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Our diet is full of fruits and vegetables containing thousands of complex chemicals, indistinguishable from "synthetic" chemicals, that have entered our diet fa

by highd 9y ago

Our diet is full of fruits and vegetables containing thousands of complex chemicals, indistinguishable from "synthetic" chemicals, that have entered our diet far too short a time ago to have had evolutionary impact. If one wanted they could surely distill many chemicals in isolation from these naturally occurring fruits and vegetables that in concentration would have many concerning health effects. The fact that many don't worry about this is largely because this research program has not been attempted. Point being, there is no reason to hold any of these chemicals to a standard higher than that of a strawberry - that is, we can give people a bunch of strawberries and say any negative effect is below some acceptable level. And, in fact, we have found many "natural" foods containing absurdly high levels of arsenic and other dangerous compounds, and that has affected their preparation for consumption. The scientific process has in this way even outperformed the naturalism heuristic.

cryoshon 9y ago
>Point being, there is no reason to hold any of these chemicals to a standard higher than that of a strawberry - that is, we can give people a bunch of strawberries and say any negative effect is below some acceptable level. ah yes, the logic that brought us Silent Spring and the children happily playing and breathing in clouds of "safe" DDT gas. if it's from a plant or animal, it can still be plenty harmful, but at least there's a history of use without major effects. not the case with industrial chemicals...
evincarofautumn 9y ago
This is, I’ve found, a good way to start a dialogue with people about chemophobia. If you ask someone “Which do you think is safer: artificial vanilla or vanilla extract?” they’ll often prefer the “natural” one. But vanilla extract contains exactly the same chemical (vanillin) in addition to hundreds of other compounds, many of which are known to be irritants, hepatotoxins, and carcinogens—in high enough doses. Of course, it’s much harder to break people of the misconception that the provenance of a chemical (synthetic or natural) matters. There seems to be some kind of innate protective disgust reaction at work. For instance, I’ve had conversations with people who say they wouldn’t be able to bring themselves to drink a glass of water if they knew it was purified from sewage. By the same token, they will drink some water that’s been imbued with some healing power by a homeopath.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Of course, it’s much harder to break people of the misconception that the provenance of a chemical (synthetic or natural) matters. If one uses contrived arguments like the one about vanilla extract, then I can see why.
  - evincarofautumn 9y ago
    Well…of course it’s contrived. Like I said, it’s a conversation starter to make people think more critically about what they mean by “natural”, “synthetic”, “safe”, and “dangerous” chemicals. What I was getting at is that in my experience, people are generally pretty open to rational discussion about that, but not about the underlying visceral squeamishness and distrust.
- cname 9y ago
  A "good way to start a dialogue" is by starting with a trick question and likely putting the other person on the defensive?
  - evincarofautumn 9y ago
    …No? I wouldn’t consider it a trick question, since I’m not trying to “catch” them or anything. The answer doesn’t even really matter. If we’re talking about “chemicals”, I think it’s a reasonable example to bring up. That is, it’s not about being right or wrong, but making people think more deeply about a topic that I care about. Something I used to do that did make people defensive & dismissive was to try to be technically correct, shit like “everything is chemicals”—which is true, but that’s not the meaning of “chemicals” under discussion, so it’s just smug and pedantic.
- losteric 9y ago
  A better example might be Tang versus cold-pressed orange juice, or Wonder Bread versus Dave's Killer Bread. Tang won't kill you, but one is clearly better. Vanilla is definitely a trick question that exploits a blindspot - tell people about the difference and then ask the question, that's the interesting discussion. Also, to be fair to that homeopath... their axioms are flawed but disgust at purified sewage is self-consistent with their beliefs ("less is more" and all that). I'd probably refuse too, but on the basis of numerous studies showing sewage treatment doesn't adequately remove pharmaceutical waste.
