I've been coming around to the idea of food having a far more significant impact on our health than we might think for some time. My FiL was diagnosed with terminal cancer around 2 1/2 years ago and given about a year. He had six months or so of "life extending" chemo and radiotherapy, but it made him so ill he quit medical treatment altogether and switched to a more healthy diet, recommended by a friend of my MiL (who's heavily into the healthy eating thing). The week before last he was told at his regular check up that his cancer is in remission, and has stopped growing.

I've always tended to eat fairly healthily, as I was diagnosed with high blood pressure when I was in my early thirties and have been on treatment (which I hate, as it tends to slug me down to a noticeable degree) for it for many years now. Recently I've been experimenting with diet (albeit in a fairly uncontrolled way) and am coming around to the view that mood and general well-being is quite definitely affected by food types, although without any form of control and now "knowing" the likely effects it's hard to rule out placebo effect.

Go for it - raw food. Don't go ugh or er - really check it out. Can be totally delicious - a whole nother world, full of vitality, fully satisfying even to a big eater like me. And raw cacao chocolate - eat ad lib because it's medicinally good, with what it contains (not sugar) as long as it's not been messed with, heat treated etc, as even the v best commercial chocolates are.

I've found that, as I've got older, I'm much less inclined to eat meat, not for any particular moral reason (although having seen first hand intensively reared pigs for pork it'd be reason enough), but just because I don't really seem to have any desire to eat the stuff. I've noticed the same trend amongst a few of my peers, so had wondered if it was just something that happens as you get older.

The coffee addiction thing is a real issue. About 25 or so years ago, back when I was flying regularly as part of my job, the Institute of aviation medicine did some studies on the effect of coffee on aircrew. Aircrew spend hours every day sitting in crew rooms, drinking large quantities of coffee (or used to). What the IAM found was that withdrawal symptoms would set in an hour or two into a sortie and the ability of the crew to function effectively was quite seriously impaired. I believe they issued guidance on coffee consumption and encouraged aircrew to switch to decaf or other refreshments before flying.

I'll also be seeking out raw cacao tomorrow, it sounds interesting!

Tom, do you really think you are helping sending us links to chocolate and chocolate related sites, particularly containing the word naked. OH ok, keep them coming !

Shazzie and the Wolfe - an ancient allegory for 21C - contains much wisdom. Seriously.

Much like The Mighty Boosh ?

Posted By: pmagowanI don't think the 'chemicals' are harmful to me

What makes to not merely think, but believe and decide on that, on behalf of your family members? Who sez? Where does the hair shirt belief come from? Who sez that? Are the chemicals OK because they're just a way of getting money out of gardening class consumers?

The chemicals i use are all known to me and as inert as they get. Any weed killer is neutralised on contact with soil. The treatment for blight is copper sulphate. I decide what I consider safe for me. The hair shirt is what you put yourself through if you try and avoid any modern methods and thus have to squish slugs, weed everything by hand and have poor yields. The chemicals are cheap. It's a personal choice but since everything is made up of chemicals (including the veg). I don't understand why we should have an aversion to some 'safe' ones and not to 'safe' natural ones.

We are trying to encourage more sustainable methods by practical means so became the first "Landshare" site in the UK as seen on TV. We now have 15 families being encouraged to grow food using sustainable methods.

I am also pro-thoughtful ways of growing things to reduce the use of fossil fuel derived treatments. In my own garden I take what I consider to be a pragmatic approach. I am a keen gardener (particularly veg) and am aware of the possibilities with crop rotation and companion planting. However, at the end of the day, I plant veg to eat, not to feed slugs, blight and other 'natural' pests. The 'organic' method is more ideological almost religious IMO, than practical. I know that without using a pragmatic approach I will have far greater losses. This is fine in that I already supply almost all my vegetable requirements but is not fine if you have to feed the world. We need to be open to clever ways of doing things as well as to modern 'chemical' (et al) treatments used pragmatically. It does nothing for 'the cause' to preach the impossible or impracticable.
I have a great bind-weed problem and creeping thistle in my 5 acres. I question anyone that thinks this can be controlled with anything other than pragmatic use of chemicals. Pig's will help but at the end of the day I want the veg, not the weeds. I have tried sifting the soil, using mulch and even black plastic coverings to exclude light. The only method which has allowed me to make the land productive is a combination of these plus judicious use of weedkiller.
'Chemicals' are not bad for you. Everything is made of them. Some of our foodstuffs contain chemicals with a detrimental effect on health as part of their natural structure. The method of manufacture (plants or humans) does not affect how the chemical works. There are a lot of people on the planet, I am not of a malthusian bent and I don't advocate a cull, so we need ways to produce a lot of food. This will inevitably mean careful use of man made chemicals as well as careful use of 'natural' methods (if there is such a concept).

