Polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon) as a Way to Increase Food Volume and Satiety | Hacker News Reader

Polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon) as a Way to Increase Food Volume and Satiety

journals.sagepub.com

33 pointsnetworked50 comments

“Two years of Newtrition investment and research had produced CHOW™. CHOW™ contained spun, plaited, and woven protein molecules, capped and coded, carefully designed to be ignored by even the most ravenous digestive tract enzymes; no-cal sweeteners; mineral oils replacing vegetable oils; fibrous materials, colourings, and flavourings. The end result was a foodstuff almost indistinguishable from any other except for two things. Firstly, the price, which was slightly higher, and secondly the nutritional content, which was roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman. It didn't matter how much you ate, you lost weight[1].

[1] And hair. And skin tone. And, if you ate enough of it long enough, vital signs.”

- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens (1990)

Ooh the Crunch Enhancer? Yeah, it's a non-nutritive cereal varnish. It's semi-permeable, it's not osmotic, what it does is it coats and seals the flake and prevents the milk from penetrating it. Chevy Chase, Christmas Vacation

This seems fundamentally the same as insoluble fiber component of plants/vegetables. Why not just eat a bunch of cellulose/lignin/chitin/other non-starch polysaccharides, seems less likely to have some bad/unexpected side-effect.

Yeah I felt minor horror reading the abstract. Do we really need to reduce caloric density through indigestible plastics when we could just.. you know.. eat plants??

Food Engineering (i.e. design and production of factory food, which is most of what's in the grocery store) relies on more flexibility and reliability, plus lower cost, than you can get from ordinary, perishable foods. PTFE is made from petrocarbons, and is easily sourced.

Also the fad for "healthy" foods (when healthy isn't really what's wanted) results in abominations like frozen "organic" (and/or "natural") burritos and the like which require even more stabilizers than the "normal" kind. This is why the CEO of Whole Foods famously declared that 90% of what was on the shelves in his stores was garbage.

TTTT ignoring its production and disposal,* PTFE is super inert (tightly linked to itself, which is why it makes a good nonstick coating). I once ate some plumber's teflon tape to prove to a colleague that it was inert: it came out the other end intact and white.

* but let's not ignore that...I was merely addressing the use in food production in my comment.

PTFE is not really produced from petrocarbons, at least not directly. Its made by polymerization of tetrafluoroethylene, which appears to be made from chloroform + HF, the former is made from petrocarbons (methane/methanol + HCl/Cl), the latter from minerals. PTFE is quite expensive (compared to most other polymers). I suspect PP or PE could work just fine in this application.

I'm just saying that you could simply eat insoluble fiber (from plants or other source) instead of ground up plastics, which will also create a massive source of microplastic pollution and contamination as it comes out the other end.

You can easily store insoluble fiber (cellulose/chitin, etc), in vast quantities in dried form without any major issues, I can't imagine ground up PTFE being significantly better in that regard.

> I'm just saying that you could simply eat insoluble fiber

We agree, and this is how I eat (factory food: shudder). Just saying this application of PTFE is not bogus IFF you accept modern food production.

Remember the fiasco that was Olestra?[1] It's an indigestible fat. I had the misfortune of being in a test market and tried some Olestra Doritos and they tasted great. Unfortunately the whole point of Olestra is that it's an indigestible fat. Guess how that works out when it reaches the end of the GI tract.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra

Seems you are easily horrified by science... Plastics come from oil which used to be plants.

Fundamentally I agree with you and have been doing my best to remove 20th century laboratory science experiments from my diet. I mostly don't use Teflon at all and when I do I clean it using hot water jets instead of scrubbing it.

That being said, I'm not a chemist, I was just mostly awake during undergrad chem, and I know there are fluorine compounds that are enthusiastic oxidizers[1], but some like Teflon coatings are more or less chemically inert. I assume that's because the oxidization has been taken to the point it's going to go. Is there a fluorine compound that will happily oxidize Teflon? The point of my rambling is can it be conclusively shown in controlled laboratory experiments that these compounds are completely nonreactive with the human digestive tract?

