- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
What I don’t get is why it took them decades to figure this out. Why have they been giving us sugar substitutes without understanding what they have been doing to us? Why were these approved for use in the first place?
What things? There is no sub-group of chemicals whose sheer presence automatically makes a food harmful. The replacement is a different argument.
Y’all are being difficult and pedantic when you could rise above that. Especially given my specific question.
And I wasn’t asking you.
This isn’t pedantic, it’s the answer, unless you can specifically tell me what “such things” are.
You’re asking a question in a public forum, I don’t see how me answering is offensive.
That’s the thing, I’m not sure what “such things” are, but I know “chemicals” is a bad classification. I mean food ingredients that have been later shown to be toxic or harmful. Or that have developed a such a reputation, even if the evidence is mixed or misinterpreted.
Trans fats wouldn’t be called a “chemical” but we use to think they were pretty awesome. And after looking around, it seems like sulfites are banned in some food contexts. I’m not finding as many examples as I would have assumed, tho.
So what’s the word for things that have been found to be bad and thus removed from food and drink? Or that have not been yet removed in all parts of the world, but are considered risky.
I wasn’t debating toxicity. I wasn’t talking about if any one example is truly toxic or not. That was what I was trying to avoid. All I wanted was a better word. Because “EVERYTHING IS A CHEMICAL” is a shitty response, and it seemed to me that telling the person water is a chemical is unproductive, and just being a dick. What word is not inclusive of all matter?
“Chemicals that have been shown to be harmful enough to warrant caution”. I don’t know what else to tell you.
The thing is, this specific chemical that we’re talking about hadn’t been shown to be harmful until now (and as you can see by the discussion elsewhere the jury is still out on if it has indeed been shown) so they couldn’t have used that phrase either to argue that it should have been obvious why ingesting it is a bad idea.
I don’t care if it’s toxic or increases the human lifespan.
I was calling out people being shitty to each other. And by asking about what word would be more appropriate, I was trying to make a point that would illuminate how smugly stating “everything is a chemical” is shitty. It comes off as neckbeard bullshit. It’s exemplary of public forums being toxic.
And I’ll reiterate again, I’m not defending the toxicity of anything here. I was just looking for a way for the discourse on the subject to avoid jerks replying that they drink water, a chemical, every day.
This is also why I said I wasn’t talking to you. Because I wasn’t trying to make a point with you. I was engaging with the person I replied to. But here you are talking about the toxicity of a specific thing, instead of seeing my point.
You were asking what word they should have used instead of “chemicals” and I told you the one option that might be appropriate if not for the specific circumstances. What else do you want?