Hi,Tom...this was a long post, forgive me if in condensing some I wish to respond to, I in some way change your meaning, and do feel free to chide me for it, gently, gently if you please! >Today we speak about hormones. >Your great grandparents ate food from their own gardens; these foods were >hormonally rich. There are hormones in meat and dairy. These are >all female hormones, which is bad for both men and women. Tom, I'm sorry to butt in here, but I believe the first chapter in any book on endocrinology would challenge that statement. Plants do have female hormones, for ppplants which reproduce sexulayy. These are not human hormones, as your brief note implies and might mislead. Also, plant and animal hormones are quite different proteins, I was unaware that consumed plant hormones would be considered anything but richer sources of the same food one would find in any plant material? >Chemicals in the environment. These chemicals create estrogens when assimilated >in the body. Synthetic fabrics, carpets, etc. do this as well. Living foods >help he body remove excess hormones. You can stop eating bad food, but our polluted >technological environment still creates estrogens. Again I must argue that this is inaccurate. Chemicals do not create estrogens in the human body, but do interefere in the functioning of our own natural estrogen by substitution on estrogen receptors, and this pollution is, indeed, a most serious, in fact a vitally serious fact which may well be the Achilles heel which will write fini to the human race if not halted immediately, or sooner. I think this list would find Theo Colborn's book, "Our Stolen Future", of vital and imperative interest. By Theo (who has been senior scientist with World Wildlife Fund and a recognized expert in endocrinologically disrupting chemicals); co-author: John Peter Myers,Ph.D in in Zoo. from UCalBerk, Dir. of W. Atton Jones Foundation (a supporting and protecting global environment org., and worked many years with the Nat'l Audobon Soc.) and written with them by Diane Dumanoski, a science journalist from MIT, who makes this very dificult subject a siesta by the seashore!). Let me tell you a bit about the book, and the best detective story you'll read since "Microbe Hunters" by Paul de Kruif. One that, I'm sorry guys, will curl your hair, unless you pull it all out first. The foreward is by no less than our own Al Gore! I feel this book is not optional reading. Forget UFO's and Armageddon, we might survive those... Bear with me and I will try review a fingernail full of it, to show how this book on endocrinology is vital to the instinctively selected raw food diet, and perhaps throw in a blaspheme, too, just for your circulation. I hope to provoke your strongest involvement in protecting the very core of raw food philosophy: the safety of consuming it. Drat, I'll not make a good mystery writer, giving away the punch line so soon! As this is already long, I invite you to continue with Part ii, if you wish (to follow).... Pat