So is it the peaches themselves that are bad or just the pesticide residue?
Are organic peaches healthy?
Anybody else remember low-fat baking recipes that replaced fat with things like fruit puree? Lower in fat, yes, but often higher in calories than the original.
While it may be be true that fruits contain pesticide residues, I don’t think there is any evidence linking eating fruit to health problems. I rather suspect that the amount of pesticide present in fruit is too tiny to be harmful.
According to Bruce Ames, 99.99% of all of the pesticides that Americans ingest are natural pesticides produced by the plants themselves:
[hijack]When I was a young boy, my mother* left us with a babysitter and a snack. It was a Heath bar. I misread it as “Health Bar”, and I wondered how what was obviously just a regular candy bar could be considered healthy. Maybe it was magical ingredients.
*just getting into the zombie mood by dropping a year-appropriate reference
A distinction should also be made between things that are nutritionally null and things that are actively bad. Iceberg lettuce, or most vegetables boiled into unrecognizable gray paste, won’t really do any good for you, but on the other hand, they won’t really hurt you, either.
Neither will anything other than poisons, if you don’t eat too much of them. Even then, some things are poisonous in large amounts but safe or even necessary in small amounts, e.g. salt.
It’s not as simple as “avoid these unhealthy foods, and eat only these healthy ones”. You can still get into trouble by eating too much of healthy foods. Chankonabe, the traditional food of sumo wrestlers, is a soup that’s pretty healthy, if eaten in reasonable quantities. The quantities that sumo wrestlers eat are presumably not what most people would consider reasonable.
OMG, that is AWESOME!!!
Moderate nut consumption is VERY good for you. See here for a review:
You can read here some about possible mechanisms for nuts apparent paradoxical effect of contributing to weight loss despite their high energy density and fat content. I’d still hold go for dry roasted or raw and unsalted though.
My nomination for the op is Gatorade, btw.
Gatorade is fine, for its intended purpose. If you’re spending a few hours in sweaty, high-activity physical exertion, it’s great. It’s only a problem (mostly from the calories) if you’re drinking a 20 oz bottle every day at your sedentary office job, or the like.
It’s also good for restoring fluids and electrolytes if you have diarrhea.
True, if for the much less than 1% of its consumption that is done by those who are drinking it while engaged in prolonged physical activities (for example running or playing college level football for two hours plus), or for rehydration whilst in the midst of a bout of severe gastroenteritis, it is healthy. For those who drink it instead of water while on a 45 minute jog, or as an “healthier” alternative to soda or even juice … um no. It wins because its brand is built on the impression that it makes you perform better and because the vast majority of its consumption has harmful, not beneficial, health effects (for the 99% plus majority it is just another form of sugar water).
It’s also good before or after a long food/liquid fast, Yom Kippur for example.
Great. Leave the tastier and more moist dark meat for those of us who appreciate it. 
And has anyone mentioned carob? You’d be better off eating chocolate.
And rice cakes are nothing but high-glycemic-index carbs.
And all the dozens of yogurt-like products that contain lots of sugar, but no acidophilus (which is the whole point of eating yogurt).
But I hate Gatorade. 
I think I’ll stick with what I usually have.
I had a doctor prescribe it for dehydration as well.
My nominees:
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Filtered/bottled water: Filtered tap water removes most of the fluoride in it. Most brands of bottled water will add chemicals and minerals to give it a ‘water’ taste.
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Red wine: supposedly good for the heart, but the short-term damage to the body is greater, and any alcohol has adverse effects on people with depression or mood disorders or are pregnant.
I once had a housemate who thought anything labeled “all-natural” had to be, at least not too bad for you. I, of course, knew better, but I never could convince her. (Even a natural-food nut who says MSG and aspartame are toxic admits here that “all-natural” is not a regulated term on food labels and is essentially meaningless)
According to the Chocolate Lovers Handbook, chapter 13, which I quote in its entirety:
Chapter 13: Carob
Carob isn’t chocolate. 'Nuff said.
I have to say, fruit juice and Gatorade are close contenders, but fruit juice wins it by a solid length. Gatorade could be specifically beneficial in some circumstances. No one needs fruit juice, except as an occasional treat.
I’m not sure if it’s quite in the spirit of this (resurrected) thread, but I have an anecdote.
I saw a chicken and bacon pasta meal today clearly labelled as having just 1 gram of saturated fat. I put it in my basket but then thought that maybe it was too good to be true.
Aha! The small print said “per tablespoon serving”.
Seriously. And this was Tesco (britain’s biggest supermarket chain)…what are they thinking?