I have written in this thread before that many of our contemporary food oddities are little more than thinly disguised manifestations of father hunger. Of course, father hunger manifests itself in other pathological ways than food issues — sexual promiscuity, to name just one — but sure it is no coincidence that this era of …
Diluted Homeopathic Training
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, a gentleman named Robert Koch developed a series of postulates to help identify the causal agents for various diseases. The basic outlines of this approach were that, first, the germ had to be found abundantly in every patient and in every diseased tissue; second, the germ must …
Up to My Waist in Global Warming, Shovel in Hand
Okay, I had to shovel my walk again this morning. Our Ponderosa pine are beautifully flocked again. We have had more snow than I ever remember having here. Snowfall records are shattered in Spokane. My truck hasn’t been out of four-wheel drive in weeks. As a friend asked me at church yesterday, where is Al …
A Tenuous Grasp on the Rules of Evidence
What would you say if someone told you that you could determine whether or not you were allergic to peanut butter, or peanuts for that matter, by putting a dollop of peanut butter on the back of your right hand and extending it out parallel to the floor? And that if you could keep your …
Of Course, Lots of Things Make Me Happy
A dusting of snow in Malibu. Real snowfall in Las Vegas. A boatload of snow dumped on us last night. We are in for another real winter it appears, two of them back to back. Spokane, just up the road from us, had to go to DefCon5 snow removal, or whatever they call it, running …
No Such Thing as Poison
Let me begin with the modest observation that there is no such thing as a poison. By this I mean that nothing is harmful to the human body in small enough amounts, and everything is harmful in large enough amounts. Different substances vary in potency, to be sure, so that some things will reach dangerous …
Though Some Died in the Process
“The human race discovered most of the home truths about nourishment before the nutritionists bored everyone silly” (Robert Farrar Capon, Food for Thought, p. 10).
A Stick of Butter on the Forehead
One of the great fallacies in the “food as medicine” mentality is the post hoc fallacy. That fallacy in full is post hoc ergo propter hoc — “after this, therefore because of this.” If B follows A, then A must, so the so-called reasoning goes, be the cause of B. And of course, since we …
The Chicken That Didn’t Get Scrawny
As Christians discuss the morality of their food choices, one of the most compelling arguments for opting out of the chicken-sandwich-at-Arbys lifestyle is that brought by those who maintain that large-scale factory farming is necessarily abusive to the animals involved. I want to write more about this later on, but wanted to state two guiding …
What We Long to Become
“Why do we marry, why take friends and lovers, why give ourselves to music, painting, chemistry, or cooking? Out of simple delight in the resident goodness of creation, of course; but out of more than that, too. Half of earth’s gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become. For all its rooted …