedroom and she'll give you a nice gentle prick in the ass. Right where your opinions and your research come from.
Widespread meat-eating just makes it less able to support them, though - the feedstuffs for the animals has to come from somewhere, meaning that they get farmed and have fertilizer and pesticides dumped on them, and a lot of the energy in those feedstuffs is wasted making meat a very inefficient source of food.
It's not meant to be a point of criticism, but it's not meat that's making so many American's fat -- it's fructose in the diet from table sugar and just as bad high corn fructose syrup. Here's a link to a fascinating video by Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist specializing in childhood obesity, entitled "The Bitter Truth About Sugar" that covers among other topics the biochemical process that connects fructose to creation of fat cells: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM. Checkout the history between the size of soda cans/bottles and the correlation to obesity rates in America. If you just want the highlights from the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdMjKEncojQ In my own personal research it's mind blowing the amount of fructose in soda vs. other food products. The amount of sugar in a low sugar whole wheat slice of bread: 1g. The amount of sugar in a 24 oz. Dr. Pepper bottle: 80g! Unholy bat guano! It's a miracle that people's pancreas don't explode from the amount of sugar consumed on a daily basis.
During which time people suffered from disease and malnutrition and many people were subsistence farmers. If you want to send yourself back to those times, be my guest. I like not having to grow my own produce and slaughter my own animals.
Sure, but we'll have to kill off the majority of the populations of China, India, and Africa.
It is a supreme falsehood that a government's responsibilities and resources must grow. Bureaucracies like the FDA may be immune to democracy, but the politicians who seek to grow them are not.
So therefore any and all attempts at increasing government spending represent greedy politicians squeezing more cash out of the populace?
Even the most hardcore libertarians I know believe the government has taxation authority for transportation infrastructure, weights & measures enforcement, and a military - including growing those things when needed. But not you, you saw through even those bullshit arguments! Guess the next time I-90 buckles or a new town with 2 million people thinks that *maybe* it's time they got a freeway we'll have to point out that: "No! Lee Greatrex opened our eyes and we know that government spending shalt never grow!".
Wake up and smell the rotting pig entrails, pal. The FDA has been underfunded and under-mandated since the 70's. If I recall, they don't even get inflation adjustments under some congresses. Increasing their budget by 33% is still not even 1/10th of the budget and none of the authority that epidemiologists, food safety advocates, and drug company whistle-blowers think they need.
It works !! it works SO well that you can understand how well it works from the words from testimony of Alan Greenspan in front of senate inquiry committee regarding wall street :
"I dont understand why corporations didnt regulate themselves"
Read radical news here
Throw in a bit of nuts and eggs.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
For how many thousands of years have there been greater than one billion people on the planet? How do you expect to get the yields to feed that many people without modern agriculture techniques?
It's not greedy corporations that "tell us we 'need' these things in our food". You can go start a farm or garden today, refuse to use these products, and see how your yields turn out. People who grow organically today compete on quality for a reason, they can't get the yields factory farming does.
Not saying the corporate farming industry is without its faults, just being realistic here.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But you might get sick by eating it.
Hmmm, poisonous beef... drool
No need :)
People using html in email should be shot.
Oh great, another propaganda point that somehow supersedes a 3 centuries of research (keeping soldiers alive on the high seas was an intense focus of research with lots of fuckups ... and you know what they already knew 3 centuries ago ? No matter what the fuckup, raw meat can fix it. Cooked/baked meat and fish (raw or cooked) can fix the large majority of fuckups with a few notable exceptions).
People (mostly small children though) die from not eating meat
If you die from too much meat, it'll be at 50 at the earliest.
And yes with a massively varied diet of plants you can avoid the need to eat meat almost completely. Not quite completely, but almost. To the point that your body can survive for maybe 2 decades without meat. This requires constant nutritional supplements (usually made from fish, so there's barely any nutricional supplements that qualify as vegetarian) and medical monitoring. It is a very difficult exercise, that's basically impossible in all but the most developed countries. You can cheat and drink milk and eat eggs, which will help a lot.
Your dietary suggestion of beans + grain is moronic. How about you eat beans and grains exclusively for 4 months, and we bet for 1000 dollars that it won't work. Of course, that's a bad bet, since either you cheat, or you die ... In both cases I doubt I'll see any money. You will after all have died from the most basic of food diseases, scurvy, after 2-3 months. That would be 2-3 weeks at best if you didn't start out living in one of the most developed nations on earth.
