In article , Oz
writes
writes
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
writes

Er, surely a toxin is only a toxin if our digestion can't cope with it
and it poisons us. Anything we can successfully digest and either
metabolise or excrete is, almost by definition, not a toxin.

How very wrong can some people be?

... I don't know, care to explain?

1) Many toxins are highly biodegradeable. Cyanide, for example is broken
down in a few tens of seconds. Pity you get to die first.

2) Many toxins get broken down by the gut, you just have to worry about
the bit that you get to absorb before it's broken down.

3) Many toxins get excreted, often damaging the kidneys and causing
kidney failure (some mushroom toxins being the best known).

4) Many toxins form the basis of vaccinations though admittedly after
they've usually been deactivated.


--
Malcolm

"Tim Tyler" wrote in message ...
In uk.rec.gardening Michael Saunby wrote:
: "Tim Tyler" wrote in message ...

: Specific enzymes exist to detoxify plant toxins that were naturally in
: our diet - and they have worked well enough to get us this far.

: No they haven't. [...]

? Clearly we got here. Pesticides and herbicides can hardly take
responsibility for that - since they are a recent phenomenon.

: The same is not true of man-made insecticides, pesticides and
fungicides.

: Of course not - they've not evolved to harm anything that eats them,
indeed
: they've been designed not to.

More to the point, they've been designed to make the chemical corps money.

so what? why should people who work for chemical companies work for nothing?

To that end, they are invisible to consumers - and likely do the minimum
necessary to pass regulator's safety standards.

so you always drive at 20mph in a 30mph zone? Or do you do the minimum
necessary to pass the regulators safety standards and drive at 30?




Jim Webster

--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/

"Tim Tyler" wrote in message ...
In uk.rec.gardening BAC wrote:
: "Tim Tyler" wrote in message ...
: In uk.rec.gardening Tumbleweed

: It makes reasonable sense:
:
: Our digestive tract has evolved to cope with natural toxins.

: In which case we probably don't regard the food source as toxic at all.
Or
: not - in which case the toxins remain toxic to humans, and we presumably
: have learned to avoid ingestion, or to process the food so as to reduce
the
: toxicity to levels we consider acceptable. Similar to how we might deal
with
: foods we know to have been treated with 'artificial' toxins, really.

Our taste buds do their best to warn us about many plant toxins.

so you don't eat peppers?

Jim Webster

"Oz" wrote in message
news
BAC writes
In which case we probably don't regard the food source as toxic at all.
Or
not - in which case the toxins remain toxic to humans, and we presumably
have learned to avoid ingestion, or to process the food so as to reduce
the
toxicity to levels we consider acceptable. Similar to how we might deal
with
foods we know to have been treated with 'artificial' toxins, really.

So far as I am aware allowed pesticide levels in treated produce are not
related to subsequent treatment by the purchaser (which may, or may not,
reduce levels further).


Yes, but I was thinking more of people eating 'wild' foods, not produce,
e.g. Colin's one man eatathon to rid the country of J Knotweed, which might
well have taken a sizeable dose of God Knows What a few hours before he
harvested it.

snip sensible stuff, for which many thanks


Further the ADI is in essence set by the maximum amount of that produce
a consumer could theoretically eat. There are stories about excessive
proposed intakes such as the one where the proposed possible carrot
intake was close to 100% of diet (they might be carrot loving
veggies...), and was well over the toxic intake for the carrots
themselves. In this situation you wouldn't be harmed by the pesticide,
but would be killed by the carrots.


So what is the deadly dose of carrots, and does it alter if they are cooked?

BAC writes

"Oz" wrote in message

So far as I am aware allowed pesticide levels in treated produce are not
related to subsequent treatment by the purchaser (which may, or may not,
reduce levels further).


Yes, but I was thinking more of people eating 'wild' foods, not produce,
e.g. Colin's one man eatathon to rid the country of J Knotweed, which might
well have taken a sizeable dose of God Knows What a few hours before he
harvested it.

Anyone taking 'wild' food from inside an arable field that he doesn't
know the treatment of is being a tad naive.

If you want wild food, take it from wild places.

Further the ADI is in essence set by the maximum amount of that produce
a consumer could theoretically eat. There are stories about excessive
proposed intakes such as the one where the proposed possible carrot
intake was close to 100% of diet (they might be carrot loving
veggies...), and was well over the toxic intake for the carrots
themselves. In this situation you wouldn't be harmed by the pesticide,
but would be killed by the carrots.


So what is the deadly dose of carrots,

It's a lot, but quite easily reached if you try.


and does it alter if they are cooked?

Not as far as I am aware.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted.