darawk 9y ago
> Point being, there is no reason to hold any of these chemicals to a standard higher than that of a strawberry - that is, we can give people a bunch of strawberries and say any negative effect is below some acceptable level. And, in fact, we have found many "natural" foods containing absurdly high levels of arsenic and other dangerous compounds, and that has affected their preparation for consumption. The scientific process has in this way even outperformed the naturalism heuristic. That's incorrect. We've coevolved with many of the foods we eat. Things like strawberries and broccolli have been, more or less, with us for thousands of years. While it may be true that there are harmful components of those foods, we know that eating them is at least not making us worse off than we were. When introducing some new chemical, we really have no idea what its effects might be. And we have no, in principle, reason to assume those effects are benign. We've had a very very long time to adjust to the organic components of most foods.
- highd 9y ago
  "that have entered our diet far too short a time ago to have had evolutionary impact"
j7ake 9y ago
The scientific process has also led to chemicals such as Thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, resulting in 10000 babies born with phocomelia. The point is not to be overly confident with what you think a chemical can do to your body, even if it is approved by the FDA.
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  Imperfect information and lack of tools/knowledge to perform adequate analysis, and perhaps selfish motivations might have caused Thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, but the scientific process did not. Unless you can pinpoint all the causal factors of a relationship, there is no other option I have heard of other than the scientific process, i.e. testing, calculating, re-testing, calculating, retesting...etc that could provide us with knowledge about the relationship between cause and effect. And obviously, it will be wrong sometimes, hence the need to re-test, but there is no better option. If anything, we need more actual scientific process, meaning using our newfound computing capabilities to open up data so that all experiments can be vetted for accuracy and differing populations tested, etc.
  - j7ake 9y ago
    I agree there is no better option but that is not sufficient to no longer doubt the state of the art knowledge of biomedicine or effects of chemical on the body.
    - lotsofpulp 9y ago
      The scientific process is all about doubting what you "know"...obviously to be pragmatic, it's useful to assume certain things such as gravity, time, that a chemical reaction yesterday will do the same today under the same conditions, etc. But the whole purpose of testing and retesting (which is the scientific process) is because you're always doubting. That's why data should be free, in order to let this testing happen. Of course we have limited resources to do testing, so there must be some triage involved somehow, but that has nothing to do with the scientific process.
- 9y ago
jakelarkin 9y ago
your argument seems to be "chemicals are numerous & complicated, therefore all new complex chemicals are okay" the compounds that've been in strawberries for thousands of years are somewhat known items and lower risk than ones invented yesterday or even 20 years ago in a Dupont/Monsanto laboratory. The issue is that we have a business and political system that is highly incentivized to start adding contrived and novel substances to the environment at a massive scale and speed never before seen in nature. In recent times it's all to easy to introduce excess carcinogens and endocrine-disruptors into most homes or kill off large number worlds of honeybees. The effects merit careful consideration and regulation.
kharms 9y ago
>Our diet is full of fruits and vegetables containing thousands of complex chemicals, indistinguishable from "synthetic" chemicals, that have entered our diet far too short a time ago to have had evolutionary impact. Our diet of fruits and vegetables has been refined through thousands of years of trial and error, and the result is that we eat a tiny fraction of available plants. It's arrogant to dismiss that history.

