I was thinking of Brigham Young and them guys.
OK, let’s say me & my buddy are hopping on our bicycles in our starched white shirts and ties, to hawk the Book of Mormon door to door. I’m wearing my beard. So you’re saying they’ll let me pedal off like that without shaving?
The full-time missionaries of the LDS church have a certain dress code which includes no beard–but it also includes short-cut hair, white shirt, etc. Those missionaries serve for a maximum of 2 years. Non-missionaries have no specific dress code (other than “modest”).
I’ve served in many positions locally in my congregations, and I grow a beard out every winter (helps when I’m bicycling to work–yes, that’s right! I bus and bike to work, even though I’m conservative. Crazy, ain’t I? 
)
Civility demanded that I not go into great depth about why your comments were ignorant when said comments (though the basis of your argument) bashing liberals were wholly unrelated to the matter of the topic at hand. You’ll note that my response, other than its off topic nature, could easily have been posted in Great Debates (to put it simply: I didn’t flame you, and you don’t somehow “win” because I posted a response in another forum).
That being said, I’ll leave this alone in this thread.
Biotop: Excellent post. It is, in a way, a shame that healthy eating has been associated with liberal politics and/or hucksterism, as it dissuades people from thinking about their eating habits critically and making changes. And, just as you said, it’s not a matter of certainty; the aforementioned Linda McCartney’s death doesn’t make health food unscientific. (It should be noted that Linda McCartney was ardently pro-vegetarian for animal rights reasons, not health food enthusiasm, and that no responsible health food supporter would claim that any food can cure or universally prevent cancer.)
Huh? The OP is about the relationship between health food and left-wing politics. How is a statement about left-wing politics off topic?
Rereading my post, I realize I could have been more clear. People on the left and on the right eat healthy food. It’s left-wingers who tend to be more vocal about shoving the stuff down your throat. (Note that typically, left-wing people push things that are “good for you” whereas right-wing people decry stuff that’s “bad for us.” Semantic difference perhaps. Pardon the generalizations, but they’re appropos for the thread.)
The funny thing is, I ride a bike to work, I despise SUV’s, etc. Many people having discussions with me about those subjects alone might think that I’m on the liberal side. I’m not vegetarian, though I respect the decisions of those who are.
Biotop’s comments about health food fraud is just what I was pointing to. Good nutrition is a good idea for everyone, and anyone who looks at the benefits of eating well (of any political persuasion) will benefit.
Here’s another idea: health food fads (which is what I see as mostly being associated with the left, etc.) are embraced like religious revelations. Conservatives (in the US) tend to be aligned with traditional Christianity, and hence are leery of “new-agey” religions. Perhaps that’s why many shy away from all health food, in an overreaction to the genuine nutcases out there.
Somehow, I thought for fairness sake someone would also start a Pit thread about this, when “said comments bashing (conservatives) were wholly unrelated to the matter of the topic at hand.”
But then, I guess fair is only fair when it agrees with your particular ideology. 
“But then, I guess fair is only fair when it agrees with your particular ideology”- I don’t remember saying anything was fair.
That response was a jokey one to respond to december’s. No need to get all melancholy.
ps- you can see my sincere WAG three posts above the offending dinkhead response.
Ha! Anyone remember Laetrile? It was the darling of the ultra-right wing.
Well, I have always seen the connection between “health foods”–which aren’t all that healthy,b ut I’ll get to that in a bit–and left-wing politics is that both are a survival of gnostic philospohy in the 21st century. the Gnostics believed in hidden wisdom that could only be achieved through initiation by the already enlightened. Lefties tend to believe that their politics is not merely an alternate solution that works better than conservatism, but is actually the only possible worldview and that any deviation is the result of lack of awareness. You’ll note that leftie rhetoric emphasizes “raising awareness.” Lefties eschew hard data that contradict their beliefs and place much more importance on feelings and intuition than on reason and logic. Witness the leftist antipathy for hard science as shown in the Alan Sokol/Social Text fracas.–hence the leftie fondness for quack nostrums and “alternative medicine.” Lefties despise Western medicine because it represents the rigidity of thinking that they detest. So they fall for crap like homeopathy, iridology, reflexology, and the like because it is advertised as being secret information that only the cosmically aware and politically enlightened can comprehend.
So-called health food stores sell homeopathic flu “medicine,” even though it’s really only water. They sell granola as being a healthy breakfast food, although a moment’s examination shows that it contains unacceptably high levels of saturated fat. Health food stores, like Fresh Fields in the DC area, sell high-fat, high-sodium foods to the unwary as healthy alternatives to the food one finds in conventional stores. Calling a sugar-laden candy Rainforest Crunch doesn’t make it any healthier than peanut brittle, nor does the money paid for it go to indigenous people.
If a local “shaman” told a leftie to buy willow bark tea from a health food store at $10.00 a bottle, he’d do it without question. But if an MD told the same leftie to take two aspirin, which can be bought for pennies, the doctor would be condemned as a tool of patriarchal Western philosophy.
Not that conservatives can’t be gullible–enough of them swallow fundamentalist Christian hogwash ,and who could forget the Reagans running the country on the advice of an astrologer? but, on the whole, I have found leftists, by and large, to be much more gullible and easy to fool than conservatives. Look at how many fools voted for Nader and yet were surprised that Bush won.
