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Feds consider upping allowable pesticide residue limits on our food
(www.nationalobserver.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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I understand to a degree allowing an increase in pesticide use (though that'll seriously impact the water quality due to runoff), the only thing that the industry needs to do to reduce pesticide residue is to just spray the produce with water.
It's just a way to cheapen out the process at the expense of people's health. And I don't just mean the end shoppers', but also all the industry workers along the way. While I imagine the amount isn't a lot, but an increase in pesticide residue that makes it all the way through the supply chain increases how much the workers are exposed to as they handle the produce.
That's a very good point. Wasn't there a study somewhere that found out that there were levels beyond what's accepted in mothers' breast milk of the pesticide called Roundup? And the reason was that the water supply was completely contaminated?
I seem to recall something like that.
Frankly speaking, I don't think there's any actively used pesticide that is particularly fine to ingest on a regular basis, even at extremely low levels. That stuff circulates throughout your entire body, and is particularly harmful to both fetuses and breastfeeding infants. And I imagine that pregnant/breastfeeding women are the group that is most conscious about eating healthily, which means tons of fresh fruits and vegetables.
We don't know the full impacts of the majority of our industrialized food system. Emulsifiers, perservatives, flavouring agents and pesticides all are relatively new and their effects, impacts, build ups, and mixtures in the human body are not fully studied or understood yet.
The issue is a lack of money studying them, as the only group with the money to do all the studies needed are the ones producing the pesticides, and they have a dedicated interest in only doing enough studies to prove that there are no immediate issues with their products.
It's a conflict of interest unless if there's more government funding into examining these sorts of things, as there are no other major forces that don't have a invested interest in making sure that the studies make the products look good.
Even then, human lifespans can reach 100 years, some of this stuff simply hasnt existed in our food supply to truly know what a lifetime of consumption can cause. Many of these additives and pesticides are tested to be safe per individual food and the total ingestion control is left to the consuner, who may be uninformed on their consumption rate, especially considering the increasing background presence of these substances in our water and soil.
About fifteen years ago, it was popularly believed within the science communities that the first bicentennial person had already been born, and some of the recent breakthroughs suggest that most of us under 50 might really be able to achieve that.
Of course, that's presuming that the stuff we're eating isn't killing us on a timescale that only the advances of curing the major diseases of today will make relevant.
It will be sad if we manage to cure all the diseases that prevent most of us from reaching 100, only to find out that the food we're eating is what's preventing most of us from going much past that. And honesty, I wouldn't be surprised if it takes something like that before money is directed towards properly studying all our additives and pesticides to check for which ones are doing us in.
I personally beleive that the industrialized diet causes significant health issues much earlier than 100 and that is a contributing factor to diseases including heart conditions, diabetes and obesity, all of which can shorten life spans and reduce quality of life.
True. Those are probably some of the highest causes of deaths lately.
While medicinal advances should help with some of them, fixing your diet would do much more much faster.
And while the industrial design of modern processed foods is a problem, I think there the greater issue is a lack of education on healthy diets and habit formation.
Those two go hand in hand, many big food processors had a hand in developing food pyramids and nutritional guidelines. Processed food manufacturers also have very little rules about their advertisements and who they can advertise to, with a huge market being to kids. These companies try to hook kids on processed foods while they are young and their tastes are still developing, one of the biggest examples being the happy meal which includes a toy that is often part of a limited time set and adds incentive to get more happy meals.
Gotta love the corporations targeting people before they're old enough to think for themselves, thus preventing them from ever learning how to think for themselves. A part of me feels like children under 10 should be banned from fast food joints unless if the children's menu is 100% made of proper and nutritious meals, but something like that is probably impossible to pass in the current political climate. Especially considering who our leaders are right now, and who the opposition are.
I keep forgetting just how entrenched the corporations' propaganda are, all the way down to food pyramids.
Water is often the enemy you are applying the pesticide to combat; a practice known as desiccation. Granted, it seems everyone's favourite desiccant is no longer on the table for modification here.
They might just mean wash the final product before shipping it out to the grocery stores.
I see you've never worked with flour before. Once it meets water there is no turning back.
Granted, if you catch it earlier, wheat berries aren't that hard to run through the dryer, assuming you accept the environmental and financial cost. Get into beans, though... Good luck.
If you just mean something like Apples, which don't need to be dry, who doesn't already wash it before consumption already?
Well of course the moment you've processed the crop it's too late to wash them. I was mostly just talking about fruits and vegetables.
But for grains and legumes, washing them before hulling them shouldn't be a problem. Of course there's the issue of added costs, but spraying additional pesticides is also a cost.
Restaurants. Just on the basis of how many people eat at those this is important.