Le mur de texte.

[gregorfodrotski]

What's wrong with your water? Is it poisonous? Flammable? Radioactive? Do your faucets occasionally run red with blood? Is your kitchen tap home to clusters of parasite eggs that, left unchecked, will burrow into your soft membranous tissues and leave you teeming with fungus or disease? Are your pipes made of lead or cobalt? Is your loft in a plant

Comments

[palomides]

Reasonably good. I too, rarely see people on here these days. I've decided to use the journal mostly to chronicle my attempts at writing something, as poor as my prose may be.
I check my friend's page about once a week, and rarely do I need to scroll to the next page to see any new posts.
You're absolutely right about the organic food thing. While living in Baltimore, I did actually really like going to Whole Foods. A big part of this is, as I mentioned before, a lot of foods that do not already have meat in them. However, when I did want meat, it was usually from more local farms, which tastes a good bit better than food that's been in a freezer for several months. I generally found that the food quality there was improved over Safeway, and there were more things I wanted to eat. Also, I occasionally found Wild Alaskan Salmon there, which was, in fact, the genuine article, although sometimes it had been in a freezer longer than I'd like (having grown up here, I'm picky, but I do know the difference between farmed and not farmed salmon). It was also not as much more expensive than Safeway as you seem to be led to believe. If you priced two natural or organic items, one at whole foods, and one at Safeway, the price at Safeway would be anywhere from 30-50% more expensive than at whole foods. Compared to non-organic foods, Whole Foods was anywhere from 5-10% more expensive.
That said, I do consider both the Vegan diet, and the wholly organic diet, to be a bit of a hoax. When you mentioned toxins above, it should also be mentioned that organic foods frequently have to use substitutes for chemically produced items, that have toxins in them. There are a lot of things that go into Organic foods where people don't realize that they're worse for you than the produced items.
On the flip side, some studies have shown that cows that use growth hormones are bad for you. Organic meats don't have growth hormones.
Also, grass fed animals taste different than grain fed animals, and are more frequent among natural/organic meats.
So it's a little more complicated than you try to make it out, in my opinion.
Also, as for your argument about sustainability...if you eat meat, you really don't get to make that argument. If Americans stopped eating meat, or significantly reduced their meat consumption, we could feed several times the people we do. Poultry is considered to be about 10 lbs of consumable vegetables per lb of meet, whereas beef tends to be closer to 20.
So, while organic farms maybe produce 1/3 to 1/2 of what you can produce on a non-organic farm, meat consumption is in the 1/10th to 1/20th range. Do the math.
That's why I limit my meat consumption. I mean, I can't lie, sometimes, I cannot ward off the calling of the great and powerful Carl's Jr (Western Bacon Burger), but, I do not eat meat more than once a week, and mostly limit myself to twice per month (not including Alaskan salmon/halibut).
I guess my point is that people should be more aware of what they're eating and the real cost of the food, regardless of what they eat.
No intention to offend here, I've just spent a good bit of time thinking, and arguing, on these subjects. My ex was a vegan, and I say never again. Never, ever again. Vegetarian is fine. That's cool. But vegan. Christ. It's a total sham. If you look at any argument for being a vegan over being a vegetarian, there are many, many wholes in it. Basically, in my opinion, people become vegan because they want to feel good about themselves. They want to feel like they're doing something good for the Earth, when in fact, it's really not changing anything. They may make a small dent in carbon production as compared with being vegetarian, sure. They may make a small dent in animal cruelty, I'll give them that. But...the difference in the dents they make is so minimal compared with not eating meat.
Also, yes, there are wars already being fought over water with much lower quality than that of Baltimore. And will probably become a much, much more valuable commodity as we experience more droughts. I study climate change , and unless we are way the fuck off on this one, which would really surprise me, there are going to be more droughts. And it is going to suck.
T