by highd 9y ago

cryoshon 9y ago

>Point being, there is no reason to hold any of these chemicals to a standard higher than that of a strawberry - that is, we can give people a bunch of strawberries and say any negative effect is below some acceptable level. ah yes, the logic that brought us Silent Spring and the children happily playing and breathing in clouds of "safe" DDT gas. if it's from a plant or animal, it can still be plenty harmful, but at least there's a history of use without major effects. not the case with industrial chemicals...

evincarofautumn 9y ago

This is, I’ve found, a good way to start a dialogue with people about chemophobia. If you ask someone “Which do you think is safer: artificial vanilla or vanilla extract?” they’ll often prefer the “natural” one. But vanilla extract contains exactly the same chemical (vanillin) in addition to hundreds of other compounds, many of which are known to be irritants, hepatotoxins, and carcinogens—in high enough doses. Of course, it’s much harder to break people of the misconception that the provenance of a chemical (synthetic or natural) matters. There seems to be some kind of innate protective disgust reaction at work. For instance, I’ve had conversations with people who say they wouldn’t be able to bring themselves to drink a glass of water if they knew it was purified from sewage. By the same token, they will drink some water that’s been imbued with some healing power by a homeopath.

coldtea 9y ago
>Of course, it’s much harder to break people of the misconception that the provenance of a chemical (synthetic or natural) matters. If one uses contrived arguments like the one about vanilla extract, then I can see why.
- evincarofautumn 9y ago
  Well…of course it’s contrived. Like I said, it’s a conversation starter to make people think more critically about what they mean by “natural”, “synthetic”, “safe”, and “dangerous” chemicals. What I was getting at is that in my experience, people are generally pretty open to rational discussion about that, but not about the underlying visceral squeamishness and distrust.
cname 9y ago
A "good way to start a dialogue" is by starting with a trick question and likely putting the other person on the defensive?
- evincarofautumn 9y ago
  …No? I wouldn’t consider it a trick question, since I’m not trying to “catch” them or anything. The answer doesn’t even really matter. If we’re talking about “chemicals”, I think it’s a reasonable example to bring up. That is, it’s not about being right or wrong, but making people think more deeply about a topic that I care about. Something I used to do that did make people defensive & dismissive was to try to be technically correct, shit like “everything is chemicals”—which is true, but that’s not the meaning of “chemicals” under discussion, so it’s just smug and pedantic.
losteric 9y ago
A better example might be Tang versus cold-pressed orange juice, or Wonder Bread versus Dave's Killer Bread. Tang won't kill you, but one is clearly better. Vanilla is definitely a trick question that exploits a blindspot - tell people about the difference and then ask the question, that's the interesting discussion. Also, to be fair to that homeopath... their axioms are flawed but disgust at purified sewage is self-consistent with their beliefs ("less is more" and all that). I'd probably refuse too, but on the basis of numerous studies showing sewage treatment doesn't adequately remove pharmaceutical waste.

darawk 9y ago

> Point being, there is no reason to hold any of these chemicals to a standard higher than that of a strawberry - that is, we can give people a bunch of strawberries and say any negative effect is below some acceptable level. And, in fact, we have found many "natural" foods containing absurdly high levels of arsenic and other dangerous compounds, and that has affected their preparation for consumption. The scientific process has in this way even outperformed the naturalism heuristic. That's incorrect. We've coevolved with many of the foods we eat. Things like strawberries and broccolli have been, more or less, with us for thousands of years. While it may be true that there are harmful components of those foods, we know that eating them is at least not making us worse off than we were. When introducing some new chemical, we really have no idea what its effects might be. And we have no, in principle, reason to assume those effects are benign. We've had a very very long time to adjust to the organic components of most foods.

highd 9y ago
"that have entered our diet far too short a time ago to have had evolutionary impact"

j7ake 9y ago

The scientific process has also led to chemicals such as Thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, resulting in 10000 babies born with phocomelia. The point is not to be overly confident with what you think a chemical can do to your body, even if it is approved by the FDA.

lotsofpulp 9y ago
Imperfect information and lack of tools/knowledge to perform adequate analysis, and perhaps selfish motivations might have caused Thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, but the scientific process did not. Unless you can pinpoint all the causal factors of a relationship, there is no other option I have heard of other than the scientific process, i.e. testing, calculating, re-testing, calculating, retesting...etc that could provide us with knowledge about the relationship between cause and effect. And obviously, it will be wrong sometimes, hence the need to re-test, but there is no better option. If anything, we need more actual scientific process, meaning using our newfound computing capabilities to open up data so that all experiments can be vetted for accuracy and differing populations tested, etc.
- j7ake 9y ago
  I agree there is no better option but that is not sufficient to no longer doubt the state of the art knowledge of biomedicine or effects of chemical on the body.
  - lotsofpulp 9y ago
    The scientific process is all about doubting what you "know"...obviously to be pragmatic, it's useful to assume certain things such as gravity, time, that a chemical reaction yesterday will do the same today under the same conditions, etc. But the whole purpose of testing and retesting (which is the scientific process) is because you're always doubting. That's why data should be free, in order to let this testing happen. Of course we have limited resources to do testing, so there must be some triage involved somehow, but that has nothing to do with the scientific process.
9y ago

jakelarkin 9y ago

your argument seems to be "chemicals are numerous & complicated, therefore all new complex chemicals are okay" the compounds that've been in strawberries for thousands of years are somewhat known items and lower risk than ones invented yesterday or even 20 years ago in a Dupont/Monsanto laboratory. The issue is that we have a business and political system that is highly incentivized to start adding contrived and novel substances to the environment at a massive scale and speed never before seen in nature. In recent times it's all to easy to introduce excess carcinogens and endocrine-disruptors into most homes or kill off large number worlds of honeybees. The effects merit careful consideration and regulation.

kharms 9y ago

>Our diet is full of fruits and vegetables containing thousands of complex chemicals, indistinguishable from "synthetic" chemicals, that have entered our diet far too short a time ago to have had evolutionary impact. Our diet of fruits and vegetables has been refined through thousands of years of trial and error, and the result is that we eat a tiny fraction of available plants. It's arrogant to dismiss that history.