Your digestive system is your real brain

Another Monday. Tough one today, as I had a whole lot of fun over the weekend. It started Friday night at the comic shop when I had my second-consecutive successful Magic night. I went 2-2, one win short of prize, at the last draft I went to, and on Friday night, I went 3-2, again just one win shy of winning prize. In both cases I made, and overcame a lot of mistakes, and generally had answers for my opponents' plans. I think this is a good thing, I think I'm headed in the right direction. But enough geek stuff. Saturday was a day at TJ's house, where she fed us amazing Indian food. Part of it was butter chicken, part of it was a tandoori salmon appetizer (YES PLEASE!), and the rest I can't really name. But it was all sooooo tasty. Aside from the food, we had a lot of laughs (many directed at me) and all in all it was a blast. But yesterday was the real treat. I signed up with Darell to take what looked like a regular cooking class: Introduction to Raw Foods. So we drove way down south and found this tiny little health food store that starts to put some fear into us right away. The woman at the front of the room started to talk, and immediately we knew this was a bad idea. I actually felt embarassed for having suggested we try it out. Other than the really good salad she made, here are some highlights: Getting a colonic will cure a flu. People with low BMIs are more toxic than obese people. The people in restaurants hate you. Feeding children kiwi and orange peels is a good idea. 3 or 4 months is a good age to introduce kale into a kid's diet. Honey is also a good idea for kids less than 12 months old. Soy is bad for you. Most nuts are bad. Acidic fruits are bad. Use olive and coconut oils only, but never cook with them because they become toxic. Green peppers are bad - they're not ripe! People aren't allergic to nuts, they're just detoxing. And, the granddaddy of them all: a raw food diet will cure anything-- even AIDS. And especially cancer. While these aren't direct quotes, and Darell's taken a few liberties with these statements for effect, they are all claims this woman made. After the AIDS proclamaition, she even started into a story that sounded like she was about to saw a raw food diet would cure autism. There are some dangerous people in the world, and I'm not talking about terrorists or religious fanatics. I'm talking about regular people that have an audience and completely eschew science and fact, to push their own ideals and beliefs as truth. "Nobody's actually allergic to nuts, your body is just so used to toxic foods that it can't handle nuts, so it rejects them," is not a statement of fact. I can honestly say, aside from Darell's concern this would be an afternoon spent making salad, that we went into this event without any cynicism. We both like food. Liking food, and wanting to prepare food that everyone will like, means being well-versed in different styles and at bare minimum trying everything. And we did learn some tricks (she used avacado in place of any sort of oil for her main salad), but we also learned about this woman's breat reduction and the way raw food have cured the problems she had. It wasn't all a wash though. Again, avacado in place of oils/dressing in salad, hell yes. And I learned there's such a thing as pumpkin seed butter. Now please excuse me while I gorge on some chicken wings, bacon, and cupcakes.