

Why it’s so easy to believe our food is toxic - kafkaesque
http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2014/04/29/easy-believe-food-toxic/

======
rdtsc
It is easy for a few reasons (I am not saying all these are 100% sound just
presenting a few of them):

* FDA and the supposed agencies entrusted by public to protect the public from poisons in the food have deemed to have failed many times. There is a revolving door between large agribusinesses and FDA. Department heads and CEO/COOs play musical chairs back and forth between. Trusting FDA to police the industry is like trusting the industry to police itself at this point.

* People are not educated enough to understand what is what. They see strange things on the labels and get scared.

* Everyone only has only one life + the life of their children to experiment on. So while a "rational" argument to "we don't know if it will poison us", is let's apply "science" and do an "experiment". Ok who wants to ingest this new formulation to be the guinea pig? Who wants to give to their infant son or daughter to later monitor and find out if they'll get cancer by the time their are 5 or not... Because the thing is, you don't get a do-over like you do with other things. "Oh the program segfaulted. Darn,..., fix bug, recompile and restart".

Those are a few of the reasons. So as the article points out people try to
figure out it on their own and kind of feel around in the dark. Facebook
groups. Friend of a friend found out about this new superfood item or
something. Or I read on Facebook that pickles have lead in them. Whole Foods
type place and other "health" food places take advantage of this fear and
uncertainty. Others make fun that. Gee so and so is such a hippie eating
sprouted beans or thinking GMOs are going to kill you. They don't know
science, haha! The other side is making fun of those that don't eat organic
hand massaged free range cows and how they are poisoning their kids with
pesticides.

There are those who want to live the libertarian dream. Just abolish the FDA
and let everyone go shopping with a radiological, chemical and bacteriological
assay kit. Gee I would buy this cabbage but my portable DNA sequencer shows
its DNA structures has been modified and it has been spliced with a DNA of a
frog. I am afraid, I'll have to find another seller. Funny thing is -- these
places exist. Just go to any poor country where government regulation is even
more non-existent. That is the above dystopia. You want to buy baby formula?
Ah well. It could be baby formula or could be chalk mixed with water and
poisons chemical that someone packaged in a basement. Who knows, you decide.

~~~
jdreaver
> There are those who want to live the libertarian dream.

Surely, there are people that care about the quality of what goes in their
body (certainly you and I do, at least). Those people would be willing to pay
a small price to ensure that what they eat is not poison. Without the FDA,
there would probably be numerous entities that evaluate food products and
place their mark of approval on those products that pass a rigorous set of
tests. Consumers that care about food quality will be willing to spend more to
buy food with that mark of approval. If the company approves too many bad
products, they lose reputation and go out of business.

In fact, there are already organizations that test the quality of products,
like Consumer Reports. Personally, I find Amazon reviews to be very helpful
when purchasing things, and if I bought my food from Amazon (I hope so one
day!) I would read the reviews before buying food I don't know about.

> FDA and the supposed agencies entrusted by public to protect the public from
> poisons in the food have deemed to have failed many times.

I agree. Let's get rid of the FDA, we don't need.

~~~
ep103
On second thought you can ignore my entire post. We already tried that in
America. I suggest you read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It didn't work.

\--------

... You would be willing to trust what you put into your body to Consumer
Reports? A magazine where, for a small fee, you can buy a positive review?

Your argument would be sound if, and only if, we could assume that the public
would or could be fully informed as to the validity / accuracy of the various
services that would pop up to replace the FDA.

Instead what would happen is the various services would simply find it more
profitable to pend good reviews most of the time, just enough to be seen as
good or slightly better than their peers for their particular advertising
demographic. All of their peers, of course, would also take money to buy good
reviews, so no single agency, or group of agencies could be trust worthy for
any real amount of the time.

And while the FDA may fall into some similar traps as the above, the biggest
difference would be that the FDA, by being seperate from the marketplace, has
only its reputation and fear of its wrath to keep its value and budget. By
contrast, the free market agencies that would pop up would have as a primary
tool the ability to use advertising and marketing to ensure that even if their
service is completely illegitimate, a portion of the marketplace would be
convinced of its validity, because customers are not 100% knowledgeable on
every matter.

And the best part, why would any of these agencies ever spend research money
on their products? Sure, enough for the marketing to sound legitimate,
perhaps, but not enough to thoroughly test their products, that could only
shrink out number of corporate clients. So you can say goodbye to any science
that might have come from agencies like the FDA actually conducting
investigations.

