For crying out loud, why eat fruits and vegetables?

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Orwell, this is probably going to be the last reply I give to you. I'm not attacking you in any way, but your arguments are flooded with fallacies.

For more information about what fallacies are, you can read

Wikipedia: Fallacies
Wikipedia: List of fallacies

I will point them out in your post one by one and leave it at that.

If other people jumped off a cliff, I'm sure you wouldn't jump off a building.



You just said it's usually random, and now you're saying it's always random.



Well in that case, my reason isn't the 'usual' reason. To accuse me of believing that would be a straw man fallacy.



Unquantified statement.



In that case: because they can afford it.



You can settle for imperfect evidence without settling for a bad argument.



It largely contributes.



Fallacy of ad hominem.

It might really be a symptom of shallow-minded thinking to attack people for being 'paranoid.' The word has two definitions, and one of them (extreme distrust) isn't bad.

I don't know why people think it's so bad to be paranoid. It pretty much means you're taking a protective stance against many possible dangers, from which you could very greatly benefit. Maybe it's because the word sounds like 'pain,' or 'paranormal,' or 'android,' or 'paranormal humanoid,' or something else. Either way, it makes me sick to hear people use that word as an insult.



Because their studies might be as flawed as the one I refuted.



To make a transition to another sense of the word while attributing the same logical relations would be an instance of the fallacy of equivocation.



Not good enough for a smart dieter.



Unsupported claims.



Meaning that you have the ability not to care. How kind of you.



Fallacy of the undistributed middle.



Unsupported claim and possible fallacy of the simple cause.



Thank you for conceding that.



I agree, as long as they don't have those seeds in them. Other than that, they're very expensive. I can get my Vitamin C elsewhere.



Grapes expire easily (as I learned the hard way) and apples are hard for me to chew.



I like bananas, too, but they are still expensive. The chief nutrient I look for is Tyrosine, and I can find that elsewhere.



Oh, come on.


It's one of my worst fears that some idiot (not you, of course) will rule the planet with fallacies one day and that all the smart people will lose their ability to talk.

You can get antioxidants from green tea

Thank you, Chibi Neko.

All they need to do is tell us what's in fruits and vegetables, in what proportion they have it to other, less expensive foods, the exact amount by which they reduce the likelihood of illness, why vitamins are no substitute (perhaps they are), why they are worth the cost, and why they are essential.

Simply telling us what to eat without explaining why is, in my opinion, rather rude and certainly questionable. Decisions not to follow these commands should not be regarded as foolish merely on the basis of what most people say or believe, as that would be a fallacious appeal to the majority.

It's a good thing I wasn't proving a theorem, then.


I'm familiar with these.


I just find it odd that you singled out my relatively mild comments as insulting.


Well, that would be the definition of a trial. I qualified the statement before because I was too lazy to go and check their methodology.


I never claimed that you believed that. Work on your reading comprehension before you accuse me of logical fallacies. I was pointing out that you have proposed no alternative mechanism that adequately explains why people who eat fruits and vegetables are healthier.


So? It's true. You haven't been giving hard numbers either, so I don't see why I have to quantify anything.


That makes absolutely no sense given your claim that this whole thing is a plot by the upper class. If the idea that fruit is good for you is a scam by the rich, why would the alleged perpetrators of the scam also be its biggest victims? You want me to stick with logic? Your theory contains an internal contradiction, therefore it is wrong. QED


I'm just going to say that you really don't understand how biological research works and leave it at that. I'm too tired to bother explaining it, and you'd likely just misread it anyways.


Not to as great an extent as many people believe.


No, just a statement of fact. And I wasn't attempting to refute any of your reasoning. I had already pointed to the obvious flaws in your reasoning, the claim of your paranoia was simply in response to your continuing to believe an irrational theory in the face of its absurdity.


You didn't refute anything. You quite plainly did not even understand the study you attempted to "refute."


Yes, and that is the error you were making. That is what I was pointing out- it is misleading to use the terminology of logic mixed in with typical ambiguous English without a clear separation.


Instead a smart dieter should trust a random conspiracy theory with absolutely no direct evidence, no indirect evidence, and much against it?


I've already supported them elsewhere.


Or just a snide remark.


Basically, your only substantial criticism ends up being that fruits and veggies are too expensive. Well, find cheaper ones, buy in season, and deal with it. You don't have to eat 2500 calories a day of apples. And you have put forward no evidence whatsoever to support your conspiracy theory.

Well, they don't know for sure. That's the trouble with biology, nothing's ever certain. What we do know is that people who follow certain diets (including fruits and vegetables) tend to be healthier. It's not enough to *absolutely prove* a causal link in the mathematical sense of proof, but it's as good as we can get.

