Comments for Nutritional supplements

Comment on The china project by Bessie Billig

Bessie Billig — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:51:33 +0000

I was talking to my husband this morning (he used to teach at a Buddhistcollege - Naropa in Boulder) and he said every visiting monk demanded meat(lamb)and lots of it!So it is strange how it gets warped here in the West.

Comment on Bitter leftover chopped liver by Rufus Kimak

Rufus Kimak — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 11:58:37 +0000

I cooked some beef liver and onions on Friday night. The liver wasstill pink on the inside (but cooked more than I meant to). I ate itFriday night, Saturday morning and Sunday morning. I reheated itSat/Sun, being careful to make it warm and not cook it further. Ittasted just fine to me. And believe me, I’m not a liver lover yet!

This was only the third liver I’ve cooked. I like it better eachtime.

Comment on The china project by Ruben Toplin

Ruben Toplin — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 07:08:27 +0000

I agreee that much of what we see is just what the researcher is expectingto see. Once when I was home sick I was channel surfing and saw most of ashow on Discovery on an indigenous South American family. The show was notabout their diet rather about the changing social structures in the bush.Anyway this family was actually farming in the jungle. At one point thenarrator made a comment (I don’t remember the exact words now) but itsounded that these people lived on just the corn and beans that they grew.There were no cows or sheep so I don’t think they had access to milk. Iremember thinking that maybe Price was mistaken and there were some trueindigenous vegetarians. Anyway later in the program when the father of thefamily was asked if he would like to live in the town, he said no becausethere was no room. where would he keep his chickens and pigs? Well thatshocked me because although he might be keeping the chickens for eggs, whywould he have pigs if not to eat them? He already had two dogs as pets.I wonder how many who watched that show walked away thinking those peoplewere vegetarian.

Comment on The china project by Sharita Wheaton

Sharita Wheaton — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:25:00 +0000

when the

expensive and I’m betting poorly constructed. These opportunities fortradtional dietary studies grow smaller everyday…..hey you can geta Coke places you can’t even drive to!

I had the opportunity a few years ago to work with Tibetian refugeesin northern India. Vegetarianism was the thing with the westernBuddhist students there so it was unspoken that it was Buddhist.However every older monk that taught these students (those orginallyfrom Tibet) ate meat with almost every meal. They didn’t consider ita meal without the meat. And they loved their fermented butter teawith salt.

As far as I know other than the vegetarians of southern India, wewesterners are the only ones that have raised it to an art form. Mostother cultures simply want meat if they can get it. And I think wewesterners are the only culture that tries to be vegetarian withouteven adding dairy!

Comment on The china project by Sabina Romenesko

Sabina Romenesko — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 02:16:26 +0000

Your report of how traditional Chinese eat mirrors my husbands. Meat wouldbe top choice if it were not for expense. Also many people who did not haveaccess to a wider variety of foods (animal foods) appeared had health problemsdue to deficiency.

Comment on Bitter leftover chopped liver by Dorsey Keeler

Dorsey Keeler — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 01:07:53 +0000

Last year I used to eat a pound of liver a week, and I always cooked it inone shot and saved leftovers. I never noticed the liver tasting bad, but it didoften turn green. Come to think of it, I never liked it much compared tothe first time I cooked it, but I’d always figured it was because it was cold.

Comment on The china project by Stephania Barcliff

Stephania Barcliff — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 22:21:21 +0000

It also seems obvious to me that the okinawans had a much better and more varieddiet after the war, and steadily improving post-war, than before. Japan wasbasically fuedal before the war; the rural poor which was a lot of thepopulation did not eat well. After the war, Japan became something of a modernDemocracy, with a much higher standard of living. It maybe that the switch fromlard to canola was detrimental, but the switch from a basically rice diet to onethat included fish and meat more than once a month more than made up for it.Anyway there are certainly a lot more factors than that study brought out. Noculture is that simple.

Comment on The china project by Dorsey Keeler

Dorsey Keeler — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:15:57 +0000

This will be great to give to someone I was talking to at work the other dayabout consumption of soy in China. This massive Cornell project should carrysome credentials.

Comment on The china project by Dorsey Keeler

Dorsey Keeler — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:08:19 +0000

Price measured tooth decay, and I didn’t notice tooth decay or skeletalstructure measurements. Moreover, what percentage of their diet is insects orsmall animals like whole frogs etc? Many researchers have overlookedconsumptionof insects especially and also tiny animals to the point of not factoring themin at all, and these animals are the highest of all in these fat-solublevitamins.

Some people probably can, and some people I’m sure can’t. Depending on yourancestor’s intake of saturated fats. But what’s more important is thenutrients that come along with them, which is what Price emphasized, in whichqualityis most important. Animals fats are high in nutrients that are protectivefrom heavy metals and toxins anyway– and again it comes down to quality, i.e.what the nutrient to toxin ratio is.

Well I think that’s EXACTLY what Price was trying to do. One of the thingsPrice pointed out was that the diets he found were widely varying. However,when all broken down to their nutrient profiles, they were very similar. Andthat’s the exact reason Price studied so many different groups. It was a lotmore than 14, he studied 14 umbrella groups, some of them consisting of manytribes with diets differing between themselves.

You know it’s very important to differentiate between heart disease and otherproblems. Just because a population does not have much heart disease doesnot mean they are paragons of health. Price did find low-fat folks who didn’thave heart disease like the Bantu, which later research revealed to be free ofheart disease. Price found them to be very healthy in terms of tooth decay,but he also found them to be very unhealthy relative to the other populationshe found. If you compare them to our society they are paragons of health,but if you compare them to other groups, you could look at tooth decay and saythey are unhealthier by a factor of 6.

Oh sure. How about the obvious bias of the researchers? If the researchersdidn’t already have 100% of the conclusion before they started the project,they would never have made the non-sequitorial conclusion they made from theirown data. Their conclusion is a total non-sequitor, 100%, but they didn’t careto take that into account.

Price on the other hand, demonstrated an enormous lack of bias, and in factdeliberately studied so many different populations so he could avoid makingunjustified conclusions. And he rigorously studied their diets, analyzed foodsin labs, etc, to break down all the chemical constitutents of the foods. Heused his own research to dismiss varying nutritional fads such as one particularfood being bad and another good such as cereals, or acid foods, or whatever.He also was careful to include minor consumption of certian things otherssometimes overlook, like plant products by the Masai or insects by the bantu.

Comment on The china project by Alfred Stauber

Alfred Stauber — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 15:02:50 +0000

The Japanese, which apparently are the defacto administrators historically,are great record keepers, hence the importance Okinawa has in longevitystudies. Unlike other locations touted, like the Andes or Caucus or Tibet,Okinawa DOES have records,,,these other place do not.