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How much soda (pop) do you drink?
SeraphimLabs:
I drink way too much soda. And never ever the diet stuff- I'll take my chances with the high fructose corn syrup rather than flirt with substitutes like Aspartame, which may be linked to neurological disorders. Total consumption works out to 1-2 liters a day depending on working conditions and ambient temperature. But I am very careful to sip it gradually through the day, as the steady supply of sugar dampens out fluctuations that cause mood swings. Again, I'd rather chance the corn syrup than deal with other chemicals whose effects are not as well known or introduce side effects.
But all that aside, if you plan your meals factoring in the energy from that sugar, the only thing you're really risking is the effects of sugar and insulin. Obesity can be avoided by reducing food intake to balance out the energy from the sugar, and as long as it is sipped instead of slammed you get a nice stable energy burn all day long without the rise and fall of the normal 3 meals a day causing noticeable changes in mood and energy level.
On the obesity front, I believe antibiotics and growth hormones are still almost universally used in animal farming in the States(?)
-tomos (August 27, 2012, 03:46 PM)
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Nope. Here in New York we're allowed to use antibiotics, and some farms do use different growth hormones such as BST. But these products have a withholding period. After treating the animal with them, any food produced by them must be discarded for a set time period, be it something they produce while alive like milk, or the meat yielded by their slaughter.
There is also strict quality control for food entering the public market:
For instance, when the truck comes to collect the milk produced by a farm, a sample of the holding tank is taken and analyzed to check the quality of the product and ensure it is not contaminated. Any farmer that produces a "hot" tank which fails the quality checks must then pay for the entire truckload at their expense, and the entire truckload is thrown away.
Small farms will often benefit from going organic though, which to maintain the status of means that only bare minimum vaccinations for the animals are allowed, all other veterinarian tasks must rely on natural methods and animals can only be fed using feedstock of organic origin, which is recommended to be grown on-site but can be trucked in from other certified sources.
"Could antibiotics be causing the obesity epidemic?"
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/could-antibiotics-be-causing-the-obesity-epidemic/13552?tag=nl.e660
-tomos (August 27, 2012, 03:46 PM)
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Sounds like someone doesn't know what antibiotics are.
An antibiotic is a substance like Penicillin (which is widely used in agriculture as point of fact, I still have a vial of it in the refrigerator) that is able to neutralize bacteria. They are used in humans too for certain types of infections, although the original Penicillin is no longer used in humans due to widespread sensitivity to it and antibiotic resistance effects.
Growth hormones on the other hand could most definitely be bleeding through into humans, and almost certainly are affecting us. They use a shorter hold-down period than antibiotics, allowing for higher concentrations in the end products to reach the consumer. Effects include people being taller and heavier, but also less obvious ones such as internal organs having abnormal sizes or properties. There are some that are also known to alter one's physical appearance given sufficient exposure- which often is cumulative. I have heard that the hormone BST used on the dairy farm is known to bleed through to commercially available milk supplies.
tomos:
"Could antibiotics be causing the obesity epidemic?"
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/could-antibiotics-be-causing-the-obesity-epidemic/13552?tag=nl.e660
-tomos (August 27, 2012, 03:46 PM)
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Sounds like someone doesn't know what antibiotics are.
An antibiotic is a substance like Penicillin (which is widely used in agriculture as point of fact, I still have a vial of it in the refrigerator) that is able to neutralize bacteria. They are used in humans too for certain types of infections, although the original Penicillin is no longer used in humans due to widespread sensitivity to it and antibiotic resistance effects.-SeraphimLabs (August 27, 2012, 04:09 PM)
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It's clear what antibiotics are - the article is talking about side-effects of taking them long term and early in life. I presume that if animals are regularly given antibiotics -and you eat that meat every day- that you will be getting a regular low dose. So, it seems reasonable to worry about side-effects (and while obesity is obviously a problem, I think there are a lot of other possible problems - as you also point out with growth hormones).
jadinolf:
None here since 2009.
Don't miss it.
Renegade:
None here since 2009.
Don't miss it.
-jadinolf (August 28, 2012, 08:48 AM)
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WOW~! That's a LONG time!
I'm now drinking maybe 1 a month max. Heck, I've even stopped drinking coke or ginger ale with my bourbon. (Water & bourbon instead.)
I remember a number of years ago when I stopped entirely, but every now and then I'd have some pop, and I'd feel like crap. It just made me feel icky and sick inside. A weird, sticky-buzzy kind of ickyness. Not sure how to describe it - not good.
However, on my TODO list is to start making homemade, healthy soda. Yes... It is possible... You can have healthy soda -- if you make it yourself. (Search for something like this: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lacto-fermented+soda )
SeraphimLabs:
It's clear what antibiotics are - the article is talking about side-effects of taking them long term and early in life. I presume that if animals are regularly given antibiotics -and you eat that meat every day- that you will be getting a regular low dose. So, it seems reasonable to worry about side-effects (and while obesity is obviously a problem, I think there are a lot of other possible problems - as you also point out with growth hormones).
-tomos (August 28, 2012, 03:00 AM)
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But that's not how they are used. Antibiotics should only be given when there is some type of bacterial infection, such as an abscess or confirmed illness. They are not by any means used on a regular basis, all that does is encourages antibiotic resistance due to residues. Not only that, but I already mentioned the restrictions- how animals treated with such cannot be used for food until a set time period depending on the product expires so as to allow it to do it's job and be broken down by their body. Although even that holding duration still leaves some residue in the products, it's below state and federal guidelines for contamination.
However supplements and growth hormones don't usually have such restrictions, and are intended for regular dosage to get the required effects. Those most certainly do bleed through to the grocery store shelf, where they will have a largely-undocumented impact on the human body.
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