5 ms·

My goodness, for a website full of techincal individuals a lot of you are falling for the appeal to nature fallacy hard. Also, it looks like no one here knows h

by whodev 2y ago

My goodness, for a website full of techincal individuals a lot of you are falling for the appeal to nature fallacy hard. Also, it looks like no one here knows how to defer to experts. I don't know much about food safety standards, chemical compositions, additives, etc. so I've talked with people who are experts instead. And from what I have gotten, most people are freaking out because they lack an understanding of what is really safe or not. People believe that since a certain scary sounding chemical was added that the food is now less safe when that's not the case.

BytesAndGears 2y ago
I think an important note is that regulatory agencies in other countries have cracked down on some of those scary-sounding chemicals, due to them being unnecessary for food with no real benefit for the person eating it, and possible evidence of negative affects. I mentioned this in another comment, but as someone who has lived for multiple years in the US and Europe, it is a drastic difference in food quality between the two. Much easier to eat foods made of whole ingredients where I lived in Europe - even many prepackaged foods that we’d buy at the grocery store. I came across this link yesterday[1] on a health-focused HN thread[2]. The study split a group of overweight people up into low-carb and low-fat diets, to see which produced better weight loss. The group that lost the most weight was actually neither - it was just whoever ended up eating less processed foods and more whole foods. [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/to-lose-weight-focus-on-what-you-eat-not-how-much-study https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/to-lose-weight-focus... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42668123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42668123
- whodev 2y ago
  > other countries have cracked down on some of those scary-sounding chemicals, due to them being unnecessary for food with no real benefit for the person eating it, and possible evidence of negative affects Just because another country bans something does not make that thing harmful. Politicians banning food products and additives with no real scientific evidence is not unusual. They bend to public will, they are politicians after all. Also, studies that show "possible evidence of negative affects" in mice ingested at higher dosages then a human would ever eat or drink does not show they are harmful in humans. Humans are not mice after all. > as someone who has lived for multiple years in the US and Europe, it is a drastic difference in food quality between the two This is purely subjective, I've been to Europe and the Middle East, both have great food. But food in America is no worse in quality. The main difference is when I visited those area's I mostly ate out, at nicer restaurants where food would of course feel/taste/look better then the average meal at home or from fast food. But when eating at friends homes, the food quality (vegetables, fruits, meats) was no different than what I could get here in America. > it was just whoever ended up eating less processed foods and more whole foods I'm not arguing that we don't eat more ultra-processed foods. We do eat too many highly refined foods with little nutritional value. My argument is against blaming food additives, dyes, GMOs, HFCS, etc... Eating more whole foods, vegetables, and fruits would make you healthier, but that's due to the nutritional value, fiber, feeling more full for longer leading to reduced caloric intake, etc... Not because you got rid of food dyes.
  - willy_k 2y ago
    > I'm not arguing that we don't eat more ultra-processed foods. We do eat too many highly refined foods with little nutritional value. My argument is against blaming food additives, dyes, GMOs, HFCS, etc... Eating more whole foods, vegetables, and fruits would make you healthier, but that's due to the nutritional value, fiber, feeling more full for longer leading to reduced caloric intake, etc... Not because you got rid of food dyes. But the prevalence of the above ingredients serves to increase consumption of processed foods relative to whole foods, both by increasing “addictiveness” aka how much people eat, and by decreasing its cost. HFCS is the best example of this, having heightened addictive properties via increased satiety suppression and dopamine response compared to other sugars, while being heavily subsidized to the point that final prices see a 15% reduction. As a result, HFCS is added to many products it has no business being in, because it increases sales (and so consumption, of processed foods). https://pastebin.com/VpeCJw3D https://pastebin.com/VpeCJw3D
ipython 2y ago
Or, maybe some of us have lived experience where artificial food dyes have detrimental effects to our children. I don't need science to tell me what my own two eyes and lived experience says. Do I really need a double blind study to tell me that when one of my kids eats food laced with these dyes, he's crazy for a week, but when he eats candy w/o these dyes, he just is a normal kid with a sugar rush? My sibling comment goes into more detail, but claiming that anyone who has a lived experience is stupid (aka, falling for a logical fallacy) is just accelerating the distrust of "authority" at a time when we need it most.
- bmicraft 2y ago
  Someone with one (1) anecdote is not an authority and shouldn't be trusted like one. Eroding trust in authorities by equating actual experts with somebody who has a half baked opinion based on an anecdote seems like the real issue to me. Going around and assuming every opinion is based on objective reality instead of subjective experience filtered through human perception with all it's quirks is not a good way to arrive at truth.
