Who loves pesticides?
Do you?
Do your parents?
Well, it’s a global $49 Billion dollar industry. The United States has about $12.1B of that and in fact Brazil is on pace to surpass the good ole US of A.
The argument of creating stable crop levels, ensuring global food supply, lowering the cost of production are all valid and in fact should be commended. The thought process is awesome. Spray some stuff on crops and it will eat out the internal stomach lining of the pests that try to eat the crops and poof, no more bugs!
How about them annoying weeds? Let’s make herbicides. Well, some (there’s quite a variety btw) are designed to have weeds grow so fast that they can’t sustain themselves and like cancer or steroids, consume the body of the plant to the point where it can no longer survive.
Super cool!
Except wait:
1) what if we are incidentally consuming these pesticides and herbicides and
2) if we are similar in nature to bugs and plants that may be not good if 1) were true
If both of these were true, then perhaps we too will show the same signs of internal stomach issues and have weird formations in our body that we can’t support or live with. Uh, oh…that’s not so awesome.
Well for point 1), it’s pretty common to hear this:
Just wash off the pesticides (and if you noticed) the preservative wax and chemical coats on produce wash that off too, easy peasy [added my own spice]
Well, unfortunately washing does not fully remove the chemicals, they are in fact inside the produce as part of it.
How do I know? By growing my own herbs at home and seeing for myself. I received a great Christmas present from my sister; she gave me the AeroFarm where you can watch and grow your own spices at home.
Those roots soaked up the water, took in the fake/real light, and absorbed anything else that you put in the water, including that special MiracleGrow stuff to feed it.
Guess what, it absorbed it all and put it into its leaves and parts that I would consume. Washing it isn’t going to do anything to get rid of that…perhaps lightly boiling as Dave Asprey recommends. But it’s still in there. In fact, wash your veggies with alkaline water after you wash it with regular water and soap and you’ll see even more lovely stuff on the outside come off. Then if you want more fun, boil it and see more come out from within. The challenge though is that this also removes the actual nutritional aspects of the produce along with the pesticides and the naturally occuring self-defense mechanisms of the plant like oxalates.
Try it at home, see for yourself (or be lazy and take my experience as your own).
So, we most likely consume a lot of pesticides. Point 1) kinda proven
What about point 2)?
Well, we see that there is a dramatic rise to autoimmune issues and gut health issues!
Are pesticides responsible? Well it certainly could be argued that perhaps we are in fact similar to the bugs. The bugs stomach lining goes poof, and so too perhaps ours does as well, slowly and surely. Perhaps we are similar to weeds as well, and that could explain one of the reasons why there are more tumors and cancerous cells growing inside people. I’m not saying it’s a direct cause, I’m just pointing out similarities here.
I’ll leave it to science, real science, to demonstrate that our stomach lining is similar in nature and reacts similarly to bugs and weeds when exposed to pesticides and herbicides (I do in fact believe there are such things out there and being worked on).
Is a little pesticide/herbicide bad? Or is it the accumulation over years of such exposure? Which foods are the biggest culprits?
Coffee grown with pesticide is like boiling water to extract out the pesticides to drink. Mmmm tasty. Luckily, there’s a large move towards identifying this issue.
Another equal or greater concentration of pesticides is with our non-organic wine. We squeeze out all the pesticides to create pesticide juice which we ferment and drink. Mmmm tasty too!
How does it work? You start by taking concentrated juice from the grapes that absorbs the nutrients, water, pesticides and whatever else sprayed into the soil. The grape is a concentrated expression comprised of whatever has been sucked up through its roots. You then perform several processes to it that require it to sit and settle, put it into a barrel for a while to age and then bottle. So you get to brew the wine through fermentation.
We grew up with Welch’s concentrated grape juice. Now it’s More like RoundUp-Concentrated, Fermented Grape for $19.99 #PesticideWineClub.
In my conversations and research, the true farmers (yes wine growing is in fact an art of farming despite it’s hip-urban appeal to own one) and famous vineyards never considered using such methods with pesticides on their grapes. Their wine is too valuable and their brand’s egos too high to belittle their craft with such pedantic measures.
