Alan,
> There are even people who one otherwise
> might consider serious who argue that their (domestic) cat loves
> milk..i.e. maybe even more than unnatural tinned and cooked food.

I think I mentioned a few posts ago, that at one time we had 10 cats at
once, all either relatives of each other, or stray farm cats that came to
live with us. And they all loved milk, and did not seem to suffer any ill
effects, diahhreah or otherwise. How would you explain this? And I think I
remember also mentioning a number of other animals (our goats and pigs) who
drank cow's milk. Why would this be so?

> And hedgehogs,
> for example, which certainly eat plenty of animal protein, will
> drink it willingly and die from it within a very few days.

I had not heard of this before - have you actually seen this happen? And if
it does,
why would a hedgehog do such a thing, do you think?

Alan said,
> I fail to see how these ratios were calculated?? Since when is, as
> > > in Colby, for example, 685 Ca and 457 P a ratio of 1.5???

Jean-Louis,
> 1.4989059080962800875273522975929978118161925601750547045951859956236323851
> >20350109409190371991247264770240700218818380743982494529540481400437636
> > 76148796...(and then the decimals are repeated: 498905...)
> >
> > that's approximately 1.5--up to an error of 0.07%.

Alan,
> Such a method of calculating a "ratio" is both misleading and tells me
> nothing.

Liza,
Alan I don't understand your confusion here. What Jean-Louis provided for
you here is not only truly funny, but it is also a correct way to express
the number
685/457. What other way are you thinking of?

> If Jean-Louis or yourself are implying that the atrocities ordered by
> by Hitler had anything to do with vegetarian,

No, I certainly wasn't saying anything at all like that, and I don't think
Jean-Louis was either. The reason I was amused at this interesting tidbit,
is that one often hears the very nonsensical pro-vegetarianism argument
that meat-eating makes people more aggressive while vegetarianism makes
people peace-loving. So it will be useful to be able to point out that
Hitler certainly doesn't fit that theory.

> Just because I as an Englishman
> happen to live in Germany, does not automatically mean that I in
> some way sanction what Hitler did.

You seem to have taken off on your own tangent here, unrelated to the topic
of discussion, which no one else on the list appeared to have been
addressing in any way. I really don't think that anyone was pointing
fingers at you, or at Germans for that matter, for anything at all,
including whatever Hitler did.

> The fact remains,
> however, that most of the Germans alive today were not alive then,

Is that true? WWII Seems like such a short while ago. I'm not familiar
enough with the demographics, but it would seem that those young German
soldiers who had been in the war would today be in their 70's maybe?

> still eat a lot of meat, totally reject the death penalty and totally
> reject any armed intervention in foreign countries.

Are these things you say confirmed by opinion polls and so on? I don't know
much about contemporary German culture. I do have a few German friends,
though, who tell me that WWII weighs very heavily on the collective German
conscience, and that it is only beginnning to become "safely distant"
enough from that terrible time, for open public discussions to start on the
real psychological effects on the German people of having participated in
committing such acts of evil, or passively turning a blind eye. I was told
that the country is in some ways still "shell-shocked."

I had said:
> .... But seriously, why is this argument always made in this way? Who said we'd
> > have to actually suck the teats of the animal, in order to get the milk?

You said:
> Did early man have milking machines? .... How
> else would you get at the milk???

Milk by hand!?!?!

Alan I'm confused. Why would you be thinking that people'd be more likely
to drink the milk right out of the animal, rather than milking into a
vessel and drinking from this?

> If people went around drinking mothers' milk after being weaned
> off, they would most likely ... experience the
> same problems ...... as those drinking
> the milk of a cow (which is meant to support the much higher and
> faster growth rate of calves).

Huh??????

Which problems are you referring to? Lactose intolerance, and allergic
reaction to proteins found in cow's milk?

> Some domesticated (and even some wild) animals can be induced to
> drink milk..as the smell is right.

What does that mean, that the "smell is right?" Why would the smell be
right, if it's not a good food for them? This doesn't make sense.

> Humans get their calories from carbohydrate foods ... (i.e. foods containing simple > sugars). Meat (i.e. the
> saturated fat in meat) is neither healthy for the human system
> and nor is it a good source of energy.

Where did you get your information? I think you need to study up on your
science a little! :)

(By the way, fat is actually the SUPERIOR energy source, providing 9
calories per gram, versus the 4 calories provided by carbohydrate.)

The statements above are solely an expression of your opinions, Alan. And,
from
what you have written, you evidently believe that everyone must be a
vegetarian in order to be healthy. There is no evidence to support such a
claim.

> Fasting does not make you
> hungry (your presumption) for anything..if done properly it makes
> you hungry for nothing.

