Hi Rex,

you wrote:
>Brix is simply a measure of the total soluble solids in the sap of a
>fresh fruit or vegetable.  It is a combination of sugar, minerals,
>vitamins, amino acids, proteins, taste factors, and other essences of
>life.

Thank you for the explanation and for the info about NPK.

Hm, I wonder if the Brix can tell if a fruit has been stored after
harvesting. It doesn't seem so.

Some people say, that every food carries an information that it sends
out in the form of biophotones. This is an irradiation of very low in-
tensity and can be measured. It's no joke!
The fresher a food, the more biophotones. The better the agriculture,
the more photones again. Eggs from commercial chicken have less
photones than eggs from free range chicken. Processed foods have much
less (if at all) photones than raw foods.

To me it seems as if there is more in a food than vitamins, minerals,
amino acids and all of those physical things.

BTW: Rex, are you using compost heaps? If yes, how high are they?

Rex:
>it tends to produce watery, often bitter, low Brix fruits and
>vegetables.  In turn, watery production is savagely attacked by insects
>and disease---hardly the food you would want to put in your mouth even
>if they rescue it with toxic

Yeah, foods overloaded with artificial fertilizers spoil much faster
than good organic ones!
I can hold Orkos' tomatos for    m o n t h s    in my kitchen without
refrigerating them. They just lose water.
Also I guess that it is possible to detect organic farmers who recently
have changed from commercial to organic production. Their products are
very good but they have a tendency to spoil faster than truly organic
products from farms which practice since years. Can you confirm this?

The only exception to the rule so far seem to be citrus. They spoil
relatively quickly even if from Orkos. "Relatively quickly" means I
can hold them 7..10 days. I guess this is a lot already, compared to
commercial citrus.

Rex:
>*on-farm experiments*.  For instance, I have proven to myself, many,
>many, times that insects and disease *only* attack sickly plants.

Insects seem to be nature's public garbage collection, together with
bacteria, fungus, etc. Whatever is considered waste by MN is eaten up
by those little critters. Very wise and funny, sometimes surprising.

Rex:
>Are any on this list aware that the best quality fruits and vegetables
>will *not* rot or decompose in any way---except when scheduled?

Yes, me. See above.

Rex:
>As another thought-experiment, I would offer up
>that ALL food research is driven by either adulterers (my term---their
>term is "processors") or manufacturers of toxic substances.

To be fair, one should add "farmers" and "farmer associations" to the
list, he he. ;-) Don't take this as an offense. I just want to keep up
an objective point of view, if this is possible.

Rex:
>I would like to skip to endive, which you described as bitter.  Yes,
>typical store bought 4 Brix junk endive is bitter (possibly from
>excessive nitrates due to over fertilizing with nitrogen, as well as
>low quality).  However, AFAIK, 12+ Brix endive, grown to proper
>standards, is sweet, delicious, and should be gobbled up by any child,
>sans dressing.

It depends. As an instinctive eater who uses only best quality organic
products from Orkos I can say, that endive (which I called chicoree in
an earlier post) is unbearable bitter when my instincts don't want it.
And when I have a need, it becomes attractive, the bitterness decreases
and I enjoy it. So there's attractive bitterness and offending one and
the degree varies. It depends on your bodily state. Sounds complicated,
if you're not familiar with instinctive eating, right?

Rex:
>Am I to be dismissed and sent, raving, into the wilderness, for being
>deficient in scientific citations?

Of course not. I also don't dig too much into scientific articles be-
cause I find it useless to breath the dust of all those papers. If
there's evidence for something and someone reports about his/her ex-
periences I find this being proof enough for most claims.
Life experience mostly is better than the conditions in some scienti-
fic laboratory.

>The Brix scale was named in honor of its developer, Professor A.F.W.
>Brix of Germany.  He won a significant prize for helping the European
>wine industry

Good grief and I didn't know it. But... I have never been a wine ent-
husiast and since going raw I didn't drink it any longer.
Perhaps I will dig out information about it if I find the time.

BTW: Last year I made one bottle of natural wine from the best grapes
Orkos had (variety Alicante from Spain). Just pressed the juice out
with a centrifuge (cold of course!) and put it into a bottle. Then
waited three weeks and it was wine, perfect wine. Well it will turn
into vinegar if you wait longer but I was quicker with drinking. :-)
And it had a very clear stop, he he.

Best truly organic greetings,

Stefan
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