In practice 2 weeks will cause enough symptoms to manifest themselves that the pain alone will drive you back to normalcy : after about a week on your proposed diet you will get small wounds which won't heal, usually in places like the corners of the mouth or between the fingers and toes. They won't heal. A little after that they will start to rip open merely because you move your body. A crust will form on them, time and again, but it will be unable to remain attached to your skin. These wounds will slowly grow in size. From that point on you will feel extremely bad and spend upwards of 14 hours in bed each day, you will lose interest in anything and everyting, complaining of a constant headache. And we're not even at ONE month yet. After a month you will lose the ability to breathe normally and have a constant sharp pain in your bones. Keep it up, and a few teeth will fall out, you will constantly have blood in your mouth, the result of large infected areas in your mouth, rendering you unable to eat or drink without extreme discomfort. Likewise, blood will leak from the other small wounds, which at this point won't be all that small anymore. After this, random internal bleeding will start occuring, making you look like a person who's gone 10 rounds against Mike Tyson, unsuccessfully. From this point on, if you're unlucky, it takes a few weeks for you to die. You will die from total loss of internal body cohesion : blood will literally leak everywhere, and at the autopsy if they break your skin without taking the pressure of first, it will gusher out.
Any other dietary suggestions ? Hint : best include the most basic of additives, vitamin C. It would also be great if you actually noticed that plants do not contain all 9 of the essential amino acids, and so you will have to include at least two non-plant lifeforms. And please note that children have 13 essential amino acids, so their dietary requirements (in the sense that they die if they don't get it) are more extensive. There are tons of special cases where additional nutrients are required either because of genetic predisposition or simple external factors ranging from contact with salt water to lack of sunlight.
There is one substance that contains all required nutrients for a human being : meat (raw meat). With fish being a close second (likewise raw), with only a few omissions. Pulverizing the bones and adding them to the meat itself makes both meat and fish much healthier (a feature ironically only part of "low-quality" meats).
Are they absolutely required ? No. But if you don't take them ... you get to puzzle everything together. Miss one piece and you will not like the result at all.
IMO... food has gotten significantly cheaper over the years, and people have been consuming more calories. More calories == more fat == more obesity.
But don't let that stop you from searching for that one evil ingredient that's making everyone fat. Just think, if we stop consuming fructose, we can all chow down on our daily serving of fast food without gaining a pound. McD for everyone!
(Personal example.. so feel free to ignore it entirely)
I consume 6-8 pieces of fruit/day (in my mostly vegetarian diet.. nothing against meat; fruits and veggies just taste better).
23g of sugar in an apple or orange
17g in a banana
15g in a peach
20g in a serving of grapes
That's around 150g of sugar/day (2/3rd of the sugar in fruit is fructose). Or 2x what the average person consumes (according to your video).
I'm 5'9", 165lbs, 14% body fat.
I guess I'll be obese any day now with a diet like that right?
Find a local farmer who doesn't use antibiotics - buy from them directly. In addition to my IT job, I have a small farm - we raise 45 - 60 pigs each year on open fields and without antibiotics in the food. We supplement the pigs grain with whey, acorns, and apples - the product we produce is of a much higher quality than is possible to find in a store, and by buying in bulk directly from the farmer I get more for my product and the end customer pays less.
There are good wholesome sustainable locally grown products almost wherever you are - find a small meat locker nearby and ask them or ask people at a local farmers market. If there is no one really close a lot of farms deliver - we sometimes drive up to three hours to deliver a pig (frozen and butchered) to a customer.
didn't mean, "IMO people are eating more". meant, IMO that's the cause. People are definitely eating more than they used to.
I raise antibiotic free meat. I know several other farmers who do as well. Modern agriculture techniques don't require that we keep animals in such poor conditions that they have to be sick all the time without antibiotics, and they don't require that margins be so slim as to require the growth boost that can be gained by feeding them in bulk. A far more modern view would look at the risks as well as the benefits.
