4 ms·

If I couldn't grow it or raise it 100 years ago, I don't want to eat it. Open to being convinced otherwise.

skymt 5y ago
Not the worst place to start, but considering palm oil has been used in cooking for thousands of years it's not clear what that principle has to do with this story.
tshaddox 5y ago
Do you mean if you personally wouldn't have been to grow it or raise it 100 years ago? Or do you mean something more like "if it wasn't widely accessible 100 years ago"?
voz_ 5y ago
What happened in 1921? Or is this one of those baseless "before we had cancer" comments?
- malfist 5y ago
  Cancer wasn't invented then. In all seriousness, things like pasteurization and refrigeration make our food supply a lot safer than it used to be.
- mbg721 5y ago
  I realized at some point that "It's food iff your grandparents would call it food" either has to be amended to add a generation, or we have to accept Oreos pretty soon.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Margarine was invented in 1869. You need to go back a lot farther. You are also skipping out a lot of newer stuff that wasn't possible back then, but after serious study seems safe. Most of what was done 200 years ago is accepted as safe, but there is no actual evidence for it, and in many cases we know it wasn't. (the obvious example of using lead in finishes for food contact items)
- tyingq 5y ago
  I suppose there's some merit in the "before we had cancer" thing. Certainly many people were dying of other stuff long before they would have gotten cancer.
gambiting 5y ago
You do realise palm oil is older than 100 years, right? Used literally for thousands of years. "Humans used oil palms as far back as 5,000 years. In the late 1800s, archaeologists discovered a substance that they concluded was originally palm oil in a tomb at Abydos dating back to 3,000 BCE.[4] It is believed that traders brought oil palm to Egypt" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil
yupper32 5y ago
Is your medicine cabinet empty?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
  No, I have ibuprofen for when I have a headache lasting more than a day. (It's caffeine... every ... time.)
  - yupper32 5y ago
    So you eat ibuprofen, but you couldn't grow or raise it 100 years ago. It was invented in the 60s and wasn't available over the counter until the 80s.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
WarChortle 5y ago
Do you not take Advil? Tums? Antibiotics? or a myriad of other useful medicine?
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Aspirin is more than 100 years old and people have been eating calcium carbonate for quite some time. I get your point, though.
f6v 5y ago
Ultra-processed foods are probably a consequence of trying to feed billions of people. Do you think there’s enough farm land, water, etc. for the earth population to only grow bio/eco produce?
rileyphone 5y ago
Of note is the monstrosities we call chickens today are a product of breeding contests in the 1940s [0] (but does that mean there is anything wrong with eating them? who's to say). It seems a lot more people today are taking a critical look at what they eat, though often excluding broad categories based on feeling rather than hard science. At first this looks reactionary, but on closer inspection one realizes that the science involved is typically biased or just lacking. We've invested comparatively little into understanding the downsides of modern food products like vegetable oil, but the little windows we have indicate they may be causing whole hosts of human maladies from dementia to type 2 diabetes [1]. Nutrition constitutes the inputs to the complex biological system, and large changes (eg disease) can end up being the result of nonlinear processes started by changing these inputs. Another example is a lack of magnesium in the western diet, through both soil depletion and food processing, leading to large scale deficiencies [2]. What's really dizzying, though, is that this information isn't widely known, and is typically found through either self-directed study or through listening to podcasts. When the average person makes decisions regarding their nutrition, they're relying on outdated and probably harmful advice, despite intending to make "healthy" choices. Maybe we need an app to scan a barcode or read a list of ingredients and respond with the known potential for harm and confidence. All I know is I'll never look at fried chicken the same way again (unless it's fried in lard, of course). [0] https://livestock.extension.wisc.edu/articles/the-chicken-of-tomorrow/ https://livestock.extension.wisc.edu/articles/the-chicken-of... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190303234503id_/http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b4ce/fae0475f0be1053c6abf0c47f485a22beddb.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20190303234503id_/http://pdfs.se... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11104-013-1781-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11104-013-1781-2
outworlder 5y ago
> If I couldn't grow it or raise it 100 years ago, I don't want to eat it Humans have been barbecuing meat for millennia. Possibly even before Homo Sapiens Sapiens was around. And yet, it has carcinogenic properties, specially if charred. What's so special about 100 years ago anyway? 1000 might make a difference - but then again, life expectancy wasn't that great back then. It's only because we are living so much that cancer is such a large problem. Also because, due to modern medicine, we can often diagnose the person before they just get sick and die from 'unknown' reasons. Your best bet is to eat food from as many different sources as you can and not eat too much of any single specific thing (which is a modern thing btw, 100 years ago, it wouldn't be as easy to do) and let averages do the rest.

