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Okay; mislabelled fish happens but it always has. Boycotting things you work with is a bit of a trend once the the initial shock kicks in but usually when we lo

Okay; mislabelled fish happens but it always has. Boycotting things you work with is a bit of a trend once the the initial shock kicks in but usually when we look from the inside we overblow the impacts of these things.. How many of us in the marketing/analytics/tracking/social media biz have Facebook profiles or browse signed into google?£ A lot of restaurants also sell ox or bison instead of beef. Fresh fish is loaded with omegawhatever and is completely delicious. Instead of cutting out one thing instead just maintain a balance like a grown up. Eat fruit, nuts, fish, cattle, paper clips, the fear of junior developers etc etc. If you only eat loads of cheap mislabelled fish then the problems warned in this story might come true but who really does that? I buy whole breams once a month or so and with some greens on the side I consider it a completely healthy (and delicious) meal. I grew up eating crabs and lobsters weekly and it didn't kill me. What's the case here?

fredsir 10y ago
> I grew up eating crabs and lobsters weekly and it didn't kill me. You don't know yet what is gonna kill you. You might get a stroke tomorrow caused in some part by doing those things. That is essentially why living healthy is a thing, and why the number one cause of human death in the world is bad eating habits and not old-age.
- houst0n_ 10y ago
  Well, not to get too off topic but this argument never really resonated with me. I'm either going to die suddenly/instantly in some accident (or otherwise in some situation like this stroke where I don't knowing it's coming) or I'll contract cancer or some other miserable thing that'll off me slowly in which case I'll die by suicide. Should I avoid nice things to get an extra 10 years when I'm 70? Not this cat, but I don't judge anyone for feeling different.
  - fredsir 10y ago
    Lots die suddenly from strokes and heart attacks (and other diet-related stuff) in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s too. I get it when you're 70, but when there's a real chance of it happening already at 30 and increasingly from that point. That realization is what made me switch my unhealthy habits out what healthy ones that I've come to enjoy just as much if not even more since I'm now also much healthier and can enjoy much more cool stuff that I couldn't before. Said another way: if food is your measure of happiness in life, you should branch out and try something other than eating, and even then, food is not good because there is meat in it. A good dish is a good dish in any case, and there are thousands of good dishes containing no animal products what so ever.
    - houst0n_ 10y ago
      Nah its not the measure I'm not that shallow, but I have a mentality where I think playing the short game when it comes to consuming whatever makes me happy makes my life better than depriving myself out of fear of an early death. It sounds dark, but I would genuinely rather die suddenly while enjoying my life to its fullest instead of clinging on and trying to extend it at the detriment of my fun (puffs cigarette and swigs from a bottle) ;) ;)
      - fredsir 10y ago
        I get that, but I find that the silver lining is to find something you enjoy just as much or even more that also makes you live longer and enjoy it for a greater extend than the unhealthy thing. 5 years back, I loved BBQ rips, steak, cows milk and cows cheese, and thought I couldn't live without it. Today I still love the taste of those things, but I have stopped consuming them and have found alternatives that I like just as much or better with the added benefit that they don't kill me, which adds to me liking them even better.
        kayoone 10y ago
        You make it sound like steak, milk or cheese are bad, but they are not. It's all a matter of balance. Low carb diets are popular for a reason, carbs and sugar are usually seen as more unhealthy than fats and personally i also consider physical activity as an important factor for balance.
        fredsir 10y ago
        They are literally bad. Low carb diets is a fad that makes it easy for people to lose weight, but carbs are important, it's literally our bodies favourite type of nutrient, and all populations through history that has done well for themself has been high carb, and people wouldn't have to cut out carbs if they cut out all the actually unhealthy stuff they choose to eat instead. Fats are important, carbs are important and so on. Saturated fat, cholesterol, hormones, refined oil, refined sugar and so on are never healthy to consume. You shouldn't ignore the fact that the number one cause of humans deaths (cardiovascular disease, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer) is directly tied to eating meat, fish, eggs, dairy and oil. Especially dairy. Dairy is arguably the worst of the culprits, but the others are not healthy either, not by any measure. Less bad does not make good. Not in any big or small amount. And yes, you might not get sick from eating them if you eat less of them, but that doesn't make them healthy, and since they also are the single biggest cause of climate change (because of the way they are produced), and that consuming those things when we don't need to at all is ethically corrupt, there is really no good reason to do so.