I'm impressed that you know of theorems and fallacies at your age. Still, I wish you would be more polite.

You're not *that* much older than me, and I'm a math major with an unhealthy habit of wandering through Wikipedia's philosophy-related sections. I tend to be impolite, or to come across as such even when I don't intend to be.

When someone starts using the Argument from Age, you can be sure that you have presented an argument he can't beat.

In my case, that's not an Argument from Age, as there is nothing I'm even attempting to prove (except that some proofs are fallacious).

But I'm not attempting a proof. Such would be ridiculous in this context. I can only prevent evidence suggesting one conclusion or another. If we're going to be honest here, nothing is "proved" outside of mathematics, and this discussion is not about math.

Yeah, I don't see how exactly veggies are to be considered expensive in this case. A can of vegetables can be found in the grocery store for $1(I think I recently bought some to supplement some rice and noodles for 80 cents), a TV dinner with veggies in it can be found for $1-2, a can of soup containing veggies can be found for $1-1.5, so these things aren't that expensive. You can even get fruit cups as your side at some fast food places(I think Wendy's and Subway do this). Also, many hamburgers come with lettuce, onion, tomato, and pickles either automatically or upon request(with people likely getting these items to pad their burger and add to the flavor, as I know that's the reason why I started doing this), tacos are similar to hamburgers in this regard as well, and many fast food places include veggies as viable sides for meals(like chicken places), and pizza places have veggies as toppings. So, I don't see how the "evil exploitative upper class oppression" argument really makes that much sense given that there is little reason to think that lower classes CANNOT get these items, however, it seems ok to claim that the lower classes likely do not get as many veggies as recommended in spite of these opportunities, and some of this is likely because the lower classes are generally less educated about nutrition, that they also might even be the sort who will think that fruit flavored drinks are fruit, and that they are not culturally disposed to eating nutritiously as opposed to the middle and upper classes who are a lot more health conscious and more likely to do things such as diet and join gyms.

Perhaps this is all just sort of off the mark for this kind of discussion, but the idea seems patently ridiculous, as we know the following things pretty well:
1) Fruits and veggies are widely and cheaply available
2) People are generally fine with them, and some seek them out for flavor purposes
3) They are still considered underconsumed, in comparison to meats and such
4) The most health conscious classes are not the poor

The first and second points are just found through simple examination. The third point is usually considered obvious given that Americans are known for consuming meats and grains but not having balanced diets. The fourth point is very obvious.

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Last edited by claire-333 on 21 Apr 2009, 5:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Fresh often taste better. With fruit, I will often go for canned stuff (especially pineapples) just for sake of convenience.

In terms of fruit perishing easily... buy it in smaller quantities, as you need it, and it will be less of a problem. Or refrigerate.

Beyond that, the flavor of canned vegetables is pretty miserable compared with fresh ones. Frozen ones are more acceptable. Here in Finland vegetables are much more expensive than in New York where I lived, but in neither place is the price in any way a deciding factor in eating them. I live on a very tight income and fresh vegetables are well within my income.

Yes, but it still undermines the theory of "enslave the masses using propaganda", as they are cheap, and a lot of people really do not know the difference(health-wise) as after all, the lower classes might not know the difference between a fruit drink and fruit juice.

In any case, TV dinner veggies are usually frozen, and TV dinners are cheap, so it still undermines this situation, and hamburgers are cheap and they traditionally already have veggies of some sort on them.

Ultimately, in my experience, I've noticed that the biggest problem for the poor regarding fruits and vegetables isn't price, but accessibility and distance. A lot of neighborhoods that are less wealthy will not have a grocery store nearby, they are more likely to have something like a 7-11 or another type of convenience store than a Whole Foods or even an Albertsons. I'm blessed to live in a city which has community gardens that give food to homeless shelters and lower income families and people living on a tight budget, but not everyone is as lucky as I am. I've visited friends in other cities who would have to take a long bike ride, a bus, or a train even to get access to a store that will sell fresh fruits and vegetables. Between that long commute and the Big Gulp right across the street, what are most poor going to choose? I was lucky, when my family was poor, we were living in Hawaii, which had year round sunshine and lived in a neighborhood where our neighbors had gardens and were willing to share. Others aren't so lucky though, and I'm a firm believer that access to health and nourishment is a right, not a privilege.
Thus, I believe that making real food, good food that's fresh and rich in nutrients available more widely should be made a priority in politics and local government, even if they don't live close to an organic farmer's market or a supermarket close to the house.