Not the worst place to start, but considering palm oil has been used in cooking for thousands of years it's not clear what that principle has to do with this story.

tshaddox 5y ago

Do you mean if you personally wouldn't have been to grow it or raise it 100 years ago? Or do you mean something more like "if it wasn't widely accessible 100 years ago"?

voz_ 5y ago

What happened in 1921? Or is this one of those baseless "before we had cancer" comments?

malfist 5y ago
Cancer wasn't invented then. In all seriousness, things like pasteurization and refrigeration make our food supply a lot safer than it used to be.
mbg721 5y ago
I realized at some point that "It's food iff your grandparents would call it food" either has to be amended to add a generation, or we have to accept Oreos pretty soon.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Margarine was invented in 1869. You need to go back a lot farther. You are also skipping out a lot of newer stuff that wasn't possible back then, but after serious study seems safe. Most of what was done 200 years ago is accepted as safe, but there is no actual evidence for it, and in many cases we know it wasn't. (the obvious example of using lead in finishes for food contact items)
tyingq 5y ago
I suppose there's some merit in the "before we had cancer" thing. Certainly many people were dying of other stuff long before they would have gotten cancer.

gambiting 5y ago

You do realise palm oil is older than 100 years, right? Used literally for thousands of years. "Humans used oil palms as far back as 5,000 years. In the late 1800s, archaeologists discovered a substance that they concluded was originally palm oil in a tomb at Abydos dating back to 3,000 BCE.[4] It is believed that traders brought oil palm to Egypt" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil

yupper32 5y ago

Is your medicine cabinet empty?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
artificialLimbs 5y ago
No, I have ibuprofen for when I have a headache lasting more than a day. (It's caffeine... every ... time.)
- yupper32 5y ago
  So you eat ibuprofen, but you couldn't grow or raise it 100 years ago. It was invented in the 60s and wasn't available over the counter until the 80s.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

WarChortle 5y ago

Do you not take Advil? Tums? Antibiotics? or a myriad of other useful medicine?

heavyset_go 5y ago
Aspirin is more than 100 years old and people have been eating calcium carbonate for quite some time. I get your point, though.

f6v 5y ago

Ultra-processed foods are probably a consequence of trying to feed billions of people. Do you think there’s enough farm land, water, etc. for the earth population to only grow bio/eco produce?

rileyphone 5y ago

Of note is the monstrosities we call chickens today are a product of breeding contests in the 1940s [0] (but does that mean there is anything wrong with eating them? who's to say). It seems a lot more people today are taking a critical look at what they eat, though often excluding broad categories based on feeling rather than hard science. At first this looks reactionary, but on closer inspection one realizes that the science involved is typically biased or just lacking. We've invested comparatively little into understanding the downsides of modern food products like vegetable oil, but the little windows we have indicate they may be causing whole hosts of human maladies from dementia to type 2 diabetes [1]. Nutrition constitutes the inputs to the complex biological system, and large changes (eg disease) can end up being the result of nonlinear processes started by changing these inputs. Another example is a lack of magnesium in the western diet, through both soil depletion and food processing, leading to large scale deficiencies [2]. What's really dizzying, though, is that this information isn't widely known, and is typically found through either self-directed study or through listening to podcasts. When the average person makes decisions regarding their nutrition, they're relying on outdated and probably harmful advice, despite intending to make "healthy" choices. Maybe we need an app to scan a barcode or read a list of ingredients and respond with the known potential for harm and confidence. All I know is I'll never look at fried chicken the same way again (unless it's fried in lard, of course). [0] https://livestock.extension.wisc.edu/articles/the-chicken-of-tomorrow/ https://livestock.extension.wisc.edu/articles/the-chicken-of... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190303234503id_/http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b4ce/fae0475f0be1053c6abf0c47f485a22beddb.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20190303234503id_/http://pdfs.se... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11104-013-1781-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11104-013-1781-2

outworlder 5y ago

> If I couldn't grow it or raise it 100 years ago, I don't want to eat it Humans have been barbecuing meat for millennia. Possibly even before Homo Sapiens Sapiens was around. And yet, it has carcinogenic properties, specially if charred. What's so special about 100 years ago anyway? 1000 might make a difference - but then again, life expectancy wasn't that great back then. It's only because we are living so much that cancer is such a large problem. Also because, due to modern medicine, we can often diagnose the person before they just get sick and die from 'unknown' reasons. Your best bet is to eat food from as many different sources as you can and not eat too much of any single specific thing (which is a modern thing btw, 100 years ago, it wouldn't be as easy to do) and let averages do the rest.