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My Peruvian climbing guide turned me onto stevia which doesn't fall into any of your categories. It is really a wholesome plant extract instead of something che
by elif 3y ago
My Peruvian climbing guide turned me onto stevia which doesn't fall into any of your categories. It is really a wholesome plant extract instead of something chemists have invented which leads me to have confidence in its (so far as we know) lack of carcinogenicity.
- selcuka 3y ago> It is really a wholesome plant extract instead of something chemists have invented which leads me to have confidence in its (so far as we know) lack of carcinogenicity. This sounds like the naturalistic fallacy [1]. A naturally occurring substance is not automatically less carcinogen, or harmful, than a manufactured one. Coffee is associated with elevated risk for bladder cancer. Cycad trees are known to be highly carcinogenic. Mycotoxins (mold) are toxic and carcinogenic. Aflatoxin from peanuts is found to be carcinogenic. I'm not saying that stevia is not safe, but safety has nothing to do with being natural or not. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
- XorNot 3y agoCocaine is a natural plant extract as well.
- elif 3y agoActually he was recommending stevia to chew with coca leaves at the time. As I said, this was high altitude climbing in Peru where that is a cultural norm.
- happymellon 3y agoIt's also the cultural norm in Hollywood. Doesn't make it a good idea.
- DontchaKnowit 3y agoyeah and it aint that bad for you until you extract the pure cocaine from it. the leaf is fine, I think
- zafka 3y agoAnd of course copious use of cocaine is known to prevent cancer.... Now the way it prevents cancer is probably not optimal......
- elif 3y agoI don't think it's a fallacy to conclude generally that consuming plants which coevolved with humans is safer than consuming chemicals which are completely exogenous to any stage of the human body's development. It would be a fallacy to suggest that one group or the other were unconditionally safer, but I find no dilemma in generalizing that the human body is more capable of processing plant-based substances. Just like I would generalize that consuming plant-based substances is healthier than consuming paint. Sure you can nit pick outliers, safe paint or oleander or whatever, but the heuristic is still of value.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 3y agoTobacco coevolved with humans. So did areca nuts. And bracken ferns.
- Natsu 3y agoI believe that more when humans have had a long history of consuming the thing without noticeable problems. And even then, sometimes traditional ways of preparing it turn out to be rather important: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization It makes me wonder if some of the things like, e.g. the supposed success of the Mediterranean diet, are due to bits of food culture like this that we've lost or never fully understood.
- Mordisquitos 3y agoI have no reason to believe that stevia increases the risk of cancer, but I'm afraid that arguing it is likely to be safe because it "coevolved" with humans is basically falling into the naturalistic fallacy with extra steps. For stevia to be arguably safer due coevolution with humans, the following would need to be true: 1. There is a selective pressure for stevia to not increase the risk of cancer in humans. 2. There is a selective pressure on humans to not have an increased risk of cancer from consuming stevia. In other words, it is firstly to argue that a stevia plant which had a tendency to increase cancer risk in humans would be significantly less likely to reproduce. This effect would be hard enough even if the hypothetical carcinogen were to be otherwise selectively neutral, but it could have a selectively positive pressure if it were an essential hormone or defence against insects, pathogens, competitors, etc. Secondly, it is to argue that if stevia were potentially carcinogenic, then humans that were susceptible to its effects were significantly less likely to reproduce. This fails on two levels. First, consider that even in the cut-and-dried cause of cancer that is smoking, lung cancer is still extremely rare among young smokers. Lung cancer patients are virtually always well past their reproductive age, meaning that even if a genetic mutation to be immune to tobacco were to appear (or indeed it may well already exist) then said mutation still has no selective advantage with regards to the consumption of tobacco. Second, even if a hypothetically-carcinogenic stevia[0] could exert selective pressure on humans to become unaffected by it, then that effect would only have taken place on the populations which consumed significant amounts of stevia over generations and not humanity as a whole. [0] Which I insist, I don't believe is the case.
- kelnos 3y agoBy that logic, burning tobacco shouldn't be carcinogenic either.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zhte415 3y agoI wouldn't propose apple seeds as a sweetener simply because they naturally grow inside apples.
- malablaster 3y agoStevia’s on the WHO list of artificial sweeteners they advise avoiding. https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-use-non-sugar-sweeteners-for-weight-control-in-newly-released-guideline https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-...
- elif 3y agoThat is a conditional recommendation pending the formation of actual guidelines.
- buu700 3y agoIt is, but IIRC for a nonsensical reason. They're lumping it in with a completely unrelated sweetener, erythritol, because some products on the market combine the two sweeteners. Using pure stevia is completely safe, as far as any research I've seen would indicate. Liquid stevia is my go-to sweetener for most purposes, or if I'm baking I'll use a stevia-monk-inulin mix that measures 1:1 for sugar. More recently, I've been using freeze dried miracle berries as a sweetener for low-sugar fruits. They essentially convert sour taste signals to sweet, which works great for strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, kiwi, passion fruit, and citrus. Also has a bit of an effect on blackberries and dragon fruit, and starfruit is on my list to try. Related LPT: most of the fruits I eat are frozen with a few minutes of thawing at room temperature. Easier to store, easier to prep, and turns out to be pretty similar to Italian ice.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoFrozen fruits are usually fresher and cheaper as well, win-win.
- Nursie 3y agoStevia is nasty though! I can’t stand the taste, I’d rather go without than have a product with stevia.
- rowanG077 3y agoCyanide is also one of those "wholesome plant extract". Not entirely sure why that would even qualify as an argument.
- KMag 3y agoAppeal to nature[0] is a poor mental shortcut. There are tons of natural carcinogens, notably aflatoxins and cycacins. Clothes, refrigeration, and Pasteurization are all extremely recent on an evolutionary timescale. They're all artificial and extremely beneficial to human well-being. Also, the idea that something is good because we've evolved with it gets the mechanism of evolution backward. Even if it were true that evolution's stochastic gradient descent had found the global maximum 15k years ago (instead of perhaps approximating a local maximum), that would imply no changes to the human would improve human reproductive success. It would not imply that no changes to the environment (such as available foods) would improve human reproductive success. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature