[Sca-cooks] Trying again

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also schmoozita'd Laura C. Minnick:
>At 05:03 AM 1/24/03 EST, you wrote:
>  >Phlip:
>>
>>What do you mean by "over-processed foods"?  Could you please share some
>>examples?
>>
>>I'd like some clarification on what you mean by "I'm really beginning to
>>think that much of this food poisoning stuff is emphasized, along with
>>allergies, because people are so used to eating over-processed foods".
>
>I'd bet that's becasue the processing destroys anything- good and bad- and
>our bodies can't handle stuff that would otherwise be normal part of
>intestinal flora.
>
>I had a doctor once posit to me that the sudden increase (mid 80's to mid
>90's) of people coming in with adult-onset asthma problems at around 30 y.o
>was inpart due to environmental factors- we over process our food, we
>over-use antibiotics, our are over-stressed (our overproduction of stress
>hormones has been well proven to cause a great many long term problems) and
>we have more crap in the air and chemicals in our daily environment than
>any culture/society has had before. it all adds up to hypersensitive immune
>systems, and chronic immune disorders. As someone who suffers from all
>that. I quite agree with him.

Very possibly. While, overall, I'm inclined to agree, there are some
pretty surprising (to me, anyway) descriptions available of cities
like London after coal started to be burned for fuel, and the first
stirrings of industrialization, probably in the reign of Elizabeth I.
The accounts of smog, soot, and the Thames catching fire make me
wonder how much worse off we may be (if at all) than a city-dweller
of the period.

Similarly, where I live, for all the dirt and smog that I encounter,
it's mostly ambient, artificial light that prevents one from seeing
most of the stars at night, and the Hudson river, once one of the
most notoriously polluted bodies of water in the world, hasn't caught
fire recently, AFAIK, and there's now a respectable shad run (as well
as striped bass, and other species) every year. The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service claims you can actually catch and eat these fish --
as long as you don't mind glowing in the dark, I guess ;-).

I guess I'm wondering, really, how the asthma statistics would
measure up if compared to accurate accounts for, say, 17th or 18th
century London, if such accounts existed. Maybe we need to figure out
which of the various fluxes, agues and catarrhs were likely cases of
asthma.

Adamantius