668 SHOULD WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO EAT RAW FOOD?

[michaelo]

Michael Olson’s Second Law of the Food Chain: The farther we go from the source of our food, the less control we have over what’s in that food.

If this law is true, and it most certainly is, it follows that the best foods would be those harvested fresh and processed least. Raw food!

But wait! Before you run out to buy or sell raw milk, or raw almonds, you best slip into some camouflage clothing and wait until dark!

In 2006, several large states—Michigan, California, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, in cooperation with the federal government, launched a major campaign to restrict small family dairies from selling raw milk to friends and neighbors.

As a consequence, the daughters of Armand and Teddi Bechard of Springfield, Missouri were arrested for selling a couple gallons of raw milk in the parking lot of a local shopping mall.

In 2010, raw almonds have been banned from the shelves of supermarkets throughout the nation. (“Psst… Hey buddy, wanna buy a raw almond?”)

This effort by government to control our access to raw food leads us to ask:

Why do some people prefer raw food to processed and packaged food?

Why is government so intent on controlling, or eliminating, raw food?

Should we have the right to raw food?

[jollybeggar]

My question is: What in our constitution gives the federal or state govts the right to tell us what we can and can't eat? And is the general public not intelligent enough to decide for themselves wether to eat raw foods, or processed foods, that the govt needs to babysit us? And what of the safety record of factory farms, and processed foods? Raw local foods have a much better track record.

I realize it's the big AG companies that are driving this..especially the likes of the Monstersanto. It really irks me that they are trying to control us Americans this way!!!

[vegwriter]

Is this a free country? What does freedom mean? Does it include having the freedom to eat what we choose?

We need a lobbying group that will get us back the right to buy unpasteurized organic almonds wherever we happen to live. Right now the only Americans who can buy them are the ones who live near the California farms that grow them. The USDA banned the sale of unpasteurized almonds beginning on Sept. 1, 2007. The pasteurization process renders foods cooked, and they are no longer raw. Raw foodies (like me) choose to eat RAW food because we believe it's better for our health and because it keeps up looking and feeling great.

Many scientific studies have shown that foods that are baked, fried and grilled cause aging and chronic disease, because heating them at high temperatures produces harmful chemicals.

We raw foodies choose not to cook our food. Instead we make all kinds of delicious dishes--from non-dairy ice cream to cakes, pies, cookies, pancakes, pizza, all kinds of entrees and more--by using power blenders, food processors and dehydrators (like the Excalibur, whose thermostat goes as low as 90-degrees Fahrenheit). Heating foods at more than 118 degrees Fahrenheit destroys their digestive enzymes and our bodies then have to work harder to digest those foods.

We raw foodies are not out to force anyone to eat the way we do. But we absolutely have the right to find and buy raw ingredients and foods in stores.

Judy Pokras
editor
http://www.RawFoodsNewsMagazine.com
author
The Little e-Book of Raw Vegan Holiday Recipes
http://www.rawfoodsnewsmagazine.com/mod ... le&sid=205
National Raw Food Examiner

[LEE]

I remain amazed at the attitudes of govt and its corporate sponsors! We do have provisions in our constitution to protect the rights of the people besides the"enumerated" rights,its in the 9th and 10th ammendments.
Be that as it may we have no constitutional protections from the corporations other than our resolve to declare open season on them if they continue to violate us,of course that applies to govt as well as a last recourse but it seems we are running out of other recourses but that is a subject for another day.
People have a right to eat,drink and otherwise injest what they will as long as it does not deny another person of their same rights,drinking raw milk and drinking whisky and then driving down the road are two totally different things, the first endangers no one, the second endangers anothers life and health ; anyone with a couple firing brain cells outta see the difference.
Govt tends to function these days as the enforcer for corporations,many of whom have long since stopped trying to serve their customers and have moved into the realm of owning and controlling them!
Govt then becomes the means and the ends to take control over any area of our lives and thus skirt the prohibition of violating our God given rights,this has to stop!
Corporations are not the only one who do this, groups like WWF and Sierra Club as well as HSUS and PETA are well funded and use govt to enforce their agendas,thereby interfering with our rights to life liberty and property,the 10th makes it clear that anything not specificly given to the fed remains the peoples and the several states rights,now it seems they read it to say whatever not mentioned as not specificly denied the fedgov must be the domain of the fedgov....NOT!
We have to take back our freedoms,the ones we know and all the ones we dont know,they are all important and belong to us as sovereign individuals,not to the fedgov,not the WWF and not GE...no one,we have the right to eat what we see fit,period! Thank You!

[randyscott]

Are you familiar with this book?

MIchael Pollan
"In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto"

"most of what we're consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it -- in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone -- is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances" -- no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become."

http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php

He offers a few simple rules for healthy eating. Here are two:
Buy from the perimeter of the grocery store;
You'll notice that in a grocery store the fresh fruits & veggies and meats are around the perimeter of the store. As you go closer to the center of the store the "food" is more processed and more packaged, thus less healthy.
Read the ingredients labels;
A tomato doesn't have an ingredients label because it contains only one tomato, nothing else. When you read the label on a "food" package you'll see things that you can't pronounce. "If your Grandmother didn't have it in her kitchen, then you shouldn't put it in your mouth."

Randy
Houston