Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
I spend quite a bit of time each week answering comments on my blogs, both old and new. I love answering comments and no question is ever a “dumb” question in my book. The only dumb questions are the ones that never get asked!
That being said, there are always a few comments each week that really grab my attention for whatever reason. To give you some idea, I was having lunch with my husband yesterday and was telling him about this absolutely brilliant comment by a reader that I was still marveling about. He immediately suggested that I do a weekly blog spotlighting standout comments.
What a great idea!
So here I am, kicking off a new Friday series that will spotlight a few brilliant comments from the prior week.
Be advised that, on occasion, I may spotlight a truly boneheaded comment as well. Boneheaded comments typically come from conventionally minded people with a bad attitude who make some lame, in the box, propaganda statement without even reading the post and considering “the other side of the story” so to speak.
I have no problem with comments that aren’t in agreement with what I write. We all have our own perspectives after all. It’s those comments which don’t even consider the other side and the commenter makes this known in a manner that is rather rude that causes me to take issue.
Brilliant or boneheaded? Let me know what you think! Here are the spotlighted comments from this past week:
Brilliant Comments
From Christin on Fish Eggs: A Superior Source of Vitamin D:
“Salmon roe was one of my babies 1st finger foods. They love to grab the tiny eggs. Way better than cereal “O”‘s…Yuck!”
Christin, my jaw was on the ground after reading your comment. What an excellent idea to give babies little fish roe to munch on as a finger food! I never did that when my kids were little even though I knew all about how wonderful and nutritious fish eggs are and what a much better choice they would be than those nasty, nutritionless Cheerios and other boxed cereals! I wish I had done this too!
Another excellent comment by Michelle, regarding Seedling Garden in 95F Heat:
“I’ve had a garden here in Lakeland, FL for a couple of years now and here’s a few things I have learned. In this area, you want your spring seedlings to be in by late February. Also, if it says FULL SUN — it’s doesn’t mean Florida full sun. Most plants need a break from the heat here. If your garden is near concrete, it’s even hotter. The concrete will reflect the light and heat making it harder to grow things. Over the summer, just plant cover crops. It’s basically our “off-season.” You can do well with black-eyed peas and Sunflowers at that time. Then get ready for the bigger growing season by planting again in September.”
Thanks Michelle for the Florida gardening tips. I will be planting again in September per your advice!
And finally, a brilliant and insightful comment from Elizabeth on A Tale of Exploding Watermelons and Fruit Fed Fish:
“Pretty soon I will give up grocery shopping altogether. Nothing is safe unless you grow it or kill it yourself. We need a serious food revolution that will take down Monsanto and eliminate the chemical pesticides and fertilizers from our food supply and we need it yesterday. Those of us who can garden and buy local meats at reasonable prices are somewhat in the minority. Everyone else is either too broke to buy the organics at the store or are going broke doing so! It should be a RIGHT to buy chemical free food. It should not be a “lifestyle choice.” That type of thinking just leaves out a lot of people who just plain can’t afford it. And that is a human rights issue.”
Elizabeth, I honestly never thought about all this food mess we’re in as a planet as a human rights issue but that is a slam dunk observation! People really do need to have a food revolution in their own homes as buying organic produce and avoiding fast food is not going to get them healthy. We are so far down the rabbit hole on this one that only drastic changes to how we grow, source, shop, and prepare our food is going to make any difference in reversing the epidemic of chronic disease in ourselves and our children.
Boneheaded Comment
Unfortunately, there were a few boneheaded comments this week as well. They were from several dentists that converged on the How I Healed My Child’s Cavity post. One of them actually called me a flat out liar!
This comment from Kent G., DDS:
“My friends and colleagues Adam, Marc & Grisha are on point here. This type of anecdotal evidence is worthless if not backed up by clinical, reproducible results. There is a scientific method for a good reason: it works! If you want to convince anyone with a scientific background or an analytical mind, you need to approach the forum of discussion with a modicum of scientific evidence. Otherwise, you’re embarrassing yourself, as are the sheep of your flock.”
Dr. Kent, anecdotal evidence is far from worthless particularly with all the flawed and blatantly false “scientific” studies that are being exposed these days! It is the patients that assume cavities always need to be drilled and filled and that there is no other way than brushing and flossing teeth to prevent them that are the real sheep! I personally don’t need a scientific study to tell me that I see a hole in a tooth one day and that the hole in the tooth is gone a few weeks later. If you cannot respect a well researched book such as Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. Weston A. Price DDS and his observations about how nutrition can heal and prevent cavities, then no scientific study will convince you either.
