6 ms·

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 u

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.
    - chillwaves 10y ago
      It's a legitimate question in the context of what we are discussing.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
My rule of thumb is: if the common food category was really as bad as they say, you'd see people eating it dropping like flies, and the nasty-sounding stuff would become a public health emergency.
- dualogy 10y ago
  > My rule of thumb is: if the common food category was really as bad as they say, you'd see people eating it dropping like flies, and the nasty-sounding stuff would become a public health emergency. Sounds convenient but IMHO somewhat beside "the point" of all these pontifications: your rule of thumb we as a species had already figured out for 100s of millenia+. That's why we don't eat grass and are told to be cautious around unknown wild berries or mushrooms. All these ponderations like OP OTOH are about "insidious, long-term-unnoticable-until-too-late health scares". An ongoing search for insights comparable in spirit to past "long-term damage" findings about lead or how some trichinosis parasites have an incubation period of ~30 years.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > Sounds convenient but IMHO somewhat beside "the point" of all these pontifications It is until it isn't; most of the time when I deal with "normal people", they seem to expect getting sick from "bad" food almost immediately, and are confused why I haven't died of cancer already because I'm using artificial sweeteners with my tea. My rule of thumb applies primarily to that kind of situations. Not denying the importance of long-term considerations, but given the amount of nonsense media publish (c.f. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you-cant-trust-what-you-read-about-nutrition/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you-cant-trust-what-you-...), I just ignore the topic altogether until some entity like WHO or FDA starts making noises.
- manmal 10y ago
  Well, cancer incidents have been rising for decades now, so all that stuff might just be killing us slowly.
  - maccard 10y ago
MichaelMoser123 10y ago
Don't know. I am very worried about radiation from the Fukushima accident. Fishies are swimming in contaminated waters... https://www.davidwolfe.com/fukushima-radiation-tumors-fish-seafood/ https://www.davidwolfe.com/fukushima-radiation-tumors-fish-s...
- joecool1029 10y ago
  Please don't link blatant misinformation on HN. https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-fukushima-causing-bloody-tumors-in-fish-old-photos.t6957/ https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-fukushima-causing-bloody-t... EDIT: Apparently some people were triggered by my original comment.
  - MichaelMoser123 10y ago
    Please be civil here on HN, the main argument of your debunking page is a source that is 404 http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/surprise-youre-eating-fukushima-radiation-bloody-cancerous-tumors-in-fish-seafood/ http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/surprise-youre-eating-fuk... However it links to a CBS article (that is available) this one mentions 10 times higher than usual radiation in Tuna caught off the West Coast (but its still supposed to be edible). http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radioactive-bluefin-tuna-crossed-pacific-to-us/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radioactive-bluefin-tuna-crossed... I am not convinced. Reminds me of how the Chernobyl accident was being downplayed in an IAEA report. http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/5/3/114932/1583 http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/5/3/114932/1583
    - joecool1029 10y ago
      I think I was being civil, the upvotes seem to agree. The source link was the to one of the original blog posts David Wolfe paraphrased the content and lifted the imagery from. The source link was crap and the arguments were lies that are easily debunked. >However it links to a CBS article (that is available) this one mentions 10 times higher than usual radiation in Tuna caught off the West Coast (but its still supposed to be edible). Yeah, detection in Tuna is concerning and needs to be considered. I wanted numbers so I found https://swfsc.noaa.gov/textblock.aspx?Division=FRD&id=20593 https://swfsc.noaa.gov/textblock.aspx?Division=FRD&id=20593 and a breakdown of how those numbers related to reality: http://abitofperspective.com/?cat=3 http://abitofperspective.com/?cat=3 We are many orders of magnitude away from even a simple medical procedure. Even assuming you can afford to eat 75lbs or so of contaminated Bluefin tuna caught near Japan. Mercury content (in any long lived fish) poses a more realistic concern. We already recommend tuna not be eaten frequently for these and sustainability reasons. But your source article was claiming that radiation was found in salmon and causing tumors there, which is a lie. (Thankfully mercury levels have been declining as we move away from coal power generation: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tunas-declining-mercury-contamination-linked-to-u-s-shift-away-from-coal/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tunas-declining-m... ) >I am not convinced. Reminds me of how the Chernobyl accident was being downplayed in an IAEA report. Don't go throwing a red herring in here. What happened there was wrong but you can't make that argument without data. It's just as wrong as misinforming the public and causing a panic. If you feel offended by me calling your source liar, come prepared to defend them or learn to accept new data and change your position. I responded so future readers of this thread won't be mislead into believing something that isn't true.
boomboomsubban 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 This article made it very clear that it was just what she does based on what she has encountered, not health advice. Also, a large part of her concern had nothing to do with pollution. It was that different types of seafood require different cooking methods to be healthy to eat. This is well known, and with so much seafood being mislabeled isn't a vague issue.
- scottLobster 10y ago
  It's passive-aggressive health advice. She sets herself up as an authority and then gives a perspective. She also has language like this: "If, like my friends and family, you choose to continue to eat seafood, I would urge you to at least start asking questions." So "asking questions" is the "least" you can do, she may have a veneer of politeness but her opinion on what people should do is clear. Further evidence is the flow of her arguments. She starts off talking about the mislabeling of fish, but then says "Let’s say you buy your seafood from a store that correctly labels its fish, or from a fisherman you trust. Maybe you even catch it yourself. But no matter how careful you are..." and then dives into the microplastics. So even if you are able to bypass her argument about mislabeling, which is filled with a lot of maybes in and of itself, in her opinion you still shouldn't eat fish because plastic. Yeah, this is the health advice equivalent of "no offense, but... insert offensive thing"

