5 ms·

What makes you think "processed" and "chemicals" are bad for you?

by jackbrookes 8y ago

favorited 8y ago
Everything is a chemical.
- iheartpotatoes 8y ago
  Right. But there's a difference between drinking a glass of water and glass of bleach. You are claiming they are equivalent. There's something called "context" in reading comprehension, it is when words take on the meaning relevant to the discussion. In this case, "chemicals" is shorthand for "bad chemicals." I don't understand why so many people fail to understand this and have to make this inane, childish observation that in fact, everything is a chemical. We know already.
  - scott_s 8y ago
    Because when people talk about "chemicals", they are often flirting with the appeal-to-nature fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature).
    - iheartpotatoes 8y ago
      Right. It's a synonymous fallacy. We get it. Apparently we cannot move on until everyone is elevated to the same level of reading comprehension. Stop trying to score petty points, and discuss the issue that yes, there is some pretty nasty shit that is manufactured by chemical companies and put into our food, and stop trying to derail the argument to "own the libs." In other words: grow up.
      - scott_s 8y ago
        I can assure you that I am never trying to "own the libs"; I am often the kind of person such people would want to own. But I do care about unstated assumptions about what is "good," when I fear those unstated assumptions are rooted in some form of magical thinking.
      - defective 8y ago
        You just said that someone is claiming that water and bleach are identical. Let me put it to you this way, instead of saying "everything is a chemical": If you stand with the poster above worrying about "chemicals", perhaps state your question more clearly so we know exactly what we're getting ourselves into. I will even give you some examples. Do you perhaps mean chemicals known to cause cancer or other diseases? What about chemicals known to aggravate diseases or conditions? Or would it be enough to be simply suspected? Maybe your threshold of what is a sufficient amount of research should be mentioned. How many studies do you wait for before you eat a certain ingredient? Do all regulatory bodies need to agree? That's certainly a lot of work going into asking a question, I suppose, almost as much as answering something like "are there [bad] chemicals in it?" What research is out there, is out there. Only you know what will make a "[bad] chemical" not just a "chemical". Of course, if you know of a place that lists all the "[bad] chemicals" that you agree with, this [practically extreme] "lib" wouldn't mind seeing it.
        iheartpotatoes 8y ago
        Here's an easier answer: eat real food, not to much, mostly vegetables. Happy mr/mrs practically extreme lib? You've just played the no true scotsman on me. Well done! It's a pretty easy choice for me: I literally eat no food with added chemicals. I simply don't know what is good and what is bad because I've given up following research and meta-studies. There is literally no way to be informed, even if I had a PhD and spent a lifetime studying nutrition and the relevant sciences. Know what the easy answer is? I'm vegan. I literally eat nothing with added preservatives or chemicals. Nothing. Except when I got to restaurants every now and then, and I don't know what's in the food I ordered. But it isn't 12 meals a year that change you, it is 1,000 meals a year. It is trivial for me to bypass the good/bad chemical debate.
    - jonfw 8y ago
      Given the nature of evolution, I think that the appeal to nature in nutrition is a much more substantive argument than can be immediately dismissed. Grossly speaking, natural foods have also existed for longer and been better studied, meaning we are more likely to know about the impact of natural foods than newer foods that aren't yet common to our diet. While "better because natural" isn't some infallible nutritional law, it serves as a very solid rule of thumb for those of us who don't have the time or motivation to more thoroughly study the science behind it.
      - nickik 8y ago
        Nature has also evolved lots of stuff that would kill you. And many things that are just plain unhealthy. And even those foods you consider 'natural' are highly evolved plants that have been optimized for human consumption by generations of humans. There is very little natural about many of the fruits and vegetables we eat that are actually truly natural.
        jonfw 8y ago
        I agree, there is a lot that's harmful in nature. But we as humans have been developing knowledge about how these natural foods affect our health for thousands of years, across a sample on the scale of billions. Tribes completely isolated from modern society have been proven to have extremely rich knowledge of the plants in their environments. As humans, we are extremely familiar with plants found in nature. GMO foods are chemically speaking much closer to natural than this veggie patty we are talking about. It lies on a spectrum so arguing about how neatly something fits a definition is missing the point.
  - bzbarsky 8y ago
    > In this case, "chemicals" is shorthand for "bad chemicals." One problem is that lots of people include tons of known harmless stuff under "bad chemicals" because it's "artificial" (even if it's chemically identical to "natural" things that they praise at the same time). Or put another way, the use of "chemicals" in discussions like this often suffers from the problem described at <https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey>: people talk about "artificial chemicals" being bad, when challenged fall back on "we just mean the bad chemicals", but then go back to in practice talking and, importantly, acting as if they mean a much wider class of things. So yes, context is important, but is also manipulated in many cases to effectively gaslight the reader by saying, "Oh, _that_'s not what we meant, of course; think about the context," when in fact "that" is what was meant. And I suspect that in many cases the manipulation isn't even conscious!