Actually, during the fast one may in fact feel no discomfort, like you say.
Or one might feel nauseated and a revulsion to food. Then again some people
feel hungry and
miserable and obsessed with hallucinating about food for the entire length
of the
fast. It's completely different for everybody.

My comments, however, were aimed at your earlier statements about the
ability of a
fast to help people make a transition to a raw foods diet, in which you
said that the fast would make a person not want to eat anything but raw
foods once they resumed eating.

This is simply not the case. I wanted to make clear that the period
following a fast is in fact a dangerous period, in which, both for
psychological reasons (some of which are VERY deep-seated, instinctual
almost) as well as for physiological reasons, a person is
very much tempted to eat ANYTHING and EVERYTHING, raw and otherwise. One
must therefore be very careful to resist this urge which could easily land
them in a hospital with all sorts of serious digestive, allergic, edema,
and other complications.

So I would strongly disagree with your statements about the fast being a
good way to transition to an all-raw diet. (Whether or not one would even
desire to be on an all raw diet is a separate issue).

> As to malnourished people...a two week fast will certainly help
> them to detox their eating mistakes and is thus still healthier
> than continuing to eat as before.

???????

Malnourished is a very big word, Alan!!

How about those who are malnourished through starvation, for instance?
There are plenty of people in the city where I live (Washington DC) who are
starving to death through poverty, or the neglected elderly, or those with
cancer, diabetes and other degenerative diseases, anorexics, just to name a
few that pop up immediately. None of those I've mentioned here, for
instance, would do well at all on a fast!!

I think it's a little irresponsible to make such wild generalizations.

You said:
> > > By eating high quality (i.e. organically
> > > grown and not treated with any chemicals whatsoever) from the
> > > start you quickly learn by taste alone to differentiate between
> > > good and bad quality produce.

And I said:
> > Well, that and a refractometer. =:o

You said:
> > A refractometer is no substitute for the taste buds. If one
> > decides to "eat to live" rather than "living to eat"
> > then quality and taste are of utmost importance.

That was meant to be a joke, Alan.

If you would have taken a look at the archives of posts over the last month
or so, you would have seen a longish discussion in which one person seems
to feel that everything in the world is judged by his refractometer. (In
reality all a refractometer is able to measure is sugar content, so even
the relative merits of coke and pepsi can be judged using a refractomer, as
was pointed out.)  :D

I had said:
> > Realize that you are talking to a potentially VERY wide audience, with your
> > statements here.

And you said:
> Oh...I didn't realise that so many people wanted to detox
> and/or convert to raw.

What I mean is that many people are (or will be) reading this. They will
take bits and pieces of information from it, to help them think about
their, and other peoples' health and diets. There may be people with all
sorts of special conditions and illnesses that you are not familiar with,
including eating disorders, who may be in many different environments abd
living under many different circumstances than you can possibly be aware of
at this moment.

So you have a responsibility maybe bigger than you realized, to not make
false statements or huge generalizations about any one diet being
applicable to "all" people. People are as different as their faces.

> Only the body (the immune system) can "cure" anything

Ah! And I would like to think that Natural Hygienists are among the more
rational, reasonable, friendly types in the alternative-diet world. You are
doing a disservice to Natural Hygiene, and as a supporter of much of NH
philosophy, I'm embarassed.

This little "mantra" above comes from older NH philosophy. However, it is
childish and simplistic, if taken blindly, in the black-and-white way you
are taking it above, and contemporary hygienists would readily agree about
this.

The truth is that the body cannot in fact "cure" everything. Medical
intervention is most definately necessary under many circumstances. It is
utter foolishness to try to claim otherwise.

Bonnie's post was an attempt to question your assertion that a fast would
"cure" Herpes, and you have responded with this evasive euphemism about the
body curing, and so on. Bonnie is in fact right that a fast will NOT "cure"
(use "rid" if you don't like the word "cure") a person of Herpes.

Bonnie said:
> > In my opinion, this could only be done with a combination of efforts, fasting
> > being one of them, improvement in diet, supplements, exercise and maybe even
> > herbs!

You said:
> Leave out the supplements and herbs (unless they are non-toxic,
> edible raw plants which should be a part of any raw vegetarian diet), add
> exposure to sunshine and happiness and peace of mind and I would agree
> entirely.

Alan, these words are just an unoriginal repitition of NH dogma. There are
many on this list who are very familiar with NH, some who think well of it,
and others who can't stand it. It would be nice, however, to see original
thinking about health, instead of just a repetition of the "company line."

And in fact, current NH thinking, which continues to evolve as more
discoveries and deeper insights are made into human nutrition and health,
now includes the uses of herbs, supplements and even <gasp!> pharmaceutical
drugs, in some circumstances.

Alan, have you looked at the list archives? You will find there many
discussions that cover in depth some of the subjects you've brought up.

Love Liza

--
[log in to unmask] (Liza May)