  - the-dude 10y ago
    You can die quickly from cancer too. Case in point: acute leukemia.
  - amelius 10y ago
    > Should I avoid nice things to get an extra 10 years when I'm 70? But what if your past bad eating habits affect your quality of life at 40 or 50?
  - foldr 10y ago
    >Should I avoid nice things to get an extra 10 years when I'm 70? I'm guessing you must be pretty young if you see your 70s in those terms. There's a good chance you'll still be healthy enough to have a pretty good quality of life in your 70s.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
scottLobster 10y ago
Honestly I'm so tired of the latest "hey, there's potentially nasty-sounding stuff in common food category that could possibly do vague bad things under vague unspecified circumstance, so stop eating it!" From all the blogs about various pesticides, pollution, feed issues, animal cruelty, we might as well just go back to sustenance farming and grow/raise our own... oh wait we can't do that because fracking and industrial soil pollution! You can't trust your back yard! /rolls eyes So much of online "health advice" is a series of micro-optimizations at best.
- houst0n_ 10y ago
  Haha me too. I remember a few years ago (or probably more like 15 now) I was visiting my mother and in the car from the airport she was telling me "did you hear its okay to eat eggs again?" >_< (there was a widespread link to cancer which was reversed) Somehow we have got to the point where the'recommended daily quota' of fruit and veg is something insane like 10 a day (I can't find gov.uk stats but a lot of newspaper articles etc). Is it so hard to understand "put shit in and you become shit"? Why does anyone need to be told? Is it so hard to understand that you should eat good quality and varied foods? That you don't need to swear off kebabs forever but don't do them every day? That putting more in than you use makes you bigger and putting less in smaller?
  - chillwaves 10y ago
    Did you read the article? The premise was A) the food you order is not the food you get and B) the food you get is loaded with contaminants that you cannot detect. And all you got from that is "Is it so hard to understand"? Yes, yes it is. You remember all the talk about BPA plastic being bad for you and an endocrine disruptor? Do you really think people should just "know" that fact before science verifies? And being skinny does not mean being healthy. That's just one metric.
    - jwilk 10y ago
      From the HN Guidelines: Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deno 10y ago
The case was NOT mislabeling, that was just part of it. At least read more than one paragraph before commenting.
seszett 10y ago
> A lot of restaurants also sell ox or bison instead of beef. That's not really related to the article I guess, but I'm curious: What's the difference between "ox" and "beef"? I'm intrigued because in French, ox and beef are supposed to be the same thing (both bœuf), and I would probably have written "A lot of restaurants also sell cow or bison instead of beef" since bœuf is supposed to be castrated bull, while most often people actually get sold cow meat.
- klodolph 10y ago
  There's a saying that loanwords only change in two ways--meaning and pronunciation. In English, "beef" is meat from cattle.
- undersuit 10y ago
  There is no difference. Oxen are just cows that have been trained to pull a device like a hoe or a wagon.
franciscop 10y ago
I grew up doing X and it didn't kill me is a really weak argument. Many people do DANGEROUS_THING and don't die! But statistics don't work that way (+ survival bias if you want). The thing is, the world is really diverse. In some countries like Japan they eat A LOT of fish, but I'd say it's mainly fish and not seashells. In Valencia (Spain) and nearby towns for example there's a lot of mussels and we also eat many small fried whole fish, which I can see how they probably have a larger chance of containing plastic than a piece of fish meat. And that is Spain and Japan, developed countries. There are lots of places where people cannot choose what to eat. And she is not even saying NOT to eat fish, she just says she doesn't eat, the reasons ("with a substance we still don’t really understand") and a possible solution: - There are steps we can take on the community level to make seafood safer. We can demand stricter and more specific labeling guidelines from federal food agencies and fish distributors. - the only ways to mitigate the problem are to reduce our reliance on single-use items and avoid products wrapped in excessive packaging.