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.
  - chillwaves 10y ago
    It's a legitimate question in the context of what we are discussing.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

My rule of thumb is: if the common food category was really as bad as they say, you'd see people eating it dropping like flies, and the nasty-sounding stuff would become a public health emergency.

dualogy 10y ago
> My rule of thumb is: if the common food category was really as bad as they say, you'd see people eating it dropping like flies, and the nasty-sounding stuff would become a public health emergency. Sounds convenient but IMHO somewhat beside "the point" of all these pontifications: your rule of thumb we as a species had already figured out for 100s of millenia+. That's why we don't eat grass and are told to be cautious around unknown wild berries or mushrooms. All these ponderations like OP OTOH are about "insidious, long-term-unnoticable-until-too-late health scares". An ongoing search for insights comparable in spirit to past "long-term damage" findings about lead or how some trichinosis parasites have an incubation period of ~30 years.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > Sounds convenient but IMHO somewhat beside "the point" of all these pontifications It is until it isn't; most of the time when I deal with "normal people", they seem to expect getting sick from "bad" food almost immediately, and are confused why I haven't died of cancer already because I'm using artificial sweeteners with my tea. My rule of thumb applies primarily to that kind of situations. Not denying the importance of long-term considerations, but given the amount of nonsense media publish (c.f. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you-cant-trust-what-you-read-about-nutrition/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you-cant-trust-what-you-...), I just ignore the topic altogether until some entity like WHO or FDA starts making noises.
manmal 10y ago
Well, cancer incidents have been rising for decades now, so all that stuff might just be killing us slowly.
- maccard 10y ago

MichaelMoser123 10y ago

Don't know. I am very worried about radiation from the Fukushima accident. Fishies are swimming in contaminated waters... https://www.davidwolfe.com/fukushima-radiation-tumors-fish-seafood/ https://www.davidwolfe.com/fukushima-radiation-tumors-fish-s...

joecool1029 10y ago
Please don't link blatant misinformation on HN. https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-fukushima-causing-bloody-tumors-in-fish-old-photos.t6957/ https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-fukushima-causing-bloody-t... EDIT: Apparently some people were triggered by my original comment.
- MichaelMoser123 10y ago
  Please be civil here on HN, the main argument of your debunking page is a source that is 404 http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/surprise-youre-eating-fukushima-radiation-bloody-cancerous-tumors-in-fish-seafood/ http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/surprise-youre-eating-fuk... However it links to a CBS article (that is available) this one mentions 10 times higher than usual radiation in Tuna caught off the West Coast (but its still supposed to be edible). http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radioactive-bluefin-tuna-crossed-pacific-to-us/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radioactive-bluefin-tuna-crossed... I am not convinced. Reminds me of how the Chernobyl accident was being downplayed in an IAEA report. http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/5/3/114932/1583 http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/5/3/114932/1583
  - joecool1029 10y ago
    I think I was being civil, the upvotes seem to agree. The source link was the to one of the original blog posts David Wolfe paraphrased the content and lifted the imagery from. The source link was crap and the arguments were lies that are easily debunked. >However it links to a CBS article (that is available) this one mentions 10 times higher than usual radiation in Tuna caught off the West Coast (but its still supposed to be edible). Yeah, detection in Tuna is concerning and needs to be considered. I wanted numbers so I found https://swfsc.noaa.gov/textblock.aspx?Division=FRD&id=20593 https://swfsc.noaa.gov/textblock.aspx?Division=FRD&id=20593 and a breakdown of how those numbers related to reality: http://abitofperspective.com/?cat=3 http://abitofperspective.com/?cat=3 We are many orders of magnitude away from even a simple medical procedure. Even assuming you can afford to eat 75lbs or so of contaminated Bluefin tuna caught near Japan. Mercury content (in any long lived fish) poses a more realistic concern. We already recommend tuna not be eaten frequently for these and sustainability reasons. But your source article was claiming that radiation was found in salmon and causing tumors there, which is a lie. (Thankfully mercury levels have been declining as we move away from coal power generation: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tunas-declining-mercury-contamination-linked-to-u-s-shift-away-from-coal/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tunas-declining-m... ) >I am not convinced. Reminds me of how the Chernobyl accident was being downplayed in an IAEA report. Don't go throwing a red herring in here. What happened there was wrong but you can't make that argument without data. It's just as wrong as misinforming the public and causing a panic. If you feel offended by me calling your source liar, come prepared to defend them or learn to accept new data and change your position. I responded so future readers of this thread won't be mislead into believing something that isn't true.

boomboomsubban 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 This article made it very clear that it was just what she does based on what she has encountered, not health advice. Also, a large part of her concern had nothing to do with pollution. It was that different types of seafood require different cooking methods to be healthy to eat. This is well known, and with so much seafood being mislabeled isn't a vague issue.

scottLobster 10y ago
It's passive-aggressive health advice. She sets herself up as an authority and then gives a perspective. She also has language like this: "If, like my friends and family, you choose to continue to eat seafood, I would urge you to at least start asking questions." So "asking questions" is the "least" you can do, she may have a veneer of politeness but her opinion on what people should do is clear. Further evidence is the flow of her arguments. She starts off talking about the mislabeling of fish, but then says "Let’s say you buy your seafood from a store that correctly labels its fish, or from a fisherman you trust. Maybe you even catch it yourself. But no matter how careful you are..." and then dives into the microplastics. So even if you are able to bypass her argument about mislabeling, which is filled with a lot of maybes in and of itself, in her opinion you still shouldn't eat fish because plastic. Yeah, this is the health advice equivalent of "no offense, but... insert offensive thing"