COMMENTARY on "NATURAL FOODS"

What is "natural"? Are potatoes natural? No, the ones we eat were bred by natives of South America to eliminate toxins and increase yield. Natural potatoes will make you ill. So will potatoes that have not been kept in the dark - do not eat potatoes that have green on their skin.BR>
Is wheat natural? Not what we eat today - it was selectively bread to resist natural defects/growths such as rust.

Is mold natural? Yes, but it may or may not be acceptable to eat. (Some people like to eat moldy cheese, but they should avoid moldy peanuts and cereal grains because the mold produces aflatoxin - which causes cancer. (Liver cancer is a common cause of death in Africa, because people there have difficulty getting good storage in the humid conditions, need the food, and have livers weakened by hepatitis and malnutrition. In contrast, people in Canada and the US are healthy. Unfortunately some supposed food experts - authors of books of course - are broad-brush recommending to avoid peanuts, thus avoiding having credibility, when there may be people who should not eat peanuts (those with damaged livers - alcoholism and hepatitis for example).

And note the many natural plants that are harmful to humans - stinging nettles or worse, toxic berries, etc. Some people talk as though nature is a Garden of Eden from which one could just pluck the food one wanted. But we know that, in addition to understanding what was safe to eat, primitive peoples had to search for food - and in some cases migrate to find more and better as local climate changed affecting growth of plants and behavior of animals. We know that some primitive peoples used up local food sources - they did not understand plant reproduction and animal husbandry. (In contrast, people today produce an abundance of food, when free to do so. Countries that value individual freedom produce enough food to give much to poor countries, including those victims of the great experiments in marxism such as the USSR.)

Me, I think that everything on earth is "natural", including everything humans have made - except for those rocks the astronauts brought back from the moon. (OK, we can debate meteorites - surely they are a "natural" phenomenon?)

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