I usually like NewYorkCountryLawyer, but I'm going to have to ask him for some proof for the statement "antibiotic use in livestock and antibiotic resistance have continued to rise throughout the entire period". I would offer the alternative that antibiotic use peaked, and then declined because overuse led to antibiotic resistance. Currently I believe that livestock antibiotic use is minimal, simply because frequent heavy use doesn't work well. And the livestock antibiotics is only a minor cause for the rise in antibiotic resistance. That resistance, which predates livestock use, is primarily caused by overuse in humans.
I hope you didn't stop liking me. I was relying on the knowledgeable folks at Grist for the statement that the practice of feeding antibiotics to livestock not for treating disease, but for the purposes of promoting growth and enabling the use of more dangerous living conditions, has increased. I know that the total amount was estimated at 29,000,000 pounds per year, and that 80% of that is estimated to be for non-therapeutic uses.
Your statements about increased resistance and use of antibiotics actually miss the point; no one is complaining about use of antibiotics to treat disease. What we are talking about is the 80% of antibiotics which go into two nefarious uses for antibiotics in livestock: (1) to increase growth [for reasons still unknown, agribusiness discovered at some point that antibiotics promote growth] and (2) disease prevention.
While "disease prevention" sounds like an ok thing, it is really a code word for "enabling the animals to be kept in such inhumane and unlivable conditions that it is assumed that antibiotics are needed to prevent the diseases they would otherwise be given by such living conditions".
So while I can't put my fingers on the data regarding growth of these uses for antibiotics in animals, I can say with certainty that the use is about 10 times the amount of antibiotics used on humans, and that 80% of it is used for purposes other than medical treatment.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
No.
The give an extremely small amount of antibiotics. something like 1/100 th of a dose. 90% of which is peed out. This kills bugs in the animals gut. Then the animal absorbs more food.
There is NO TRACE in any meat when processed.
When an animal is sick, it is isolated, given proper doses, and has to be without antibiotics. If memory serves, 3 months isolation.
Isolation may also mean several animals who might be sick.
The dose is far too low to create a 'superbug'.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
and I get to be sick at the +1 mod to stupid ignorant statements.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ask where the bacteria come from to begin with.
Most people dont know what happens to our waste once we flush the toilet.
Hint - EPA Title 40 Section 503 - Land application of Sewage Sludge.
Hint #2 - if it doesnt say USDA Certified Organic on label, the winning bet is human sewage was part of production cycle.
www.sludgefacts.org
www.sewagesludgeactionnetwork.com
www.deadlydeciet.com
Big problem in PA
Big problem in CA
Big problem in VA
I wholeheartedly agree. My doctor tells me not to smoke, drink, eat too much salt etc etc... If I do all that I can just as well kill myself because life isn't worth living then.
-- Cheers!
No doubt you can get fat eating too much of anything, but the thing about modern Western diets is that they are highly processed. They've added high-fructose corn syrup to everything and taken nearly all the fiber out of our grains.
Eating a banana provides fiber, is more filling, and more nutritious than drinking a bottle of flavored sugar water.
There's obviously bribery going on to interfere with this public health program. Either directly in cash or other things of value, or just the promise of career escalation after leaving the FDA to work for the meat industry and its support services.
If our news media weren't even more corrupt there'd be a news story about the bribery. Reporters have had 35 years to cover it.
--
make install -not war
Well, while I am hitting that age where I'm trying to eat more veggies, etc.
I still feel that I didn't get to the top of the whole food chain to only eat rabbit food.
I like to have grilled, roasted, braised or fried dead animals too....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If you read the links I posted as a reply to myself (CDC)... over the past 30 years, calorie intake has increased by 335 calories/day for women and 168 calories a day for men. That's 2lbs/month.
People are fat because they eat too much. Sorry it's not more complicated than that.
BTW.. my reply was specifically addressing those who say fructose is the sole problem. In the parents second video link, he says fructose is a poison. That's ridiculous.
I won't argue that things w/ fiber are more filling.. since I agree.
Also.. Sucrose (table sugar) is 50/50 fructose and glucose. HCFS is 55% fructose. Not a huge difference.. so it seems unlikely it's causing all the problems people want to attribute to it.
People who worry about antibiotic resistances shouldn't worry just about meat that has this. They need to worry about Triclosan and the family of antibacterials that are used in plastics and handwash formulas as well. There's no shortage of studies out that show using it promotes bacterial resistance to all antibiotics.
