Seven foods the Experts won't eat.

[meriruka]

I blew it on the tomatoes. The crop in this area was so poor last year that I had to buy the canned stuff to add to soups. The nearest place to get fresh organic tomatoes is 50 minutes away.

We should start our own list of stuff you shouldn't eat from the grocery, then again, my list would include almost everything in there

How I'd love to snag one of those calendars, it's a shame that everything I know how to do, everyone else also knows & probably has been doing it for much longer.

 

[Farmfresh]

Welcome to Sufficient Self!

If you stick around a while you will find even though many of us have been doing the SS thing for very long time - you whipper snappers can still teach us a thing or two sometimes. There is always something to learn!

 

[meriruka]

Thanks!
It's been many moons since I was a whipper-snapper, more like a slacky-saggy now.
Finally got out of the city to a farm, paid off all debt & am now working towards SS. I've been doing some things: chickens, turkeys, huge garden, making soap, canning & crafts and am an expert in construction with scraps & scavenging other peoples' unwanted stuff.

 

[Beekissed]

Meriruka, welcome to the forum! Sounds like you have much to teach us!

 

[enjoy the ride]

OK- contrarian to some extent.

I usually look at anything reporting handi-dandi factoids as usually incomplete and frequently wrong. So why the rush to believe all this with at least some citing of studies comfirming?

I have been around University people for decades and find that the level of poor judgement is as high there as anywhere else.

The guy citing the apple problems - he said that apples need a lot more spraying than other kinds of fruits because weaker varieties are grafted and have little disease resistance.
Well- I hate to burst his bubble but virtually all commercially grown fruit from apple, pears, etc to nuts are grown on grafted stock. I grow on grafted stock as almost everyone who grow home grown fruit trees purchased from a nursery or store does.
Grafting allows uniform convenient height, early fruit production and uniformity of variety. They are not inherently weaker than any other fruit variety, although some, mostly home offerings, are. If you want disease resistance- you can buy that sweet cardboard masquerading as an apple known as Red Delicious.
Actually I would suspect that most commercially grown apple varieties have disease resistance as part of their attractiveness to growers- chemicals are expensive.

The reason for all the spraying is that people demand fruit that looks perfect- no scab, insect, etc damage. They want ridiculously large, symetrical fruit. All not possible to produce in mass inexpensively without chemicals of some kind.

I do not spray my apples and try to pick disease resistant varieties for my area but I also will eat ones with scab or rust damage- some lopsided and small. If people will go with that, they too can have chemical free fruit.

About the other items, I have no direct know so can't say. But since they sited one less-than-sensible source, it makes me wonder about the others. Some reporter without understanding is not a person to accept as gospel. Especially as the ones used as experts are from organizations promoting organica products.

(If I could use emoticons at the moment, I"d be using the one hiding under a chair.) I like to grow without chemicals- I just don'ty trust these kinds of articles for real information.

 

[Farmfresh]

Have you ever met my husband? You sound just like him!

I think you bring up very valid points. My husband is always very scientific and very skeptical about almost everything! It is his opinion that any thing true should be able to withstand hard scrutiny, so scrutinize he does. He also pointed out the lack of references. Still I have heard most of these things other places, so I still found the article interesting and possibly worthy of more research.

 

[enjoy the ride]

Gee Farmfresh- I was going to post a semi-apology for being so cranky with my post. But your kindness has certainly turned away rath- I'm really sorry for raining on the parade.
I have heard most of those things too.
I wish that people could find some middle ground between spraying the heck out of everything and declaring everything not totally organic as an evil worst than murder.
There are some people who feel that the cost of feeding a family should not be considered but a family who can have real difficulties coming up with the money to buy organic. I just don't feel that they should be made to feel bad about having to buy commercial items. It should be possible to find a middle ground where chemical use is reduced but used when really neccessary
And there are some practices, especially in meat production, where I think organic rules are actually dangerous to public health. And a lot of the time, there is just too much rigid posturing on both ends of the spectrum.

Long live grafted trees- they have been around for certuries and have given much benefit to all of us!

 

[Farmfresh]

There are some people who feel that the cost of feeding a family should not be considered but a family who can have real difficulties coming up with the money to buy organic. I just don't feel that they should be made to feel bad about having to buy commercial items. It should be possible to find a middle ground where chemical use is reduced but used when really neccessary
And there are some practices, especially in meat production, where I think organic rules are actually dangerous to public health. And a lot of the time, there is just too much rigid posturing on both ends of the spectrum.

Long live grafted trees- they have been around for certuries and have given much benefit to all of us!

I think we are all entitled to our own viewpoints. I just wish my hubby was not quite so vocal and so determined about his sometimes!!

