“Chemicals” in food. Literally every substance, every food and people are composed of them. The common usage has bastardized the meaning and latched on to the naturalistic fallacy. Snake venom is natural. Cyanide is natural. Arsenic and Uranium are natural. Botulinum toxin is natural. Something being naturally occurring does not automatically make it good for you just as something being made in a lab does not equate to being bad for you.
Same thing with people thinking that organic food is healthier. Organic food might be good for the environment, but not necessarily the climate or your health.
I worked in produce as a quality inspector for a couple years. Organic generally just means lower quality for higher price. No one is regulating it as far as I know, they can just skip pesticides, do everything else the same and charge more for the same product that actually cost them less to produce. We refered to it as a hillarious scam when the boss wasnt around.
Organic has less pesticides. Which is probably healthier no? I mostly buy non organic, but always get organic for certain foods like strawberries and oats since they tend to have so much pesticides used on them.
Less pesticides also means more bacteria and more bug poop. There is a reason why they use pesticides, after all.
Even if there are trace amounts of pesticides left, you can just wash the produce, which you should always do anyway. Same reason you wash the organic produce to get rid of bug stuff…
The trace amounts of bug poop or pesticides really makes no difference when it comes to your health.
A guy at a deli counter slicing cold cuts and assembling them into a sandwich is “processed food”. Using the term as a health concern marker is meaningless.
Even Kraft Singles, the posterchild of “processed food”, famously disallowed to legally call itself “cheese” on its packaging, what is it made of? What hellish process hath humanity wrought? Cheddar cheese, sodium citrate (a mundane variety of salt), and water. That’s it.
It’s not forbidden from being called “cheese” because it’s a bastard concoction of mad scientist chemicals that approximate cheese to ruse consumers. It’s simply cheese, literally watered down to the point that you can’t call it cheese anymore.
All that the sodium citrate is doing in this situation is acting as a binder that helps the cheese solids hold on to the water. This action is what gives many dishes, sauces, and the like their smooth, creamy texture. But use the word for that – “emulsifier” – and suddenly people think you’re trying to poison them, because that’s a scary chemical word.
Why does this product exist? Because it offers a unique melty texture that people appreciate in certain contexts. It’s a niche product with a niche function. Treat it like one.
I haven’t run into anyone who considers emulsifier a scary chemical word. Most people I know with any baking skill know what the word means and use egg yolks for that purpose all the time.
tl;dw The chemicals used in chemotherapy are naturally occurring, and science uses what we know works. So when people say “you should use natural remedies”, what they really mean is, you should use something:
we don’t know whether it works
we know doesn’t work
we know is actively harmful
And the first two categories aren’t necessarily bad, an Epsom salt bath can feel really nice, but don’t think it’s a replacement for proper medical science.
I love when they compare food labels from two countries but don’t notice the ingredients are the same just described in different words or with different levels of verbosity based on the local regulations.
On one hand I agree with you, the way “chemicals” are used in everyday speech differs from the text book definition.
On the other hand, if we take our heads out of our asses and stop the "well actually"s I kinda have to agree with being against “chemicals” in food. Arsenic is naturally occurring, sure, but at what concentration? Radioactive uranium is a naturally occurring element, but I would hardly call nuclear fallout something natural.
Uranium doesnt need to undergo fission to be toxic. Fission also occurred naturally in the oklo nuclear reactor long ago. Uranium mined from that area is depleted in U235 and there are higher concentrations of stable isotopes derived from fission products in that area. Arsenic is found in higher concentrations in rice crops. Its found in certain soils and lakes. In certain areas in India, Fluoride can be high enough in concentration to cause bone growth abnormalities. Selenium is found in higher concentrations in the western US to the point that certain plants take it up and concentrate it further up to 2% dry weight. The plants use it as a defense against herbivory. Some trees concentrate nickel to the point that it turns their sap blue and may be a viable source of the element. i.e biomining. The plants that take up selenium also make an alkaloid called swainsonine that if ingested in high enough quantities, can cause cattle and other animals to shake themselves to death. Hence they are colloquially named locoweed i.e crazy weed. Certain plants were historically used as a form of crude birth control due to some of the compounds found in them being abortificants. Echinacea was pulled from the market as it was found to significantly increase the risk of heart attack and stroke due to its stimulant properties. Foxglove was used to develop digitalis which is a valuable heart medication but the plant itself is fairly dangerous. Metformin was derived from naturally occurring compounds that are poisonous in the concentrations they are naturally found in due to their tendency to cause severe hypoglycemia. There are TONS of plants that contain hepatotoxic compounds (cause liver damage). Green potatoes, rhubarb, raw red kidney beans, those all have substances in parts of them that can cause illness.
The point is that nature has plenty of ways to kill. Something being “natural” is no guarantee of safety.