    - magduf 8y ago
      >One problem is that lots of people include tons of known harmless stuff under "bad chemicals" because it's "artificial" (even if it's chemically identical to "natural" things that they praise at the same time). People who believe in homeopathy don't believe this, since they believe that purified water has "memory", so logically they would also think that naturally-derived and artificially-derived but otherwise identical chemicals would somehow be different from one another.
      - bzbarsky 8y ago
        I like that comparison! One caveat, though: the identity of chemicals needs to be pretty carefully defined. Especially any time chiral things are involved, naturally-derived things are much more likely to be a pure enantiomer or close to it while artificial synthesis is more likely to produce racemates unless you are very careful.
        magduf 8y ago
        True, but even here we're not talking about identical molecules. Chiral molucules are ones (which are usually organic--based on carbon) which have both "left handed" and "right handed" versions. The two versions have the same molecular formula, but they're opposites of each other. So it's like having a left-hand drive car versus a right-hand drive car: they might look identical using a mirror, but they're really not, and you can't use them the same way because the way they interact with their environment is different (a driver in a RHD car in a LHD country will have a hard time seeing everything properly because the roads aren't designed with this configuration in mind).
hokkos 8y ago
Some of the biggest and best studies on nutrition told us that processed food is not very good for us : Study links heavily processed foods to risk of earlier death https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/11/study-links-heavily-processed-foods-to-risk-of-earlier-death https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/11/study-links-...
- jdietrich 8y ago
  There is an association between processed foods and poor health outcomes. There are some processes that have a clear causal link with poor health, most obviously the use of nitrates in meat preservation. It is not clear that all (or even most) processing is harmful.
  - marzell 8y ago
    Another aspect of this is that processed foods require less calories for your body to metabolize, since they are already partly broken down. While that doesn't specifically increase the rate of exposure to pathogens/toxicity, it does increase the net calories consumed in an already high-calorie category, and contributes to obesity.
- gowld 8y ago
  Regular burgers are heavily processed. They don't grow on burger trees or in burger coops.
  - GrynetMolvin 8y ago
    Regular burgers (at least BK or McD) are famously 100% beef, no additives. Though I guess you can call the slaughter "processing".
zzzeek 8y ago
Specifically there's suspicion regarding soy protein isolates which are produced in an industrial setting using hexane: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/04/a-study-found-hexane-in-soy-protein-should-you-stop-eating-veggie-burgers.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/04/a-study-found-he... additionally, soy's estrogenic nature (combined with the disproportionately widespread use of soy in processed food products, which would be the "not natural" part) is suspected of having potential influences on breast cancer, male fertility, and thyroid function. you can of course argue none of these things are nearly as bad as the saturated fat in beef but I feel more comfortable with a sunshine burger that's just brown rice and sunflower seeds.
- intopieces 8y ago
  The soy thing is long disproved. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/
  - zzzeek 8y ago
    many soy studies are heavily influenced by corporate interests not unlike how Coca Cola and tobacco companies in the past have had extreme influence on the scientific community so while I still eat soy I will continue to avoid the industrially processed variety, but thanks for showing me things I already have read.
darpa_escapee 8y ago
Including "natural flavors" in an ingredients list is a way to incorporate any number of undisclosed substances in a product. No substance obscured by the "natural flavors" label needs to go through any safety testing or analysis[1]: > Even the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, has concluded that the “FDA’s oversight process does not help ensure the safety of all new GRAS determinations” and that the “FDA is not systematically ensuring the continued safety of current GRAS substances.” You need to ask yourself what a company has to gain by intentionally obscuring ingredients in their product meant to be consumed by humans, and what you have to lose by consuming it. > Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Potato Protein, Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract... "Natural flavors" is the 5th ingredient by weight in the new Impossible Burger. While I understand that this board often has a "but dihydrogen monoxide is a chemical" outlook, being skeptical about undisclosed substances in food is a valid stance. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/what-does-natural-flavors-really-mean/2017/07/24/eccdc47e-67f7-11e7-a1d7-9a32c91c6f40_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f1c0ec5a4b5d https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/what-does-...
bvinc 8y ago
My wife and I have been studying nutrition for several years. Processed unnatural "foods" having bad effects on humans is an undeniable pattern that shows up over and over again. The reason for this is simply because of evolution. Our bodies evolved eating natural plants and animals. Our bodies have never before been exposed to the huge number of food additives that have been invented in recent years. You probably hate that we have to talk in generalities. But food studies are expensive and hard to get right, and there's a LOT that we don't fully understand about nutrition. We're nowhere close to understanding all the different ways that all the different food additives are affecting our bodies.