So in short, all you would have created is a group of competing standards, non
of which would have their customer's health as a primary concern, all actively
advertising potential poisons to consumers, while simultaneously hurting
agricultural research.

~~~
jdreaver
I totally disagree. You are holding these hypothetical companies to a standard
_above_ that of the FDA.

>You would be willing to trust what you put into your body to Consumer
Reports? A magazine where, for a small fee, you can buy a positive review?

> All of their peers, of course, would also take money to buy good reviews, so
> no single agency, or group of agencies could be trust worthy for any real
> amount of the time.

Oh, so kind of how corporations spend money to lobby the FDA in their favor?
Or large pharma companies bribe FDA regulators to approve only their drugs so
they can have a monopoly on the market?

> has only its reputation and fear of its wrath to keep its value and budget

In what world is a government agency's reputation more important than a real
business' bottom line? If the government doesn't do their job, they still take
your money, everyone keeps their jobs, and the only recourse you have is to
vote another representative in office who _might_ try and change things. With
a business, you stop giving them money, and they see the effect immediately.

> even if their service is completely illegitimate, a portion of the
> marketplace would be convinced of its validity,

Kind of like how the FDA uses the force of law to convince people that they
actually look out for the consumer.

> And the best part, why would any of these agencies ever spend research money
> on their products?

If they didn't they would probably endorse bad products and go out of
business.

Almost all of your criticisms could be applied to the FDA, but you think that
they just need "reform." I don't need the government to tell me what to put in
my body.

~~~
ori_b
> _If they didn 't they would probably endorse bad products and go out of
> business._

Keep in mind that "No immediately noticeable harm" is all they have to go for
to stay in business. Long term health of your consumers isn't that important
if you want to make some money.

I'd far rather have agencies that aren't motivated by making a quick buck
keeping track of my food safety.

Especially since there is nothing preventing these hypothetical more rigorous
companies from existing today, right now, if people don't trust the FDA.

------
lotides
I'm not sure the point of this article. She didn't spend much time attacking
specific myths.

I see so many people these days running to defend these giant corporations and
their processes from creating food as quickly and cheaply as possible. They
don't need defending. They've won. Most Americans rely on their products,
whether they like it or not. I can't make the schools serve my kids healthy
foods, I can't make the prisons serve prisoners real foods or make my local
grocery store stock foods that are safe and healthy. Let them defend
themselves. They'll be fine.

If I make the decision that I don't want HFCS in my bread or certain GMO
products in my lunch, why do you care? Why block the nutrition label from
saying that a product is GMO? It doesn't effect you. If you're positive that
no negative consequences come from us engineering our food, then go ahead and
eat as much as you want. But stop attacking those of us that want to be able
to find foods that meet our own personal standards. We all should have the
right to know what's in our food and where it comes from.

I care a lot about what I eat and the foods I make for my family. I know a lot
of misinformation is out there but the appropriate response is to correct the
misinformation, not attack everyone that is just trying to do what's best for
themselves.

For those of you that want to start caring about what you put in your body,
[http://examine.com](http://examine.com) is a good place to start. Good luck.

~~~
plorkyeran
> Why block the nutrition label from saying that a product is GMO?

Who has ever tried to do that? Opposing _mandatory_ labeling and trying to
forbid labeling are very different things.

~~~
bpodgursky
Advertising a food as GMO free is banned for good reason. Labeling is supposed
to be informative to the consumer, and alert them to nutritional information
about the food which could impact their health--and GMO foods have decisively
been shown to have no health impact.

If food manufacturers were free to advertise the absence of irrelevant
nutrients, they would immediately begin barraging consumers with useless or
harmful information--

"now free of pyridoxal phosphate!" "no phylloquinone used in the production of
this cereal!"

Should the average consume have to know that these are actually vitamin K and
B6? Of course not, the nutrition facts are there to inform them, and the FDA
makes sure it cannot be used just for branding purposes or to confuse the
consumer. Since GMO food is unequivocally proven safe, the manufacturer will
not be helping the consumer make an informed decision by advertising the
absence.

~~~
lotides
The science is never done. I hate, HATE, hate when people treat science like
we already have all of the answers.

> and GMO foods have decisively been shown to have no health impact.

No, the studies done thus far, with specific controls they've used and the
ideas they've test for, haven't found anything. There is no such thing as
decisive in science. The science could change tomorrow. What's harder to
change is the laws we've put in place because of industry interests.

The United States has a long history of taking the side of big business. Even
with food. Look at the food pyramid that I was taught as the "healthiest" way
to eat when I went to school. Today things have changed and we've learned a
lot of backstory on how much of what we learned during that period was based
on industry lobbying and not science.

I don't want us to make the same mistake again. Genetic engineering is a very
young science. It doesn't belong in our food yet. I'm not saying we should ban
GMOs. But I think it's fair to label foods that have GMOs in them for those of
us that don't want to take part in the giant human trial.

At one point we were all cool with asbestos in our homes, lead in our paint,
chemicals in our water and doctors endorsed smoking. Stop pretending like this
isn't a big gamble.

