Everything you eat is poisonous

I was thinking about this in a half-joking, half-serious way. Everything you eat is poisonous.

We are 'heterotrophic' organisms. This means that we have to eat substances that were created by another living creature. We can't just eat inorganic minerals by themselves. We have to eat other, more complex substances that come from living things.

So we eat plants and animals and insects and whatever other categories there are. Plants don't want to be eaten. They make poisons to protect themselves against us. We selectively breed plants so that they produce fewer poisons, but then, the bugs find them and eat them before we do, so we put poisonous pesticides on them to make them poisonous again (unless we are buying organic produce or growing it on a farm that deliberately doesn't use pesticides).

Anyway, from studying nutrition on and off for many years now, I've learned that almost every category of food has some kind of a dangerous aspect to it. Fruits and vegetables cause problems, and so do meats. Synthetic vitamin and mineral pills cause problems too. Nothing wants to be eaten. It's like we are just barely adapted to the world around us, but not quite. It's a constant battle.

I could go into detail about what kinds of problems are caused by foods... I'll just give a few quick examples. Phytic acid in grains and beans interferes with calcium absorption. Salicylates in fruits and vegetables causes reactions in salicylate-sensitive individuals. Tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and some other foods in that family might cause arthritis in some people. Drugs and poisons come from millions of other plants, and you can't eat anything unfamiliar without being at risk.

My experience with bone marrow showed me that meats are definitely NOT 'meant' to be eaten. The animal didn't grow its body for the purpose of feeding us. It grew its body for the purpose of producing hormones and substances and doing all these functions it needs to do to stay alive. So when you eat bone marrow, you get poisoned by the very same hormones that cause the animal to feel that it is injured, and that trigger its body to produce new blood cells, and to feel strengthened so that it can fight to protect itself (the bone marrow made me feel extremely restless and 'strong' for several hours, and I went jogging around the parking lot because of this unbearable discomfort). Animal bodies weren't designed for the purpose of being eaten by us, any more than plant bodies were designed to be eaten by us.

If you try to eat just plain inorganic minerals you can be poisoned too. I tried to drink mineral water, the one with 'high mineral content,' from the grocery store, and it triggered vomiting, and it also produced poisonous vapors that triggered vomiting every time I got in the car where I had opened up the bottle of water. (Note, when I say it triggered vomiting, I mean that it TRIED to trigger vomiting, but I am vomit-phobic and so I forced myself not to vomit, but had to sit there struggling for a long time.) I don't know which mineral in the mineral water triggered vomiting.

I could go into a lot more detail but I'm not in the mood. I'm just entertaining myself by blogging.