Monday, June 29, 2009

Would you eat this if you knew?


Robin works at the monastery. They have a kitchen there where they prepare food for the monks, employees and people who come there on retreat. They get their food from the commercial food supply giant Sysco. Robin brought home some boxes to use as weed control under the mulch. We got as far a putting the boxes down on top of the weeds but have not gotten to mulching yet. No mulch on-hand being the reason. Today i was walking over the boxes to get to the water spigot when i happened to look down and read the words printed on the end of a box that contained oranges. The box said that the fruit inside had been treated with one or more of the following: pyrimethanil, fludioxinil, thiabendazole, imazalil ..... I started googling these scary words.
What the box did not say was that these pesticides are to varying degrees known or suspected carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, developmental or reproductive toxins, ground water contaminators and other equally bad things.
This is what we are being fed in cafeterias and restaurants everywhere.
Do you really want to eat that?

4 comments:

Angela said...

That makes me sick to hear that! I have always wondered why I get sick when I eat certain foods and little by little I am finding out the source! The doctor's always look at me like I'm crazy when I say that lettuce makes me sick. When I buy lettuce for home I have to wash it really good and then I can eat it and not get sick.

Happy 4th of July!!!
Angela

Mandie said...

I am not shocked. So sad!! No wonder cancer is a huge problem. It makes me sick to think of what goes on in restaurants too, agghh!! This all makes me so thankful to get fruits and veggies from my own garden.

Anonymous said...

I have worked in commercial kitchens for the last ten years and have been noticing that the number of potential chemicals applied to produce has been increasing. The boxes used to just list wax. Now it's five or six multisyllabic chemicals on top of the wax. Every time someone looks at me funny for hand washing each pepper I have to grab a box and show them what we are leaving on if we don't. I can't get management to make it policy though, not yet anyway. I've almost got my down payment together for my own farm now and I'll never have to worry about what is in my food again.

Anonymous said...

The real problem with our world is that everyone has become chemophobic. People are afraid of what they don't understand, and simply being unable to pronounce a word doesn't make it bad. Might I mention that water (dihydrogen oxide) is a chemical? Oh, and that anything containing carbon is technically organic? There is a reason those "chemicals" have been used on fruit - would you rather eat moldy, parasite-filled oranges, instead? I wouldn't.