And a bit of C2H5OH at the weekend!

Thanks John.

It is one of the reasons why I am investing in pigs. One problem is that you can't just let pigs loose in the garden (if you still want a garden). Bind weed grows everywhere, has deep tap roots and impossible to kill. Pigs don't eat the roots as they are not bulky like the creeping thistle. I went round painting the leaves with a small paintbrush and diluted gyphosate. Did the trick!

pmagowan

I used to struggle keeping the pigs in where I wanted them even using electric netting. Due to there intelligence they discovered heaping soil against the netting allowed them to escape. Finally sorted now with simple 3 strand electric fence but high voltage just have to remember to switch of and earth before attempting to move it. Killed our latest GOS 's just prior to christmas and they have been brilliant. Does help when one of the landshare members used to be a butcher.

Posted By: JSHarrisEverything we eat, breathe or drink is just chemicals or elements

Yes I know doh. You know what I mean.

Posted By: pmagowan'Chemicals' are not bad for you. Everything is made of them

And some are deliberately killer-toxic - but just to plants, actually selected plants, or particular insects, or harmless once they hit the soil - so 'they' have been saying forever, but sequentially proved wrong by bitter experience.

Posted By: pmagowanSome of our foodstuffs contain chemicals with a detrimental effect on health as part of their natural structure

So we from long experience of own or prev generations' body reaction know what the 'safe' limits are (or choose to ignore body signals). Can anyone have same personal experience about 'safe' levels of toxic garden chemicals? We can't even know what the toxic content of a particular plant is (don't say it says 'none' on the tin).

Anyway it seems like renewablejohn and pmagowan in fact are up for alternative measures - just prefer not to have to, fully. Permaculture sets out to provide comprehensive if radical answers, by fundamental 'design' that I think goes deeper than mere 'organic'. E.g. in Permaculture, abandon the wish for neat rows with 'clean' soil between. That's a hard one - my missis can't quite believe that Permaculture can mean that!

It's also worth remembering that the vast majority of all "chemicals" are simply compounds derived from natural materials anyway. We haven't really "invented" many new chemicals, in the main we've found alternative uses for chemical compounds that nature has already invented.

The natural world is significantly more hazardous to our health than most of the things we've come up with. The three most toxic substances we know of, in order, are plutonium, botulism and ricin, all naturally occurring elements/compounds. At the opening of the new lab/office building (part of my last job before retirement) we had some stands illustrating our research achievements, including our ricin antitoxin. Prince Edward picked up a bag of castor beans from the display and asked how dangerous they were. When told that he was holding enough ricin to kill the population of a fair sized city he did put the bag down quite quickly.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: fostertom</cite><blockquote><cite>Posted By: JSHarris</cite>The three most toxic substances we know of, in order, are plutonium, botulism and ricin</blockquote>Where does mercury (vapour, liquid ..) come?

</blockquote>

Depends on the form. Some mercury compounds are fairly toxic, most are far less toxic and the metal itself isn't really up there at all as an effective way of killing someone. It's worth bearing in mind that the scale of toxicity is a very broad ranging one, though. The main issue is with mercury salt poisoning, primarily because the body isn't good at getting rid of it, so it tends to be cumulative if people are exposed to high levels for long periods (not a real issue with mercury metal or vapour poisoning, as the metal is nowhere near as toxic as some of its compounds and the body shifts it reasonably well).

The really toxic stuff, like ricin, kills with minute doses. 3 µg of ricin breathed in or injected will kill an adult in two or three days (that's around one fortieth of a single grain of sugar). The far less toxic stuff, like mercury, needs fairly large quantities to be lethal, around 16 g for mercury salts reducing to about 4000 µg for the most toxic form of mercury, dimethyl mercury. There's no published data for mercury metal or vapour lethal toxicity, probably because it's not that lethal, and the allowable exposure limits are quite high (around 100 µg/m³ in air in a workplace, which is a fair bit in volume of mercury vapour terms).