But it's so very natural!

That little bit of Romanian means "So very natural it can be [safely] swallowed". It comes off a toothpaste tube, showing that the idiocy is making inroads in the third world (or is it two-and-a-half ?).

Here's the problem : carbon monoxide is quite natural. It's very, very natural. And you know what else is natural ? Sulfur dioxide. And you know what else is very, very natural ? Hydrogen cyanide. Seriously, it is, what's it take, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen tied together in a knot. These happen to be in order the most common elements found in organic matter. They're as natural as it gets.

Something being "natural" does not mean that something is safe. A large rock is very natural, and a large rock falling on your head and smushing it to a pulp is also very natural. Granuloma-inducing parasites are all natural. Histoplasmosis is naturalⁱ, bartonella is very natural, blastomycosis is natural, the fifty trillion states of poor health due to all the worms, fungi and bacteria in the world are all natural.

The illiterate hordes of this "civilisation" of ours have somehow constructed this "natural" symbol as a later day equivalent of the medieval purity, and are running around like headless chickens doing the same exact thing they were doing five hundred years ago, just under a different name. Somehow the pre-industrial state of health is idealised to a level of perfection that never in fact existed and then sold to the adoring multitudes as a contemporary philosopher's stone (and if homeopathy isn't modern alchemy, trying to isolate that "principle" of purity then I've been wasting my time reading old tomes).

So enough with it. "Natural". What the hell does it even mean ? That it's not supernatural, fallen from the sky, given to Moses on the mountain ? Is it supposed to be a sort of "Eat natural, avoid manna" ? Nonsense, I say. If you grow a pea in a pot on your windowsill it's natural, but if it grows on a farm it's not natural ? You grow it in a plastic pot. And what's worse, once you harvest your windowsill bonanza and cook the peas they will probably touch the potatoes. Or the meat. Or even - horror - both!

In closing, my advice to you is this : only eat blessed food.

1. It's a fungus that lives on feces, urine and vomit which can be aspirated causing serious trouble in imunocompromised individuals. Known as cave disease or spelunker disease for the very reason. [↩]