“Chemicals” in food. Literally every substance, every food and people are composed of them. The common usage has bastardized the meaning and latched on to the naturalistic fallacy. Snake venom is natural. Cyanide is natural. Arsenic and Uranium are natural. Botulinum toxin is natural. Something being naturally occurring does not automatically make it good for you just as something being made in a lab does not equate to being bad for you.
Same thing with people thinking that organic food is healthier. Organic food might be good for the environment, but not necessarily the climate or your health.
I worked in produce as a quality inspector for a couple years. Organic generally just means lower quality for higher price. No one is regulating it as far as I know, they can just skip pesticides, do everything else the same and charge more for the same product that actually cost them less to produce. We refered to it as a hillarious scam when the boss wasnt around.
Organic has less pesticides. Which is probably healthier no? I mostly buy non organic, but always get organic for certain foods like strawberries and oats since they tend to have so much pesticides used on them.
Less pesticides also means more bacteria and more bug poop. There is a reason why they use pesticides, after all.
Even if there are trace amounts of pesticides left, you can just wash the produce, which you should always do anyway. Same reason you wash the organic produce to get rid of bug stuff…
The trace amounts of bug poop or pesticides really makes no difference when it comes to your health.
My least favorite is “it’s processed”
I can count the ingredients on my hands, and the “processing” is like 4 steps max.
“Unga bunga me invent new process for food. It called cooking. Make less parasites in meat. Very good.”
“Cooking bad, garg. We no want processed food.”
Cooking is processing food.
A guy at a deli counter slicing cold cuts and assembling them into a sandwich is “processed food”. Using the term as a health concern marker is meaningless.
Even Kraft Singles, the posterchild of “processed food”, famously disallowed to legally call itself “cheese” on its packaging, what is it made of? What hellish process hath humanity wrought? Cheddar cheese, sodium citrate (a mundane variety of salt), and water. That’s it.
It’s not forbidden from being called “cheese” because it’s a bastard concoction of mad scientist chemicals that approximate cheese to ruse consumers. It’s simply cheese, literally watered down to the point that you can’t call it cheese anymore.
All that the sodium citrate is doing in this situation is acting as a binder that helps the cheese solids hold on to the water. This action is what gives many dishes, sauces, and the like their smooth, creamy texture. But use the word for that – “emulsifier” – and suddenly people think you’re trying to poison them, because that’s a scary chemical word.
Why does this product exist? Because it offers a unique melty texture that people appreciate in certain contexts. It’s a niche product with a niche function. Treat it like one.
I haven’t run into anyone who considers emulsifier a scary chemical word. Most people I know with any baking skill know what the word means and use egg yolks for that purpose all the time.
I really liked this post by Hank Green regarding “natural remedies”.
tl;dw The chemicals used in chemotherapy are naturally occurring, and science uses what we know works. So when people say “you should use natural remedies”, what they really mean is, you should use something:
And the first two categories aren’t necessarily bad, an Epsom salt bath can feel really nice, but don’t think it’s a replacement for proper medical science.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
this post by Hank Green
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I love when they compare food labels from two countries but don’t notice the ingredients are the same just described in different words or with different levels of verbosity based on the local regulations.
On one hand I agree with you, the way “chemicals” are used in everyday speech differs from the text book definition.
On the other hand, if we take our heads out of our asses and stop the "well actually"s I kinda have to agree with being against “chemicals” in food. Arsenic is naturally occurring, sure, but at what concentration? Radioactive uranium is a naturally occurring element, but I would hardly call nuclear fallout something natural.
Uranium doesnt need to undergo fission to be toxic. Fission also occurred naturally in the oklo nuclear reactor long ago. Uranium mined from that area is depleted in U235 and there are higher concentrations of stable isotopes derived from fission products in that area. Arsenic is found in higher concentrations in rice crops. Its found in certain soils and lakes. In certain areas in India, Fluoride can be high enough in concentration to cause bone growth abnormalities. Selenium is found in higher concentrations in the western US to the point that certain plants take it up and concentrate it further up to 2% dry weight. The plants use it as a defense against herbivory. Some trees concentrate nickel to the point that it turns their sap blue and may be a viable source of the element. i.e biomining. The plants that take up selenium also make an alkaloid called swainsonine that if ingested in high enough quantities, can cause cattle and other animals to shake themselves to death. Hence they are colloquially named locoweed i.e crazy weed. Certain plants were historically used as a form of crude birth control due to some of the compounds found in them being abortificants. Echinacea was pulled from the market as it was found to significantly increase the risk of heart attack and stroke due to its stimulant properties. Foxglove was used to develop digitalis which is a valuable heart medication but the plant itself is fairly dangerous. Metformin was derived from naturally occurring compounds that are poisonous in the concentrations they are naturally found in due to their tendency to cause severe hypoglycemia. There are TONS of plants that contain hepatotoxic compounds (cause liver damage). Green potatoes, rhubarb, raw red kidney beans, those all have substances in parts of them that can cause illness.
The point is that nature has plenty of ways to kill. Something being “natural” is no guarantee of safety.