Our local parents’ magazine is a real delight to read. Here is an excerpt from this month’s issue:
Recent testing by Quadrant Scientific, Inc. found a quarter million microorganisms on unwashed produce purchased at grocery stores. And an estimated one-third of produce in America contains a lot of residual pesticides (sic) …
This was embedded in an article supporting organic produce soap. I would say that this paragraph is among the most scientific that you find in the GVP articles. Each sentence is a doozy unto itself. Take the first sentence and ask, what is the point? OOOHHH SCCAAARRRYYY micro-organisms are on your grocery store produce. Where is the science in that comment? How does this compare to what is found on produce at a typical farmers’ market? Or directly at the farm? Or is 250,000 microorganisms a lot? A little? Where do they come from? Do they come from hands and handling? Do they come from, as the article intimates but does not say directly, evil horrible pesticides and chemicals? That would seem odd given that evil horrible pesticides and chemicals would seem to destroy microorganisms. And if that is the case, then what is the point of the statistic presented in this way? Do the editors even read these pieces?
Of course, the second sentence should go down in the annals of science: “one-third of produce has “A LOT” of residual pesticides.” Not only does it commit every error the first sentence does, but it then reminds us that we need to rewrite our familiar tables of weights and measures to add this new measure of “a lot.” Is a lot about 100 milligrams? A couple of ounces?
I’d remind you that more people will read that single article and act on it than I will reach in a combined 2 years of blogging.
LOL! I see that rag all the time.
I wonder how many bacteria are in the human digestive tract? Should I be worried?
Note to the intellectual elite, who tend to be Whole Foods shoppers: belief in God is as easy as belief in your superstition about organic foods.