That said, there is something wrong with our food. We have had an explosion in auto-immune disorders over the last few decades that is accelerating. Allergies to common foods are increasing rapidly as well. An allergist that I see has recently starting adding citrus tests to her test panel, because citrus is suddenly (and for unknown reasons) becoming a big problem. I don't know what's wrong, but I do hope we figure it out.
If you aren't sure, then I don't think I get the logic on the default being "okay, feed it to your kids!". Surely it makes more sense to be cautious about the things we ingest..
Um. There's kind of a big difference between requiring something and just not forbidding it.
Completely agree
> If you aren't sure, then I don't think I get the logic on the default being "okay, feed it to your kids!".
False dichotomy. I don't think the choices are either "ban it" or "okay, feed it to your kids!" There's a middle ground there that I think makes more sense.
Why would you feed something to your kids just because it’s legal?
Who are the idiots that just pick things blindly off of shelves in stores without reading what’s in it?
Sugar is completely legal, yet I read the amounts of sugars in foods to avoid high sugar items. I’m also not giving my children bottles of olive oil to drink with dinner.
Can you name any specific items that you feel it was a disservice to ban, and say why?
But here's an example: Cannabis. Why? There's now tremendous evidence that the ban was misguided, and that there are very real medicinal properties that benefit the human body and help control inflammation. When banning it (and making it a schedule 1 substance) research was severely hampered and in many cases halted.
The FDA faces the same ethical dilemma every time they decide on new drugs. A slow approval process is literally letting people suffer and die in exchange for trials with more certainty.
The old FDA food guidelines that shape what schools are allowed to feed children are a perfect example of the stupidity of legislating based on poorly understood food science. “Carbs are good, fats are bad!”
Low sodium guidelines because “salt kills people!” also turned out to be pretty stupid in retrospect.
There are many possible culprits from gut bacteria to hygiene hypothesis of an overactive immune system going after anything that remotely looks the part due to having evolved in filthier environments and being evolutionary "calibrated" to be overactive by default because parasites immunosuppress.
I don't know that for sure. It's simply my suspicion as a mostly layperson that has spent years researching and experimenting on myself through various diets, everything from SAD (Standard American Diet) to Paleo, AIP, Carnivore, Keto, etc. I notice a huge difference in the way I feel based on how I'm eating.
Is there a list of stats for incidence of food allergies? It seems many friends I know (in EU) have food allergies to things like cucumber, hazel, peanuts, also gluten (celiax or something). One person I know has Crohn's disease. I would be curious to see the stats in both US and EU to see if it's really linked to a region's food. Or if it's just that common diets across the world are causing it.
Edit: or a third possibility is that rates haven't changed at all and it could be increase in either reporting or population making it seem like it's more commom now than before.
What you say is very interesting. Cucumber (like citrus) was also not something that people really had allergies to until recently (or possibly your third possibility kicks in here). Peanuts and gluten have skyrocketed recently too.
Maybe off topic, but I read an interesting theory regarding the use of GMOs to explain this. The logic went basically like this:
Plants were genetically modified to be resistant to herbicides -> farmers began spraying fields indiscriminately, knowing that the plants they cared about wouldn't die, but the weeds would, therefore producing bumper crops much more regularly -> This led to one of two possibilities: 1. the chemicals are being consumed in unsafe quantities by humans now when they eat those plants or 2. the mutations that hardened the plants changed their protein structure such that they are less digestible, which leads to intestinal damage, which promotes intestinal permeability, which leads to food allergies to foods not previously a problem.
In 2018 or 2017 they removed the import ban for high fructose corn syrup from the USA into the EU. Now HFCS making its way into many supermarket products.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/25/why-am...
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-europeans-dont-refrigera...
I'm not sure if I prefer the more liberal approach by the US or the more conservative one by the EU. In general I'm in favor of only banning things when they're proven to cause harm, so innovation is not stifled because of some nonsense hysteria.
Since this is concerning my health though, I'm really unsure.
Here is how to make an artificial egg:
IT'S A health hazard.
The bit with dyes on kid focus issues for instance. That doesn't sound like a health effect - it sounds like kids being excited over bright colors as they are prone to be! It seems to fit so well with the suggestion bias of thinking kids were more hyperactive when they were given candy.
I prefer the way you order steaks in, at least, Holland and Switzerland. The steak comes with nothing - which is almost always what I want. In the US I have to explicitly ask for no potatoes, for instance.
There is a lot of “people have more allergies/obsessing/whatever than the old days,” and the assumption is that it’s because of the food, without actual science proving that’s the case; it’s just a hypothesis that doesn’t necessarily account for thousands of other variables.
People have more allergies now than they used to. Could that not be caused by more electromagnetic radiation? More TV watching? Typing more?
Bread has sugar in it. If you want bread without sugar in it, you must either pay more for the organic stuff or make it yourself. If you want bread without any additives or preservatives at all, you must buy your wheat from outside the country. Wheat in the US is fortified with iron and vitamin B by law.
There's probably some room for slower digestion and absorption to matter, but calorie availability and density is likely the bigger problem then the exact nature of the calories.
I bake all my own bread. I use one level teaspoon of caster sugar in warm water to get the yeast going. You can add a bit more to get a harder crust on the bread. But this is so little, and it mostly gets used by the yeast, so that it has negligible effect upon the taste. Salt makes a vastly bigger difference.
I understand that much mass-produced bread in the US has greatly larger quantities of sugar in it. In the UK, this is only seen in "long-life" bread (which tastes terrible, and I don't know of anyone who buys it).
also what's wrong with iron and vitamin?
Edit: the linked article mentions that research into the health risks of mustard oil has not been conclusive.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/dining/american-chefs-dis...
