RE: what is BRIX?

[Guest guest]

>Suze-

>

>>actually i think you are *under-enthusiastic* :-) the fact that some

>>unscrupulous producers goose their brix by spraying sugar water is for all

>>intents and purposes irrelavant.

>

>No it's not, because it indicates a deficiency in the measurement.

> If you say

>

>> It's the only way to actually KNOW the quality

>> of the food you eat. everything else is just

>> educated guessing,

>

>you're saying that brix readings are an absolute measure of food

>quality.

no i'm not saying that. i'm saying that you CAN get an accurate measurement

of food quality using a refractometer. it's been done and is being done by

many folks already and as i previously mentioned, high brix readings

consistently correlate with healthy, disease- and pest-resistant crops,

which produce abundant and disease resistant " offspring " and that these

foods routinely taste MUCH better than low brix foods. additionally, animals

that feed on high breed pasture and feed are healthy and disease resistant,

while animals on low brix feed (think " factory farms " ) are consistently in

poor health. now i haven't read carey reams work yet, but my understanding

is that he found a correlation between soil fertility and brix, but i don't

know the specifics. maybe michael does. in fact the whole concept started

with soil fertility. i don't know all the details yet because i haven't read

reams work, or dr. anderson's, but i will post more when i do. however, if

you just hang out on the brix talk list for a little while you will begin to

understand how useful a refractometer is for measuring the nutritional

quality of foods.

it's not perfect, but it's the most affordable accurate measurement we have

for the average citizen or farmer to test the quality of their food.

furthermore, there IS a way to get around the sugar-spray spiking should it

happen (which i think would be quite rare or non-existant for the things we

are testing), although i don't know the details about it. i think there's

more info on it at the brixpage site.

The fact that you can goose them with sugar sprays is by itself

>sufficient to disprove that assertion, but there are further drawbacks,

>such as the fact that brix readings are ONLY useful relative to other brix

>readings of the exact same strain of the exact same food. Not only can

>honey not be compared to apples, Granny s cannot be compared to

>Winesaps -- and different varieties of Granny s can't be compared to

>each other either!

actually, there's a different scale of measurement and different

refractometer for honey than there is for produce. the one we are talking

about is for plants. and i fail to understand how the relative readings

disprove anything. the original brix scale for x,y,z plants, as i understand

it, was based on reams experiments based on the health of the plants he

tested. for example, he found that " x " brix for potatoes (or whatever)

corresponded with disease-resistance. whereas the same plant at low brix was

not. there's a consistent correlation with brix level and health of plants.

that's really the crux of the matter.

Furthermore, brix measures total dissolved solids. As

>anyone in chemistry can tell you, that's not very illuminating by

>itself. Those solids can be any old darn thing.

>

>That said, obviously brix is useful -- when all else is held equal. But

>you're not measuring actual food quality, just a possible implication of

>relative quality.

i'm not sure what other dissolved solids you'd expect to find in a plant

aside from its nutrients? but regardless, as i've said again and again, the

correlation between high brix and healthy plants has been consistently noted

not only by reams but by those experienced in agriculture and using

refractometers. of course the refractometer doesn't tell you that your corn

stalk has precisely 2000 units of vitamin A and so on - i'm not saying it's

that specific about nutrient measurement, but i think it goes beyond simple

" implication " . at least that seems to be the case according to all i've read

about those experienced in ag and brix.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

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heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times. " --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

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The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

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