Page 2 RAIN January 1980 Dear RAIN, This is in regard to your review of "Fast Foods Will Make You Sickly Quickly" in July 1979. I hope the rest of this letter shows a better knowledge of nutrition than . the quote you printed. "The moisture content alone in fast food . .. ranges from 44 to 62 percent, which almost qualifies them as beverages." The implication I get from this quote is that this high a moisture content is either bad for a person or ripping a person off. Checking out the moisture content of other foods, you will find that this percentage is low: e.g., asparagus, 91.7%; mung sprouts, 88.8%; sweet cherries, 80.4%; hard-cooked eggs, 73.7%; tofu, 84.8%; peas, 83.3%. These foods are generally considered good for a person but come much closer to being bev,erages than fast foods. In the November RAIN we accessed The Least Is Best Pest Strategy and neglected to note that it was edited by Jerome Goldstein, who also published it. Another observation to be made is that the difference in moisture content of a vegetable or fruit is not all that great. The difference between being solid and being a beverage is more a matter of form than moisture content (this is based on my glancing at percentages-not sure if nutritionists agree), e.g. : Raw Juice Apples 84.4% 87.8% Apricots 85.3% 84.6% Blackberries 84.5% 90.9% Tomatoes 93.5% 93.6% Another observation to be made is that substances with low moisture contents may or may not be good for oneself. Legumes, nuts and grains all have low moisture contents, but so do candies (0. 9-17.3 %), sugar (powdered O. 5 % , while honey is 17.2 % ) or cake icings (11.1 %-17.9%). As far as I'm concerned, the quoted critiWin, the weekly magazine from which we excerpted Vicki Barnett's "Changing the American Way of Work," is located at 503 Atlantic Ave., 5th floor, Brooklyn, NY 11217, 212/624-8337. (Subscriptions $15/year.) Win has been providing excellent coverage of nonviolent social change efforts here and abroad for almost 15 years. RAIN cism of fast foods is not valid and any other statements in the reviewed article should be checked with sources to make sure they are valid. Sincerely yours, Ronald Ekberg P.S. The human body is 60-70% water, which makes each of us even more of a beverage than'fast foods. -The fault is in my review, not in the Caveat Emptor article, which was not dealing in water content of foods as such but rather food laws and marketing practices that define excessive levels of allowable moisture and encourage the watering-down of foods. It's similar to the situation with Ivory Soap, where there is so much air foamed into the bar of soap that you pay over $3 per pound for the soap you get, while other soaps cost $1.19/lb. Pretty expensive air!_:_ Tom Bender Our apologies to Gerri Traina, who authored the Women and Solar half of "Pulling Together'' last month and was not credited. Gerri wanted us to note that many of her ideas were outgrowths from the Sydney Oliver speech she excerpted. The complete text of Sydney's talk will be printed in the "Women and Energy" issue of Quest: a feminist quarterly, 2000 "P" St. N.W., Suite 308, Washington, DC 20036. Journal of Appropriate Technology RAIN is a national information access journal making connections for people seeking more simple and satisfying lifestyles, working to make their communities and regions economically self-reliant, building a society that is durable, just and ecologically sound. RAIN STAFF: Carlotta Collette, Mark Roseland, Pauline Deppen, Jill Stapleton·, Kiko Denzer, Dawn Brenholtz, John Ferrell RAIN, Journal of Appropriate Technology, is published 10 times yearly by the Rain Umbrella, Inc., a non-profit corporation located at 2270 N.W. Irving, Portland, Oregon 97210, telephone 503/227-5110. Copyright © 1980 Rain Umbrella, Inc. No part may be reprinted without written permission. Typesetting: Irish Setter Printing: Times Litho Cover Photograph: Courtesy of Oregon Historical Society
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