[1] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/th...

The manufacturing byproducts are known to be hazardous. Like PFOAs.

The manufacturing byproducts of vegetables are known to be hazardous (pesticide residue).

I'll wager those PFOA are worse, but it's worth saying that if you're gonna manufacture PTFE for human consumption you could possibly clean up the process and get something perfectly clean, even cleaner than vegetables.

This comment makes no sense, it's like you've never heard of organic farming

It's like you never heard of parasites and bacteria on organic vegetables?

Organic isn't pesticide-free, it just uses different pesticide formulas.

> Is there a fluorine compound that will happily oxidize Teflon?

No. It can't be done. PTFE is fully oxidized (well, fluorinated).

> The point of my rambling is can it be conclusively shown in controlled laboratory experiments that these compounds are completely nonreactive with the human digestive tract?

I haven't looked for the study, but even if it hasn't been done, it's clear that fully fluorinated substances are not major health risks.

What so many "oh no, TEFLON!!1!" people don't understand is that PTFE really is as chemically harmless as the evil chemical companies say it is. The problem is that this stuff isn't entirely PTFE (or even PFA, which is close enough even if it's oxygen in some spots instead of fluorine). Fail to fluorinate one location on that PTFE molecule and you've left a reasonably reactive pocket that can start causing trouble. (You end up with an inert PTFE chain hung off of some other molecule, which will gum up the works.)

So... just fully fluorinate stuff, then? Unfortunately there's only one fully fluorinated molecule chain, and that's PTFE. Everything else, other than PTFE, is more reactive, and thus more toxic. (I guess there's also tetrafluoromethane, but that's gaseous.) And you need other things than PTFE: PTFE is chemically inert enough that it's difficult to mechanically bond to things. Other fluoropolymers are used to make bonding layers to help attach PTFE to substrates. These are what you should worry about in your cookware: they're intentionally more reactive!

The other wrinkle is that I mentioned that fluoropolymers are chemically inert, because they are. But they're not thermodynamically inert. Get them hot, and they decompose into things with more reactive sites, usually in an uncontrolled way that admits some pretty nasty byproducts. (See "MTV flares" for an example of how to harness this.) Thus, the fact that PTFE pans kill birds who are sensitive to these decomposition products is real, and you should never use PTFE at high heats.

Fluoropolymers are useful, good for many things, and often quite safe. But there are real dangers. Don't listen to the suits from the chemical company who insist that it's all safe, or the tinfoil hats who insist that it can never be safe. As with so many things, the truth is in between.

> PTFE is fully oxidized (well, fluorinated).

Can't the C-C bond by oxidized? Teflon will burn if heated enough in a high oxygen atmosphere. From my understanding that's what happened to Apollo 13.

(I'm not implying this will happen in a human gut :)

My understanding is that that's decomposition followed by combustion of the decomposition products (free radicals).

Looking at the electron density around the C-C bonds gives some hint as to why they're stronger than they look. In general "backbone" single C-C bonds are pretty tough; there's a reason double bonds are always the attack sites, if they exist.

Thank you! This is quite educational.

this sounds absolutely awful. psyllium powder does effectively the same thing without the complexity required to produce it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#Produc...

Also, consider where the output needs to go after being consumed by a person.

Tough choice. We could fill our foods with tasteless indigestible plastic so that we can gorge ourselves on processed foods and not get fat, or we could eat a healthy diet. I’m split.

This is going to add a fair amount of impossible to decompose microplastics to the ocean.

I had a similar thought, but I wonder how much a 'powder' would qualify as microplastic - can a microplastic be so small that it doesn't have the same food-chain impact as slightly-larger microplastic? Is it possible to make a substance that is universally 100% excreted by every organism?

> Is it possible to make a substance that is universally 100% excreted by every organism?