  - ipython 2y ago
    I'm not asking to be treated or trusted like an authority. I'm just asking not to treat people, when sharing a lived experience shared with others (making this n>1), is told that their experience is "half baked". My lived experience is by definition my objective reality. Arguing with me that I could not possibly have experienced a cause and effect because some people didn't hold enough large enough placebo controlled double blind studies (I say this because double blind studies have studied this exact phenomenon, and triggered the retraction of some of these dyes in other countries) is just insulting after a while. We know so little about nutrition and how different individuals process different nutrients that the scientific consensus on healthy food habits, weight loss, etc have shifted dramatically over the years. We are facing an obesity epidemic in the US. A little humility would be nice in the face of what clearly is not working for the majority of the population. I mean, it's just food dye for God's sake, what's the "scientific" argument that foods must contain artificial colors?
scoofy 2y ago
This isn't even that surprising. It's been a controversial food additive banned in various countries basically my entire life, and I'm in my 40s.
- op00to 2y ago
  People eat maraschino cherries on ice cream sundaes in many countries where people claim the dye is banned, yet the cherries still contain the die. Maybe you should reevaluate your position.
  - scoofy 2y ago
    The issue isn't that it's a health risk directly, it's just the result of some very reasonable principals. The "Delaney Clause" in the Food Additives Amendment of 1958 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act is why it's getting banned. If something is known to cause cancer in animals, and it isn't necessary for the production of the food, then it shouldn't be included. This is simply an application of the Precautionary Principle to things already associated with harm. Since we can't know all the goods or harms that can come from a substance, if something is known to cause potential harm and it's unnecessary, then we shouldn't consume it. The human body is an absurdly complex multi-variate system, and throwing a bunch of unnecessary random shit at it not a great idea in general, but is generally reasonable when we don't know whether it's producing harms or benefits or neither. However, when we know these additives can produce harms, and it is wildly impractical to do repeated, controlled longitudinal studies with large sample sizes on humans, all at various levels of exposure. So, since the substances are entirely unnecessary we might as well just avoid them unless they are essential to creating products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Additives_Amendment_of_1958#Delaney_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Additives_Amendment_of_19... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Food,_Drug,_and_Cosmetic_Act_of_1938 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Food,_Drug,_and_Cosmet... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
gigatree 2y ago
Have you considered that those experts might have perverse incentives? It’s not a secret that the very regulators whose job it is to make sure we don’t eat poison are the same people who sell the food. But sure feel free to “trust the experts”, I’ll be over here doing my best to not eat things made out of coal tar (even if someone in a lab coat says it’s okie dokie).
- hakunin 2y ago
  Every single thing in our society has perverse incentives. Every single person who ever sells you something has incentive to sell you as little as possible for as much money as possible. Every single employer has incentive to pay you as little as possible for as much labor as possible. But that's not how things end up happening, because other forces are at play. People who worked their entire life in an industry and became experts on it, then become regulators for the same industry, have incentives to favor their industry, sure. But who else should be regulating the industry if not the expert in that industry? If you get someone who is not an insider, wouldn't they just fail at regulating, because they have no idea how it works? Also, the people who put someone in that position, isn't there a chain of accountability there? There are many people working side by side with the "evil person trying to enrich themselves". Bad acts come out. Incentives tend to balance each other out. It's not wrong that part of a regulator's job is to find a balance as to not destroy an industry while regulating it.
  - gigatree 2y ago
    > But that's not how things end up happening, because other forces are at play. Is it really not how things end up happening? We must be living in two different realities. The greater the power, the higher the likelihood it becomes corrupted. With such a high incentive to give into corruption, you can’t just hand-wave it away with “but I’m sure it gets balanced out by something”. Your local family doctor might be a good enough person to help you get better without expensive drugs, but the head of a large institution? Fat chance.
    - hakunin 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
theferalrobot 2y ago
> appeal to nature fallacy Appeal to nature isn't a fallacy, it is a rhetorical device and can be a completely logical razor. The appeal is to have a diet more in line with our evolutionary past. If we want a yellow food dye should we: A) derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and that a couple studies have confirmed is probably safe... B) derive it from petroleum (as current US yellow food dye is) that a couple studies say is probably safe. Who the hell would take B? Unless we believe that our studies are infallible, all encompassing and perfectly established and executed the first will always be a better option. Time and time again we see that things previously thought safe are not but I would argue it is far far rarer to see that on the more naturally derived side of food.
