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One import distinction is that artificial chemicals were not part of the environment our bodies evolved in, whereas some of the natural chemicals were. Furtherm
by phyzome 4y ago
One import distinction is that artificial chemicals were not part of the environment our bodies evolved in, whereas some of the natural chemicals were. Furthermore, most of the natural chemicals would be more closely related to other chemicals we did evolve in contact with. The ones that are less novel to our bodies are less likely (in a very general sense!) to cause trouble.
For example, cyanide is otherwise lethal but widely present in plants, so our bodies are actually pretty good at dealing with it.
So along that axis you could probably lump stevia and aspartame closer together, while sorbitol (which is very much naturally occurring) would be much closer to sucrose.
- Retric 4y agoThe problem showed up because we where concentrating chemicals found in plants in the first place. We aren’t adapted to large quantities of refined sugar and repeating the same process with some other sweeteners runs into the same issue. Evolution adapts to specific environments not every single chemical your ancestors encountered even a minuscule quantity of. I can see why you might find it comforting but it’s really just a just so story. Evolution is really slow and needs significant pressure to result in adaptation, just look at how slowly humanity has been adapting to lactose. Finding an obscure chemical that humans find sweet and then concentrating or manufacturing massive quantities of it isn’t inherently safe even if trace amounts of it are in some plant.
- phyzome 4y agoYou're correct that concentration is important. "The dose makes the poison", as they say. But it's not about being "comforting", it's about having a heuristic to make decisions when you don't have enough hard data. So in general, I try to avoid novel chemicals. It's not a guarantee of anything, but it's good enough for first-pass decision-making.
- Retric 4y agoI have a similar risk aversion for novel chemicals. I simply don’t make an acceptation for organic compounds.
- whakim 4y agoThe thing is, we may have evolved to deal with chemicals that killed us and/or caused serious harm, but there's no evolutionary mechanism that selects for good health - surviving and reproducing are all that matters.
- LarryMullins 4y agoYou're alive today, so surely you know better than to go around eating random mushrooms even though those mushrooms are natural. Natural is in no conceivable way a usable heuristic for nontoxic. Trying to actually use that heuristic is a one-way ticket to Pain Town.