Topic: This frozen chicken “had a rich, emotional life.” - page 7. (Read 21159 times)

Why salad is so overrated



As the world population grows, we have a pressing need to eat better and farm better, and those of us trying to figure out how to do those things have pointed at lots of different foods as problematic. Almonds, for their water use. Corn, for the monoculture. Beef, for its greenhouse gases. In each of those cases, there’s some truth in the finger-pointing, but none of them is a clear-cut villain.

There’s one food, though, that has almost nothing going for it. It occupies precious crop acreage, requires fossil fuels to be shipped, refrigerated, around the world, and adds nothing but crunch to the plate.

It’s salad, and here are three main reasons why we need to rethink it.

Salad vegetables are pitifully low in nutrition. The biggest thing wrong with salads is lettuce, and the biggest thing wrong with lettuce is that it’s a leafy-green waste of resources.

In July, when I wrote a piece defending corn on the calories-per-acre metric, a number of people wrote to tell me I was ignoring nutrition. Which I was. Not because nutrition isn’t important, but because we get all the nutrition we need in a fraction of our recommended daily calories, and filling in the rest of the day’s food is a job for crops like corn. But if you think nutrition is the most important metric, don’t direct your ire at corn. Turn instead to lettuce.

One of the people I heard from about nutrition is organic consultant Charles Benbrook. He and colleague Donald Davis developed a nutrient quality index — a way to rate foods based on how much of 27 nutrients they contain per 100 calories. Four of the five lowest-ranking foods (by serving size) are salad ingredients: cucumbers, radishes, lettuce and celery. (The fifth is eggplant.)

Those foods’ nutritional profile can be partly explained by one simple fact: They’re almost all water. Although water figures prominently in just about every vegetable (the sweet potato, one of the least watery, is 77 percent), those four salad vegetables top the list at 95 to 97 percent water. A head of iceberg lettuce has the same water content as a bottle of Evian (1-liter size: 96 percent water, 4 percent bottle) and is only marginally more nutritious.

Take collard greens. They are 90 percent water, which still sounds like a lot. But it means that, compared with lettuce, every pound of collard greens contains about twice as much stuff that isn’t water, which, of course, is where the nutrition lives. But you’re also likely to eat much more of them, because you cook them. A large serving of lettuce feels like a bona fide vegetable, but when you saute it (not that I’m recommending that), you’ll see that two cups of romaine cooks down to a bite or two.

The corollary to the nutrition problem is the expense problem. The makings of a green salad — say, a head of lettuce, a cucumber and a bunch of radishes — cost about $3 at my supermarket. For that, I could buy more than two pounds of broccoli, sweet potatoes or just about any frozen vegetable going, any of which would make for a much more nutritious side dish to my roast chicken.

Lettuce is a vehicle to transport refrigerated water from farm to table. When we switch to vegetables that are twice as nutritious — like those collards or tomatoes or green beans — not only do we free up half the acres now growing lettuce, we cut back on the fossil fuels and other resources needed for transport and storage.

Save the planet, skip the salad.

Salad fools dieters into making bad choices. Lots of what passes for salad in restaurants is just the same as the rest of the calorie-dense diabolically palatable food that’s making us fat, but with a few lettuce leaves tossed in. Next time you order a salad, engage in a little thought experiment: Picture the salad without the lettuce, cucumber and radish, which are nutritionally and calorically irrelevant. Is it a little pile of croutons and cheese, with a few carrot shavings and lots of ranch dressing?

Call something “salad,” and it immediately acquires what Pierre Chandon calls a “health halo.” Chandon, professor of marketing at INSEAD, an international business school in Fontainebleau, France, says that once people have the idea it’s good for them, they stop paying attention “to its actual nutritional content or, even worse, to its portion size.”

I won’t be the first to point out that items labeled “salad” at chain restaurants are often as bad, if not worse, than pastas or sandwiches or burgers when it comes to calories. Take Applebee’s, where the Oriental Chicken Salad clocks in at 1,400 calories, and the grilled version is only 110 calories lighter. Even the Grilled Chicken Caesar, the least calorific of the salads on the regular menu, is 800 calories.

Of course, salad isn’t always a bad choice, and Applebee’s has a selection of special menu items under 550 calories (many chain restaurants have a similar menu category). Applebee’s Thai Chicken Salad is only 390 calories (although it has more sodium than the Oriental Chicken Salad). Other chains, like relative newcomer Sweetgreen, have a good selection of salads that go further toward earning their health halo: more actual vegetables, less fried stuff.

I asked Bret Thorn, columnist at Nation’s Restaurant News and longtime observer of the restaurant industry, about salads. “Chefs are cognizant of what’s going on in the psychology of diners,” he said. “They’re doing a kind of psychological health washing,” not just with salads, but with labels like “fresh” and “natural,” and foods that are “local” and “seasonal.” “A chef is not a nutritionist, or public health advocate,” Thorn points out. “They make food that customers want to buy.”