What makes you think "processed" and "chemicals" are bad for you?

favorited 8y ago

Everything is a chemical.

iheartpotatoes 8y ago
Right. But there's a difference between drinking a glass of water and glass of bleach. You are claiming they are equivalent. There's something called "context" in reading comprehension, it is when words take on the meaning relevant to the discussion. In this case, "chemicals" is shorthand for "bad chemicals." I don't understand why so many people fail to understand this and have to make this inane, childish observation that in fact, everything is a chemical. We know already.
- scott_s 8y ago
  Because when people talk about "chemicals", they are often flirting with the appeal-to-nature fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature).
  - iheartpotatoes 8y ago
    Right. It's a synonymous fallacy. We get it. Apparently we cannot move on until everyone is elevated to the same level of reading comprehension. Stop trying to score petty points, and discuss the issue that yes, there is some pretty nasty shit that is manufactured by chemical companies and put into our food, and stop trying to derail the argument to "own the libs." In other words: grow up.
    - scott_s 8y ago
      I can assure you that I am never trying to "own the libs"; I am often the kind of person such people would want to own. But I do care about unstated assumptions about what is "good," when I fear those unstated assumptions are rooted in some form of magical thinking.
    - defective 8y ago
      You just said that someone is claiming that water and bleach are identical. Let me put it to you this way, instead of saying "everything is a chemical": If you stand with the poster above worrying about "chemicals", perhaps state your question more clearly so we know exactly what we're getting ourselves into. I will even give you some examples. Do you perhaps mean chemicals known to cause cancer or other diseases? What about chemicals known to aggravate diseases or conditions? Or would it be enough to be simply suspected? Maybe your threshold of what is a sufficient amount of research should be mentioned. How many studies do you wait for before you eat a certain ingredient? Do all regulatory bodies need to agree? That's certainly a lot of work going into asking a question, I suppose, almost as much as answering something like "are there [bad] chemicals in it?" What research is out there, is out there. Only you know what will make a "[bad] chemical" not just a "chemical". Of course, if you know of a place that lists all the "[bad] chemicals" that you agree with, this [practically extreme] "lib" wouldn't mind seeing it.
      - iheartpotatoes 8y ago
        Here's an easier answer: eat real food, not to much, mostly vegetables. Happy mr/mrs practically extreme lib? You've just played the no true scotsman on me. Well done! It's a pretty easy choice for me: I literally eat no food with added chemicals. I simply don't know what is good and what is bad because I've given up following research and meta-studies. There is literally no way to be informed, even if I had a PhD and spent a lifetime studying nutrition and the relevant sciences. Know what the easy answer is? I'm vegan. I literally eat nothing with added preservatives or chemicals. Nothing. Except when I got to restaurants every now and then, and I don't know what's in the food I ordered. But it isn't 12 meals a year that change you, it is 1,000 meals a year. It is trivial for me to bypass the good/bad chemical debate.
  - jonfw 8y ago
    Given the nature of evolution, I think that the appeal to nature in nutrition is a much more substantive argument than can be immediately dismissed. Grossly speaking, natural foods have also existed for longer and been better studied, meaning we are more likely to know about the impact of natural foods than newer foods that aren't yet common to our diet. While "better because natural" isn't some infallible nutritional law, it serves as a very solid rule of thumb for those of us who don't have the time or motivation to more thoroughly study the science behind it.
    - nickik 8y ago
      Nature has also evolved lots of stuff that would kill you. And many things that are just plain unhealthy. And even those foods you consider 'natural' are highly evolved plants that have been optimized for human consumption by generations of humans. There is very little natural about many of the fruits and vegetables we eat that are actually truly natural.
      - jonfw 8y ago
        I agree, there is a lot that's harmful in nature. But we as humans have been developing knowledge about how these natural foods affect our health for thousands of years, across a sample on the scale of billions. Tribes completely isolated from modern society have been proven to have extremely rich knowledge of the plants in their environments. As humans, we are extremely familiar with plants found in nature. GMO foods are chemically speaking much closer to natural than this veggie patty we are talking about. It lies on a spectrum so arguing about how neatly something fits a definition is missing the point.
- bzbarsky 8y ago
  > In this case, "chemicals" is shorthand for "bad chemicals." One problem is that lots of people include tons of known harmless stuff under "bad chemicals" because it's "artificial" (even if it's chemically identical to "natural" things that they praise at the same time). Or put another way, the use of "chemicals" in discussions like this often suffers from the problem described at <https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey>: people talk about "artificial chemicals" being bad, when challenged fall back on "we just mean the bad chemicals", but then go back to in practice talking and, importantly, acting as if they mean a much wider class of things. So yes, context is important, but is also manipulated in many cases to effectively gaslight the reader by saying, "Oh, _that_'s not what we meant, of course; think about the context," when in fact "that" is what was meant. And I suspect that in many cases the manipulation isn't even conscious!
  - magduf 8y ago
    >One problem is that lots of people include tons of known harmless stuff under "bad chemicals" because it's "artificial" (even if it's chemically identical to "natural" things that they praise at the same time). People who believe in homeopathy don't believe this, since they believe that purified water has "memory", so logically they would also think that naturally-derived and artificially-derived but otherwise identical chemicals would somehow be different from one another.
    - bzbarsky 8y ago
      I like that comparison! One caveat, though: the identity of chemicals needs to be pretty carefully defined. Especially any time chiral things are involved, naturally-derived things are much more likely to be a pure enantiomer or close to it while artificial synthesis is more likely to produce racemates unless you are very careful.
      - magduf 8y ago
        True, but even here we're not talking about identical molecules. Chiral molucules are ones (which are usually organic--based on carbon) which have both "left handed" and "right handed" versions. The two versions have the same molecular formula, but they're opposites of each other. So it's like having a left-hand drive car versus a right-hand drive car: they might look identical using a mirror, but they're really not, and you can't use them the same way because the way they interact with their environment is different (a driver in a RHD car in a LHD country will have a hard time seeing everything properly because the roads aren't designed with this configuration in mind).

