Comments friarslantern has made

  • Dear Grist:

    I appreciate your reminding us that your health advice need be conservative, as this is not your focus; this is a good point especially in light of people giving raw milk to young people.

    However, other than that, this seemed awfully like obfuscation masquerading as an apology.  You ask your audience to remember that you aim for humorous advice, but I couldn't see any attemps at humor in your raw-milk advice column.

    The whole point, in my opinion, of people's bristling at your original article can be summed up here: (from your original article):

    "Some people believe that raw, unpasteurized milk has more nutrients than pasteurized milk, and also falls into the (vague) category of a “living food,” which is somehow beneficial to eat. The nutrient claim is not supported by research."

    Oh?  Live Lactobacillus acidophilus's being "somehow" beneficial for health is not supported by research???  This was sloppy researching and writing.  At least you could have acknowledged probiotic's known value and recommended, instead, that people eat yogurt with active live cultures.

    I believe you have taken an opportunity to vent -- an opportunity to show to your own skeptics that environmentalists can be "sensible" and "conservative," too, and the losers are people who believe in the (well-researched -- you don't deny, I hope) value of living probiotics and the right of (informed adults) to decide these things for themselves.  Easy targets that you speedily put down, and then had the tactlessness to publish what is a tongue-and-cheek apology for it.

    Your assertions had no relation to the environment -- but you know that raw-milk advocates are, generally, rather environmentally oriented, and you had fertile ground on which to spread a little pesticide to help kill a personal bugaboo of yours.  I am sorry about your brother.  Probiotics have saved my quality of life from feeling sick all the time to feeling (mostly) well.

    "Regular readers should know that my own zealotry is focused on small farms and local food".  Here, here!  More power to ~that~!

    friarslantern

    On Umbra on incendiary topics posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago 4 Responses

  • I'm an omnivore.

    I don't know about you.  I evolved by depending on (small, but essential) quantities of meat.

    Go ahead and eat a bunch of soy and get sick later in life if you want.

    I'll stick to eating small quantities of meat, and supporting humane slaughter of the meat I eat, and a prayer over the life of the animal I eat, before I eat it.

    I'm not trying to make you do the same.On Cheap-chicken ad from KFC hides true cost of food; here's a tastier, low-cost alternative posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 17 Responses

  • Umbra, this answer is about as valuable...

    ... as the substance said to infect raw milk itself.

    "Raw milk", until that pasteurization process was developed, was used for centuries - no, millenia.  There were few problems.  Use your common sense.

    Pasteurization came in only AFTER the industrialization of milk came in, and with it, careless, mass processes delivering milk to anonymous consumers that the big companies had little concern for.  Diseases and infection were rampant, and mass pasteurization took care of that.  

    With cautious milk production, you can yield raw milk that is just fine (ask my dad, or anyone who grew up on a farm several decades ago -- illnesses are rare).

    How ironic that you advocate a process necessitated, for the most part, by large, long-distance, factory production.

    And who can blame milk-allergic people who CAN safely drink raw milk without symptoms for wanting to do just that?  Or people who need to supplement their probiotic flora to stay healthy -- or are people who do this now-accepted-by-maintstream-medicine practice "true believers"?

    What a disappointment.On Umbra on raw milk posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 20 Responses