I don't need a scientist

In a conversation about food in Skypeland, a musician and retired circus performer from Sweden claimed that it was bad to eat pigs that had been killed after they were transported in a truck for 24 hours, and so the pigs had been subject to stress, which is unhealthy for the meat. I asked if it was better to kill the pigs quickly then, to avoid damaging the meat. Someone else agreed, and said that it was the stress of a surprise killing ruined the meat and said it would go bad very quickly because it was quickly killed. I pointed out that there was a discrepancy here; one said it was healthier to kill quickly in a surprise butchering, and someone else said it was healthier to not surprise them and let them get used to the idea that something bad was going to happen. Somehow they had not realized they did not agree with each other. I said I would subscribe to science instead of just gratuitous claims. They were not happy with me for saying this, and they attacked me. Someone said "I don't need a scientist to tell me anything. I just use common sense."

One made the claim that antibiotics were the same as steroids (What the heck?). The Swede said that you can see how unhealthy our food is because our children are 20 cm taller than they were a few decades ago (I thought that people were becoming taller because our nutritional intake is better now...). "Look at our kids. We eat this shit", he said. Someone said this was the "evolution of man" but he was shouted down.

Finally since there was no host in the room, the skypecast descended into nonsense. Someone came in and started playing a loop about leather belts and drove off the people worried about food. And so I decided to have a bit of fun, and did the same to the person with the recording about leather belts, playing a nonsense phrase of my own, over and over. The people who had disrupted the room were not very happy, but I guess it is good to give them a bit of their own medicine. It is funny to ruin other people's conversations, but not so funny if someone ruins their fun...