Thanks to everyone who posted comments this past week! I love reading your ideas and insights and understanding what is on your minds and hearts. Keep ’em coming! Another edition of The Weekly Comment Spotlight will be posted next Friday!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
I enjoy your blog and have learned a lot. i am still in the process of changing my diet to reclaim my health but as a single parent with 40+yrs of bad eating it’s a difficult process. that said, it appears that most folks who eat a real food diet have energy and good health, both of which I want so i am slowly making changes. I think Dr. Kent G and other skeptics are not only more comfortable with what conventional medicine has taught them but would like more scientific evidence because real food bloggers only seem to ever quote the same three folks – sally fallon, dr price and dr mcbride! i think anecdotal evidence is great and i always opt to try curing myself of ill health through diet first but i wish there were more people would be on board if there were more organizations to turn to for support other than the wapf.
Hi Laura, when you are on the leading edge of a movement, you don’t have momentum on your side. There are many other pioneers in the Real Food movement, but for now we are still quite a small group.
I think this Friday post is a great idea! However I do have an objection to the Boneheaded classification. I would rather see it called something like “Not Yet Enlightened” otherwise you are treating these people’s comments the same way they are treating your post.
Hi Julie, making a boneheaded comment doesn’t necessarily make a person a bonehead. Everyone makes boneheaded comments from time to time. It’s not personal labeling a comment as boneheaded. I understand where you are coming from, but I really think these comments are truly boneheaded and don’t want to water it down by calling them something more PC.
Black-eyed peas are summer ground cover with benefits, like nutritious yummy fresh peas. Also, in the summer grow okra and eggplant. Try the heirloom watermelons. Old Florida people had a crop in the ground year round.
Sarah – this series will be fun to read. The Hubs had a great idea, glad you were open to his input.
Thanks! that is what I will do!
Hi Jackie, refrigerate unless you have a cool cellar.
Let’s assume that the dentist’s are correct, that there is no way to improve teeth health with nutrition. Where is the harm in trying? It’s not like you’re spending 100’s or 1000’s of dollars to heal your cavities. You’re eating real food, which can only improve your health. So why can’t some people just be up for trying it?
Excellent point, Lanise. These closed minded dentists are terrified that it really does work and they would lose business. It’s all about the $$$ not their patient’s health.
I was talking to a friend recently about GAPS and Dr. Natasha, and she wasn’t interested in anecdotal evidence, only what she could find in peer-reviewed medical journals. I, on the other hand, love “anecdotal evidence” because it’s stories about what’s working for real people in their very real lives. My nurse practitioner (and every other conventional doctor I talked to) said about my 2 sons’ chronic, recurring throat infections that there was no real connection to diet and their infections. But as soon as we started GAPS and got serious about probiotics and fermented CLO/BO, the infections away. Anecdotal? Who cares. That’s what happened, even if it’s not in a peer reviewed journal.
It’s just like government “experts” who say there’s no nutritional difference between raw and pasteurized milk. All the lactose intolerant people who have real stories about the vast differences they’ve experienced in their own lives are dismissed as “anecdotal.” I’ll take the anecdotes, thank you very much.
Hi Sarah,
I currently work in a dental office and am the second from my family in a dentition-related career. I have been following your blog for several weeks now, and I am fully on board with a lot of the ideas you espouse. I, too, have always heard that once a tooth has moved past the pre-carious lesion state, that there was no stopping the decay without intervention by a dentist. About 8 months ago we had a patient scheduled for a routine prophylaxis and filling (the cavity was diagnosed at his last visit — the patient put it off 6 months, with lots of tsk-tsks from us). He came up to the front desk after his cleaning, and I told him that the assistant would take him back shortly for his filling, but he said “no, I’m good, it went away by itself.” I just stared at him, laughed, and said, “what do you mean?” (I thought he was joking), and the doctor confirmed that the tooth was healthy and there was no longer a need for a filling. I literally still did. not. get it. There was no further explanation, and it was just brushed off by the dentist as an anomaly that he didn’t care to explain, and that has stuck with me ever since. I have to admit I read your post with a lot of skepticism, but I couldn’t get past my own experience in our office. Something clearly happened, and I’m more open-minded now as to what it was because of this experience.
To Barbara, receding gums can be caused by bone loss (if you imagine your gums as a blanket draped over your gums, this makes sense), so make sure to floss daily in order to remove plaque between teeth (a buildup of plaque can lead to bone less because the anaerobic bacteria eats away at your bone). Also very important to note: healthy gums do not bleed when you floss. A lot of people don’t like flossing because it makes their gums bleed, but they fail to realize that flossing more is actually the answer to the problem. Brushing really hard can also abrade enamel and cause some gum recession. The periodontist at our office always says to brush gently, but THOROUGHLY.
Wow, I did not intend this response to become so long and meandering, but I am clearly in a sharing mood. Thanks for the work you do, Sarah!
Awesome Sarah. Just stay open minded and everything falls into place eventually. The answers sometimes come in their own time but at least when they do, you are ready for them and they don’t pass you by.
Dental check-up in November 2010 – 2 teeth with receding gum lines. Dental check-up yesterday, gums healthy. I took my cod liver oil much more faithfully and eliminated grain. Works for me!