3 ms·

Hint: water is a chemical.

• eurasiantiger 4y ago
  That’s not what was meant and you know it. You’re being intellectually dishonest.
  • Scalene2 4y ago
    And the person saying "chemical" is being intellectually lazy.
    • eurasiantiger 4y ago
      What word would you suggest to use, then? Discussing individual chemicals by name is inefficient, confusing and almost certainly requires scientific citations to be remotely worthy of discussion. Going by groups of chemicals is a bit better, but then citations are largely not applicable. There are no synonyms or near synonyms. The dictionary definition of ”chemical” (noun), however, is explicitly clear: 1 : a substance obtained by a chemical process or producing a chemical effect 2 : a drug I posit that the person saying ”chemical” is not being lazy, they are being scientifically accurate while enabling rational discussion. It’s anyone saying ”but EVERYTHING is chemicals” that needs to check the dictionary.
      • astine 4y ago
        Your definition "1" describes just about anything. Water, for example, produces a chemical effect. So do amino acids. Your entire metabolism is a chemical process, as is the growth of plants. What I think that people mean when they talk about "chemicals" in their food is artificially synthesized chemicals and that's easy enough to say.
  • rvbissell 4y ago
    I point that out in conversations similar to ours because (in my experience) so many people who make the chemical-free argument do so because they've fallen for the Appeal-To-Nature fallacy, e.g. "naturally grown food must be better for you." The reality is that Nature only finds local maxima for some variables relevant to the organism's survival, and those variables aren't necessarily relevant to what is best for human health. In this particular thread, my first contribution was too flippant to be constructive, so I deserved the down-vote. But I wasn't being intellectually dishonest.