Hm. Time for some Stupid Posters, because I have seen some and I wouldn’t want them to go to waste.
You can see them yourself if you visit the Facebook page of someone who calls himself David Avocado Wolfe. Yes, he really does. He says he’s a public figure, too. Well I don’t believe that.
Piffle. Not common sense at all. Think of all the African and Middle Eastern and Indian and Chinese foods the names of which I can’t pronounce properly – that’s hardly a reason not to eat them.
Nope. That’s not true.
“Pushes off the body’s dirty electricity”?
Please.
He may be a public figure, but he’s no thought leader, that’s for sure.
I wonder if people who believe stuff like this just get it processed through enough other gullible people that they happen to trust, or if they have a deranged idea of “truth” that lets them accept whatever they want to believe today.
Being barefoot is awesome, but I haven’t seen any scientific data confirming anything about absorbing earth vibes.
“Absorb free energy from the earth?” What the hell?
I hear a train. Woo. Wooooo. Wooooooooooo!
You can also absorb hookworms by going barefoot if they are present.
Health benefits of walking barefoot: give a home to all the tetanus viruses, or anthracis bacillus or hookworms you might happen across. Also, it’s a good way of improving your concentration, digging bits of glass out of your feet. I live on an old farm that’s been worked since the 1880s — there are bits of nasty everywhere you can walk.
“If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it”
Don’t eat sushi, or most French cuisine, then.
Tetanus is caused by a Clostridium bacteria.
The nasty respiratory virus my wife and I had the last couple of weeks seems to be abating. Can’t say as we’ve learned anything except that nasal rinses are helpful for bad sinus congestion. But we wouldn’t have needed that except for the virus, so it seems a bit of a pointless exercise, no?
I like walking barefoot (in warm weather), which is why I bought a pair of five-fingers. I don’t think they do anything magical; I just like the feeling of going barefoot on the ground, without risking injury from pebbles, glass, etc. (though it will be interesting to see whether my hallux problems get better or worse, compared to the useless orthotic I got for an outrageous price back in the fall).
I wonder what they eat. Given that every thing that can be remotely described as food contains horrible things that cannot be pronounced easily, they must be starving. Sure, I don’t want to say, “Mmm, tasty source of 3-((4-Amino-2-methyl-5-pyrimidinyl)methyl)- 5-(2-hydroxyethyl)-4-methylthiazolium chloride!” when I’m having potato salad, but it’s there! And it’s a CHEMICAL! A CHEMICAL! There is no safe level of chemicals in food, ever, I’ve been told!
I wonder what this urinary tract infection is going to teach me? Oh, wait, it’s probably “Always trust Western Medicine since they gave you the antibiotics that will make it go away!” But I already knew that. Damn-it universe, I passed that test already, stop giving it to me again! I wonder what the diabetes is trying to teach me. Since it will never go away, I can only assume that the universe is a really lousy teacher.
As for walking barefoot… diabetic. Barefoot+outside+diabetic=ulcerous sores. Wait, that’s it, the diabetes is trying to teach me this poster is really stupid! Got it! You can go away now, diabetes!
Well that’s quinoa off the menu for most people.
Hm… seems he really loves the fruit of Persea americana.
I wonder if he knows that the fruit of Persea americana produces a natural pesticide called persin that can break down healthy cell walls?
(For the record, I eat Persea americana fruit like it’s going out of style. So. Damn. Good. Go ahead and break down my cells and destroy my fat content for the day. Totally worth it.)
Hrm. A few things I can pronounce:
. arsenic
. ricin
. 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin
. polonium 210
…. so, umm… This is really pretty useless advice, it seems to me. I mean, just whose diet is this going to affect? People who can’t read the pronunciation keys in dictionaries, maybe? And who also somehow haven’t worked out some of the online ones now havecool little sound files you can click on, too?
Oh. Right. Guess this theoretically might have some use to people who don’t read. Except vapid posters, we must assume. And is this, perhaps, essentially the underlying message? Don’t learn stuff. Your ‘common sense’ is plenty.