- arcticbull 2y ago
  > The appeal is to have a diet more in line with our evolutionary past. Okay, where in the evolutionary past did we eat Doritos colored with annatto? > A) derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and that a couple studies have confirmed is probably safe... A lot of things we have historically eaten are carcinogenic. Natural flavoring for root beer is flavored with sarsaparilla root. Fun fact, it contains safrole, a known carcinogen. Carrots, bananas, parsley, black pepper, clove, anise contain alkenylbenzene compounds which cause cancer in rodents. We've historically eaten coumarin-containing plants (tonka beans, cassia) -- carcinogenic. Furoanocoumarins in parsnips, celery root, grapefruit, etc, can cause skin burns and prevent many drugs from working (or make them work too fast). Cassava, sorghum, stone fruits, bamboo shoots and almonds contain cyanogenic glycosides which turn into cyanide when eaten. Undercooked beans contain lectins, and 4-5 kidney beans are enough to cause somachache, vomiting and diarrhea. Nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants) contain solanine which is toxic. Various fruits like pineapples have raphides which are sharp spikes made of oxalic acid. If you eat particularly aggressive ones they can even cause bleeding. The pawpaw fruit that has been eaten for generations contains annonacin, a neurotoxin. People have been eating (prepared) mushrooms like gyromitra that have gyromitrin (metabolized to monomethylhydrazine, rocket fuel, a neurotoxin) for generations too. It can actually cause ALS over time. Castor beans contain ricin. The difference is apparently God doesn't have to publish this information on an ingredients list. > B) derive it from petroleum (as current US yellow food dye is) that a couple studies say is probably safe. "A couple studies" is wildly disingenuous. A quick search will tell you as much.
GeoAtreides 2y ago
I also talked with people who are experts, and they assured me banning Red Dye 3, among other things, is necessary and it will improve population health in the long term. See, I can also make shit up.
- whodev 2y ago
  Great, but I can actually back it up. That's the difference here. I can point you to experts who agree with what I am saying and who I have chatted with.
  - GeoAtreides 2y ago
    Sure, that would be interesting to see. Point me to the experts :)
    - whodev 2y ago
      If you are actually interested then Dr. Jessica Knurick. She is accessible on different social media platforms and has a website where you can contact her.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
midtake 2y ago
Oh come off it. The United States has the highest rate of obesity in the WORLD (excluding some small Pacific islands). The US also has some of the most overengineered food. It doesn't take much to see the connection. We are well past the point of carefully reasoning about food. It is time to start killing off additives first and asking questions later. "Freaking out" is the reasonable stance when everything in the grocery store is poison.
- whodev 2y ago
  You are blaming the wrong thing though. America isn't obese because of red dye 40 or food additives, it's obese because Americans eat too much ultra processed foods that are high in calories and low in nutritional value. Along with minimal exercise and walking. Banning red dye 40 isn't going to solve anything, companies are just going to find another food dye, natural or synthetic. There needs to be major changes in the average American diet to incorporate more whole foods, fiber, vegetables, fruits, etc... Once that is done then take a harder look at the dyes and additives.
  - myroon5 2y ago
    If blaming behavior, worth noting food color dye consumption exacerbates behavioral issues like ADHD symptoms: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32006369/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32006369/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9573786/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9573786/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4321798/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4321798/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3441937/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3441937/
fuzzfactor 2y ago
As a benzene-handling professional for decades who never intends to cease entering environments subject to exposure, I've never considered intentionally ingesting non-food ingredients or contamination to be the least bit safe. Especially dyes and pesticides, if you study the chemistry of these you can see that very good characterization and identification of complex, unique, undesired impurities has not really been very comprehensive at all. Beside the possibility that the dye molecule itself may be the most toxic component anyway. With industrial hazards there is at least one layer of PPE, and I can do anything I see fit to further mitigate exposure in any way. I don't even know which dye is in things like Flamin Hot pop culture materials, but they sure look fake to me. And if the only PPE between me and the potentially-hazardous substance is the bag that the Cheetos come in, I'm always going to be highly dismayed when the integrity of the PPE is compromised for any reason :) As non-food ingredients have proliferated over the decades, all I can say is why even bother? Give me a break, they couldn't have used very good strawberries if they had to make them pink artificially. I am a lifelong science dude myself, studied dyes quite a bit and even synthesized some in the lab. So on this I trust the judgment of young mothers who are avoiding junk food for their kids more so than other scientists who propose that dyes are completely harmless for some reason.

