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Comment by pierrefar | Hacker News Reader

Carrageenan is on a lot of labels, and I'm often asked, 'What is that chemical?' It's not a chemical. It's seaweed!

Actually, it is very much a chemical. All food is chemicals. It's just perverted advertising that convinced the masses that chemical = "something bad".

For more sad laughter on this topic, the Royal Society of Chemistry's blog has a category for "chemical free" living:

http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/rsc/tag/100-chemical-free/

They even announced a £1 million bounty for anyone who can find a chemical-free cosmetic:

http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2010/CTPA100Ch...

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Actually, it is very much a chemical. All food is chemicals.

That's literally true, but not the intended meaning. Chemical has become a synonym for "man-made". It's a useful distinction. If you were forced to choose between eating 100g of a random "chemical" molecule, or 100g of a random "natural" molecule, you would be much better off with the latter.

True, scientific studies can show that chemical X is harmless, but.... only if the study was done over a very long time. Only if it was done properly. Only if the scientists didn't receive their financing from BigCo.

It's perfectly reasonable to be wary of "chemicals", heuristically.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not one of these people living in mistrust of chemicals. But I understand where they're coming from, especially if they have a poor grasp of science. A reasonable move for Kasparov (e.g.: sacrificing his queen for tactical advantage) might be a terrible move for me in the same situation.

>If you were forced to choose between eating 100g of a random "chemical" molecule, or 100g of a random "natural" molecule, you would be much better off with the latter.

Here, have a delicious puffer fish. I prepared it myself!

Rating chemicals by whether or not they occur naturally is a really piss-poor way of judging danger. There is a practically unlimited number of naturally occurring chemicals what will knock you dead, and there are similarly tones of synthesized chemicals that are completely harmless, or even beneficial. Bringing "synthesized vs. naturally" is always disingenuous, we have had better ways of judging danger since the dark ages.

You make a good point, though I wish you hadn't called mine retarded.

we have had better ways of judging danger since the dark ages.

That's true. And if you trust scientists and the FDA to do their jobs, you're all set. But what if you don't? Let's say that I'm at the supermarket in a small, poor country with a corrupt FDA, and I want to buy some juice. Well, I'm going to favor those brands with natural ingredients (and hope that the ingredient list is correct). Maybe that's a stupid move, but it has served me well so far.

"You make a good point, though I wish you hadn't called mine retarded."

Apologies, I sometimes forget some people find that word particularly offensive.

No problem! In fairness, this "pick a random chemical component" idea was at least moderately retarded, and most worthy of criticism.

I think this comes up because natural substances tend to have a longer history of usage. I'd take a natural additive that has been generally proven safe by 500 years of human history over a synthetic chemical that was (supposedly) shown to be reasonably safe through 5 years of lab testing.

Until very recently lead and mercury were commonly considered to be swell things to ingest as medicine. With the exception of "these berries taste good and these berries will kill you"^, history of human consumption is a pretty bad thing to go by.

^ and they even messed this up on occasion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato#History

At least we have a long history of data on which to base conclusions. Unlike some of the stuff Monsanto is eager to spray on your food, lead wasn't invented in a lab last year. And see how long it took for the harmful effects to become apparent? Longer than a FDA testing cycle, definitely!

As for tomatoes, there was a serious lack of information regarding many topics in Europe at that time. Did the people living in lands to which the tomato is indigenous suffer from that misperception?

Anyway, the point is to analyze these substances based on what we know now, not what someone thought 250 years ago.

Lead, mercury, and Tobaco where known to be unsafe before I was born. That's a fairly long time from my perspective. Also, in the short term they are reasonably safe. It's only because we can look at long term exposure that we understand how harmful these things are.

To ingest, use as cosmetics . . you name it they tried it. A long history of use is neither a sign of safety or efficacy, but try telling the non scientific public that.

I personally wish the FDA "Generally Regarded as Safe" list were more well-known. I think "GRAS" would make a good replacement for "natural."

The problem is that some non-natural chemicals are GRAS, and the people who make the most noise about 'all-natural' will never accept them as being benign.

If you were forced to choose between eating 100g of a random "chemical" molecule, or 100g of a random "natural" molecule, you would be much better off with the latter.

That is a distinctly ignorant and biased statement. Go eat 100g of sand, of seawater, tree bark, crude oil, or algae. Notice how I stacked the deck in that list, as these are just naturally occurring things not merely chemicals. Try eating 100g of caffeine, botulinum toxin, vitamin E, nicotine, DNA, warfarin, morphine, or ricin.

Nature is far from harmless, it's merely familiar so that we are more prone to accept whatever degree of harm it holds as, well, "natural". Man-made novel chemical compounds are not all harmless either, but imagining that there is a firm barrier between "natural" and "man-made" and that one category is far and away safer than the other is superstitious thinking.

I think there are two parts to what you're saying: "chemical" molecules are, as I said elsewhere in this thread, are better described as artificial or synthetic. We agree on that, but I disagree that it's reasonable to be wary of chemicals - it's a triumph of rubbish marketing.

The other part is the assumption that "natural" molcules are inherently better. There is no difference between naturally-occuring vitamin C vs synthetic vitamin C. Also, there are lots of naturally-occuring molcules you don't want in you.

The other part is the assumption that "natural" molcules are inherently better.

I wouldn't say "inherently better", but...

Through evolution, we've adapted to molecules present in the environment, and because other organisms have similar tolerance to toxins, eating them is usually safer than eating a random substance.

It's just a heuristic, of course, reasonable people may disagree. I was just pointing out that the OP's position is not "obviously dumb".

I disagree that it's reasonable to be wary of chemicals - it's a triumph of rubbish marketing.

It goes both way: companies producing artificial products (including drugs) have massive advertising budgets, but there's no ad touting the merits of oranges and tap water.

Honest question: if I find a new mammalian species and try to sell its meat, do I need FDA approval?

EDIT: In your top post, you're objecting to the man's argument that "it's natural therefore it's safe". I agree with you that it's naive in this context. I guess I misread your post and argued against something else :/

"Through evolution, we've adapted to molecules present in the environment"

Flows both ways, though. Through evolution, our biological enemies have come up with the nastiest chemicals they can.

Natural vs. "man made chemicals" people often forget that on the whole, Nature is out to kill you. The most potent known toxin is called Botulinum toxin and is named after the bacteria that produces it (or vice versa).

Sometimes nature is out to cooperate with you or merely take advantage of you, for example: fruit.

I don't think the intent is to kill with poisons as much as to serve the ultimate goal of most organisms, self preservation.

> If you were forced to choose between eating 100g of a random "chemical" [man-made] molecule, or 100g of a naturally occurring molecule, you would be much better off with the latter.

How about some supporting evidence? (I assume that you're excluding man-made molecules which are also found in nature, but if you're not, please explain where you're putting them and why.)

Carrageenan also causes all sorts of cancer in rats - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...

Interesting. I haven't heard about that. Wikipedia has a nice simple overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrageenan#Health_concerns

Absolutely. All food is made up of component chemicals. Still, I think people need to be more aware of the food they are eating.

Have you ever had a look at the ingredients in non-dairy creamer: http://foodconstrued.com/2011/01/cream-in-my-coffee/

I agree completely that we need to be aware of what we eat. My concern is that we're using really bad terminology to scare people.

A much better word would be "artificial" or "synthetic" additive IMHO.

Which would be only marginally more specific. Humans have been eating "artificial", "synthetic" foods for thousands of years, and all of these things are made from "natural" ingredients because matter can't be conjured from thin air. Can you really come up with a test to distinguish between a just-invented stabilizing agent with unknown long-term effects on health and, say, flour?

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