how I imagine cardboard tastes.
Even venereal diseases used to be combated with drugs containing heavy metals. Their antibiotic effect was used for this purpose. The drug was called “Salvarsan”. That was less than 100 years ago. Of course, people died during this therapy; many thousands more than what we would call a “side effect” today. Penicillin is used these days. Penicillin is, by the way, a mycotoxin or mold-poison.
Whether heavy metal usage is still commonplace in China or whether the metal in rice wafers occurs naturally is something I can’t judge. However, this is of no importance.
Conversely, when we examine the nematodes in fish it’s exciting to see how people can mutate into “thrill seekers”. You eat raw fish (Sushi) and then complain about fish tapeworms. Since you want to be hip, you are willing to take that risk. Normal people cook meals. This shows that today’s diet has nothing to do with “common sense”.
The highlight are “black smoothies”, which contains finely dispersed activated carbon. The inherent “logic” is obviously (?) derived from activated charcoal tablets, which bind toxins in acute cases of poisoning. How these activated carbons want to “know” which substances are toxins and which are nutrients is a mystery. Apparently, drinkers of this kind of smoothie apparently attribute more intelligence to them than to themselves.
Smoothies are a “modern” food. Bacteria live on every plant and on
every fruit. This isn’t bad because they protect themselves with their cell walls. Leaves often have a layer of wax, making it very hard for bacteria to penetrate. When you put everything into a mixer, the cell walls will break up allowing the bacteria to multiply quickly because the surface that these bacteria can attack has increased one thousandfold (again, the area rule applies here; math is the same everywhere). To keep the temperature low, you add ice because 10° Celsius (50° F) more will double their growth rate. In the middle of summer, a smoothie is thus a proven way to get food poisoning if you let it sit for a longer period.
Toxins in Food
Somehow, toxins are being continuously detected in food these days. Surely we can do without them, can’t we?
One thing is clear: Pests and fungi propagate better in monocultures than in the wild. That’s statistics – the distance to the next identical plant is shorter. What’s more, they have to reproduce in a reliable way. To do this, they have to make sure that their seeds ripen. Conversely, if they do not have this mechanism, these plants wouldn’t exist. The astronomer Harald Lesch says: “One shouldn’t be surprised that cat fur has holes where the eyes are”.
Plants have “built-in” mechanisms that prevent animals from eating their fruit prematurely. Some fruits have hard peels. Apples have a peel with a wax layer.11 Most, however, contain toxins, so-called “stomach poisons”.
Humans invented several methods to render these poisons harmless: e.g. when making sourdough, poisons are rendered harmless by bacteria. But the most important thing is: to cook them!12 Humans are clever, too: When cooking beans, the housewife pours away the soaking water. This gets rid of some of the poisons. She knows that beans are quite toxic.
Another part of these poisons is rendered harmless by cooking them. In the course of evolution, humans have accustomed themselves to the remaining poisons.
Of course, different peoples tolerate different amounts of poison. Some people aren’t poisoned by raw beans. They need to have a genetic defect to do this, and they eat this type of bean to prevent tropical diseases. There are people who die from these beans as well. Perhaps they would have died much earlier from the tropical disease. This is a pure optimization process that selects the least evil.
Then humans began to cultivate plants. They did this to increase the yield, but also to reduce the poisons inherent in the plants that prevent them from being eaten. This protection was then acquired by humans. People know that the bitter tips of cucumbers should be cut off. The same is true for zucchini. Bitter areas show that they’re toxic: A German amateur gardener accidentally killed himself a few years ago on his own home-grown zucchini: His wife had refused to eat the bitter soup and survived. That’s why regulations exist for the seeds. If toxic varieties are created, things can end up badly, as the amateur gardener demonstrated in his self-experiment. The case was reported by the press. Unfortunately, not on what something like this implies and what it means to our modern system.
Humans perceive the taste as “bitter” or unpleasant precisely because evolution has arranged things in such a way that humans can survive life’s struggle against poisons. If humans were to perceive poisons as sweet, then they would’ve died out long ago. Basically, no animal would ever think to say: “I'm going to eat this now because it tastes particularly nasty so I can get healthy.” Animals are smarter than humans.
Which isn’t to say that the system can overregulate itself sometimes. Experts and the people who write the rules also pretend to be on the safe side because they know what happens when you don’t write the provisiions correctly. I refer to the poisonous zucchini.
Now there is a perception that poisons, like the ones used by farmers, are bad and you have to do away with them entirely. How are plants supposed to “defend” themselves against predators? This is especially impossible because the stomach poisons have been bred out of them. Seen this way, insecticides and pesticides are necessary. By using modern technology, i.e. weather forecasting or other methods, it’s possible to minimize the use of poisons. Plants don’t have this option; they have to carry the poisons permanently with them because they don’t have a built-in weather forecasting computer.
It takes on religious traits when people want to use “natural poisons only”. They think that “naturally” extracted poisons are more harmless than the same poisons made from petroleum.
This is when you notice that the line of causality has been abandoned and that demons and gods have found their way back into modernity – post factually. Giordano Bruno probably would’ve never imagined, 420 years after being burned at the stake, that he would’ve been burned the same way by some people in order for them to practice their religion.
This nonsense becomes damaging to society when these same people get at each other’s throats: Normal people argue based on the current state of science and technology (which can change, too, but only within the valid laws of nature). Others do so according to the state of their religious convictions. Each only wants to discredit the other. Both sides nearly act the same.
During the Crusades, people were burned, murdered and raped in the name of Christianity. This doesn’t mean that the other religions are any better; just as all religions will at some time or another have to come to an end. But, no – with ours, the one we’ve got now, something like this doesn’t happen of course.
Meaning and Abuse of Religious Views
Religions provide valuable information on how the coexistence of people in the respective culture can proceed without conflict, as is the case with the 10 Commandments, for example. Furthermore, they serve to ensure the survival of the religious group. However, they’re also subject to a certain evolution. Might makes right here, too.
When it comes to the abuse of religious views, the arrogance of people who believe in God over non-believers or people of other faiths is currently in the spotlight. This attitude is pronounced among fanatical believers. This leads to their alleged right to subjugate and physically destroy unbelievers and people of other faiths. All you need to do is recall the persecution of Christians in Africa by Muslim extremist groups, the expulsion of Muslim minorities by the Buddhist Burmese, the constant clashes between Buddhists, Hindus in India, and Islamists and Hindus in Pakistan. Last but not least, there’s the perpetual conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, which always claims a large number of lives – all in the name of Allah.
Individual groups of non-believers (atheists) are not sparing in their arrogant remarks about believers who don’t regard the life of man as limited to any earthly existence.