Sometimes, it seems, rationality is perhaps not our fellow humans' strongest suit.
A couple of items brought that notion home recently.
A few months ago the vegan world was shaken when a BBC comedy quiz show called "QI" announced that avocados are not vegan. Neither are almonds, kiwi fruit, butternut squash and melons.
My initial reaction when I heard this was that it was a comedy quiz show and that they were just being funny. But apparently it is a real thing.
You and I are smart, and when we read something like that we just shake our heads like old people and wonder what this world has come to.
How can avocados not be vegan? They are a fruit. So are kiwi, melons and, yes, squash. Almonds are seeds. No animals are harmed in serving any of them.
But to the most vegan of vegans, the veganer-than-thous, these nonanimal edibles pose a definite moral problem. The plants are all pollinated by bees, obviously. And there are not enough bees to pollinate all the avocado and almond trees in the orchards where they are grown.
So farmers have taken to moving bee hives from orchard to orchard in order to pollinate their trees. And the moving of man-made bee hives is verboten in the most minority echelons of Veganland.
Some people claim that moving bee hives causes harm to the bees, though there is also evidence to suggest that it does not (including fascinating but somewhat gross evidence about how bees cannibalize their fallen comrades). The most hardcore vegans refuse to consume anything that exploits any animals, even insects.
I understand ideological purity. A small part of me even admires it.
Still, if the supervegans want to avoid eating avocados and almonds to keep from exploiting bees, that is fine. That means more avocados and almonds for the rest of us.
As long as they don't exploit animals by keeping them as pets.
The other item that caught my head-shaking attention is the apparent re-emergence of oxygenated water on the market.
Oxygenated water is water that has extra oxygen in it. It is actually scientifically possible to do this, although the amount of oxygen that can be crammed into a bottle of water above the traditional ratio of two atoms of oxygen to one atom of hydrogen is fairly small.
The folks that sell oxygenated water claim that it is good for you in any number of ways, from curing cancer (at least in mice, although the scientific "study" they link to is hilariously incoherent and incomplete) to improving your youthfulness and your looks.
No wonder they charge $89.95 for six bottles of the stuff. Which is water.
The product "provides required levels of oxygen needed for peak health, vitality, immunity and longevity," they claim. They also point out, for the more scientifically inclined, that "oxygen is essential to wellness."
Well, it would be pointless to deny that. But they may be on less sound medical footing when they say "oxygen deficiency is a direct precursor to nearly all illnesses and disease."
Their point is that you need oxygen to live, and that drinking water with a tiny bit of extra oxygen in it _ at 90 bucks for 9 liters _ is an essential way to get all the oxygen you need.
But there is a much better way to get oxygen into your body _ and a lot more of it by than drinking expensive water. It's called "breathing."
