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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

To pre-empt the inane pedantic reactions that always seem to accompany discussions on such articles: yes, water is a chemical too, as are vitamins, etc.

When people talk about "chemicals in food" they mean additional, lab created stuff added to the food, like artificial sweeteners, additives, preservatives, coloring, remains from the production and transportation process, etc.

Those against "chemicals" in food obviously don't advocate for food made without any kind of molecules and chemical substances.

Amazingly not only functions can be overloaded, but words too.

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When people refer to "chemicals" in food, without distinguishing what type or category of chemicals, I tend to assume that they have an agenda of frightening an uninformed populace or that they are a member of that uninformed populace themselves.

Well, first there was the agenda of food companies to put as much crap can increase their profits (e.g. by making food more addictive, sweeter, longer lasting, etc) in there as legally (and often beyond legally) possible.

Here is something I think we are close to agreement on. Companies have made food more addictive, cheaper, more shelf stable in a variety of ways, to the detriment of nutritious food and consumer health in general. But unless we put the focus on the real issues with modern food, I don't think we will see much if any progress. In fact, I suspect that food companies and food scientists are up to the challenge of making food that is just about as cheap and addictive and shelf stable as the current stuff is without using any "artificial" chemicals. I mean, when "nitrate free" bacon can be sold that is, in fact, chock full of nitrates, the possibilities are endless.

What, the pedantic reactions of people who only read the article's title? The article is clearly talking about phthalates, first mentioned in the second sentence.

>What, the pedantic reactions of people who only read the article's title?

You'd be surprised.

those against "chemicals" in food often demonstrably have no idea what they're talking about. the overloading is a rhetorical attempt to associate fear and lack of knowledge with everyday experience. your defense of this practice is vastly more inane than any objections to it.

>those against "chemicals" in food often demonstrably have no idea what they're talking about

No, but they clearly have an idea that they don't mean water or salt.

I ignore anyone who makes pedantic word-choice arguments when everyone is clearly capable of understanding what's going on. At best, it is more obsessed with their own cleverness than actual discourse, but more usually is just dishonest.

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