fredsir 10y ago

> I grew up eating crabs and lobsters weekly and it didn't kill me. You don't know yet what is gonna kill you. You might get a stroke tomorrow caused in some part by doing those things. That is essentially why living healthy is a thing, and why the number one cause of human death in the world is bad eating habits and not old-age.

houst0n_ 10y ago
Well, not to get too off topic but this argument never really resonated with me. I'm either going to die suddenly/instantly in some accident (or otherwise in some situation like this stroke where I don't knowing it's coming) or I'll contract cancer or some other miserable thing that'll off me slowly in which case I'll die by suicide. Should I avoid nice things to get an extra 10 years when I'm 70? Not this cat, but I don't judge anyone for feeling different.
- fredsir 10y ago
  Lots die suddenly from strokes and heart attacks (and other diet-related stuff) in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s too. I get it when you're 70, but when there's a real chance of it happening already at 30 and increasingly from that point. That realization is what made me switch my unhealthy habits out what healthy ones that I've come to enjoy just as much if not even more since I'm now also much healthier and can enjoy much more cool stuff that I couldn't before. Said another way: if food is your measure of happiness in life, you should branch out and try something other than eating, and even then, food is not good because there is meat in it. A good dish is a good dish in any case, and there are thousands of good dishes containing no animal products what so ever.
  - houst0n_ 10y ago
    Nah its not the measure I'm not that shallow, but I have a mentality where I think playing the short game when it comes to consuming whatever makes me happy makes my life better than depriving myself out of fear of an early death. It sounds dark, but I would genuinely rather die suddenly while enjoying my life to its fullest instead of clinging on and trying to extend it at the detriment of my fun (puffs cigarette and swigs from a bottle) ;) ;)
    - fredsir 10y ago
      I get that, but I find that the silver lining is to find something you enjoy just as much or even more that also makes you live longer and enjoy it for a greater extend than the unhealthy thing. 5 years back, I loved BBQ rips, steak, cows milk and cows cheese, and thought I couldn't live without it. Today I still love the taste of those things, but I have stopped consuming them and have found alternatives that I like just as much or better with the added benefit that they don't kill me, which adds to me liking them even better.
      - kayoone 10y ago
        You make it sound like steak, milk or cheese are bad, but they are not. It's all a matter of balance. Low carb diets are popular for a reason, carbs and sugar are usually seen as more unhealthy than fats and personally i also consider physical activity as an important factor for balance.
        fredsir 10y ago
        They are literally bad. Low carb diets is a fad that makes it easy for people to lose weight, but carbs are important, it's literally our bodies favourite type of nutrient, and all populations through history that has done well for themself has been high carb, and people wouldn't have to cut out carbs if they cut out all the actually unhealthy stuff they choose to eat instead. Fats are important, carbs are important and so on. Saturated fat, cholesterol, hormones, refined oil, refined sugar and so on are never healthy to consume. You shouldn't ignore the fact that the number one cause of humans deaths (cardiovascular disease, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer) is directly tied to eating meat, fish, eggs, dairy and oil. Especially dairy. Dairy is arguably the worst of the culprits, but the others are not healthy either, not by any measure. Less bad does not make good. Not in any big or small amount. And yes, you might not get sick from eating them if you eat less of them, but that doesn't make them healthy, and since they also are the single biggest cause of climate change (because of the way they are produced), and that consuming those things when we don't need to at all is ethically corrupt, there is really no good reason to do so.
- the-dude 10y ago
  You can die quickly from cancer too. Case in point: acute leukemia.
- amelius 10y ago
  > Should I avoid nice things to get an extra 10 years when I'm 70? But what if your past bad eating habits affect your quality of life at 40 or 50?
- foldr 10y ago
  >Should I avoid nice things to get an extra 10 years when I'm 70? I'm guessing you must be pretty young if you see your 70s in those terms. There's a good chance you'll still be healthy enough to have a pretty good quality of life in your 70s.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

