[Sca-cooks] Butter
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius1 at verizon.net
Tue Jun 24 07:17:39 PDT 2008
On Jun 24, 2008, at 9:43 AM, Doc wrote:
> So what we have here is a tertiary source (Wilson)
> quoting another tertiary source (Drummond). What's
> more, "The Englishman's Food" is one of the root
> sources for the Moldy-Meat-Myth. Again, since vitamin
> D was unknown before the 20th century (along with any
> connection to rickets), and since butter can only
> *lose* vitamin D over time, Drummond's statement is
> certainly completely fabricated.
Perhaps he's simply repeating someone else's assertion. While it's
hard to argue with a known fact (and I'm trusting you on this one)
that vitamin D can only be lost through exposure to the sun, and not
increased, it's also not impossible, in theory, for an observation to
be made of a phenomenon, and failure to understand the phenomenon
doesn't mean the phenomenon never occurred. So, for example, the fact
that certain foods, such as limes and certain green plants, could
prevent, alleviate and in fact cure scurvy was known for centuries
before anyone isolated Vitamin C. It is therefore conceivable that
someone is pulling a bogus and untested modern theory to explain a
legitimate phenomenon, out of their butt in one piece.
Stranger things have happened...
> When I get home I'll check through my copy of Drummond
> and see if he has any sources at all to back it up.
> I'll be really surprised if he does. I'm used to
> expecting fluff in Drummond's book. Unfortunately
> this makes me have to double check "facts" in Wilson's
> book as well.
Most people don't deal in facts, and good documentation isn't always
especially fact-oriented, either. Primary sources can be fictional or
erroneous. Wilson attributed a quote to a guy that said something in
print -- this is a fact. He's apparently quoting someone else. At some
point someone is responsible for whether or not the original statement
is true, but I don't think Wilson expects anyone to take her word as a
fact without having actually put that butter out there in the sun
herself, and had a chemical analysis done on it...
Adamantius
"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's
bellies."
-- Rabbi Israel Salanter
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