~~~
XorNot
GMO labelling is of no value though.

Because whether or not something is produced using genetic engineering
techniques does not explain whether its safe.

For example, I could genetically engineer corn to produce to tetrodoxin
poison, and kill a bunch of people with it. Does that prove GMO food is
unsafe? No, it proves tetrodoxin is dangerous.

GMO labelling initiatives set out to inflame and spread fear, because no one
ever wants to try and label exactly what has been altered, deleted or added.
They just want to stick a big "Genetically modified!" sticker on there because
their interest group has their public polling data which they know will make
consumers react negatively.

~~~
smtddr
_> >GMO labelling is of no value though. Because whether or not something is
produced using genetic engineering techniques does not explain whether its
safe._

Ah, now here's the thing. If you don't know whether it's safe or not which
side do you error on? For me and my family, all I know is that my family has
no particular history of health problems eating mostly "organic" in that I'm
the first generation born in America and the rest of them grew up in Nigeria
eating food from plants & farm animals raised with centuries-old tribal
techniques. Not saying this was 100% of their diet, but certainly a great deal
more natural than USA. I have a relative who doesn't need their diabetes
medicine when in Nigeria to control blood sugar level. I'm guessing it's
because in Nigeria 97% of the food isn't loaded with HFCS and other
sweeteners.

I have no idea wether GMOs are safe, but I'm not interested in being the
experiment for it. GMO labeling should be allowed. Or at the very, very least
I should be able to go online to see the GMO status of a brand of food
product. GMO labeling should be allowed. Or at the very, very least I should
be able to go online to see the GMO status of a brand of food product.

Another part of this is probably from the core belief I hold; that human
beings messing around with mother-nature is generally hubris and risky. I do
respect the fact that many, many amazing things have come out of medial
science but I treat it all with caution rather than just whatever-the-
scientists-say-must-be-right. Then I watch something like "Food Inc."[1] and
become just a bit more skeptical of foods enhanced by science via processing,
GMO, pesticides, whatever. I want my food grown with plain ol' water &
sunshine & animal feces fertilizer... at least for now.

1\.
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286537/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286537/)

~~~
the_af
But that's not the thing. The argument is that labeling something "GMO" gives
NO information about whether it's safe. You cannot use this label to err on
the side of safety, because the same argument can be used for food labeled as
"GMO-free": this also gives NO information about its safety. What side would
you err on in this case?

------
tokenadult
This is a good summary of the information trade-offs consumers deal with in
deciding what foods to eat. The author identifies some of the worst purveyors
of misinformation about food in this interesting article. As a good teacher,
she tries to understand her students' preexisting misconceptions,
misconceptions that often show up in Hacker News threads about food or
nutrition.

I especially like the author's curated collection of hyperlinks in the
article, which lead to several important sources of information on some of the
hottest nutrition debates we often see here on Hacker News. Her recommendation
of the _Grist_ series on GMOs[1] is especially helpful.

[1] [http://grist.org/series/panic-free-gmos/](http://grist.org/series/panic-
free-gmos/)

------
MisterMashable
Sugar is the stuff life runs on but at our modern level of consumption it's
undoubtedly the number one food toxin. Sugar is the secret to addicting the
consumer and peddling high profit mush. It doesn't really matter much what
form it's in sugar, evaporated cane juice (euphemistic term for what sugar
actually IS), corn syrup a.ka. HFC (vilified but not substantively different
than table sugar), molasses, wheat, corn starch, rice flour, etc. Modern wheat
actually has a higher glycemic index than table sugar! Most of our food isn't
toxic, just barely acceptable and sometimes poisonous e.g. food born
illnesses. Our food is great at killing us slowly, lowering the quality of
life and overall health and most of all attracting huge government $ubsidies!
It's all about the money after all. Anyhow, I blathered on about this because
it's probably the single most effective thing anyone could do for their
health, keep their blood sugar stable and avoid cheap high glycemic addictive
foods. BPA in tomato cans and other 'problems' deserve very low priority in
relation to the sugar epidemic.

