I prefer to buy organic, but am far from religious about it. I don't like the idea of pesticides being used on my food, but I'm also a poor student and paying double for food can be tough to justify. I guess the only thing that saves me is that I don't spend ridiculous amounts of money on meat products (I'm vegetarian). If I ever go out of my way to buy organic, I make sure I buy from local organic farmers who bring in fresh produce all the time and don't wrap everything in plastic.
Speaking of plastic, plastic bags annoy the Hell out of me. I bring my own cotton bags everywhere with me in my backpack, but some places still
insist that I take whatever I buy in a plastic bag. Three problems I have with them:
1) I don't want four hundred bags sitting around in one of my closets.
2) It's an awful waste of plastic that only gets dumped into landfills.
3) If they're heavy, they can be painful on the palms to carry long distances (I walk everywhere).
But back to foods...
Pesticide use will increase yields, but at what cost? In a society where far more food is produced than is necessary (in North America, at least), what's the point of producing even more? How will it affect nearby ecosystems and the environment at large?
Africa is a bit of a different story. Most places in Africa
need more food, so, to a certain extent, pesticide use can be better justified. However, that justification itself isn't necessarily the whole answer. Pesticides are expensive, and small-time farmers in Africa can't afford them, which means they can't compete against the already-large producers. This, in turn, serves to widen the gap between the haves and have-nots. So, overall, does that make pesticides beneficial to Africa? How about the world in general?
Taking North American excess produce and shipping it to Africa makes very little sense. Yes, it will feed them in the meantime, but it doesn't address the root of the problem. It is not sustainable and only serves to help citizens and governments pat themselves on the back.
Recycling doesn't make perfect sense at the moment, but throwing it in a landfill sure as Hell doesn't either. I look at recycling from a future perspective...what do we do when we run out of resources? Not going to happen for a long time, but can you imagine the amount of "energy" it would take to sort through all the landfills in the world? Reducing and reusing is definitely the ideal answer, but recycling has to come into the picture eventually. Why not start now so that we can avoid a problem later on? Or, perhaps that's a little too far-sighted for people today.
Pseudobrit, why are you so afraid of anything unorthodox with respect to human health? From pretty much everything else you've ever written on these boards, I've gotten the impression that you're usually very open to unconventional ideas that slip by most people. Just to point out one thing in particular about migraines...there is no
one cure-all treatment. Since they have different causes, they have different treatments. Telling someone with migraines that pharmaceutical pills are the only way they can ever hope to rid themselves of migraines is pure bull. I use a form of mental visualisation (related to meditation) to rid myself of headaches and migraines whenever I get them, and it has yet to fail me once. Science doesn't back that up because in its current form, it
can't.
Quite often, migraines are stress-related, and massages can
work wonders in stress relief. If you disagree, then you're likely either uncomfortable being touched or have never actually had a massage. These days, stress is increasingly being recognised as a "disease" (think, dis-ease) and it's effects are appearing in studies everywhere. Stress is intimately related to individual well-being, and a reduction in it can have quite unexpected consequences.
That said, it's hard to scientifically quantify the inner workings of the human mind. This is one area where science isn't particularly advanced, so it would be expected that science can't always back up the perceived benefits of stress reduction or any sort of poorly understood phenomenon. In short, if it works for you, do it! If not, don't bitch out the people who are fortunate enough to have other options. Who cares if it
is just placebo?
Also, since having less stress is a form of wellness, a massage can
definitely help with that
EDIT:
Pseudobrit, I saved you the trouble of some research...here are the top results on Google for the four issues you had with massages, as they are related to stress. I've already liked an article that relates massages to stress reduction. Search was performed as
stress [insert ailment]:
Circulation
Migraines
Cancer
Wellness