There is a strain of…uhhhh…health food-ism on the right. Didn’t that Kellog guy invent corn flakes because he thought that eating meat made you horny? Or something like that…
I wonder how many fairly conservative people eat healthy, organic food–but just don’t buy it or make a lot of noise. My faimly, for instance, has always had a large garden. We ate home-baked bread, from wheat we ground ourselves–but we bought that wheat in bulk. I can safely say that I had a relatively vegetarian, non-consumer diet growing up–quite often our meals consisted of a mess of veggies from the garden–and yet my mom never set foot in a health food store, because she was producing it herself. (She baked her own granola, too.) I didn’t have a frozen or packaged meal until I hit college. (FTR, my family is pretty conservative, esp. dad.)
And I know plenty of people who were similar, growing up. I know some now; several of my friends and I spend a lot of our time talking about our gardens, trading the produce we grow, and buying healthy food in large bulk. We go to a dry cannery and can the grain, beans, etc. ourselves in big ol’ cans. I sprout my own wheat, make my own yogurt, can my own fruit and jam, and produce healthy meals–at home. The health food store is nice too, but I don’t need much from there unless I want my couscous fix or a good spice.
Surfing the web on a quest for food-storage sites, I’ve noticed that they’re pretty evenly divided between ultra-conservative and hippie-liberal types. Hm. Perhaps many conservatives just do their health food differently…
Is Rainforest Crunch really sold in health food stores, emarkp? That seems odd to me. Do you happen to have a cite?
Food storage is a slightly different issue from health food. As far as I can tell, most ultra-conservative groups that are interested in food storage are survivalists, who are storing food to survive the Coming Apocalypse [TM].
Sorta like Creationist evangelists?
The whole healthfood thing is pretty bizarre…especially the “organic” food movement. I fail to undersytand why people want to pay 2-3 times the price for vegetables fertilized by horse manure (and most likely contaminated by bacteria). It’s like the bottled water thing-people pay an enormous price for H2O which is mostly the same stuff that comes out of the tap!
I suspect that most of the fervor for “healthfood” is sublimated evangelism-you have to eat “right” just like you have to be saved…
of course, if there is money to be made, somebody will always be on hand to supply “health food”!
One great difference (that I’ve noticed) between liberal health-food consumers and their conservative counterparts - and one reason that people associate healthy eating almost exclusively with liberalism - is the great difference in mentality between why the two groups choose their eating habits. For conservatives, vegatarianism is something they do. For liberals, it’s something they are.
Personally, I like eating healthy sometimes. I love a good salad. I think veggies are cool. I think tofu can be tasty if cooked right. (Though nasty when it tries to pass itself off as something else. Tofu is not turkey. Tofu is not ice cream. Tofu is not hamburger. Please stop pretending it is.) But whether for health reasons or just for the taste, I just eat healthy foods because sometimes I want to.
For a lot of liberals I know, however, eating organic foods is some sort of holy crusade. It’s almost a religion. Gotta make sure your foods are strictly organic. Gotta make sure that these organic foods come from rain-forest-friendly, eco-conscious, politically correct sources (I submit as Exhibit A the ordinance that just passed in Berkeley making it a crime punishable by $1000 fine and prison time if any store sells coffee that isn’t from a strict list of environmentally friendly and liberal-happy producers). And most importantly, you must make sure that every one knows that your diet isn’t just a health matter, it’s a political statement. Eating at McDonalds isn’t just unhealthy, it’s selling out. It’s not just about taste, it’s not just about health, it’s about politics.
I spent the better part of a year living with a couple of environmentalist health nuts, and got a very up-close-and-personal look at what the liberal health-food mentality looks like. Certainly this isn’t descriptive of every liberal, but I can guarantee you this behavior is much more prevalent on the left side of the fence than on the right. When was the last time you saw a Republican bragging about the political implications of his London broil?
Jeff
After reading last week’s cover article from Newsweek, I resolved to eat more organic health food.
It’s much better for the environment, and all of the chemicals used on non-organic produce are bad for you, even more so for children.
—For a lot of liberals I know, however, eating organic foods is some sort of holy crusade. It’s almost a religion. Gotta make sure your foods are strictly organic. Gotta make sure that these organic foods come from rain-forest-friendly, eco-conscious, politically correct sources—
I’m not sure I see the problem, other than these particular liberals happen to value different things than you.
Would you scoff at a person who thought that buying T-shirts from a company that helped fund abortion clinics was wrong, saying “geez, it’s a good T-shirt, that’s all that matters, so chill out, will ya?” The liberals you describe may be pretty wacky in their moral associations, but at least they recognize that their purchases and consumption HAVE moral content. Pretending that they don’t is the sign of someone with no pressing interest in morals; not exactly a flattering quality.
—When was the last time you saw a Republican bragging about the political implications of his London broil?—
If Republicans wish to portray themselves as the truly moral ones, as opposed to the licentious and lazy liberals, it hardly makes much sense to be proud of having no interest in the political or moral dimensions of one’s actions.
—It’s much better for the environment, and all of the chemicals used on non-organic produce are bad for you, even more so for children.—
Some of the things in organic foods are bad for you too: are you sure you know which is worse? Herpes is “organic” but no one is rushing out to try it.
Another intriguing arguement: organic foods cost more than their alternatives. That means that in general, people will probably eat less of them (less fresh fruits and vegetables)… which in turn means less of things like apples and such that help reduce cancer risk.
Sigh…not this tired argument again.
Organic produce does not, in general, cost 2 to 3 times regular produce. In our store organic produce is often cheaper than the conventional produce from down the road at Kroger. If you buy out-of-season imported produce, you’ll probably pay a good bit less than the scarce organic produce of the same variety. In season, you will likely pay the same or less, especially if the small store is buying locally instead of going through a supplier middleman.
Almost all farmers use manure. It’s cheap. It’s been used for centuries in a safe fashion. That conventional produce you just brought likely was fertilized with manure. Organic growers have very strict standards for the use of manure. Conventional farmers…?