------
mgamache
It's so easy to believe our food is toxic because the people selling it have
no long term concern for our health. If it doesn't cause an acute health issue
they've done their job. Food that is sweet, long lasting and attractive is
what we are told to buy with marketing dollars and shelf space that is paid
for by food companies. Supermarkets in the US devote 80%-90% of it's food
space on products that are not fit for regular human consumption. Companies
driven by quarterly profits are not worried about some health problem that
might happen at some future date. The C level executives will be retired and
cashed out the stock options long before they'll be called on the carpet. I
know it's supply and demand, but it's also deceit and manipulation.

------
loongpoke
> ll this misinformation is a version of the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
> tactic that’s been recognized as a marketing tool in other contexts.

This reminds me of computer security. With the recent exponential growth of
vulnerabilities and backdoors, people are talking about moving to more secure
languages like Haskell and Rust, installing airgaps, etc. But when you think
about it, why does it matter? Look how "vulnerable" credit cards are, every
time you use with a new vendor, you increase the risk that one of those
vendors will take all your money. But this never actual is a problem in
practice because the credit card company actually knows you in person, and if
they see that any suspicious behaviour happened, they will just revert the
transaction.

With the advent of the third wave of computing, the cloud, the Internet of
Things, and whatnot, I think everything will just become a pseudo-intelligent
big ball of semantics. Take the web for example. Nobody actually knows what a
web browser should do. They just know that when you use a well battle tested
browser, it will probably work on most sites, and usually wont be more than
slightly degraded even on the sites it doesn't work well on. These days
protocols are evolving more into, just say what you want, and the machines
will figure it out through their vast pools of information. This same kind of
thing will make security issues irrelevant, because the Internet of Things
will just know who you are (by various means obtained by their evolution), and
you'll never have to worry about an actual attacker doing damage to you.

------
anuraj
The article scuttles the basic issues like

1\. How credible is the bio safety of GM products. Why is the consumer not
having the choice to know if a product uses GM ingredients?

2\. What is the level of pesticide residues in food we eat? What are the
harmful effects? For example, many organo chlorides are known to be persistent
pollutants and can cause severe damage to nervous and endocrine systems and
can even affect fetuses.

3\. Why there is no transparency of information regarding toxicity of
chemicals found in food?

------
Goladus
That's a good article on why it's good to be skeptical of people claiming "our
food is toxic," however there are a at least two important pieces of evidence
that anyone can observe:

    
    
        1.  Obesity rate, along with diabetes or "metabolic
            syndrome" has skyrocketed in the past 2-3 decades.
            Food supply is on a very short list of probable
            causes for this.
        
        2.  Processed foods often contain additives you would do
            without given the option, regardless of whether
            there was any scientific evidence about adverse
            effects.

------
jsudhams
If you have to "Get educated" to select and eat food then i would avoid. The
issue with GMO is that there is a very little observation done. I agree that
for that matter many of the other food/medicine is same. We really do not know
if i take all GMO food for say 5 years what will happen? Does some not-GMO
react differently with GMO? how about places like India where you can get
anything certified as long as some professor or doctor says it is no problem
to eat unless it is related immediate death.

------
Terr_
> But behind the unified front (all processed food is dangerous!) lies a
> tangled web of factoids. Some are clearly not true [...] Others are true,
> but [...]

A factoid, _by definition_ is untrue or at least uncertain. The suffix _-oid_
denotes that it _resembles_ a fact, but cannot be classified as one.

(Or if you like recursion... "Factoid: A small fact is a factoid.")

~~~
aylons
You may define a word whatever you please in your text, but you cannot state
the definition for the common use of the word. This prerogative are for its
users, as a group.

Dictionaries (which do not define, but only catalogs accepted meaning) defines
"factoid" not only different than you do, but also in accordance to the
intended meaning of the text [1][2][3].

Some people (specially engineering and math types, myself included) tend to
put too much weight in a word morphology to extract its meaning. But
linguistics is not that straightforward and meaning for a word can even change
over time.

[1] Merriam Webster: "an invented fact believed to be true because it appears
in print", [http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/factoid](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/factoid)

[2] "A brief or trivial item of news or information." and "An assumption or
speculation that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as
fact."
[http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_eng...](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/factoid?q=factoid)

[3] Cambridge: "an interesting piece of information"
[http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/british/factoi...](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/british/factoid?q=factoid)

~~~
Terr_
> an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print

Are you blindly copy-pasting? That's exactly what I just said about it not
being a real fact.

In addition, your second link specifically denotes the "small fact"
interpretation for what it is: A very recent and predominantly-north-American
neologism.

[http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-
language/2014/jan...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-
language/2014/jan/17/mind-your-language-factoids)

Perhaps in time it'll be like "decimate", where the false version has
obliterated the original, but I don't think we're really at that stage yet.