(Also, what’s the ruling on stuff I could theoretically pronounce more or less correctly, but which I just keep pronouncing wrong, just because everyone else around here does, and they’re going to have no idea what I’m talking about if it I actually say it right? Like, say, phở? I’ve got used to just letting it rhyme with ‘toe’, for this reason of practical convenience. Do I have to restrict myself to just eating the broth or something?)
When I saw that captioned baby, my thoughts were something like “why would you use a baby photo! Babies can’t pronounce goddamn anything! Oh wait, a clever portrayal of most people’s lack of chemistry experience when pronouncing long molecule names, brilliant satire!” I concluded that you had been hoodwinked, so I visited to find something like a statement or whatever to set things straight. Instead, I found this picture, in which a tsunami intensity map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is portrayed as if it were actually a map of nuclear waste leaking from Fukushima. Debunked multiple times in the thread by many commentors, but never addressed.
Conclusion: this guy is not only completely in earnest, but dishonest as well.
According to David’s website….
“David “Avocado” Wolfe is the rock star and Indiana Jones of the superfoods and longevity universe. The world’s top CEOs, ambassadors, celebrities, athletes, artists, and the real superheroes of this planet—Moms—all look to David for expert advice in health, beauty, herbalism, nutrition, and chocolate!”
Sounds like a purveyor of woo to me.
I like being barefoot, but honestly, I can’t believe the things some people attribute to walking barefoot! Of course, the shoes she’s dangling are high heels, and there are some negative effects of high heels, but those can be overcome simply by wearing more sensible shoes.
(… and come to think of it, I’m not sure ‘the body’s dirty electricity’ is something I’d necessarily be entirely opposed to.)
Glad to see that I wasn’t the only one who thought saw the baby photo and immediately thought of said baby’s lack of being able to pronounce ‘milk’ but still consuming it.
Does Mr. Wolfe then advocate for voluntary human extinction through not feeding infants who can’t ask for food? Madness, either way.
Depending on the area where you’re walking barefoot. You could also be exposing yourself to a lovely parasite, the hookworm.
Sounds an awful lot like that “Food Babe” dingbat.
Sometimes I have a hard time saying the word avocado without garbling it (and Persea americana is right out), but that’s not going to stop me from having one with lunch today.
Given the numbers of cats around pretty much all human habitations, and the fact “as high as 45 percent*” of cats have hookworms, barefoot running may be a great way of picking up hookworms. Hookworms, tapeworms, roundworms, giardia, and toxoplasmosis are all pretty common in cats.
* From: http://www.vet.cornell.edu/FHC/health_resources/Parasite.cfm
I can pronounce “phenylketonurics” just fine; I’m willing to bet the target audience of that poster can pronounce “arsenic”, but I would still recommend they consume the former over the latter, even if the former can potentially cause health problems for a few people.
Well, *I* can pronounce LlanFairPwllGwyngyllGogeryChwyrndrobwllLlanTysilioGoGoGoch, but I wouldn’t eat it.
If you can’t say it, listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BXKsQ2nbno
But still don’t eat it.
Ha, when I was at a crammer in north Oxford there was a Welsh cook at the house where I lived and we used to get her to say it for us. I can say the first few syllables…
LlanFairPwll-etc is an early memory for me. When I was 6yo we went to England (and Wales, obviously) and went up Snowdon. Llan….that place is the lower terminus of the cog railway. My dad made a point of learning to pronounce it (well, at least to read it — I won’t guarantee that his grasp of Welsh phonetics was correct. And to complicate things, there was his Yorkshire accent on top of it…..). There’s a slide in the archives of the station sign.
The photo of the baby has nothing to do with pronunciation.
It has to do with common sense.
Infants are known for their common sense.
I know one person who has a bit of trouble pronouncing “turmeric.” Guess that means it’s bad for you, eh?
Just ONE person? Everybody seems to have trouble pronouncing that! Also mascarpone.
I watch cooking shows on tv too much.
Whenever I hear the word ‘mascarpone’ said out loud, I have trouble not envisaging a My Little Pony masquerade ball. Is that just me?