onions have lots of sulphur. i love raw onions.

FWIW, one of the more recent and alleged poo pooers of Garlic was Robert 'bob' C. Beck..... same guy who developed the Beck protcol of Blood Electrification and Magnetic Pulsing as tools for maintaining health and eliminating disease. His stance on Garlic can be found somewhere within his various 'papers' found on the web. I read it once or twice and sort of got the gist of it, something to do with eaten Garlic able to cross the blood-brain barrier and the subsequent impact on brain activity was considered by him to be generally not desirable. He referenced what is/was an apparent military axiom whereby they do not permit pilots to consume Garlic prior to flight.

Back to some of the topics that started this, just moments ago I saw a headline in today's smalltown local newspaper citing a "study" out of Chicago claiming breast cancers in women have shown higher incidence among red-meat-eating women. Part of the article also seemed geared towards informing the reader of the opinion that these cancer risks will prevail despite the use of Vitamin E supplementation.... so I gather that somebody involved with this study has an ax to grind with Vitamin E, whether it be genuinely sound forms of E or genuinely bad forms of E.

Getting back closer to the originating topic, the thought that is increasingly being allowed into our awareness seems to be a spin on an old one - life is terminal. To me, one of the more profound aspects of this adage as it's being enforced in the present is the many ways in which the establishment has embraced this axiom while giving it a new twist, one they've put forth great effort on many fronts in telling us, basically "face the facts folks and just let us show you the many ways we've engineered to help speed up this experience for you".

I have read the blood/brain anti-garlic theories. I believe that in that theory, onions are okay, just not garlic.

A group that avoids all things garlic/onion are the Jains, some sort of eastern religion. I'm not overly familiar with them and really all I know is that they avoid the garlic/onion family. P-r-e-t-t-y extreeeeme...

"Orthodox Hindus and Jainas, for instance, do not use garlic or onions in their cooking, much less have raw onions in their salad. Clearly, this prohibition has no relation to the taking of life, but every relation to the properties ascribed to various foods. Certain foods are ‘hot’, others are ‘cold’; foods are also categorized according to their supposed internal propensity to excite the passions. Whatever the medicinal properties of onions and garlic, these foods are believed to be base in some respects; more significantly, both onions and garlic give out strong smells, and it is argued, not unreasonably, that consumption of these items obfuscates the richer and softer tastes and smells associated with vegetables."
--- http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/Cuisine/vegetar.html

The wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

Quoting from the wikipedia article:

"Jainism's stance on nonviolence goes much beyond vegetarianism. Jains refuse food obtained with unnecessary cruelty. Many are vegan due to the violence of modern dairy farms. The Jain diet excludes most root vegetables, as they believe this destroys entire plants unnecessarily. If you eat apples, you do not destroy whole trees, but for root vegetables, whole plants are uprooted. Garlic and onions are avoided as these are seen as creating passion, meaning anger, hatred, jealousy."

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I personally have heard nothing to make me consider avoiding any garlic or onions. I mean, maybe I wouldn't eat garlic if I were an airplane pilot or some such thing. I think the benefits outweight the potential problems.

Thank you for your thorough research and well-said thoughts on this important point.

You clarify my seat-of-the-pants understanding and experiments. Not that my way is so bad, since it is based entirely on 'messages from the interior', my interior...but it is then powerful hard to state my conclusions in a meaningful way that is helpful to others.

People need to follow the line of reasoning right from where it originated, in order to choose their own way with any degree of confidence.

Grzbear has started an important discussion here...one that promises to bring us much closer to our personal truths and individual well-being.

Thank you both for your clarity, and great memories.

fledgling

[Message removed by a Forum Moderator]

Well, back to the China Study and also the article I posted...
The thing about observations of a people group's eating habits, health and death statistics is that it leaves a lot up in the air...
There can be errors in the study itself.
Then errors in the assessment and interpretation of the study.
Then errors in the critiques of the interpretations... and so on.

A lot of it is based on generalizations and assumptions.
Plus, for foreigners to go into a place like China and hope to get a handle on the situation...
It is just a BIG JOB.
China itself is so vast. And people in different regions eat so differently from each other.
So anyone writing about the situation is coming into it with their own opinion, and that plays into how the interpret it.
When we read someone's take on things, they write as if they have it all figured out.
But how can they? There are so many factors!
Some are probably more correct than others.
But anytime someone talks about how the Chinese, or the Okinawans, or the Hunzas eat, then someone else will say that the facts are not entirely correct. "They eat tons of seafood"/"The seafood consumption actually is quite low." "They eat lots of protein"/"They eat small amounts of protein" "They are mostly vegetarians"/"They aren't vegetarians at all!" and so on...

And then we try to attribute a low rate of a certain disease to something they eat - or something they DON'T eat - or the atmosphere they live in...
There are so many factors. So many pieces of the puzzle, that it's hard to know who is actually putting it together properly!
I find these population studies fascinating. And I try to glean as much from it as I can. But they usually raise as many questions as they answer!!!!

So, for example - what role does sulfur play in the health of any given people group? The fertility of the soil? The sulfur in the soil - the sulfur in the water - the sulfur in the food? And this is only ONE area!!!
It boggles my mind...

I like to ask myself 2 questions:
1) What ONE change could this people group make that would MOST improve their health?
2) What ONE thing can I learn from this people group that would have the BIGGEST impact on my health? (AKA, What ONE thing can I do/change?)

Obviously there are many options out there, and people will come up with different answers. But those are my own bottom-line questions.

are you drinking the moreless drink?

I cant wait to grow my own veggies, I especially like the idea of hiring a master gardener.