OMG!!1! Chemicals in our Food!!1!

[supergee]

A knowledgeable reply to a scary meme about "eight toxic foods."

Thanx to Mary Anne Mohanraj on Facebook

Comments

[arlie]

*roflmao*

The original article is clearly drek, assuming the send up at your link is remotely accurate.

On the other hand, the link also pinged my BS meter - which is better than pegging it, as the article critiqued would have. Ever read The Skeptical Environmentalist, by Bjørn Lomborg? Derek's blog post struck me as coming from a similar worldview. AFAIK, everything Lomborg says is true - and misleading as all get out. There's a value system lurking behind what it chooses to present, and therein lies the problem. I'm neither a chemist nor a toxicologist, but I suspect the blog post has similar problems.

While hysteria is unwarranted, and many of the claims in the original article are insane - I strongly suspect that many of the items listed are better avoided. But more importantly, I'm not keen on the implicit premise - adding things to foods is fine, by default, even if those things are nothing humans ever ate before e.g. 1800.