How Would You Define Clean Eating?

MonsoonStorm

Meat on the bone isn't banned in the UK... Beef perhaps (but that had more to do with BSE rather than anything else - a contaminant from the neural tissue of diseased animals) But all other meats are available on the bone. Kneejerk reaction? perhaps - but the consequences of that particular disease are a little worse than a dodgy tummy. There's also the point that the industry had to do everything it could to reassure every country that banned UK beef that they were doing all they could to make it safe. It was only at the start of this year, 15 yrs after the BSE issue, that the US has allowed the import of IRISH beef (all other EU beef is still under ban) Now, given that BSE has been a non-issue for so long, how much of that "safeguarding ban" is down to politics and the US govt purely wishing to boost their own beef industry? Also given that and the influence that large companies have on the US govt... it is really such a leap that a lot of this anti-organic stuff is been blown out of proportion to meet an agenda?

The problem is, it isn't the FDA itself that is testing these things, but the companies that develop them. You are right, you can't trust the fear-mongering sites, but then equally, how can you trust the govt system? Until the govt establishes it's own private independent testing system, and removes itself from the influence of large companies, then all results will be skewed.

The other thing with organic meat (in the UK at least) is the stricter conditions on living standards. Most mass produced cows in the US seem to be raised in massive pens, wallowing in mud, being fed food that their systems aren't designed to digest without a blade of grass in sight, which is something I find hard to comprehend.

As for listeria, it is common and can happen at any point in the food processing chain. It is also not going to kill you unless you are severely immuno-compromised in the first place. Who's spreading the fear-mongering about bugs in the first place? "Use Dettol anti-bacterial spray on all of your work surfaces! Safety for your entire family!" *cue picture of sweet innocent baby crawling on a surface and then putting it's hands in it's mouth* Fear-mongering is everywhere, most of it propagated by the government and massive companies. Big point for avoiding listeria - "don't eat soft cheeses, blue cheeses etc etc". No thank you. I like my cheese.

Having lived in China for a long time I have seen the full spectrum of "additives" to food, from simple sugar water all the way through to melamine. The wet markets are still open when it's 35 degrees and all of the produce (meat and veg) is just out in the open air exposed to anything and everything, yet somehow the population keeps going up ;-) The stuff you buy from the side of the road which is being sold by random people who have grown it in their garden... god only knows what it was fertilised with (I can hazard a good guess), you can bet your bottom dollar that they didn't use expensive mass produced chemical stuff though. Simple precautions are all that are needed.

One other consideration... yes, there may be bugs on food, ok. But bugs have been on food for millenia. Before we became oversterilised germophobes with antiseptic everything, our bodies were better able to cope with such bugs. Now we are caught between increased virulence in bugs (brought about by pesticides etc) and immune systems that, for one reason or another, no longer know what they are attacking or how to attack it. On the other hand we have a plethora of chemicals that our bodies don't know what to do with, the plants don't know what to do with, and the bugs are slowly evolving to ignore regardless.

Just my opinion.

It all boils down to eat what you feel most comfortable with and trust no-one

MonsoonStorm

Pubmed article basically slamming the FDA's testing of the effects of hormones in meat:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10366402

Oxford journals research article related to the current thinking on hormones in meat and the effects on children, and also decrying the FDA's testing:
http://humupd.oxfordjournals.org/content/12/4/341.short

The govt and the FDA are not necessarily correct. But again, just to re-iterate, this is not me siding with the fear-mongers. I believe that certain people (Mr. Mercola, looking squarely at you!) are downright dangerous at times.