First of all, it is very unlikely. But even if it could be theoretically possible, I very much doubt anyone would spend money to make it universally excretable. They will stop at humans, and maybe (luckily) at mammals.

The paper addresses the use of fiber supplements (such as psyllium).

"Fiber is sometimes supplemented to the diet for this purpose, but the use of fiber causes soft bulky stools and is commercially limited because it alters the taste and texture of food."

In fact, that's generally why people take them, but there is too much of a good thing. PTFE doesn't do that.

That said, I'm not going to start grinding up Teflon in my food just yet.

I can't imagine that bulking up my foods with teflon powder wouldn't also alter the texture, possibly the taste as well, although simply by diluting with tasteless powder.

I'm guessing that the "soft, bulky stools" is really the limiting factor here.

I don't think all natural fiber sources have this issue. Finely ground non absorbent insoluble and non fermentable fiber, like wheat bran or just cellulose appear to have the opposite effect.

I believe this article was cited in this paper which was featured on HN recently: https://osf.io/x4fk3/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27936016). Two very opposing viewpoints...

So… forever microplastics?

It makes one long for the days when the FDA was created to combat the use of fillers like sawdust...

Interesting research, even if it isn't something you'd immediately assume would go into commercial products. The fact that they see a weight decrease simply from adding calorie free weight to the food is interesting to me. I knew different foods can have vastly satiety at the same calorie count, but I would not assume that this could be simply due to a weight or volume difference. I would more have assumed that our bodies response to breaking down the foods would regulate our hunger to aim for a given amount of energy intake.

It's rarely questioned in our society that satiety comes down to food volume (or weight). It's what we mean by "high calorie" food: high kcal per gram.

I agree with you, but a mind-bending consequence is that there's no such thing as high calorie food.

The food of the future is going to be 25% Teflon, 30% mealworm, 30% lab-grown meat concentrate, and 15% assorted insects as real food is regulated out of existence for us proles.

At least we can take solace in watching our betters jet around the world to dine on real food on TV or whatever social network is in vogue at the time.

Wait, Teflon is safe? Why did my mom make me throw out my chipped Teflon pans?

because of the layers beneath the Teflon that are used to stick the Teflon to the metal

Heating it up to common cooking temperatures causes it to decompose into unsafe decomposition products.

Does anyone else not feel full if you eat a large volume of low carb food?

I can feel my stomach stretched but if my blood sugar doesn’t rise I still feel hungry.

I don’t think this trick would work on my body.

Proteins are the only thing that keep me satieted for a long time.

Carbs are the least and with fat are mostly for taste.

And what to do with that teflon after it passes through humans?

We should of course recycle it.

soylent brown

yeah and increasing worldwide numbers of people with intestinal permeability thanks to gluten and now we are going to be saturating our guts with teflón, it may not be metabolizable but not everyhing that is non metabolizable is safe to use specialy if you are coating you intestines with it.

This is what you get with MD MBAs writing papers huh

Since when is Teflon non-toxic? Scientists need to stay away from food.

Teflon won't react with anything in your body. It's totally inert. It's one of the most inert things we know about. That's the whole point of the article.

It's effectively inert to anything except molten sodium, magnesium, or the like.

It will depolymerize at temperatures above 650-700C.

Neither of those conditions is likely to be found in your body.

The temperatures I’m familiar with and can find online are much lower than what you list, specifically starting to decompose at 250c and significant decomposition over 350c.

I’d be worried about putting this on a grill or frying it. It’s theoretically mostly safe in terms of temperature, almost.

Wikipedia already has a section addressing temperature overlap between food and Teflon decomposition:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#Safe...

Yeah, the manufacturing biproducts (PFOA, PFOS etc) can certainly interfere with biological processes and endure in the environment for a long time, but PTFE is relatively benign as a solid... until it gets really hot and decomposes into carbonyls.

You could have said the same thing about asbestos.

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