How is it untrue? The chefs in that article are (technically illegally) using massage oil with a required "for external use only" warning label, because that is "the only use for which it is legally approved in the United States."
https://www.epicurious.com/archive/blogs/editor/2014/04/wher...
> but I'm totally for banning strongly psychoactive ingredients from food - cannabis should be a controlled substance.
That reads to me as contradictory. banning != controlled substance
Constant evaluation, testing, and liability for people/companies that knowingly use dangerous or harmful ingredients can go a long way here. In fact often times it's the only way broader datasets can be gathered. The market provides a strong incentive here as well not to poison your customers.
I also think that education, including warnings on packages, and then letting adults make their own decisions, is a good way to go. One state that I know of recently banned a pest control chemical because some idiot sprayed his dog's food bowl with it. The dog later died. The state's knee jerk response of banning it is counter-productive IMHO. I've been using it for DIY pest control for many years and it is one of the most effective I know of, and when used as directed is perfectly safe (don't spray anything that will be ingested with it, such as dog food bowls, gardens, etc).
The history of corporate malfeasance and the desire of people to optimize for short term gain versus long term gain indicates that your view is not supported by reality.
For example see the cigarette industry and how it deliberately made its products addictive and more dangerous.
You mean the good old "Okay, I won't say anything when you feed it to your kids, but I didn't say it's OK, so if they die it's your fault!" ground?
Selfishly, I’d be happy with banning a lot more food stuff. I love salt, sugar, and saturated fat, and like that they are well understood.
Most of the newer riskier things are ways to improve margins for companies that mass produce food, either by letting it sit on a shelf longer, or to make processed cornmeal taste more interesting.
Growth hormones exist to make the agriculturist more money, they don’t help feed a war torn country.
If the priority of these systems were solving hunger, we’d disincentive meat and dairy production and incentivize high nutritious vegetarian production.
When we’re dumping corn into salmon feed, sugars, and vehicle fuel, I can’t fall for the idea that food is constrained by supply.
Producers make production efficient to capture more of the market at the lower price points on the demand curve. There aren’t enough rich people to pay for thick margins at a large scale in the food industry. The only ones with large margins are the organic farmers selling to rich people.
Growth hormones exist to make chicken much faster, which means much cheaper chicken for consumers and to make the chicken raisers more money. If it weren’t cheaper, people wouldn’t buy more of it and it likely wouldn’t be worth the investment.
Here’s a thought exercise, why do you think sellers of factory chickens outsell free range chickens by orders of magnitude? If the only difference was margin and not price, nobody would buy the factory stuff.
I don't know if you're an expert in Haggis, so maybe you know more than me, but this FAQ says otherwise.
http://www.scottishhaggis.com/index.php/frequently-asked-que...
> the USDA does not allow sheep lungs to be used in manufacture
In other words, you pointed to a source which confirms that it is possible to make and sell haggis domestically in the US.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Joy
If they had wished to say Kinder Surprise, they could and should have done so.
But even if you are right as it pertains to wheat your claim is that no food can be deemed safe. That’s a big claim and one that is very hard to support. We know some foods are safe (in the general sense of the term).
I think you've confused me with will4274 who said:
> It's impossible to prove that a food item is safe. The two categories are known to be bad and not know to be bad.
Regarding the subject tho, I think definitions of "safe" and also who would comprise a "credible source" are probably more to the crux of the discussion.
Your implication that because one or several persons (or companies) did something wrong, therefore all of mankind is bad/evil is fallacious. Because a neighbor of mine is a thief or a murderer, does not make all neighbors thiefs and murderers. We hold him accountable for his actions.
Your view would make sense if market forces always lead to companies not wanting to poison their clients. But this isn’t the case.
> Constant evaluation, testing, and liability for people/companies that knowingly use dangerous or harmful ingredients can go a long way here. In fact often times it's the only way broader datasets can be gathered. The market provides a strong incentive here as well not to poison your customers.
as my one prescription, when in fact it is not. It's just a piece of the puzzle. In fact I agree with this statement of yours:
> Society, in the form of government, needs to be vigilant against wrongdoing and in the case of food we ought not rely on market forces to prevent bad actors from unleashing their bad intentions on society.
I also may have over-read into your reply that you don't believe the market has any ability to disincentivize bad behavior, which after reading your latest reply may not be the case. Please correct me if I'm not summarizing your point accurately, but it seems you agree that markets do incentivize good behavior, but that it isn't perfect and therefore governments should have a role in ensuring people (and corporations) don't misbehave. If that's an accurate summary of your position, then I agree with that. We may disagree on what optimal intervention levels look like, but we could at least agree on the broader point :-)
I do not agree with your analogy. People do refer to "vegetarian hamburgers". For examples, https://www.yummly.com/recipe/Vegetarian-Hamburgers-626992?p... and https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g30196-d10434055... .
People also refer to vegetarian haggis - https://www.hendersonsofedinburgh.co.uk/food/vegan-haggis-an... and https://www.macsween.co.uk/products/delicious-every-day-vege... .
The Wikipedia page points out that "Some commercial haggis is largely made from pig, rather than sheep, offal" and points to http://www.ramsayofcarluke.co.uk/products/traditional-ball-h... which uses pig lungs instead of sheep lungs.
The Wikipedia page also references a 1615 recipe for haggis which does not require sheep lungs, saying "oat-meale mixed with blood, and the Liver of either Sheepe, Calfe or Swine, maketh that pudding which is called the Haggas or Haggus".
To me this sounds like the old gatekeeper question of who gets to assign authenticity. Since things called "haggis" are sold in Scotland (or at least the UK), and do not have sheep lungs, I think that means it is incorrect to say that just because a product sold in the US or Canada does not have sheep lungs in it, it cannot be called haggis.
Also, Joy were introduced in Italy in 2001, so they’ve been in Europe for a long time.