Ok Ted, so explain to me why humans existed so many years before we were able to alter plant chemicals, if these plants were so very harmful to us.
Because back then people didn't live as long.
Your only genetic reason to live is to reproduce, so after you've done that and your kids have got to the age when they can reproduce, you are no longer genetitally useful as far as evolution is concerned.
So if you drop dead in your 40's that's no problem as far as the human species is concerned although I accept it is a problem for you and your family.
It's old fogies like me who want to stay active and fit in their retirement that are such a drain on society. In the past people didn't generally live long enough after they stopped work to get Alzhiemer's or Cancer, now we all live longer and prefer not to die young, we have to take greater care of our bodies and pay attention to the nutrient density/quality of our foods.
Do we not have our own natural defenses as well?
Indeed we have an innate immune function that tries to deal with pathogens but this is fundamentally controlled by Vitamin D status and health professionals (in order to increase the amount of health care we require) provide advice that tends to scare us from laying naked in the midday sun (the best time to raise 25(0H)D levels as that's when most UVB is present), they tell us to lower our cholesterol (it's older people with the highest cholesterol that live longest) and it's the cholesterol in our skin that is converted to vitamin D. Hence if you want to generally lower natural immune function to increase the amount of illness generally, the best way to do so is to reduce cholesterol levels and also tell people to stay out of the sun or use sunscreen.
Is not nature all a big fight for staying alive, going back and forth between different species? Isn't this how the natural world is supposed to work?
Sure but the changes that are determining modern food choices are those naturally determined by humans plants and animals. We have messed with the natural order by inserting money and greed into food production so we pay farmers a subsidy on the amount they produce so now modern grain isn't what is best for human health but what produces the highest yield at the lowest cost. It doesn't matter to the farmer if you get Alzhiemer's when you are old because the wheat you've been eating is higher in pro inflammatory gluten (and other allergens) and lower in magnesium, zinc, iron, copper but it does matter to you and your family.
The same goes for meat/dairy.
Cows, sheep, pigs all lived outdoors when I was a boy, now these are more efficiently produced indoors with the food they eat being pelleted first rather than just grazing natural grass. So supermarket meat is higher in inflammatory omega 6 and lower in anti inflammatory omega 3. This leads to the pathogenic bacteria that thrive in an inflammatory environment taking over your digestive system leading to increased obesity while the gut flora that are less effective at extracting calories from food decline. So raising inflammatory status leads to greater illness and obesity but the farmers producing food are paid by the amount of food they produce, not by how good that food is.
I can't see how we are going to turn the situation around because the vested interests behind the drugs industry are so powerful they can manipulate the information provided to health professionals and most people prefer to get health advice from health professionals and don't spend time reading the research and thinking whether or not it meets the basic standards of common sense.
I've not littered this post with links but if you want to see the research supporting any of the claims please ask. I can bore you to death on the cholesterol lowering scam.
Do bear in mind that total meat avoidance is not sustainable in the long run.
It's perhaps time people understood the importance of choline
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