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Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
1) I pointed out that obesity is related to portion sizes, but health of diet is a different subject. Right there in my post.
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And when you start considering the insulin response to certain foods, and how your body burns fat, the idea of being in a state of ketosis, not to mention the different effects different foods have on the body, you'd realize that its not as simple as calories in, calories out.
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2) Though I am certain I am not a rocket scientist, I am certain that we can't agree what cows were "meant" to eat. By evolutionary design, that could mean the cow was "meant" to eat whatever makes them most viable, which would actually include those antibiotics you complain about. If you mean by intelligent design, then I'll leave that for you to decipher for me.
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Corn fed cows, which is what feedlots feed because of how cheap the government's subsidy programs have made it, are 80% more likely to carry the
E. coli serotype O157:H7 strain. That comes from this study.
Russel, James B.
Rumen Microbiology and Its Role in Ruminant Nutrition. (Ithaca, NY: self published, 2002.)
Eating animal byproduct, also a very common occurrence in the mass production of 'meat', can lead to the animal in question to be infected with BSE. US regulations only partially prohibit the use of animal byproduct in feed, which is why their ban of Canadian beef due to BSE concerns was hilarious.
Campylobacter, a food-borne illness resulting in nausea, vomiting, fever, abdominal pain, headache and muscle pain, is 60% more likely to be found in feedlot raised cows, versus in only 2% of grass-fed raised cattle.
Grassfed cows also naturally have a higher content of CLA, Omega3 and 6 fatty acids, and a naturally higher flax content, all of which have been proven to be beneficial health wise to humans.
Plus, there is the FACT that feedlot raised cattle are given growth hormones that will make them 400lbs bigger by the time they are slaughtered. Sending 1,600lb cows to the slaughterhouse is unheard of for grass-fed cattle. Another 'unnatural' part of the whole process.
There have been various studies done to show that the hormones remain in the meat after the cattle have been slaughtered, which is why variations of the growth hormone, like rBHG have been banned in many countries, yet the US still uses it.
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Not to point to this post exclusively, but people need to give their head a shake about this whole "It's natural, therefore it's better" garbage. For instance:
-Tornados are natural. They kill.
-Poisonous berries are natural. They kill.
-Most antibiotics are synthetic. They have saved millions of lives
-The insulins we use now are synthetic. Millions of people would drop dead if we didn't have them
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What a stupid comparison. I won't even comment on the whole 'tornadoes are natural and they kill, therefore we can eat processed food all we want without problems' argument.
But you are completely wrong on the comparison of the antibiotics given to humans, which save lives, and using that argument to say that giving antibiotics to animals is therefore safe, and causes no health concerns or serious problems.
First of all, since you clearly don't understand how the feedlot industry works, when calves are weaned off the mothers they are usually placed into the feedlot setting, and since they're crammed into a pen with 200 other animals there is a higher risk of a variety of diseases due to the higher amount of animals, plus the actual condition of the pen which is often loaded with manure and other crap which the animals lay in the majority of the time.
Because of this feedlots will give a whole pen a variety of antibiotics before the calves even get into the pen as a preventive measure. The latest, greatest drug of choice is
Draxxin. At roughly $700 bucks a bottle, this miracle drug is absolutely worth it. Well, at least until the overuse of antibiotics as a preventive measure will help contribute to the emergence of resistant bacteria. Another common problem in the chain our food travels.
There have been many cases where associated antibiotic resistance from the result of using antibiotics as growth promoters in animals have resulted in restricted use of antibiotics.
Right now there is a EU wide ban, which I mentioned earlier, on the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics as growth promoters. But, according to wikipedia, it is estimated that greater than 70% of the antibiotics used in the US are given to a variety of feed animals in the absence of an actual disease. Like I said this has resulted in the emergance of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria like Salmonella, Campylobacter, E-coli, and Enterococcus. There is almost evidence from US and European studies that suggest that these kinds of resistant bacterias cause infections in humans that do not respond to our common antibiotics. Which basically renders your stupid argument that 'antibiotics save lives, therefore all antibiotics are good' useless.
Don't believe me? Go ask the ASM, APHA, and the AMA why they have called for restrictions on antibiotic use in food animal product, and an end to all antibiotics being used for non-therapeutic uses.
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When choosing produce that is good for the environment, should we not then choose the produce that limits it's impact the most rather than simply go for something with a natural sounding name like "organic"? Eating only organic because you believe it's better for you or the environment is maybe a little naive. As with everything, the true answer for what is best likely lies in the middle. Time to think for ourselves maybe
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You want to talk about the environmental footprint that the mass production of 'food' has? Because a operation that revolves around grass-fed beef, where cows are free to wander a pasture, and naturally fertilize the area they occupy is a hell of a lot more 'clean' than a feedlot where truck loads of manure need to be hauled out 2-3x per year in an effort to keep it clean. Nevermind the fact that every year numerous feedlots run into environmental problems because the nature of their operation requires them to be close to a water source, which also means that most of the time they end up leaking manure and other garbage into the same water source that is so essential to the cows.
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Genetically modified tomatoes that leave a small footprint vs. massive gardens to produce the same seems to me like it's maybe not the organic which is best.
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Tomatoes aren't genetically modified. There was something done to try and stop the tomato from becoming 'soft' are harvest, but the whole project was scrapped. 'Commercial failure' it was called.
As for GMO crops, if the idea is to increase yields, when its debatable whether it actually works.
I think a bigger problem that should be solved first is the subsidization of the biggest agriculture industry in the world(US), which like Vulcan pointed out earlier causes a LOT of problems throughout the whole world.
No wonder there is a food shortage when buying a locally grown produce is more expensive than buying stuff that is imported from the US.
), but the industry and the profitable "certification" companies have not proven otherwise that I've seen. 