I agree. I think that commercially prepared foods should be as safe and cheap as possible, but ... here it comes ... I don't think that the current policies of government subsidy and turning a blind eye to the way some things are grown and processed to achieve foods at low cost, no matter what else, are right.

Some of those screaming posturing folks on both sides of the spectrum are right. We need to produce food with REAL nutrition that is kind to the planet AND respects the life of the animals involved AND keep it low cost as possible. We are smart folks. Those things CAN be done. More GMO crops and a denser stocking rate in the poultry shed are NOT the right answers.

There has been a lot of shouting from the organic folks about certain products - raw milk for an example. My hubby is a "pasteurize everything" man, while I am a "raw can be better" gal. Raw milk from goats (which have NEVER carried tuberculosis) or a cattle herd that is carefully managed and regularly tested, or very small "Bessie never left the place" operations is certainally healthy to drink and probably better for you! But to provide milk safely to the whole country when you have milk from thousands of cows being combined into one large cross-contaminated batch you HAVE to Pasteurize it!

That is just an example. By an large small producers take more time and effort and produce far superior items nutritionally, but they DO cost more. I just have a hard time knowing that 13 commercial meat packing plants process the meat for almost the whole nation and that basically 4 companies control our meat supply. I also have problems with dangerous commercial practices - like continuing to operate a peanut butter factory that has tested positive for salmonella or can linings that leach into the acid foods packed inside of them. This we gotta fix.

As far as those grafted trees. I love them too! I have a grafted dwarf peach, a grafted dwarf cherry and a 4 in one grafted "Fruit Cocktail Tree" in my tiny front yard that allow even a city farmer like me to reap a grand harvest in little space!

 

[ToLiveToLaugh]

OK- contrarian to some extent.

I usually look at anything reporting handi-dandi factoids as usually incomplete and frequently wrong. So why the rush to believe all this with at least some citing of studies comfirming?

I have been around University people for decades and find that the level of poor judgement is as high there as anywhere else.

The guy citing the apple problems - he said that apples need a lot more spraying than other kinds of fruits because weaker varieties are grafted and have little disease resistance.
Well- I hate to burst his bubble but virtually all commercially grown fruit from apple, pears, etc to nuts are grown on grafted stock. I grow on grafted stock as almost everyone who grow home grown fruit trees purchased from a nursery or store does.
Grafting allows uniform convenient height, early fruit production and uniformity of variety. They are not inherently weaker than any other fruit variety, although some, mostly home offerings, are. If you want disease resistance- you can buy that sweet cardboard masquerading as an apple known as Red Delicious.
Actually I would suspect that most commercially grown apple varieties have disease resistance as part of their attractiveness to growers- chemicals are expensive.

The reason for all the spraying is that people demand fruit that looks perfect- no scab, insect, etc damage. They want ridiculously large, symetrical fruit. All not possible to produce in mass inexpensively without chemicals of some kind.

I do not spray my apples and try to pick disease resistant varieties for my area but I also will eat ones with scab or rust damage- some lopsided and small. If people will go with that, they too can have chemical free fruit.

About the other items, I have no direct know so can't say. But since they sited one less-than-sensible source, it makes me wonder about the others. Some reporter without understanding is not a person to accept as gospel. Especially as the ones used as experts are from organizations promoting organica products.

(If I could use emoticons at the moment, I"d be using the one hiding under a chair.) I like to grow without chemicals- I just don'ty trust these kinds of articles for real information.

Don't want to be trouble, just need to point out a flaw. All grafted trees are not created equal. What the comment about apples produced commercially was referencing continually grafted trees. That is to say, apples don't seed true. So to keep one variety going, it has to be grafted. And then that tree has to be grafted. And on and on. Our red delicious variety trees right now have been grafted hundreds of times. Each grafting weakens the "crop" slightly. This is why red delicious are smaller and more mealy than they used to be.

Grafted trees aren't the problem. Continuous grafting is. And continuous grafting actually results in LESS pest resistance. Our commercial varieties aren't chosen for their pest resistance. They've been around a long time, and we know and like the names. There have been attempts to breed pest resistance into commercial varieties by changing the "root tree" that the bud is grafted on to, but this has had limited success.

Just my two cents. It wasn't off base. For further info, feel free to reference "the botany of desire" and "Rootstock effects on gene expression patterns in apple tree scions".

edited for "bud" not "bus"

 

[enjoy the ride]

I guess that is why I raise my own meat mostly. I don't grain except for those does who need the extra energy in the last month of pregnancy or while nursing.
However I do believe in chemical worming for the health of the animal and the safety of the consumer. Even if you have a lot of land to spread the animals around, some parasite load will exist and some of those parasites are dangerous to people. Pork especially carries dangerous parasites that they pick up as omivores.
But no routine antibiotics or hormones- not neccessary at all.