scottLobster 10y ago

Honestly I'm so tired of the latest "hey, there's potentially nasty-sounding stuff in common food category that could possibly do vague bad things under vague unspecified circumstance, so stop eating it!" From all the blogs about various pesticides, pollution, feed issues, animal cruelty, we might as well just go back to sustenance farming and grow/raise our own... oh wait we can't do that because fracking and industrial soil pollution! You can't trust your back yard! /rolls eyes So much of online "health advice" is a series of micro-optimizations at best.

houst0n_ 10y ago
Haha me too. I remember a few years ago (or probably more like 15 now) I was visiting my mother and in the car from the airport she was telling me "did you hear its okay to eat eggs again?" >_< (there was a widespread link to cancer which was reversed) Somehow we have got to the point where the'recommended daily quota' of fruit and veg is something insane like 10 a day (I can't find gov.uk stats but a lot of newspaper articles etc). Is it so hard to understand "put shit in and you become shit"? Why does anyone need to be told? Is it so hard to understand that you should eat good quality and varied foods? That you don't need to swear off kebabs forever but don't do them every day? That putting more in than you use makes you bigger and putting less in smaller?
- chillwaves 10y ago
  Did you read the article? The premise was A) the food you order is not the food you get and B) the food you get is loaded with contaminants that you cannot detect. And all you got from that is "Is it so hard to understand"? Yes, yes it is. You remember all the talk about BPA plastic being bad for you and an endocrine disruptor? Do you really think people should just "know" that fact before science verifies? And being skinny does not mean being healthy. That's just one metric.
  - jwilk 10y ago
    From the HN Guidelines: Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deno 10y ago

The case was NOT mislabeling, that was just part of it. At least read more than one paragraph before commenting.

seszett 10y ago

> A lot of restaurants also sell ox or bison instead of beef. That's not really related to the article I guess, but I'm curious: What's the difference between "ox" and "beef"? I'm intrigued because in French, ox and beef are supposed to be the same thing (both bœuf), and I would probably have written "A lot of restaurants also sell cow or bison instead of beef" since bœuf is supposed to be castrated bull, while most often people actually get sold cow meat.

klodolph 10y ago
There's a saying that loanwords only change in two ways--meaning and pronunciation. In English, "beef" is meat from cattle.
undersuit 10y ago
There is no difference. Oxen are just cows that have been trained to pull a device like a hoe or a wagon.

franciscop 10y ago

I grew up doing X and it didn't kill me is a really weak argument. Many people do DANGEROUS_THING and don't die! But statistics don't work that way (+ survival bias if you want). The thing is, the world is really diverse. In some countries like Japan they eat A LOT of fish, but I'd say it's mainly fish and not seashells. In Valencia (Spain) and nearby towns for example there's a lot of mussels and we also eat many small fried whole fish, which I can see how they probably have a larger chance of containing plastic than a piece of fish meat. And that is Spain and Japan, developed countries. There are lots of places where people cannot choose what to eat. And she is not even saying NOT to eat fish, she just says she doesn't eat, the reasons ("with a substance we still don’t really understand") and a possible solution: - There are steps we can take on the community level to make seafood safer. We can demand stricter and more specific labeling guidelines from federal food agencies and fish distributors. - the only ways to mitigate the problem are to reduce our reliance on single-use items and avoid products wrapped in excessive packaging.