by whodev 2y ago

BytesAndGears 2y ago

I think an important note is that regulatory agencies in other countries have cracked down on some of those scary-sounding chemicals, due to them being unnecessary for food with no real benefit for the person eating it, and possible evidence of negative affects. I mentioned this in another comment, but as someone who has lived for multiple years in the US and Europe, it is a drastic difference in food quality between the two. Much easier to eat foods made of whole ingredients where I lived in Europe - even many prepackaged foods that we’d buy at the grocery store. I came across this link yesterday[1] on a health-focused HN thread[2]. The study split a group of overweight people up into low-carb and low-fat diets, to see which produced better weight loss. The group that lost the most weight was actually neither - it was just whoever ended up eating less processed foods and more whole foods. [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/to-lose-weight-focus-on-what-you-eat-not-how-much-study https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/to-lose-weight-focus... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42668123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42668123

whodev 2y ago
> other countries have cracked down on some of those scary-sounding chemicals, due to them being unnecessary for food with no real benefit for the person eating it, and possible evidence of negative affects Just because another country bans something does not make that thing harmful. Politicians banning food products and additives with no real scientific evidence is not unusual. They bend to public will, they are politicians after all. Also, studies that show "possible evidence of negative affects" in mice ingested at higher dosages then a human would ever eat or drink does not show they are harmful in humans. Humans are not mice after all. > as someone who has lived for multiple years in the US and Europe, it is a drastic difference in food quality between the two This is purely subjective, I've been to Europe and the Middle East, both have great food. But food in America is no worse in quality. The main difference is when I visited those area's I mostly ate out, at nicer restaurants where food would of course feel/taste/look better then the average meal at home or from fast food. But when eating at friends homes, the food quality (vegetables, fruits, meats) was no different than what I could get here in America. > it was just whoever ended up eating less processed foods and more whole foods I'm not arguing that we don't eat more ultra-processed foods. We do eat too many highly refined foods with little nutritional value. My argument is against blaming food additives, dyes, GMOs, HFCS, etc... Eating more whole foods, vegetables, and fruits would make you healthier, but that's due to the nutritional value, fiber, feeling more full for longer leading to reduced caloric intake, etc... Not because you got rid of food dyes.
- willy_k 2y ago
  > I'm not arguing that we don't eat more ultra-processed foods. We do eat too many highly refined foods with little nutritional value. My argument is against blaming food additives, dyes, GMOs, HFCS, etc... Eating more whole foods, vegetables, and fruits would make you healthier, but that's due to the nutritional value, fiber, feeling more full for longer leading to reduced caloric intake, etc... Not because you got rid of food dyes. But the prevalence of the above ingredients serves to increase consumption of processed foods relative to whole foods, both by increasing “addictiveness” aka how much people eat, and by decreasing its cost. HFCS is the best example of this, having heightened addictive properties via increased satiety suppression and dopamine response compared to other sugars, while being heavily subsidized to the point that final prices see a 15% reduction. As a result, HFCS is added to many products it has no business being in, because it increases sales (and so consumption, of processed foods). https://pastebin.com/VpeCJw3D https://pastebin.com/VpeCJw3D

ipython 2y ago

Or, maybe some of us have lived experience where artificial food dyes have detrimental effects to our children. I don't need science to tell me what my own two eyes and lived experience says. Do I really need a double blind study to tell me that when one of my kids eats food laced with these dyes, he's crazy for a week, but when he eats candy w/o these dyes, he just is a normal kid with a sugar rush? My sibling comment goes into more detail, but claiming that anyone who has a lived experience is stupid (aka, falling for a logical fallacy) is just accelerating the distrust of "authority" at a time when we need it most.

