October 7, 2009

Healthful foods are also the foods most likely to make you sick.

Hmmm.

Obligatory film reference:
Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk." 
Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties. 
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge? 
Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true. 
Dr. Melik: Incredible.
But don't laugh. Watch the clip at the first link to the end. This is all about priming us for a big increase in the power of the FDA.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of course tiger's milk is unhealthy. You try suckling on a tiger's teat and tell us what happens.

Peter

MadisonMan said...

My opinion is that your likelihood of getting sick really drops if you know where your food is coming from.

The FDA is supposed to monitor things to keep food safe. If food is unsafe, then the FDA is not doing its job. It's counterintuitive to then give it more power. How about they do something with the power they do have?

Yes, I know that's how bureaucracies work. You pay them to do A, which they don't do, but they do B and ask for more money to do C.

Fred4Pres said...

Not exactly. This should be called common sense.

Salad can make you sick because it is generally eaten raw. As a matter of course, you should wash all salad (whether pre washed or not) and assume it could be contaminated with something. It grows in dirt you know. Animals like deer walk through those fields doing what animals do. Even if it is contaminated, washing almost always helps make it less so. And while organic salad is pestiside free (supposedly) it is not organic fertilizer free (which is often some form of animal shit). Yum.

As for oysters. Get them from sources you can trust. Provided they come from clean waters, no problems. They are food of the gods, but there is nothing quite as bad as gobbling down one of satan's spawn occasionally mixed in.

Fred4Pres said...

This is not about giving the FDA or the USDA more powers. They have enough. It is often not domestic food that is the source of the problem, but imported food from Mexico and elsewhere. You want to expand powers, more inspections of food coming in.

And anyone who eats food from China (like cheap shrimp, etc.) is playing Russian roulette.

traditionalguy said...

Will the FDA also tell Walmart to buy American food and not Chinese food? That would be going beyond preaching to meddling. Until proven otherwise, the FDA wants a job more than they want to protect Americans from Health Foods.

KCFleming said...

"Healthful foods are also the foods most likely to make you sick."

Inigo Montoya: Healthful? You keep using that word...

chuck b. said...

I guess the possibility that the FDA is understaffed and underfunded is outside the realm of possibility.

Well, stay away from zinc-based "cold remedies".

Anonymous said...

All of DC sees now as a golden moment: a president who believes in the nanny state and loves to write checks.

We're in real trouble.

Original Mike said...

If food is unsafe, then the FDA is not doing its job. It's counterintuitive to then give it more power. How about they do something with the power they do have?

Agreed.

For 5 additional points replace "FDA" with "Medicare" and recompute.

MadisonMan said...

Why is Medicare trying to keep food safe?

Original Mike said...

As per your FDA observation, on another front the government is asking for the power to rework the health care sector in the mold of Medicare, while Medicare is bleeding money and cost shifting it's obligations to the private sector (a private sector which will disappear if their plans are take to fruition).

A better test writer might have stripped out "If food is unsafe" from the original quote. But then a better student would have rolled with it.

No points for you. ;-)

miller said...

I love my government, because it cares about ME.

wv: culling, as in "the government's attitude towards people like me."

Kylos said...

Not quite the same issue, but I have a friend from college whose doctor told him to lay off on the salads a bit because his vitamin A levels were too high.

Larry J said...

My brother Steve is a picky eater. He jokes that "green food causes brain damage" and refuses to eat it. Of course he's wrong, green food doesn't cause brain damage (running does) but it can be unhealthy.

traditionalguy said...

The best brain food is high protein beef and lamb. The fads will always be with us to sell something else. And people who practice Yoga for long suddenly develope an intense dislike for eating beef...go figure.

Original Mike said...

@Kylos: Jesh. I've taken to eating great big salads to improve my lipid levels. Now I have to worry about too high Vitamin A?

Kylos said...

He had been suffering sudden and acute throbbing in his head when he got his heart rate up. I don't know the mechanism, but apparently the doctor blamed vitamin A. But, since I'm not licensed in that field I'd recommend talking to your doctor before making drastic changes to your diet.

My perspective has always been that overdoing it on one type of food or neglecting another isn't healthy. Variety in diet really can be healthy.

blake said...

Oh, hell, everybody's gettin' more power, why leave the FDA out?

The Crack Emcee said...

traditionalguy,

"People who practice Yoga for long suddenly develope an intense dislike for eating beef...go figure."

No mystery there:

People in the Yoga cult are being told how and what to think about food - and pretty much anything and everything else. Fuck yoga. Once those fools get going they'll drive you crazy with they bullshit. "Flouride's no good for you!", that kind of bullshit. That meditation bullshit, too. It's all a bust. Mind games: It's exercise/it's a spiritual practice/It's exercise/it's a spiritual practice! It's some bullshit that's old as dirt.

You wanna eat healthy? Do what I do:

Two-for-a-dol-lar, Chi-nese mus-tard greens!

(Some old Chinese lady yelled that at me, just like that, today.)

The Macho Response