In article , Jim Webster
writes

wrote in message
...
In uk.rec.gardening Jim Webster wrote:

"Tim Tyler" wrote in message ...
In uk.rec.gardening Tumbleweed
wrote:
It makes reasonable sense:

Our digestive tract has evolved to cope with natural toxins.

no, our digestive tracts have evolved to cope with SOME natural toxins.
Also the plants and their toxins are still evolving

Er, surely a toxin is only a toxin if our digestion can't cope with it
and it poisons us. Anything we can successfully digest and either
metabolise or excrete is, almost by definition, not a toxin.

in which case Glyphosphate, the start of this thread, is not a toxin.

I think we have to be careful just how we bandy such words about. If I
remember correctly, asprin is poison for cats, if so, then Asprin is a
toxin.

And penicillin kills guinea pigs....


Trouble is we are all sloppy and casual and neglect to put in the full
details. Perhaps if we say plants produce an array of substances, many of
them toxic in varying degrees to many species.
But the obvious thing to do is eat more meat. Once it's been killed most of
your problems with regard to its defence mechanisms are over :-))

--
Five Cats

Five Cats writes

And penicillin kills guinea pigs....

Indeed it does. Stone dead.

If discovered today it would have been rejected on first screening,
never to be seen again.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted.

In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
writes
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
writes

Er, surely a toxin is only a toxin if our digestion can't cope with it
and it poisons us. Anything we can successfully digest and either
metabolise or excrete is, almost by definition, not a toxin.

How very wrong can some people be?

... I don't know, care to explain?

1) Many toxins are highly biodegradeable. Cyanide, for example is broken
down in a few tens of seconds. Pity you get to die first.

2) Many toxins get broken down by the gut, you just have to worry about
the bit that you get to absorb before it's broken down.

3) Many toxins get excreted, often damaging the kidneys and causing
kidney failure (some mushroom toxins being the best known).

In fact I can't, offhand, think of any toxins apart from heavy metals
(which are excreted, but slowly) that don't fall into one, some or all
of the groups above. A moment's thought, and you would have realised the
same.

None of which really affects what I said.

A toxin is something toxic which poisons us. If it doesn't poison us
(i.e. is successfully managed by our digestion) then it's not a toxin.

Some things which are toxins to some animals are not toxins for other
animals for just this reason.

--
Chris Green )

writes
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:

1) Many toxins are highly biodegradeable. Cyanide, for example is broken
down in a few tens of seconds. Pity you get to die first.

2) Many toxins get broken down by the gut, you just have to worry about
the bit that you get to absorb before it's broken down.

3) Many toxins get excreted, often damaging the kidneys and causing
kidney failure (some mushroom toxins being the best known).

In fact I can't, offhand, think of any toxins apart from heavy metals
(which are excreted, but slowly) that don't fall into one, some or all
of the groups above. A moment's thought, and you would have realised the
same.

None of which really affects what I said.

Apart from illustrating biodegradeable, excretable and digestible
toxins, no.

A toxin is something toxic which poisons us. If it doesn't poison us
(i.e. is successfully managed by our digestion) then it's not a toxin.

That's something else. That is 'detoxifies'.

Some things which are toxins to some animals are not toxins for other
animals for just this reason.

Indeed, for a variety of reasons.

Mind you - don't forget the dose.
Very few things are completely non-toxic - not even water.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted.

"Tim Tyler" wrote in message ...
In uk.rec.gardening Tumbleweed
wrote:

: You miss the point, 'organic' plants are also full of insecticides and
: fungicides, naturally evolved to be super efficient at such stuff as
: mimicking animal hormones, (see the recent news on soy milk, killing
insects
: etc.
: When a random sample of around 50 of these chemicals was tested to the
same
: standards as man-made pesticides, 50% of them were found to be toxic, in
: fact *much more* toxic than would be allowed for man-made chemicals.
Thus
: the man made pesticides about which you complain are less toxic than
half
: these naturally ocurring chemicals. You complain about 'junk' when you
refer
: to man-made chemicals that have undergone rigorous testing, yet you eat
: plants full of hundreds of untested, probably more dangerous chemicals,
with
: no worries.

It makes reasonable sense:

Our digestive tract has evolved to cope with natural toxins.

Hmm. Let's just see how my digestive tract has evolved to cope with this
nice pie full of shiny, succulent, tasty and digestible Atropa berries. Or
on second thoughts, maybe not. Maybe it's just a 'gut feeling', but...

Specific enzymes exist to detoxify plant toxins that were naturally in our
diet -
and they have worked well enough to get us this far.

Being smart enough not to believe this sort of guff got us this far. Being
smart enough to help evolution along with plant strains that were more
nutritious and (in some cases) less toxic got us this far.

In article , Oz
writes
Five Cats writes

And penicillin kills guinea pigs....

Indeed it does. Stone dead.

If discovered today it would have been rejected on first screening,
never to be seen again.

Except that mice & rats are used a great deal more than GPs for
testing.....
Still I guess it might kill those as well.