bmicraft 2y ago
Someone with one (1) anecdote is not an authority and shouldn't be trusted like one. Eroding trust in authorities by equating actual experts with somebody who has a half baked opinion based on an anecdote seems like the real issue to me. Going around and assuming every opinion is based on objective reality instead of subjective experience filtered through human perception with all it's quirks is not a good way to arrive at truth.
- ipython 2y ago
  I'm not asking to be treated or trusted like an authority. I'm just asking not to treat people, when sharing a lived experience shared with others (making this n>1), is told that their experience is "half baked". My lived experience is by definition my objective reality. Arguing with me that I could not possibly have experienced a cause and effect because some people didn't hold enough large enough placebo controlled double blind studies (I say this because double blind studies have studied this exact phenomenon, and triggered the retraction of some of these dyes in other countries) is just insulting after a while. We know so little about nutrition and how different individuals process different nutrients that the scientific consensus on healthy food habits, weight loss, etc have shifted dramatically over the years. We are facing an obesity epidemic in the US. A little humility would be nice in the face of what clearly is not working for the majority of the population. I mean, it's just food dye for God's sake, what's the "scientific" argument that foods must contain artificial colors?

scoofy 2y ago

This isn't even that surprising. It's been a controversial food additive banned in various countries basically my entire life, and I'm in my 40s.

op00to 2y ago
People eat maraschino cherries on ice cream sundaes in many countries where people claim the dye is banned, yet the cherries still contain the die. Maybe you should reevaluate your position.
- scoofy 2y ago
  The issue isn't that it's a health risk directly, it's just the result of some very reasonable principals. The "Delaney Clause" in the Food Additives Amendment of 1958 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act is why it's getting banned. If something is known to cause cancer in animals, and it isn't necessary for the production of the food, then it shouldn't be included. This is simply an application of the Precautionary Principle to things already associated with harm. Since we can't know all the goods or harms that can come from a substance, if something is known to cause potential harm and it's unnecessary, then we shouldn't consume it. The human body is an absurdly complex multi-variate system, and throwing a bunch of unnecessary random shit at it not a great idea in general, but is generally reasonable when we don't know whether it's producing harms or benefits or neither. However, when we know these additives can produce harms, and it is wildly impractical to do repeated, controlled longitudinal studies with large sample sizes on humans, all at various levels of exposure. So, since the substances are entirely unnecessary we might as well just avoid them unless they are essential to creating products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Additives_Amendment_of_1958#Delaney_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Additives_Amendment_of_19... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Food,_Drug,_and_Cosmetic_Act_of_1938 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Food,_Drug,_and_Cosmet... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

gigatree 2y ago

Have you considered that those experts might have perverse incentives? It’s not a secret that the very regulators whose job it is to make sure we don’t eat poison are the same people who sell the food. But sure feel free to “trust the experts”, I’ll be over here doing my best to not eat things made out of coal tar (even if someone in a lab coat says it’s okie dokie).

hakunin 2y ago
Every single thing in our society has perverse incentives. Every single person who ever sells you something has incentive to sell you as little as possible for as much money as possible. Every single employer has incentive to pay you as little as possible for as much labor as possible. But that's not how things end up happening, because other forces are at play. People who worked their entire life in an industry and became experts on it, then become regulators for the same industry, have incentives to favor their industry, sure. But who else should be regulating the industry if not the expert in that industry? If you get someone who is not an insider, wouldn't they just fail at regulating, because they have no idea how it works? Also, the people who put someone in that position, isn't there a chain of accountability there? There are many people working side by side with the "evil person trying to enrich themselves". Bad acts come out. Incentives tend to balance each other out. It's not wrong that part of a regulator's job is to find a balance as to not destroy an industry while regulating it.
- gigatree 2y ago
  > But that's not how things end up happening, because other forces are at play. Is it really not how things end up happening? We must be living in two different realities. The greater the power, the higher the likelihood it becomes corrupted. With such a high incentive to give into corruption, you can’t just hand-wave it away with “but I’m sure it gets balanced out by something”. Your local family doctor might be a good enough person to help you get better without expensive drugs, but the head of a large institution? Fat chance.
  - hakunin 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

theferalrobot 2y ago

> appeal to nature fallacy Appeal to nature isn't a fallacy, it is a rhetorical device and can be a completely logical razor. The appeal is to have a diet more in line with our evolutionary past. If we want a yellow food dye should we: A) derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and that a couple studies have confirmed is probably safe... B) derive it from petroleum (as current US yellow food dye is) that a couple studies say is probably safe. Who the hell would take B? Unless we believe that our studies are infallible, all encompassing and perfectly established and executed the first will always be a better option. Time and time again we see that things previously thought safe are not but I would argue it is far far rarer to see that on the more naturally derived side of food.

