10 ms·
Balancing safety and innovation in human health is incredibly difficult. This isn't a criticism of the FDA, but rather an observation of facts underscoring bot
by panabee 2y ago
Balancing safety and innovation in human health is incredibly difficult.
This isn't a criticism of the FDA, but rather an observation of facts underscoring both the challenges and opportunities.
Some foods consumed safely by humans are toxic/harmful in mice, due to how mice react differently to key compounds.
Common examples:
1. Chocolate - theobromine
2. Coffee - caffeine
3. Chili peppers - capsaicin
- amelius 2y agoIsn't coffee toxic to humans too?
- manmal 2y agoToo much coffee does make some humans toxic.
- osigurdson 2y agoEven humble hydrogen can be dangerous in high enough concentrations. This, and daylight savings time doesn't actually add any hours of sunlight.
- bumby 2y agoMy understanding is the toxic level of caffeine is so high that you’d die of hyponatremia first from the water in coffee before caffeine kills you.
- spondylosaurus 2y agoGenuine question: does that mean when people die after consuming way too much caffeine, it's not because of "caffeine toxicity" per se, but because the effects of the caffeine put too much strain on their body?
- necubi 2y agoNobody is dying from the caffeine in coffee (like 50-100mg per cup). According to the NIH, LD50 of caffeine is 150-200mg/kg (so say 10g for a small person). That's like 100 cups of coffee. Even with espresso that's hard to imagine. It would need to be in powder form or concentrated in something far beyond natural levels of coffee/tea/matcha/etc.
- aphantastic 2y ago1 cup filter coffee can be 170mg or more. And LD50 isn’t really relevant here, even LD1 levels are deadly to hundreds of millions of people. It’s entirely possible for what some might consider a “normal” amount of coffee to be deadly to many. See other comment for espresso calculations. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=etnMr8oUSDo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=etnMr8oUSDo
- bumby 2y ago"It's entirely possible" isn't the way to think about estimating risk because it assumes the risk goal is zero (ie any risk > 0 means the outcome is "possible"). A dose greater than LD50 means "more probable than not" of dying, absent additional information, which is a more appropriate framing. Similarly with caffeine content "can be". All kinds of variables like roasting time affect the dose But the semi-standardized dose for a cup of coffee is about 100mg. Related to your link, they are a much larger cup of coffee for comparison. If you normalize it to the standard coffee size, it comes to 100mg caffeine, so right in line with what would be expected.
- necubi 2y agoLD50 is (an estimate) of the 50th percentile (i.e., 50% chance of dying), but that doesn't mean it's linear. It _certainly_ doesn't mean that 1% of people will die at 2% of that value, which I think is what you're implying. The lowest example of a lethal dose I can find in the literature is 57mg/kg. Caffeine overdoses are so rare that we don't know the true distribution, but it's clearly not the case that millions people will die from a few coffees. Your other comment calculated the lethal dose as *a gallon of espresso*. That's like 125 shots. That is not a remotely normal amount of coffee. It would take multiple people over an hour to make that much espresso for you. --- Edit: I can't reply, but "LD1" isn't a group of people and you can't just claim it's 1% of the population. LD50 doesn't imply anything about the population distribution or how it varies by person. It refers to a particular experimental set up (or estimate from a natural experiment) in which 50% of the subjects died after a certain dosage. For example, the LD50 of falling is ~50ft. Some people will be more susceptible to dying by falling a certain distance than others, but there are many other factors involved and it makes no sense to say someone is in 1% of falling-death-probability. I agree that LD50 doesn't tell you everything you'd want to know, like the lowest possible dose that might kill someone. There might be people who are extremely sensitive to a substance, or situations in which it's particularly dangerous (in combination with other substances or another health condition, for example). For something safe and widely used like caffeine, I'd expect that the vast majority of people would experience roughly similar toxicity (say, within 2x of the median) with a tiny population of outliers; but you can't just assume that there's 1% of the population that's drastically more sensitive.
- daedrdev 2y agoMost things are toxic at high enough doses, for example too much oxygen in the air is poisionous
- amelius 2y agoYes, but I get the impression that a lot of people have a limit on the number of cups they can drink per day (usually below 5), after which they get various symptoms.
- DebtDeflation 2y agoAt a high enough dose, sure. But study after study over the last decade has shown coffee to have a positive effect on everything from diabetes to Alzheimers.
- markasoftware 2y agofrom a brief look, it seems most of the benefits are attributed to antioxidants / other chemicals in the coffee, not caffeine.
