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Comment by fao_ | Hacker News Reader

There's a large amount of precedence, that's why. Rather than asking the room, one would think the first step would be to obtain information and inform yourself.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5753965/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34022259/

https://theconversation.com/natural-supplements-can-be-dange...

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Why so defensive? I'm asking the room because it's a smart room, usually, and often there's someone who'll be far better informed than I could be with a quick search. That's literally why I spend time here.

Regarding your links, I'm sure I could find similar studies about nearly any kind of food. I have a friend who won't eat peanuts because he's afraid of aflotoxins, which are real, genuinely dangerous, and if you think that peanut products are tested well enough to 100% guarantee the aflotoxins are always below safe levels in all peanut products you'll ever eat... Well, I'll disagree.

https://inspection.canada.ca/food-safety-for-industry/food-c...

So again, why do you think supplements are worse than other food products? I don't agree that your links answer this question.

They do show that there's often contaminants in supplements. They _don't_ show that supplements are unusual in this regard when compared to other food products.

Your third link focuses on heavy metals in supplements. Here's a similar study showing they are also in baby food:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heavy-metals-in-baby-foo...

So is it just supplements and baby food? Unlikely. More likely it's that supplements and baby food are both things that make people worry about contamination, so they test them more. Meanwhile your ketchup might be loaded with all kinds of contaminants but you'd never think of testing it.

"These things are also contaminated" is shoddy argumentative reasoning at best, it is not the "got ya" that you think it is . I never claimed that there aren't contaminants in food, and I don't see how it defeats my claim that dietary supplements are unsafe -- the FDA is more stringent in regulation and testing with respect to food, as opposed to dietary supplements, because, you know, we need to eat to survive.

Please take a second to read my comment here, before responding: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36930128

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