arcticbull 2y ago
> The appeal is to have a diet more in line with our evolutionary past. Okay, where in the evolutionary past did we eat Doritos colored with annatto? > A) derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and that a couple studies have confirmed is probably safe... A lot of things we have historically eaten are carcinogenic. Natural flavoring for root beer is flavored with sarsaparilla root. Fun fact, it contains safrole, a known carcinogen. Carrots, bananas, parsley, black pepper, clove, anise contain alkenylbenzene compounds which cause cancer in rodents. We've historically eaten coumarin-containing plants (tonka beans, cassia) -- carcinogenic. Furoanocoumarins in parsnips, celery root, grapefruit, etc, can cause skin burns and prevent many drugs from working (or make them work too fast). Cassava, sorghum, stone fruits, bamboo shoots and almonds contain cyanogenic glycosides which turn into cyanide when eaten. Undercooked beans contain lectins, and 4-5 kidney beans are enough to cause somachache, vomiting and diarrhea. Nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants) contain solanine which is toxic. Various fruits like pineapples have raphides which are sharp spikes made of oxalic acid. If you eat particularly aggressive ones they can even cause bleeding. The pawpaw fruit that has been eaten for generations contains annonacin, a neurotoxin. People have been eating (prepared) mushrooms like gyromitra that have gyromitrin (metabolized to monomethylhydrazine, rocket fuel, a neurotoxin) for generations too. It can actually cause ALS over time. Castor beans contain ricin. The difference is apparently God doesn't have to publish this information on an ingredients list. > B) derive it from petroleum (as current US yellow food dye is) that a couple studies say is probably safe. "A couple studies" is wildly disingenuous. A quick search will tell you as much.

GeoAtreides 2y ago

I also talked with people who are experts, and they assured me banning Red Dye 3, among other things, is necessary and it will improve population health in the long term. See, I can also make shit up.

whodev 2y ago
Great, but I can actually back it up. That's the difference here. I can point you to experts who agree with what I am saying and who I have chatted with.
- GeoAtreides 2y ago
  Sure, that would be interesting to see. Point me to the experts :)
  - whodev 2y ago
    If you are actually interested then Dr. Jessica Knurick. She is accessible on different social media platforms and has a website where you can contact her.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

midtake 2y ago

Oh come off it. The United States has the highest rate of obesity in the WORLD (excluding some small Pacific islands). The US also has some of the most overengineered food. It doesn't take much to see the connection. We are well past the point of carefully reasoning about food. It is time to start killing off additives first and asking questions later. "Freaking out" is the reasonable stance when everything in the grocery store is poison.

whodev 2y ago
You are blaming the wrong thing though. America isn't obese because of red dye 40 or food additives, it's obese because Americans eat too much ultra processed foods that are high in calories and low in nutritional value. Along with minimal exercise and walking. Banning red dye 40 isn't going to solve anything, companies are just going to find another food dye, natural or synthetic. There needs to be major changes in the average American diet to incorporate more whole foods, fiber, vegetables, fruits, etc... Once that is done then take a harder look at the dyes and additives.
- myroon5 2y ago
  If blaming behavior, worth noting food color dye consumption exacerbates behavioral issues like ADHD symptoms: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32006369/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32006369/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9573786/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9573786/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4321798/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4321798/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3441937/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3441937/

fuzzfactor 2y ago

As a benzene-handling professional for decades who never intends to cease entering environments subject to exposure, I've never considered intentionally ingesting non-food ingredients or contamination to be the least bit safe. Especially dyes and pesticides, if you study the chemistry of these you can see that very good characterization and identification of complex, unique, undesired impurities has not really been very comprehensive at all. Beside the possibility that the dye molecule itself may be the most toxic component anyway. With industrial hazards there is at least one layer of PPE, and I can do anything I see fit to further mitigate exposure in any way. I don't even know which dye is in things like Flamin Hot pop culture materials, but they sure look fake to me. And if the only PPE between me and the potentially-hazardous substance is the bag that the Cheetos come in, I'm always going to be highly dismayed when the integrity of the PPE is compromised for any reason :) As non-food ingredients have proliferated over the decades, all I can say is why even bother? Give me a break, they couldn't have used very good strawberries if they had to make them pink artificially. I am a lifelong science dude myself, studied dyes quite a bit and even synthesized some in the lab. So on this I trust the judgment of young mothers who are avoiding junk food for their kids more so than other scientists who propose that dyes are completely harmless for some reason.