I see your point. I've wondered whether there's evidence that eating "organic" food leads to better health than eating conventionally raised food of comparable quality.

I also consider it possible that one or two pesticides are bad for people, but that's not the same thing as it being important to avoid all pesticides.

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Think about your parents and aunts and uncles when they hit their fifties. Now look at people just hitting their 40's and 50's now. When I was a kid, fibromyalgia was a RARE disease. Very exotic. Now, my one friend's mom who's in her mid 50's was forced into retirement by a combination of that and early alzheimers. The guy who works at the corner gas station in my neighbourhood who looks about that old has it. Yes, I know the plural of anecdote is not data, but on the other hand, with big pharma having the means and motive to bribe and subvert a lot of research on hazards, I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to trust "official studies" much either. (Other autoimmune issues like allergies have clearly exploded. MS is getting rather common too, in Dee's neighbourhood in St. Louis she says when she went to bars she almost always found at least one person there with it, different person each time.) Seems odd we're getting all these weird diseases that used to be rare if our environment is as safe or safer than it used to be.

All I know is that since I spent 3 months living on regular pasta and olive oil (to save money up for a big expenditure), and then tried switching to organic red rice from bhutan and sardines (yes I know eating just one thing isn't good but I had concerns about other stuff and I wanted a "neutral base" to work from for exploring what I should eat). I noticed that my sleep issues that had been dogging for three weeks cleared up immediately. moreover, _any time_ I tried a new food (with a couple exceptions, one of which surprised me: high quality dark chocolate, the other was regular eggs) I would notice the ache in my kidneys that wakes me up at the 7-8 hour mark would wake me up at the 5-6 hour mark instead.

I was not "eating my bread in anxiety" either. much of what I experimented with I was optimistic about. One thing that vexed me was I had a week of having two hothouse bell peppers a day. first four days fine, last two days the twinges moved to earlier. My lifestyle's pretty consistent so I'm fairly confident that there's some nasty stuff on most of what we get including most organic certifications_. But GMO stuff is bad, that always gives me twinges, and the strongest ones of all at that. Including the times I've had food I thought wasn't GMO but it turned out it was. (The GMO popcorn gave me serious stomach distress too, worst of my life, and my stomach normally doesn't trouble me at all).(And how rare is that these days? I'm one of my only friends I know for whom this is true).

I think saying that any anti-GMO/pesticide bias means you're a paranoid fruitloop is a very unsupported statement.

And yah, Obama's behaviour is appalling. Glad to see the studies about healthiness, I'm thinking our society is so insanely stupid on this topic. :(

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Seth Roberts collects accounts of self-experimentation. He's then apt to overgeneralize, but he's turned up some good stuff.

I've been seeing a surprising amount of MS among the people I know, but not early Alzheimer's. I agree that fibromyalgia seems really common. I don't know whether it used to be undiagnosed or is really increasing.

You might be interested in Diabetes Rising-- a book by a medical journalist who says that both types of diabetes have been increasing for the past century, and none of the theories cover the facts.

My stomach doesn't trouble me at all. On the other hand, I get occasional flack from my intestines, pretty much from dairy products.

Problems with mouse studies.

Why people do mouse studies anyway.

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FWIW, my brother's celiac disorder went subclinical when he went on a strict organic diet. Which makes him happy, as he can now have beer again.

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