--
Five Cats

In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
: Tim Tyler writes
:In uk.rec.gardening Michael Saunby wrote:

:: All in all it's better to eat meat - animals generally defend themselves by
:: running away rather than producing toxins, so all you need is a means of
:: catching them.
:
:Not logical. You can't conclude it's better to eat meat because it can
:run away.

: I see you have missed the point completely.

The point was apparently:

Assertion: "All in all it's better to eat meat"
Justification: "animals generally defend themselves by running away
rather than producing toxins"

A dumb syllogism with a false conclusion.

:Meat is higher up the food chain for one thing - and thus will concentrate
:environmental toxins.

: But not pesticides, because they are biodegradeable - a requirement.

Please don't publicly spout mis-information like this on health topics.

An estimated 88% of all pesticide residues resident in food are found in
meat and dairy products.

Numerous pesticides are concentrated in animal fat.

E.g. see:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract

Here it is in plain english:

``Beyond reflecting long-term energy balance, [adipose] tissue offers a
relatively stable depot of triglyceride and fat-soluble substances, such
as fat-soluble vitamins, and pesticides. As a tissue it represents the
greatest reservoir of carotenoids in the body. Halogenated hydrocarbons
may be measured in concentrations of hundreds-fold greater than those in
blood of the same individuals.''

- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract

"Halogenated hydrocarbons" are typically pesticides and herbicides.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/

In uk.rec.gardening Jim Webster wrote:
: "Tim Tyler" wrote in message ...

: Our taste buds do their best to warn us about many plant toxins.

: so you don't eat peppers?

I often go easy on many pungent fruit and vegetables.

I'm not sure what your point was - since the fruiting bodies of
many peppers are neither particularly pungent nor terribly toxic.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/

In uk.rec.gardening Michael Saunby wrote:
: "Tim Tyler" wrote in message ...
: : "Tim Tyler" wrote in message
: : In uk.rec.gardening Tumbleweed

: : It makes reasonable sense:
: :
: : Our digestive tract has evolved to cope with natural toxins.
:
: : In which case we probably don't regard the food source as toxic at all.
: : Or not - in which case the toxins remain toxic to humans, and we
: : presumably have learned to avoid ingestion, or to process the food
: : so as to reduce the toxicity to levels we consider
: : acceptable. Similar to how we might deal with
: : foods we know to have been treated with 'artificial' toxins, really.
:
: Our taste buds do their best to warn us about many plant toxins.

: I've never tried raw soya but I reckon it's not good to eat. A lot of what
: we eat today needs some processing, to grow it in large quanties requires
: modern technologies. What alternative do you propose - starving people?

What alternative? - to promoting pesticides as safe?

Warning people that many pesticides are not safe - and encouraging them
to eat certified-organic produce - or at the very least wash their fruit.

: The plants are happy to cooperate in making themselves taste pungent.
:
: By contrast, the artificial toxins have been designed to be tasteless and
: invisible to consumers.

: And safe!

Indeed - but that often appears to be a secondary requirement.

Corporations want their products to sell. Only if there is
significant damage which tracable back to them, and they can't
claim innocence through ignorance - do they apparently get concerned.

Safety typically comes through regulation and testing - not
from the manufacturers - but DDT should have taught us that
it is not an infallible system.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/

In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
: Tim Tyler writes

:By contrast, the artificial toxins have been designed to be tasteless and
:invisible to consumers.

: One thing I am certain about, and that is that smell and taste features
: absolutely nowhere in anyone's selection procedure for pesticides. The
: infinitesimal residues (if any) left by the time you eat it are only
: detectable (if at all) by hugely sophisticated analytical equipment.

: Just to give you some idea I have visited a site where they could test
: at these levels. They had three areas, with separate doors to the
: outside and staff from each area were not allowed to touch each other
: until their shift had finished. This was because if one of the 'low
: level detection' area walked through the 'high level' area (where the
: test applications were made) then they would totally trash the analysis
: just from particles they picked up walking through.

: As any farmer would tell you, many sprays smell 'rather strongly'.

: So you are quite incorrect.

Reading comprehension problems? Or are you just a troll?

:Strawberries are one of the most pesticide-infected types of produce.
:They don't have natural toxins in.

: I very much doubt that. When I grew them nothing much but the odd slug
: ate them, which is always a giveaway.

I presume you were growing them on your own private planet - where
there are no birds.

:They are "designed" to be eaten by mammals like us.

: The fruits maybe. That doesn't mean they aren't toxic. I expect there is
: a fair bit of oxalic acid in them just the same.

The most toxic bit is probably the seeds - but very few of them are
digested.

:The fungicides sprayed on strawberries are toxic to
:animals like us.

: Fungicides are toxic to fungi.
: That's why they are called fungicides.

Because something is toxic to one kingdom that doesn't mean it
isn't toxic to other ones.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/