I agree with many of the statements made here. We also eat from the garden and when in season. Lucky for us, the seasons here are long! We simply plan our meals around what the garden produces! I think this really simplifies life. Lettuces grace our table from December to June, tomatoes from July to December, cole crops are good from November until June. In the winter we eat peas and favas, in the spring runner beans, in the summer common beans, in the fall sometimes cow peas, sometimes limas. Carrots produce every month (but they are less tasty in the summer), beets most of the year, chard all the time. We grow all the herbs we use, but only have basil in the summer and cilantro in the winter. Fruit is great, and even better now that we started growing strawberries. Our fruit production goes like this: December to May too much citrus! strawberries are producing most of the time, peaches in mid summer if the squirrels let us have some, figs in August and September, then some of the neighbor's grapes. We do buy some tropical fruit from time to time, bananas, mangos, papaya, we can't grow those too well. I also eat a lot of my preserved (dried) figs troughout the year. So I think we produce 90% of the fruit and veggies we eat. We produce some potatoes, but need to buy some for part of the year. Same with onions. Garlic was a bust, must do something about it. We grew corn a couple of years, no more. We are using the space to grow artichokes, better return on the investment! So we buy corn a couple of times a year. As far as other grains, I have tried growing amaranth for grain. No fun to harvest, but I like it as greens in the summer!

So you think nature was made to keep us safe? Because that is completely backwards, we evolved to adapt to survive in the environment. There is natural horizontal genetic transfer among plants in many cases, it probably happens at a higher rate than the artificial transfer, we just don't find and take care of the naturally occurring ones. Who exactly brought up "Substantially equivelant"? Is that a reference to something? The chances of a gene successfully piggybacking with a target gene are roughly 1/10^19 (about 30 base pairs to a primer, need at least 25 to match to have any percentage work, then you have about 15 cycles where your "piggybacker" needs to be chosen preferentially to your target site, to be fair the 1/2 chances on the 15 or so cycles would probably be lower than 1/2 and the 1/4 chance of any given base pair would probably be a bit higher, because the four nucleic acids are never found in the exact same ratio, its typically between 19 and 31% for any given base). What prevents the gene from getting away outside of the lab is the lack of equipment and reagent in the environment. Yes some genes can make it through the natural way, but again we aren't choosing toxins that affect humans, so there is no reason to think that a gene in corn from pigweed will affect milkweed any more than a gene in corn from corn. The lab techniques require equipment that is never found in nature. As for toxins against pests and against humans ... they will be in the plant. But a toxin you spray on the plant will probably be there in higher quantities. Potentially we can produce toxins in just the parts that are attacked, for instance we could produce a toxin in the stems of squash to quash SVB. However thus far we have been sticking to toxins that aren't toxic to humans, Bt for instance, binds specifically to a protein in the digestive tract of lepodoptera, humans have been spraying the whole bacteria on veggies for years and years with no problem. I am a student, and haven't made anything worth testing, but yes they do test on animals, and sometimes they test poorly (Jules Dervase talks about a test done on rats with tomatoes and how the rats wouldn't eat them ... neglecting to mention that the rats wouldn't eat any tomatoes GMO or non). For me the worst cases are things like golden rice, they simply moved some genes from one edible plant to another but had a huge push back, had they been successful they probably would have prevented nearly 250,000 children each year from going blind. Since it was ready to be distributed globally 8 years ago that is 2 million children.

Here are some good studies -- at least from the descriptions there seem to be some well designed ones -- that show some higher nutrient levels in organic foods, and the specific nutrients are named. Some of the studies also demonstrate the higher levels of harmful pesticides in conventional foods, such as the study that measured the levels in the urine of children from two groups, one eating conventional and one eating organic. And the value of organic methods for soil microbiology and carbon sequestration and the like is also mentioned in some studies. I would like to note that the "source" for information in the posts by TMG1 on this thread is primarily a propaganda pamphlet paid for and produced by big AG (it's a circuitous route, which was described to him last year when he was last here touting these fictional "facts" but he didn't believe that his source was inherently flawed, and so he's come back armed with misinformation again.) If anyone really wants to know the route and how the pamphlet came to be sold on Amazon, I can lay it all out again. Here is a link that might be useful: nutritional values, pesticide levels, value to soil in organic foods

Dan The human body is not designed for processing meat--that's why most of our teeth are blunt--for grinding and chewing on fruits and veggies. This is why doctors recommend not introducing meat into a child's diet for the first six months to a year; because their stomachs are not srong enough to learn to process it yet. People that do eat meat usually eat it on a regular basis; and they have been doing so since early childhood. Their bodies have been conditioned to accept the meat and process it to the best of their abilities. They have trained their bodies to process the meat through gradual introduction, followed by consistent consumption. Once meat is removed from a diet, especially for an extended amount of time, the body loses some of its ability to process it--the system's not used to it anymore. The degree of illness experienced when meat is suddenly re-introduced varies from person to person. A few factors to consider are: 1)how long has meat been absent from the consumer's system, 2)was that person a rigid vegetarian who read every label to check for animal broths and fats, etc., and, 3)how much meat was ingested? The degree of the reaction also depends on the sensitivity of the person's stomach, too--whether it is prone to reject spicy stuff or stuff with too much fiber; or if they started out with a relatively hardy constitution. I know that personally, I have a pretty strong stomach. I rarely have any funky reactions unless someone has accidentally (or spitefully!) slipped me food that was tainted with animal products. I get pretty sick even if I eat portabellos that are grilled on the same grill where meat has been cooked (if it isn't well-cleaned!). But then I haven't had any meat, animal fat, or broth or anything for several years (I do still consume a small amount of cheese; and sometimes I will eat cake that was baked with eggs; so I fortunately have few reactions to dairy!). I have also read that the body does react the same way when dairy is removed from the diet. Generally, our bodies were not intended to process any milk other than what our own mothers have produced for us. But after that supply dries up, we no longer need to get the nutrients provided in breastmilk from breastmilk because our bodies are strong enough to eat the foods in which those vitamins and nutrients naturally occur. Apparently we should all be lactose-intolerant; but I suppose our bodies just follow the same conditioning as it does with meat consumption. Anyway; I hope that that novel has helped you understand why you probably had stomach cramps! When that happens to me, I find that eating dry toast with a glass of water helps to alleviate the stress. Sometimes even the water alone helps to flush the meat from your system. I hope you find some of this helpful!!! Melissa