4 ms·

Ubiquitous access to food that causes disease does not make 'The poor of today better of than the middle class of the past'.

• hga 13y ago
  Using the toxicologists' maxim ""All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison." (normally "The dose makes the poison"), is there any food that does not/can not cause disease?
  • engrenage 13y ago
    So all food is equivalent! Following your maxim, we can replace food stamps with an unlimited supply of strychnine and just let people choose a healthy dose for themselves.
    • hga 13y ago
      You're welcome to show me (I'm from Missouri) where anyone has seriously suggested strychnine or other "official" poisons are foods. Which is very different from e.g. pointing out that while strychnine has an human LD50 of 1-2 mg/kg, "In low dosages, strychnine can act as a stimulant and has been used by athletes to enhance their performance." followed by a couple of Olympic examples in 1904 and 1992 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strychnine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strychnine).
      • engrenage 13y ago
        That was an absurd comment, meant to illustrate how meaningless it is to say 'anything is poisonous in the right dose' in a thread about whether the poor today are better off than the middle classes of some past era.