Yeah, you can usually still get through from what I understand. But unlike the situation before 2008 or so, the TSA no longer guarantees that they will let you travel without ID. And you'll usually be forced to submit to some "ID verification" steps where they ask you questions to verify who you say you are.

It's funny (and not widely known), but you actually didn't need a photo ID to fly domestically in the U.S. until maybe the past couple years. For quite a few years after 9/11, you could just say "Oh, I forgot it," and they'd stick you in an alternate line that usually got you through security faster (though often with an extra patdown).

Technically, there was a legal principle that you had a right to travel freely within the U.S. without having to present "papers" (a la Nazi Germany). People who "forgot" their IDs were usually fine, but the TSA started harassing those who just refused to show ID.

Around four years ago, it started to get harder -- they'd ask for any sort of ID even without a photo: credit card, whatever, and then they'd make mysterious phone calls and generally let you through.

But then around the time of the nude scanner crap, the TSA finally decided it was just going to ignore people's right to free travel and just officially admit that we've descended into the likes of Nazi Germany if we want to travel any distance within the U.S.

For all the harassment that has been shown to people by the TSA, most people are shocked that for about 8-9 years after 9/11, you still didn't even need ID to get on a domestic flight.

One correction: "It's because white flour can be stored longer. It doesn't go rancid as fast because it contains all those fatty acids and other nutrients."

I obviously meant "[White flour] doesn't go rancid as fast because it doesn't contain all those fatty acids and other nutrients found in the whole grain version.

I'm sorry. I thought you actually had a clue about what you were talking about. That's why I actually bothered to have a conversation. Now I'm not so sure.

Umm, wheat bran contains a bunch of B vitamins, among other things. That's, in fact, why white flour is fortified with all those B vitamins in the first place: scientists know they are lost in white flour, and so they are added back in (even more than is usually there). There are also essential fatty acids and other things there. If you ate a whole wheat berry (which wouldn't be pleasant), you'd probably get very little nutrition out of it. But when you grind it up, which is how everyone eats it, you can get some of the nutrients out of it.

Nope. Wrong again. This is actually where the most vitamins and minerals in wheat are concentrated, and it is also high in fatty acids.

Seriously, go to any nutrition website and look these things up. It's not that hard. Heck, even take the time to note why the bran and germ are generally removed even today -- it's not for nutritional reasons. It's because white flour can be stored longer. It doesn't go rancid as fast because it contains all those fatty acids and other nutrients. I don't know how dense or brainwashed someone has to be to believe this nonsense.

No, no, no. Nobody eats whole wheat berries. You grind the damn thing up. That's how you get access to the endosperm, the germ, and everything else. As for other grains, if they aren't ground, they are either spouted or soaked and cooked until they swell and release their interior.

Give me a single citation of a scientific resource where they have actually chemically measured the nutrients in grains where this is shown to be the case. You can't.

Glucose response in the bloodstream is greatly affected by the mix of foods you eat at any given time, not just the sheer quantity of any particular sugar. The glycemic response to whole grains is significantly lower than to "white" grains, presumably because of the mix of other stuff. Regardless of whether this other stuff has significant nutritional value (which it does), the fact is that it significantly changes the way our bodies digest the food, probably in a way that is beneficial.

But as a larger point, of course reducing actual sugar is important first and foremost. Yet, our bodies respond to things like white wheat flour, white rice, potato starch, etc. in ways that are almost equal to a response to sucrose. (Most people don't encounter glucose by itself, except when in a fructose/glucose mix like honey, or when they are bonded together as in sucrose.)

Anyhow...

From the absolute nonsense in your last post, I have to conclude that you are either a troll or are hopelessly lost to some propaganda, so I'm signing off.

Cheers.

Hmm... do you have a reliable citation for this claim? Not some paleo or Atkins diet page or something, but something, say, peer-reviewed?

And, yes, in a raw form, whole grains often are hard to digest and release nutrients, but if they are cooked, soaked, or spouted, it gets easier to absorb these things. Regardless, I'd hardly say it's a "myth" that whole grains are more nutritious than processed counterparts. Except for the few vitamins that processed wheat and rice tend to be specifically fortified with, whole grains generally contain more vitamins, minerals, protein, other useful fats, etc. If you eat them raw, you won't absorb most of them, but if you break down the grain by grinding or cooking or soaking (as almost everyone does), you'll get more of the nutrients out.