- DebtDeflation 2y agoI'm not a medical professional, but my understanding is that at least for the anti Alzheimer effect, it is due to the caffeine, specifically the effect it has on dilating capillaries in the brain.
- NavinF 2y agoDoes that work with other stimulants? Pretty much all the stronger ones dialate capillaries with fewer side effects than caffeine
- khendron 2y agoNot for me. Coffee, anything caffeinated actually, makes me sick like I have the flu. The older I get, the more sensitive I become. I can't even eat chocolate anymore because of the caffeine content.
- panabee 2y agoThis is a good question and encapsulates the challenges of food and drug regulation. Yes and no. At certain concentrations, many safe compounds become dangerous in humans. Even at tiny doses, foods like peanuts may be safe for the vast majority yet lethal for a minority. Given how devilishly heterogeneous the human race is, the ideal solution provides safety testing at the individual level, not the population level [0]. But this is years away until computational and biological breakthroughs arrive. [0] Population level is a misnomer. FDA trial sizes below. Phase 1: 20 to 100 people Phase 2: up to several hundred people Phase 3: 300 to 3,000 people https://www.fda.gov/patients/drug-development-process/step-3-clinical-research https://www.fda.gov/patients/drug-development-process/step-3...
- EA-3167 2y agoKeep in mind that very commonly accepted safe substances such as carrots or water also become lethal at high enough doses, for all humans. It's often stated, and it can be tiring to hear, but the dose really does make the poison.
- pas 2y agoAnd context matters. Folks with this or that kidney problems can die from basically nothing while the median bloke doesn't even notice that their piss is a tad darker.
- EA-3167 2y agoThat's an excellent point, and of course individuals can have pretty stark differences in metabolism, with the alcohol flush reaction being a great and highly visible example.
- stefantalpalaru 2y ago[dead]
- 6SixTy 2y agoDose makes the poison
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison
- chrisweekly 2y agoToxicity is in the dose. Even good old H2O can be lethal in sufficient quantity.
- krispyfi 2y agohttps://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/panera-to-pull-highly-caffeinated-charged-lemonade-from-menu-after-wrongful-death-lawsuits/ar-BB1m3uYT https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/panera-to-pull-hig... Panera used to sell a drink that contained close to the FDA maximum recommended daily quantity of caffeine, and also allowed free refills. Several people died, and sales were halted after some wrongful death lawsuits. This isn't to say that caffeine is dangerous. Danger isn't an intrinsic property of a substance but rather an emergent property of the context in which it is used. (This is why the schedules of the Controlled Substance Act are inherently stupid.)
- cwillu 2y ago[flagged]
- zeofig 2y agoPoor little bastards can't eat anything fun
- computerdork 2y agosnorting coke probably gives them asthma:)
- akira2501 2y ago> This isn't a criticism of the FDA Why wouldn't it be? In many ways they've clearly lost the fight. They're much smaller and less supported than the entities they intend to regulate. There is a known revolving door problem between federal and commercial employment. The natural mission of regulating food _and_ drugs is no longer sensible in our current social and political environment.
- mschuster91 2y ago> The natural mission of regulating food _and_ drugs is no longer sensible in our current social and political environment. Speaks volumes about the state of the USA given that y'all's regulations on food are so lax that the topic already tanked an agreement with the EU (TTIP) as well as a bilateral agreement with the UK (the one the Brexiteers proclaimed would be possible once Brexit came, but still isn't there). The most obvious differences are washing eggs, washing chicken carcasses with chlorine and prophylactic (or worse, growth-stimulating) usage of antibiotics. All of that is banned here, but allowed in the US - mostly to mask the horrible sanitary and working conditions in farms and slaughterhouses. I'm not going to act like European slaughterhouses are paradises because they are everything but that, but nowhere near the levels of horror from the US. When even regulation to prevent the worst of the worst isn't feasible any more, frankly I'd say your system has failed entirely.
- wbl 2y agoThe regulations weren't what sank the treaty. They were an excuse used by influential agriculture lobbies to sink it.
- mschuster91 2y agoAg lobbies are one thing (and they're pretty problematic as well, not shying away from extortion and some IMHO are even bordering on terrorism), but rest assured our populations absolutely and vocally do not want chlorinated chickens, nor do we want GMO food.
- BurningFrog 2y agoAll those are "pesticides" that plants produce to try to poison predators. Other examples are cocaine and nicotine.