Not so long it was common sense that the earth was flat, that the sun revolved around the earth, and that mental illness was due to demonic influence.

thanks,
Coach Hale
www.maxcondition.com

The primary ideas pimped by OFA demonstrates a misunderstanding of chemistry. And really plays off the idea that natural is better, however, this is complete nonsense.

There is an excellent detailed Pdf- Chemical Misconceptions- featured at Sense About Science
http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/13/

Thanks,
Coach Hale
www.maxcondition.com

These types of claims are very popular these days. The paleo diet and all that rest their claims on the idea that "we evolved to do this or that".

Such claims are ENTIRELY without merit. Because they can NEVER be disproven. I blogged a lot about the unscientific claims of Michael Pollen, for instance, which are more a "romantic vision" than science. At least in regards to his claims about nutrition, nutrionisim, and "instinct".

If Jamie comes by he can answer the comments in regards to the article. So please take this as my own reactions to your good points and not as me putting any words in Jamie's mouth.

There is one very important point that must be considered when speaking of ANY toxins, whether natural toxins we can expect to find in organic foods or "synthetic" toxins.

But before I bring up that point I'd like to talk about the word toxin itself. It's always a good idea to define our terms. Colloquially, we use the word toxin to describe any bad chemcial that gets into your body and interacts with the body's cells in a negative way, causing damage. A poison could be thought up as a very bad toxin that does a great deal of damage very quickly or kills you outright very quickly. So lets assume by the word toxin we mean chemicals that cause slow damage.

Most people are probably not aware that in biology a toxin is a bit more specific. That is, they are damaging chemicals or poisons that are produced IN NATURE BY BIOLOGICAL MEANS.

Even in the case of insecticides like DDT, which the article mentioned, these are sill organic chemicals. DDT for instance, is an organochloride. So even though we talk about these things being synthesized or isolated they are still produced via chemical reactions involving organic compounds that…happen in nature. We just ramp it up and produce chemicals in large quantities that only happen very rarely "by themselves". There are many examples of these types of toxins.

The biological toxins that plants produce to defend themselves or for whatever reason and the organic pollutants that we "produce" and then introduce into the environment artificially…they are all NATURAL.

So, to me, the idea that there is a distinct difference between the "natural toxins that our bodies have dealt with forever" and new toxins that we have introduced more recently doesn't hold much weight. A toxin is a toxin is a toxin. What matters is 1)Just how much damage it can do and how quickly. 2) How much does it build up in the body..like you spoke of the liver, but also the kidneys, the skin, etc…can the body get rid of it through some process and how quickly can the body do that and 3) How much of it are we exposed to?

Since there are SOOO very many toxic chemicals in nature we don't know enough about them to say which of those points is more important. It's overwhelming. We can definitely say that pesticides like DDT are REALLY harmful. But we can also say that exposure to this is no where near on the level of various other toxins we are exposed to.

Okay, so now to the point I mentioned earlier.

I tried to allude to this point when I brought up the thing about domesticated rats living unusually long life-spans (I think "unusually is a better word than the word I used: unnaturally, which is perhaps meaningless).

And you yourself mentioned it when you talked about humans living very long lifetimes into the future. The point is that toxins, no matter where they come from, if they don't kill you or devestate you in a short while as in a "poison" take time to do their damage. And many of them that would be harmless at small amounts take time to build up to "toxic levels".

Lifespans in well developed, industrialized nations have increased DRAMATICALLY in a relatively short period of time. In fact, in the United States, the average lifespan increased by more than 30 years in the 1900's alone. That is HUGE. From 1900 to 2000, according to the US Census data, life expectation increased from about 43 years to 77 years (all races, male and female, averaged together).

You talked about toxins that we've dealt with for 100,000 years. Well, although some people have always lived long lives, and in different periods and different places life-expectancy changed thoughout history, I think we can safely say that from the Paleolithic through to the early 20th century, forty was a "ripe old age".

That means, on average, which means that some lived longer..say to sixty or so and some lived much shorter lives…say to 22 or 23.

And now average is about 65 for the whole world, saying nothing of the more advanced nations.

"Toxins" that were ingested or absorbed naturally through food or what have you, to someone with a life expectancy of 40..are a moot point. More likely for a coal miner to die from black lung or a cave in than from "toxins". So if you are getting me, toxins take time to do their work and the longer we live the more we get to see that work come to fruition. All the accumulated damage we get as we grow old is something only the very lucky got to see once upon a time.

Also, you have to consider the monumental difference between the sudden and world altering "invention" of agriculture versus how humans lived for thousandns and thousand of years before agriculture (and agriculture did come about "suddenly" in historical terms).

So we are talking about coffee and other plants that we consume that may contain toxins that can build up in our bodies and do slow damage. Before agriculture there was never a "surplus" of any one food…or at least very rarely. There is simply no comparison between having your pantry stocked with coffee ALL THE TIME, no matter the season, versus, say, eating a fruit ONLY when that fruit is in season because somebody across the world isn't growing it and shipping it to your grocery store.

Not to mention all the other "staples" that we consume in ridiculous quantities. So the three of us are talking about drinking our coffee, and we probably do it every single day and we drink, say, at least 2 cups, which are really mugs, and maybe more on some days. Evolution, has not "prepared our bodies" to deal with that. We are ingesting much higher quantities of toxic chemicals from that than we are from "modern toxins" and both groups of toxins, they are not really "different" in the since of one being natural and one not. All chemicals are natural in that they occur in nature. We can not make, as human beings, supernatural things!

Evolution has very little to do with dealing with the modern world. Adaptation does.

You make some very interesting points, imrev. I've read about smoking being healthy, that was proposed back in the old days, but I never heard that magnetic radiation could be healthy. I'm going to look into that now.

As for the food industry not paying for studies that could cast negativity over the industry, well I've seen the same with the milk industry. Every bit of research I've read that has to deal with milk, or even dairy in general, is 99% positive…and funded by the milk/dairy industry!

I think that we unanimously agree that regardless of how much research we read, who recommends what, or what sort of crackpot theories people come up with…We will still be enjoying a nice chemical filled cup of coffee.

As a for instance, you will get more potentially carcinogenic chemicals from a cup of coffee, organic or otherwise, than you will from a year of exposure to chemical pesticide residues. All the chemicals presents in the foods we eat…same picture. There are also many PROTECTIVE chemicals in the foods we eat. Including in coffee (bold statement seeing that coffee is supposed to have around 1000 chemicals of which twenty something have been investigated).

However there is no significant evidence that coffee, carrots, peppers, kung pao chicken, etc pose a real cancer risk.

Realize that when scientists are investigating chemicals for their carcinogenic properties they are NOT trying to "prove" that the chemical causes cancer. They are looking for potential. And they are certainly not, by extension, trying to prove that the associated food causes cancer.

Even though you get so many potentially harmful organic chemicals form the food you eat, so much so that that exposure might be said to pose a greater risk than pesticide chemical exposure, it is no where near the ridiculously large amounts that laboratory rats are exposed to! Also, a fact that many people don't know is that "strains" of rats that are "prone" to certain types of cancer are chosen for many of these trials. The idea being is that if you think a chemical causes skin tumors you pick a strain that is prone to skin tumors (not saying much since rats are particulary prone to skin tumors).

As a by the by..rats go down with cancer a dime a dozen. Even your really nice pet store rats. Simply put, they were never meant to live the cushy lives they do in captivity and thus their small and short lived bodies have few defenses against the toxic chemicals that build up in their tissues when they live unnaturally long lives.