And we want to buy things that are fried or creamy or salty or sweet, or all of those things. Which doesn’t mean that the right salad can’t be a good choice for a nutritious meal. It just means that it’s easy to get snookered.

Salad has unfortunate repercussions in our food supply. Lettuce has a couple of No. 1 unenviable rankings in the food world. For starters, it’s the top source of food waste, vegetable division, becoming more than 1 billion pounds of uneaten salad every year. But it’s also the chief culprit for foodborne illnesses. According to the Centers for Disease Control, green leafies accounted for 22 percent of all food-borne illnesses from 1998-2008.

To be fair, “leafy vegetables,” the CDC category, also includes cabbage, spinach and other kinds of greens, but the reason the category dominates is that the greens are often eaten raw. As in salad.

None of this is to say that salad doesn’t have a role in our food supply. I like salad, and there’s been many a time a big bowl of salad on the dinner table has kept me from a second helping of lasagna. The salads we make at home aren’t the same as the ones we buy in restaurants; according to the recipe app Yummly, its collection of lettuce-based salads average 398 calories per serving (although a few do get up into Oriental Chicken territory).

An iceberg wedge, with radishes and bacon and blue-cheese dressing, is something I certainly have no plans to give up. But as we look for ways to rejigger our food supply to grow crops responsibly and feed people nutritiously, maybe we should stop thinking about salad as a wholesome staple, and start thinking about it as a resource-hungry luxury.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/why-salad-is-so-overrated/2015/08/21/ecc03d7a-4677-11e5-8ab4-c73967a143d3_story.html

All I meant is, that when you read the account of the creation in Genesis in the Bible, it seems to say that all material in the universe was one big chunk. Then God separated it into whatever different kinds of bodies exist in all space. But... when God does this, He does it from a standpoint of the earth, that all the materials came from the earth, this earth.

We are ugly bags of mostly starwater.
https://youtu.be/gBuyqM5u2GY

Which btw, has memory and structure.
https://youtu.be/YwaNfNcurvQ

Now think about what that dark pagan blood ritual sacrifice/ dinner is doing to your body's water.

Yes! Stop getting naked you Vegan Feminists. Plants don't taste as good when they are in shock!

This is a joke right? Because it's pretty funny.

Hitler was a vegetarian.

"Vegan Feminist" Professor Asks Women to Stop Getting Naked to Support Veganism





The Vegan Feminist Network, which says its mission is to "eradicate oppression from the Nonhuman Animal rights movement and improve inclusiveness through dialogue and educational resources," has warned women to stop stripping off their clothes in favor of veganism.

The article, titled Dear New Vegan, was written by Corey Lee Wrenn, who teaches Sociology at Colorado State University. In the piece, Ms. Wrenn explains to women what they might experience now that they've decided to stop eating meat or animal products.

"You may start to realize that being vegan is one thing, but being vegan and female-identified is another one altogether," she writes. It continues later, emphasis hers, "If you decide that simply being vegan isn’t enough and that you want to get involved with activism, you are going to come up against more male violence."


If you become an activist, Ms. Wrenn details, you have to be careful of male vegans, as they "control" the movement. And let's face it, the article says, "You might start to think that getting naked for the cause is “liberating.”"

But you need to be careful. Wrenn warns, "It may not be men directly telling you to get naked (women are in on it, too), but the patriarchal norms of the movement have created an environment where women are simply expected to become sex objects “for the animals.”"

If you start wanting to take off your clothes, "woah, stop." You need to "think again," Ms. Wrenn writes. She continues (emphasis theirs), "Consider also that only thin, white, cis women are allowed to “empower” themselves for other animals, and that turning men on sexually is not the same as turning men on to veganism. Empirical research shows that facilitating the oppression of women does not challenge the oppression of other animals."

At the end of the piece, Wrenn adds, "P.S. If you are a woman of color, that’s a whole extra set of challenges. As a white woman myself, I can’t speak to the depth of these challenges, but I can tell you that the vegan movement can be a really nasty “color blind” place at times."

http://www.thesocialmemo.org/2015/07/vegan-feminist-professor-asks-women-to.html


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Is eating female plants a sign of patriarchy oppression? Should light skin fruits and vegetables check their privilege before getting eaten?

Earth dust, like the stars are.

The Bible does not mention darwin's theory but I would (personally) read this as if a man was trying to explain to an ant what the fabric of life was 'coming from', atomic dust particles:

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”


Are we really all made of stardust?


That will be it as far as my Sunday's teaching...

 

Of course the Bible has been completely rewritten, many times. Before the making of the printing press, that was the only way to spread the Bible, write it. Since we have printing presses these days, and since one can actually print it on his home computer printer, why would I want to waste my time rewriting the Bible?

Once there is very much evidence, a thing can be considered proven. Because of the evidence, God has essentially been proven, as has the Bible. Examining the history of how the Bible came into existence might be a bit difficult - so that you can see the evidence, that is. But the evidence for God is all around us and has been shown in a big way at https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10718395.

You can't see the evidence if you don't look.

Tell you what, why not rewrite the bible (which is okay because it's been done before) and add a bit of evolution into the story line.
You can then fully believe the theory 100%.

I am totally NOT against the idea of some group of scientists actually finding a possible method or complete scenario or complete flow regarding evolution. While I am not actually hoping for it, I certainly wouldn't mind if somebody found a complete way that evolution could have happened, from the start of inorganic to life, to the life that we have today. In fact, I would like it if several of these methods were found.

It would prove that God had created mankind so great that they could even find out how to make life evolve. Of course, then there would be the problem of proving that evolution actually did the job, and not God.

Implementing the word "Abiogenesis" is simply a recent way that evolutionists have attempted to split up evolution theory, because they are having such a difficult time proving any of it exists. How many years has it been, now, since Darwin?

I believe BADecker is referring to Abiogenesis where life began from nothing.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Yes, correct, there is no proof of evolution, that's why we call it a theory. Obviously. 

Notice how he doesn't know that the formation of life from inorganic materials is part of the standard evolutionary process. However, no-one has proven that the things that are called evolution in the sense that BO is saying, are not simply programed-in methods that living creatures have for adapting to climactic and other conditions.Science simply hasn't become that capable, yet.

This is it. Animals may have and exhibit intelligence. But no animal attempts to advance his own reasoning or life-style beyond what is built into him - instinct. Only human beings have the ability to extend their intelligence into all kinds of new regions.

In New Zealand, under common law, if you own the animal, you can eat it. If you subscribe to formal citizenship rather than simple domicile, you might get governmental flack. And if you don't know how to stand as a man/woman in common law, you might lose in court. But if you know how to stand, you win.

Bolt to the head. No pain, just delicious tender meat. Circle of life bitches, kudos to the human race for getting to the top of the food-chain.

New Zealand legally recognises animals as 'sentient' beings






A change to New Zealand law has recognised what pet owners and scientists have known for years - that animals have feelings.

The Animal Welfare Amendment Bill, which passed its final reading on Tuesday, states that animals, like humans, are "sentient" beings.

"To say that animals are sentient is to state explicitly that they can experience both positive and negative emotions, including pain and distress," said Dr Virginia Williams, chair of the National Animal Ethics Advisory Committee.

"The explicitness is what is new and marks another step along the animal welfare journey."

The bill also bans the use of animals for the testing of cosmetics.

Dr Williams said the legal recognition of animal sentience provided a stronger underpinning of the requirements of the Animal Welfare Act.

Nelson SPCA manager Donna Walzl said the changes were "wonderful".

"It's great to finally see it brought into legislation. It's awesome."

She said pets that came to the SPCA's attention often exhibited human-like emotions.

"You can see that they do have separation anxiety and that's showing emotion. It's almost a human emotion," she said.

"It's the same with the animals that we see that are neglected and have real, true animal welfare issues. They suffer for it. You can see it in their eyes. It's quite sad, really."

A submission on the bill by SPCA Auckland said a declaration of sentience was needed "because most New Zealand law treats animals as 'things' and 'objects' rather than as living creatures".

Walzl said she hoped that recognising animals as sentient beings would add "more weight" to abuse and neglect cases in court.

"Hopefully there will be some sterner penalties out there and that obviously creates a bigger deterrent for people to do those things."

The bill also provides for a penalty scheme to enable low-to-medium level offending to be dealt with more effectively, and gives animal welfare inspectors the power to issue compliance notices, among other measures.

New Zealand Veterinary Association president Dr Steve Merchant said the bill greater clarity, transparency and enforceability of animal welfare laws.

"Expectations on animal welfare have been rapidly changing, and practices that were once commonplace for pets and farm stock are no longer acceptable or tolerated. The bill brings legislation in line with our nation's changing attitude on the status of animals in society."

The bill was introduce to parliament by primary industries minister Nathan Guy in May, 2013.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/68363264/New-Zealand-legally-recognises-animals-as-sentient-beings

^^Yep, he's totally close-minded and incapable of taking on any information - I've explained to him a couple of times that evolution and the emergence of life itself are 2 different things, yet he still doesn't distinguish them.

Doing so wouldn't even violate his beliefs/ethics, so I don't know why he doesn't learn. I don't think I've ever seen him admit he was wrong, ever.

 

Mention evolution and it doesn't take long for the angry Christians to start their hand wringing. LOL


Observe how he deliberately changed the theory of evolution so that meant something that it doesn't.
Theory of evolution says nothing of the origin or point of evolution. It describes how new species come into existance.