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It reminds me of people who won't eat certain foods because it contains "too many chemicals".
by gman83 2y ago
It reminds me of people who won't eat certain foods because it contains "too many chemicals".
- haswell 2y agoExcept we know certain chemicals are harmful, and we have no idea about the long term effects of many others. We also have a history of using materials we don’t understand and only stopping after it kills or harms enough people.
- randomcarbloke 2y agoyou just sound like an anti-vaxer, one of those UPF fearmongering cultists.
- jcranmer 2y agoThe problem with this worldview is that it dramatically underestimates the harm of "natural" products compared to "artificial" products. You see, if it's fermented grape juice, it's "natural", and so it's a complex flavor profile. But if you actually list out what's in it, it's a lot of toxic chemicals banned as food additives, and synthetic wine is illegal as a result. And you can't omit the egregiously toxic stuff because it makes the test came out wrong.
- IAmBroom 2y agoYour assumptions about beverage law are dead wrong. "Synthetic wine", whatever you mean by that, is not "illegal". And beverage makers actually have much more freedom than ordinary food makers in their choices of ingredients.
- jcranmer 2y agoSynthetic wine is the name for people who are trying to create wine from its chemical ingredients rather than from the natural process of fermentation. There was an article several years back about one of these groups trying to get regulatory approval to sell their product, and the stumbling block was the use of things that weren't approved additives. (I want to say it was tannins, since that's the most overtly problematic chemical in wine, but it has been several years since I've seen the article, so I could be mixing it up for one of the other carcinogens involved).
- IAmBroom 2y agoYou mean like caffeine and fried animal fat? :D
- haswell 2y agoMy point wasn't that there are no naturally occurring harms, but that foods which on their own are otherwise considered safe may take on a different safety profile when altered depending on the nature of that alteration. e.g. we're beginning to realize that eating highly processed meats on a regular basis can cause GI problems/cancer in the long run while eating some of the components individually and prepared differently does not.
- bix6 2y agoThere’s a big difference between a real strawberry and a vat of chemicals called strawberries.
- trelane 2y agoSeems akin to the Ship of Theseus. Is an entirely artificial--but indistinguishable down to the atomic level--strawberry not a strawberry?
- haswell 2y agoWhen we have the ability to replicate strawberries at the atomic level, then I’d grant you this point. We presently do not, and the market is filled with products calling themselves one thing while in reality being in essence a vat full of chemicals.
- trelane 2y agoMy point was that strawberries are a vat of chemicals.
- haswell 2y agoBut surely you’d agree that “vat of chemicals” is not the only metric by which to evaluate a substance, and that not all vats of chemicals are strawberries. You can play this game with everything that exists. Everything is just a concoction of atoms. But some arrangements of atoms result in nuclear weapons. Others make up the breakfast I ate this morning. The fact that they’re all just atoms doesn’t mean they share other properties like: safe to eat, tastes good to humans, etc.
- randomcarbloke 2y agoapples contain amygdalin and cyanide, theoretically lab-grown apples that exclude these are far better for you than wild/farmed apples.
- 2y ago