3 ms·

That seems like a bit of a leap. I mean, the quantities are very small and so far as I know no one has seriously claimed that eating Brie or Camembert is bad fo

by gjm11 3y ago

That seems like a bit of a leap. I mean, the quantities are very small and so far as I know no one has seriously claimed that eating Brie or Camembert is bad for you (or at any rate that it's any worse than eating any other cheese). Lots of foods are at least slightly bad for you -- some of them much worse than Brie or Camembert -- but I would still consider it unfortunate if (say) chocolate or bacon or cream became unavailable.

nikolay 3y ago
Chocolate is a superfood, and bacon is not toxic. There's a difference between a food containing a known toxin and a healthy food that can become unhealthy based on its preparation. Boiled beef is healthy, but charred beef causes pancreatic cancer. However, blue cheese contains a neurotoxin, and I doubt it has a hormetic effect as I haven't seen a study showing that people eating blue cheese have better health.
- gjm11 3y ago
  (Apologies for the very slow response; I forgot that this discussion was ongoing.) "The dose makes the poison" and even without hormesis it can be the case that very small doses of something do you no actual harm because whatever they do is within the range your body can fix quickly. I haven't seen a study showing that people eating blue cheese (or Brie and Camembert) have worse health; have you? Chocolate may be "a superfood" but most chocolate also contains quite a lot of sugar, which is (tasty but) very bad for you. I am pretty sure most people who eat substantial amounts of chocolate would be healthier rather than less healthy if they ate less. Most bacon is cured using nitrates and nitrites, which on cooking produce (slightly) harmful compounds. All red meat seems to be at least a little bit bad for you, too. To repeat, I'm not saying that we shouldn't eat chocolate and bacon. I eat plenty of them myself. But when we do we're making a tradeoff between present tastiness and future health, and if the same's true for Brie and Camembert then that doesn't seem fundamentally different. And I would be sad if any of those things became unavailable.

by gjm11 3y ago

nikolay 3y ago

Chocolate is a superfood, and bacon is not toxic. There's a difference between a food containing a known toxin and a healthy food that can become unhealthy based on its preparation. Boiled beef is healthy, but charred beef causes pancreatic cancer. However, blue cheese contains a neurotoxin, and I doubt it has a hormetic effect as I haven't seen a study showing that people eating blue cheese have better health.

gjm11 3y ago
(Apologies for the very slow response; I forgot that this discussion was ongoing.) "The dose makes the poison" and even without hormesis it can be the case that very small doses of something do you no actual harm because whatever they do is within the range your body can fix quickly. I haven't seen a study showing that people eating blue cheese (or Brie and Camembert) have worse health; have you? Chocolate may be "a superfood" but most chocolate also contains quite a lot of sugar, which is (tasty but) very bad for you. I am pretty sure most people who eat substantial amounts of chocolate would be healthier rather than less healthy if they ate less. Most bacon is cured using nitrates and nitrites, which on cooking produce (slightly) harmful compounds. All red meat seems to be at least a little bit bad for you, too. To repeat, I'm not saying that we shouldn't eat chocolate and bacon. I eat plenty of them myself. But when we do we're making a tradeoff between present tastiness and future health, and if the same's true for Brie and Camembert then that doesn't seem fundamentally different. And I would be sad if any of those things became unavailable.