Raw food and other hippy crap

Funny story - this Friday was 4/20 - the infamous pot-smoker's holiday.  I am not a pot smoker, so I went to the gym and worked my tail off on Friday.  Considering this was around 4 o'clock (well, closer to 4:20...), when you generally can't find a parking spot at the local YMCA, I was overjoyed to discover nary a single high-school/college kid at the gym (there was one, actually, who spotted me on the bench whose named turned out to be the same as mine...).  Considering it was a Friday at 4:30, the place was a ghost town.  Needless to say, I loved seeing yet another stereotype confirmed (males in high school or college are potheads - math majors exempted).  I was also pretty happy not to deal with the usual traffic jam that is the weight area at that time.

Anyway, onto the discussion of other hippy crap.  Today's discussion is about raw food.  I know next to nothing about it.  In fact, in most cases I haven't even heard arguments for it.  I know that they say cooking vegetables cooks vitamins out of it, and I know that there is some reason to believe that - but there is also reason to believe that without cooking vegetables you won't be getting through much of the cellulose to get many of those vitamins in the first place - not that it matters, I eat meat and eggs so I get enough vitamins.  I generally think cooked vegetables taste better, though there are exceptions, like many greens.  I like sushi, and I understand why it is mostly safe to eat (If I am not mistaken, with the exception of tuna, sushi sold in the US has to be frozen beneath a certain temperature for a certain period of time - this kills any marine parasites that may be present and many other pathogens).  I don't believe any of the arguments that it's healthier for you, unless you burn it - but I'm a good enough cook that I usually don't have an issue with that - and burnt fish tastes bad besides.  I know for a fact that cooked eggs, in addition to being safer to eat than raw eggs, are actually more nutritious if cooked (denaturing the proteins in the whites tends to make them easier to absorb - to the point where a raw egg white has what they call poor bioavailability, and a cooked egg white has near perfect bioavailability).  Ditto for the burning them issue, but the same rule applies here.  Burnt eggs taste like garbage; even scorched eggs are nearly inedible.

So then we come to the real raw food arguments that I neither understand nor know much about.  I know that some people like to eat raw, non-fish meats.  In the case of an omnivorous or carnivorous animal, I know that this is generally bordering on stupid beyond measure because you risk contracting a parasite that is likely to kill you before you can do anything about it (read about trichinosis - If you get enough trichina worms in your system you can die.  That or they just end up in your spinal cord or brain and you die.).  But then there are herbivores.  I am terrified of parasites, so I wouldn't want to eat them raw, but I also understand that in the US at least you are very unlikely to contract a parasite from raw herbivore meats (or from pork, come to think of it).  And I do occasionally have my steaks a little rare.  The risk of bacterial infection is also there, but not so much in a rare steak as in completely raw meat.  Beside these arguments, I prefer the flavor and texture of meat that is at least cooked somewhat, and so I don't care too much for the arguments for raw non-fish meats.

So then there is raw dairy.  I can honestly say that I know very little about this for certain.  I believe that the argument for pasteurization is strong - regardless of what you do with the milk, or how the cows are raised, pasteurization reduces the likelihood of a consumer contracting a foodborne illness from the product.  This is independent of the cows being grass-fed, or organic, or being happy or what-have-you (if you aren't convinced, imagine that the only difference between one dairy and another is pasteurization.  Even if such a situation does not exist, without doubt, the dairy that pasteurizes its milk has fewer pathogens and consumers of its product are less likely to contract a foodborne illness, even if the difference of these chances is insignificant.).  Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that one is likely to get sick from drinking raw milk, but if the benefit doesn't outweigh the risk, I can see no reason to increase my chance of an uninvited "cleanse," or potentially something worse.

As you may recall, I like having solid, definitive proof of things before I believe them.  This stems in part from the fact that I study mathematics, and as an undergraduate (and actually, before that, as a high school student) I am only allowed to give answers that I know and can show.  Because of this, when some asshat with a pH.D "performs" an epidemiological study and concludes that drinking raw milk will make you live forever, I feel cheated AND superior at the same time, because I know he is either wrong or he got extremely lucky, not to mention the fact that he went into a soft-science field and isn't required to actually do any hard work.  Now that I'm off my soapbox though, I can actually make a point.  Everything you read about raw milk either claims that it will kill you or turn you into the embodiment of perfect health.  While I can't definitively say that either of these is untrue, I can conclude that if either is, it is only because the researcher who said so got lucky - the research that could suggest this either way just hasn't been done yet.  In addition to this, it probably won't be done in any reasonable amount of time (probably because both the raw milk people and the pasteurization people don't want the real facts to come out).

With these in mind, I can't justify the cost of such a product without a guarantee that its benefits outweigh its risks.  It's not that I'm not interested in trying to learn more, but I do face the issue of it just sounding a little too granola for me.  Not to mention the fact that if I started drinking raw milk, I'd probably have to cut off my internet or something.

Until next time.