Talk to these winemakers of famous wines, they’re super cool and down to earth. They’d never consider ruining the historical art and craft. In fact, in Europe only around 56 additives are allowed, in the USA it’s about 76. So Fat Tony logic says there’s 20 additives the USA can use that Europe has banned.
Regardless of why, how, or what reasons, there’s most likely more bad stuff in USA wine than Europe based off of this logic. So drink European …#driveEuropean too?
It’s not a full-proof approach, but on average, consider this a general rule of thumb that will work more times than it won’t. Provence, Bordeaux, Burgundy are all great. Follow Dry Farm Wines, to learn more about the proper craftsmanship and pesticide-free wines out there.
So who’s at fault here for infusing pesticides into adult Juicy-Juice known as value wine? It’s us MBA’s who don’t truly understand that there’s more to life than squeezing pennies out of a perfectly fine industry.
We’ve realized we can increase efficiency and output to saturate this new large market of amateur bargain wine shoppers looking for an alternative to yeast-filled and watered-down beer.
Cut COGS, decrease production time, reduce uncertainties…aka use pesticides and other additives to make the big bucks…although wine is super competitive in this space so I’d say what they’re really working towards is squeezing out the few extra pennies from the process and/or justifying their large consulting fee.
Let’s not get too academic and sciencey on ourselves, is this true? Is pesticides damaging to me and my health?
Despite the obvious intuitive answer, I tried an experiment myself. What better excuse to drink wine than in the name of scientific discovery.
One glass of Pesticide Wine drank over dinner = massive headache beyond a hangover for 2 days….replicated 5 different times
One entire bottle of Pesticide Free Wine drank over dinner = free and clear the next day…replicated 5 different times
And yes, I am monitoring my liver, but request that 5 times of headaches is enough for getting the picture.
So Pesticides = Bad = Pesticide Wine Baddest of them All
Why does this matter? Well first of all, cheap wine doesn’t taste the best. I’m not talking about stuffy Master Sommelier taste-testing, I’m just saying a bag of Goon wine (aka frat party wine) is probably not what you want to be drinking on your romantic date, it doesn’t quite go with the overpriced salmon or chicken.
Well then Mr. MBA, how do we sell all this bad wine? If we can’t promote its use in getting some romance on?
Easy, mix it with another fruit juice to make a bubbly blend of sugar and wrap that into our society’s culture of acceptance. I’m talking of course about the bottomless mimosas and Sunday Boozy Brunch.
I’m all for fun (maybe), but when you’re going to be spending your one day of relaxation, unlimited possibilities, and whatever you want, consuming pesticide ridden, low quality sparkling wine (cause let’s be honest, it’s not the good stuff they’re mixing for you), with extra fake orange juice (once again, not the good stuff), we as a society are finding another activity to continue our dumbing down and encouraging the practice of injecting ourselves with potentially damaging chemicals.
If you begin to have autoimmune issues and/or gut issues, perhaps you should reconsider the booze-themed brunch in favor of going for a hike, reading a book, chilling on the hammock outside, walking around, meeting your neighbors, doing basically anything besides dedicating an entire morning of poisoning yourself one carafe at a time. One might say the rising trend of Boozy Brunch is our collective alcoholic conscious finding a spring and summertime replacement for our fall and winter religion of NFL Sunday football.
But no one likes being told what to do or what not to do, so may I suggest to you, that if you do go out on a Boozy Bruch that you request a spot that serves pesticide-free sparkling wine mimosas.
And if you go YOLO on me and order pesticide Mimosas anyways, just know that there’s some great hangover pills ready to be sold to you and perhaps in 20 years you’ll be in line at the tele-doctor robot re-upping one of your 5-7 drug prescriptions that the average older American is on.
Personally, I’d rather spend that money on good wine than on all them pills (and yes, I did apply an NPV to that calculation you spreadsheet elitists)
#spendOnGoodWineNotOnPrescriptionPills
Just a thought for this Sunday Night Reflection.