hokkos 8y ago

Some of the biggest and best studies on nutrition told us that processed food is not very good for us : Study links heavily processed foods to risk of earlier death https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/11/study-links-heavily-processed-foods-to-risk-of-earlier-death https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/11/study-links-...

jdietrich 8y ago
There is an association between processed foods and poor health outcomes. There are some processes that have a clear causal link with poor health, most obviously the use of nitrates in meat preservation. It is not clear that all (or even most) processing is harmful.
- marzell 8y ago
  Another aspect of this is that processed foods require less calories for your body to metabolize, since they are already partly broken down. While that doesn't specifically increase the rate of exposure to pathogens/toxicity, it does increase the net calories consumed in an already high-calorie category, and contributes to obesity.
gowld 8y ago
Regular burgers are heavily processed. They don't grow on burger trees or in burger coops.
- GrynetMolvin 8y ago
  Regular burgers (at least BK or McD) are famously 100% beef, no additives. Though I guess you can call the slaughter "processing".

zzzeek 8y ago

Specifically there's suspicion regarding soy protein isolates which are produced in an industrial setting using hexane: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/04/a-study-found-hexane-in-soy-protein-should-you-stop-eating-veggie-burgers.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/04/a-study-found-he... additionally, soy's estrogenic nature (combined with the disproportionately widespread use of soy in processed food products, which would be the "not natural" part) is suspected of having potential influences on breast cancer, male fertility, and thyroid function. you can of course argue none of these things are nearly as bad as the saturated fat in beef but I feel more comfortable with a sunshine burger that's just brown rice and sunflower seeds.

intopieces 8y ago
The soy thing is long disproved. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/
- zzzeek 8y ago
  many soy studies are heavily influenced by corporate interests not unlike how Coca Cola and tobacco companies in the past have had extreme influence on the scientific community so while I still eat soy I will continue to avoid the industrially processed variety, but thanks for showing me things I already have read.

darpa_escapee 8y ago

Including "natural flavors" in an ingredients list is a way to incorporate any number of undisclosed substances in a product. No substance obscured by the "natural flavors" label needs to go through any safety testing or analysis[1]: > Even the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, has concluded that the “FDA’s oversight process does not help ensure the safety of all new GRAS determinations” and that the “FDA is not systematically ensuring the continued safety of current GRAS substances.” You need to ask yourself what a company has to gain by intentionally obscuring ingredients in their product meant to be consumed by humans, and what you have to lose by consuming it. > Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Potato Protein, Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract... "Natural flavors" is the 5th ingredient by weight in the new Impossible Burger. While I understand that this board often has a "but dihydrogen monoxide is a chemical" outlook, being skeptical about undisclosed substances in food is a valid stance. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/what-does-natural-flavors-really-mean/2017/07/24/eccdc47e-67f7-11e7-a1d7-9a32c91c6f40_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f1c0ec5a4b5d https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/what-does-...

bvinc 8y ago

My wife and I have been studying nutrition for several years. Processed unnatural "foods" having bad effects on humans is an undeniable pattern that shows up over and over again. The reason for this is simply because of evolution. Our bodies evolved eating natural plants and animals. Our bodies have never before been exposed to the huge number of food additives that have been invented in recent years. You probably hate that we have to talk in generalities. But food studies are expensive and hard to get right, and there's a LOT that we don't fully understand about nutrition. We're nowhere close to understanding all the different ways that all the different food additives are affecting our bodies.