Okay, fine. I'm on board with your "this is only a correlation" business. Yet, your alternative proposed explanations are again only hypotheses: they don't mean that whole grains don't have any benefits over refined ones.

You're comparing apples to oranges here. Grains shouldn't be seen as replacing meat in a diet. If you switch from an omniverous diet to a vegan diet, grains aren't where you need to add foods to replace the meat. Instead, you need to consume many more nutritious vegetables, fruits, legumes, seeds, and nuts, all of which are much more nutritious (in terms of providing vitamins, minerals, and other trace nutrients) than grains. And, notably, most of these are just as or more nutritious by this standard than meat is.

Meat is best at certain vitamins and minerals, as well as a good source for complete protein. If high in fat, it is also a good calorie source. But, with the exception of B12, you can get those vitamins and minerals in plant sources (though admittedly you have to work harder for some of them, particularly if you won't drink milk or eat any eggs). As for protein, a mix of grains, legumes, seeds, and nuts will give you a pretty good source of protein too. For the rest of the trace nutrients, vegetables and fruits are better than meat or grains.

I'm not sure why you bring up this nice story, which I'm well aware of. But it has nothing to do with a discussion of whole grains, since Americans (even poor ones) had mostly been eating white flour for long before 1900. This malnutrition says nothing about whether whole grains are better or worse.

If you want to argue that placing too much emphasis on grains in the diet is a problem, I'll gladly agree with you. Grains are mostly for calories, not for (most) nutrients. But if you are going to eat grains, which most hard-working people in the past had to do to get enough calories, whole grains are probably better in part because they are harder to digest. While some of the benefits of whole grains are in question or unproven, I do think a link between diabetes and processed grains makes a lot of sense, given the way processed white flour and rice is almost like pure sugar in the way it screws with our body chemistry. For that reason alone, I'd say whole grains are usually a better choice.

Great. So, the fact that I bake my own bread, which generally includes at least a half dozen whole grains plus some seeds or some other stuff is no better than Wonderbread. Forget about cooking up some quinoa -- I'm just as good eating that cheap white rice. Thanks for educating me.

Or perhaps the moral is that we generally eat food that was previously alive. Where we draw lines about exploiting that "life" is usually based on arbitrary divisions projecting human feelings and morals onto things that have a very different experience of the world.

For most of the vegans I know who have a problem eating honey, I think the carrot really represents a conundrum. It is really a greater problem to exploit the work of bees than it is to rip a living organism out of the ground and kill it completely to consume it? Some people say that the bees still have a nervous system that can feel pain or something and harming or exploiting them is a problem... but have you never had a garden and stepped on a plant, or tore a leaf, or made some sort of other damage or barrier or whatever to the plant's growth? The plant will respond (albeit more slowly). It is a living thing, and it has systems designed to react to the environment, as all animals do.

The line is always arbitrary. For most people in my experience, it's primarily about "cute and cuddly" things more than anything else... and I'm not sure that's a good thing to build a moral philosophy on.

I actually agree with you about the deficiencies in vegan diets (see my previous post on this thread), but you are really overstating your case here. I don't know any vegans who eat like you describe, and the few vegetarians I know who eat like this are stupid. (For the record, I'm an omnivore.)

It is difficult to meet calorie needs on vegetables, but with fruits too, the calorie quantity goes up significantly.

Grains are not "nutritionally bankrupt" -- only processed things like white flour, white rice, etc. are. Most actual vegans I know eat all sorts of whole grains (whole-grain wheat, rye, barley, oats, quinoa, millet, sorghum, barley, amaranth, etc.). These can't provide all nutrients, but they are a heck of a lot better than white bread or white rice. Add in some seeds or nuts to these grains to make bread, and you end up with something that actually has quite a bit of nutrition.

I notice that you completely omit beans and legumes, which are an essential part of vegan and vegetarian diets, and a place where a lot of protein and nutrients absent from grains comes from.

For vegetarians that supplement a diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds with some milk and a few other derived animal products, there is rarely any problem in creating a balanced diet. For strict vegans, getting enough calcium, vitamin D, and sometimes iron (and a couple other random minerals) can be an issue, and it does require care.

The only major issue that will require supplements or fortified food is B12.

I'm not saying there aren't people who eat only "bread, pasta, rice, all sorts of fake processed ****, and... very little vegetables." But that is not representative of any vegans I know, who in general tend to eat much more wholesome grain products and other food than the omnivores I know.