If you're that damn paranoid about germs, use 80-100% rubbing alcohol, or a iodine based antiseptic.
Om, nomnomnom...
There's a reason as stated in Lustig's presentation about why eating fruits as a source of sugar is NOT bad -- it's because the fruits don't just contain fructose, they also contain fiber, a substance which among other things inhibits the absorption of fructose through the intestines, unlike the sugar/fructose that's put into candy, salad dressings, junk food in general and soda which have NO FIBER. That's something you would have picked up *HAD YOU WATCHED EITHER VIDEO*. If it makes you feel any better, *I* appreciate you letting me know what kind of diet you are eating and the results you're getting. Based on Lustig's presentation and the South Beach diet I've managed to lose 50lbs. since September 1st just by ditching the junk food + sodas + any foods high in sugars (but with no fiber) or carbs such as potatos (which if you're not familiar are processed into sugars by the human body). I'm going to try switching to a higher fruit diet to see if I can get results similar to yours.
attention mods: MOD PARENT UP
And anyone reading this, also check the youtube video mentioned. It's informative and interesting at the same time. True, it's 1h30 long, but the guy isn't boring.
JigJag
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
I was gonna say, 'Yeah, it can, they did it for millenia', but then I reread what you said. Feeding 7 billion people isn't easy. Even harder is dealing with warlords who play games with the distribution.
I've been told we have 5 times as much food on hand at any given time to feed everybody, the problem is in the distribution networks. When they get politicised, problems happen. Just look at central Africa.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Actually you couldn't be more wrong, the planet can't even support the CURRENT population without modern agricultural techniques, never mind FUTURE population growth. Add in the fact that much of the world is currently subsisting on inadequate or barely adequate nutrition as it is, and your statement becomes even more ridiculous. One effect of globalization has been to increase the quality of life in former 3rd world nations. China and India come to mind as rapidly developing nations with HUGE populations that are going to be demanding a higher plane of nutrition than they currently get.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Low level antibiotics used in agriculture, self policing? Check. Heavy metals from sludge used in agriculture, self policing? Check. Human sewage sludge using in agriculture, self policing? Check. Keeping American citizens dumb to what is really going on within the Agriculture industry? Check. Fund biased research to prove Ecoli/MRSA/salmonella outbreaks unlinked to any of the above? Check.
I'm too burned out from the Mad Cow fear mongering to even care anymore.
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
You think you have it bad --- my doctor told me I had to stop posting comments on Slashdot!
About 0.2 thousand, actually.
In the parents second video link, he says fructose is a poison. That's ridiculous.
I watched the whole video, the 1.5 hour one on the first link, and he goes through how it's treated metabolically by the body, and in particular the liver, and he compares it to alcohol. If what he says is true, he makes a reasonable case. It's not the kind of poison that is going to kill you in one shot, but over time it does have harmful effects and can cause chronic illness.
I wouldn't write this guy off so quickly. In particular, the amount of sugar that's being dumped into our foods has been on a steady climb for decades. The simplest piece of advice he gives is to stop drinking sugared drinks like soda and fruit juices.
thanks... guess i'll have to watch the longer one.
congrats on the weight loss. About 6-7 years ago I cut nearly all of the junk food, lost 45 lbs. It's surprisingly difficult to gain weight without junk. 1 pint of ice cream == 10 apples or 30 tomatoes or 25 cucumbers or 1-1.5 loaves of bread or ~2.5 steaks (8oz).
Yes. Vegetables get Fertilizer and Cows get the protein food. Yes, Vegetables need pesticides, and i hope that we also prevent insects dangerous to the cows from crawling around the cows.
However, if the cow is always close to getting a bacterial infection prevented by antibiotics then you have done something as wrong as if vegetables would rot in to moist ground and your solution to this would not be to regulate the amount of water but to hope to kill the bacteria in some other way.
The point is: modern farming should provide ideal nutrition and environments to plant and animals - e.g. the hygienic greenhouses. If you do that then plants or animals don't get sick. If you practices are so fucked up your plants or animals get sick by default, then you are *not* doing modern agriculture, but something different.
How to know is somebody is an asshat? They will mock on explicitly marked personal statements, even if on-topic to compensate for something.
There's a good article from Gary Taubes that presents a good summary of the argument, along with some of the uncertainties:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=2&ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all