There are jerks everywhere who believe in everything. I do think the jerks tend to be more vocal when they feel like they are in the dominant culture -- vegans in a crunchy part of a hip town will look down a little more on meat eaters, while vegans in "barbecue country" might have to deal with some banter and mild insults.

But sometimes people are just jerks. And they can be unpleasant, no matter what their beliefs.

In the end, people in the world are different. It's the people who don't accept that who make life unpleasant for everyone. If the vegan mentioned had been relatively laid-back during lunch, but still asked a few questions of a server, it might have gotten everyone talking. Maybe some people might have even been convinced to cut down on meat or try some sort of vegetarianism or something. At a minimum, you could have had an interesting philosophical debate, but if you all were pleasant people, you could eventually just accept things and move on and have a good time. If someone didn't want that or was too offended by someone else's behavior, he or she should have simply excused him/herself from the future lunches.

Unfortunately, I've noticed that most people tend to just get very nervous when anyone actually wants to talk about these things beyond just declaring what their own behavior is. I tend to eat very little meat, but I don't object to it occasionally, nor do I view either side to be fundamentally flawed. But I've occasionally had conversations with stricter vegetarians and vegans where I just tried to sort out what they believed, and they got very anxious -- even though I was just asking out of curiosity.

The problem, in the end, is that for many people this is sort of a gut instinct that tells them which way to go, just like some people are drawn to particular religions or whatever. They just feel it is wrong to eat cuddly things or whatever, and someone probing their views makes them nervous... just as if you started asking someone about "why" they go to church, and why that particular church, or why they believe in some political perspective.

Vegetarians and vegans seem to have a little more of this sort of complex, in my experience, because their perspective is not the dominant one in the U.S. For some people, that insecurity leads to acting out like out like you describe.

The problem with these arguments is where you stop. Many strict vegans I know won't eat honey, because the bees aren't consenting to give up their honey. I've even heard vegans argue about whether we can eat yeasted bread -- or is it "exploiting" the yeast to make it rise for us?

And, of course, once you're getting to the level of yeast, the whole animal/plant thing starts to break down. Why not talk about exploiting the lettuce by tearing off its leaves, exploiting the carrot by stealing its roots. These are essential parts of the plant. Even if you eat only fruit, you should be sure to protect the scattering of the seeds to be sure you're not interfering with natural reproduction.

I'm not at all saying there is anything wrong with being vegetarian or vegan. But everyone has to draw some sort of line somewhere, and it's always going to be arbitrary. Everything below that line is open to exploitation, and everything above that line should be protected.

I don't mean to be cynical, but the vast majority of vegetarians I've talked to don't have any depth to their philosophy. It's usually about some sort of worry about cuddly things; hence, many are happy to eat fish. Others (usually more principled) extend it to all vertebrates, some go down as far as bees and silk worms. In the end, many discuss things like "sentience" and ability to "feel" pain, but even most plants will react (slowly, admittedly) to any significant damage -- isn't that proof that they don't "like" what we are doing to them?

In the end, all of this talk about "consent" and "sentience" and "exploitation" and whatever usually goes out the window the moment an ugly (but often harmless) spider is crawling up your kid's back, and you swat the damn thing down and step on it.

I don't think that's the standard that most strict vegans use. Most strict vegans I know don't eat honey, but the bees will keep making it, regardless of what is "forced" upon them. The bees are "free" to leave. (I'm aware that they stay due to the presence of the queen, but the queen could theoretically leave too... but the bees just like making honey in that environment.)

Anyhow, I think the real vegan rationale is more like some sort of perceived "exploitation." That's a subjective term, but I think that's really what's going on in vegan philosophy. The animals might make the food anyway, but we are exploiting them to make food for us.

Of course, we also exploit plants too when we harvest parts of them like leaves or roots, which they have to regrow (or perhaps they even die or are completely consumed). Even by eating the fruit and not letting the seeds be dispersed naturally, we often interfere with reproduction.

The problem with all of these arguments is that you can keep going and going until you can't eat anything because you're exploiting it. I've even heard some vegans have arguments about whether we can eat leavened bread -- aren't you "exploiting" the yeast??

The question is just where you stop, because you have to eat something, and generally speaking, you'll end up exploiting or killing something else in the process... no matter what it is.