Slashdot Mirror
FDA Considers Redefining Chocolate
shewfig writes "The US Food and Drug Administration is considering redefining 'chocolate' to allow substitution of vegetable oil ($0.70/lb.) for cocoa butter ($2.30/lb.), and whey protein for dry whole milk. There are already standard terms to differentiate these products from chocolate, such as 'chocolatey' and 'chocolate-flavored.' The change was requested by the industry group Chocolate Manufacturers of America. Leading the resistance to this change is high-end chocolate maker Guittard, with significant grass-roots support from the Candyblog. The FDA is taking consumer comments until April 25. Here is the FDA page on the proposed change, which oddly enough does not say what the proposed change is."
As if American chocolate wasn't bad enough as it is...
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Once ethanol production drives up the cost of corn, perhaps we will start to see real sugar used instead of high-fructose corn syrup.
Life is not for the lazy.
My name is Harmonious Botch and I'm a chocoholic. A fucking serious chocoholic. I figure I spend about 200 per month on it. Were I this hooked on booze or heroin, I'd be dead by now.
There is already crud in the chocolate. Any serious consumer of chocolate already knows to read the ingredients.
To write this post, I went to the trash can, pulled out a package of inferior quality candy that my wonderful but misguided wife had bought. I had thrown it away because of the crud in it. Under "ingredients", it says: "palm, shea, sunflower, and/or safflower oil". There is already whey protein in it also.
A little vegetable oil is not going to make a big difference. Over the last decade or two they have snuck palm oil in, and sometimes even wax, and most consumers didn't notice. Most of you won't notice the vegtable oil either, and those of us who do already read the labels.
Did you ever know a "chocoholic"? One of those folks who just can't get enough chocolate? I bet there's at least one in your home or workplace. At my house, it's my wife Emily. She's got to have her little bowl of Hershey's Kisses in the living room. She can't go shopping without bringing home some chocolate ice cream or a chocolate-cake mix. She's even got a funny little sweatshirt that says, "My Name Is Emily, And I'm A Chocoholic."
To be honest, I'm a bit of a chocoholic myself. Except for one small detail. You see, instead of being addicted to chocolate, I'm addicted to booze. Yep, from dawn to dusk, there's one thing on my mind: booze! Beer, liquor, wine, all that stuff!
When my wife gets one of her cravings, she reaches for a Baby Ruth or Mars bar. With me, it's Icehouse beer. My refrigerator is always stocked with plenty of it. I also have a little flask of whiskey in my desk drawer at work. In fact, if you can keep a secret, I even keep some booze in my car in case of traffic jams. I just can't stand to be without booze for too long!
I'm a lot like that Cookie Monster on Sesame Street. Only it's more like the Booze Monster. When I walk into a party and see that they have booze of any kind, it's like, "Whoa-hoa! All bets are off! Lemme at that booze!"
I remember this one time, there was no chocolate in the house. Emily was going out of her mind, trying to scrape up some sort of chocolate fix. In the end, she resorted to drinking a cup of hot cocoa. It was so cute! Sort of like the time I drank all her hairspray because there was no booze in the house. Or that other time with the rubbing alcohol. Or the Nyquil. Or the Aqua-Velva.
Another time, I was completely out of booze, and all the stores and bars were closed, so I drove 45 minutes to find a place that would sell me some beer or something. I was kind of embarrassed, because here it was late Monday night, and I had to work the next day, and I'm driving around looking for booze. But, hey, that's just how things are when you're a "booze-oholic" like me! I finally found a huge all-night liquor store. You should have seen how I loaded up! Cases of this, fifths of that. It was 5 a.m. when I finally got home, so I just said, "To heck with work!" and had my own little improvised holiday. I called it Booze Day! I'd been working hard, getting to work on time almost every day for two weeks, so I figured I'd earned what wound up being the rest of the week off.
Sometimes Emily and I think we should cut down a little-you know, health concerns and all. But there's always some special occasion that gives us an excuse to go off our "diets." Halloween was Emily's last big bender. We only got three trick-or-treaters the entire night, so the whole big bowl of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups went straight to her. (Or straight to her thighs, as she said!)
My most recent bender was today. There was a good movie on TV, and I figured, hey, I'll need steady hands to change the volume. Of course, it all went straight to my liver, but what are you gonna do?
For my birthday, Emily gave me the funniest coffee mug, perfect for Irish coffee. It has a little teddy bear on it with a "don't mess with me" look on his face, and it says, "Hand Over The Booze And Nobody Gets Hurt." I laughed so hard! That bear was just like me when I robbed the party store earlier this year! Also, the mug is really big, so it can hold a lot of booze... another plus!
Yes, those chocoholics are a funny sort. But they won't hurt you-as long as they have their chocolate, that is. Or, in my case, booze!
- lifted from The Onion
For chocolate thayt is true. Chocolatey only needs to somehow resemble chocolate. Add a few more -ey and you probably have something is vaguely brown. Perhaps recycled Zunes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The FDA is taking consumer comments until April 25.
After which time they will toss them out and make a re$pon$ible deci$ion.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The surplus sugar will go into making that well known vegetable called ketchup.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Dont follow this path I dont care what the US does, M&Ms were about the only edible chocolate there anyway.
Damn you Slashdot and your chocolate stories, I now have a huge craving for a big box of Leonidas.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Chinese medicine (herbs, acupuncture, etc.) has been around for thousands of years. People have been curing themselves long before Big Pharma pushed all of their drugs on us.
Couple hundred years ago, draining blood was considered a cure for just about anything. Lets bring it back. Next time you have a headache, slit your wrists.
God, you "all natural" medicine freaks are about as bad as those Scientologist.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
This is the same FDA that in spring 2006 bowed to industry pressure to change labeling requirements for carmine coloring. Look at a bottle of Listerine Citrus Burst. It has an ingredient called cochineal extract. Sounds kinda exotic like vanilla extract. FDA proposed labeling standard requiring manufacturers to say "cochineal extract (insect derived)" but food manufacturers argued that would turn off consumers so they deleted the insect derived portion. Cochineal extract is a red food coloring derived from crushing pregnant cochineal beetles. They also use it in Wonka (Nestle) Pixy Stix. This isn't for health reasons or flavor enhancement. Cochineal extract (insect derived) is used purely for aesthetic purposes. Just remember the next time you rinse with Listerine Citrus Burst that you're swishing crushed dead pregnant beetles in your mouth.
signature pending slashdot approval
I absolutely stay away from the Big Corporate chocolate: Hershey's, Cadbery's, etc. It's all shit. High Fructose Corn Syrup and other crap in there. Ever had fine, European chocolate? The taste and texture is so much better.
There is a healthy and damn tasteful alternative to "corporate chocolate": Scharffen Berger Bittersweet Fine Artisan Dark Chocolate. I buy the 70% and 100% Cacao bars. You can really taste the cacao beans in the 70% but it's not completely bitter. The 100% takes a bit getting used to but once you've enjoyed these high quality chocolates, the "corporate chocolate" tastes like the shit that it is. I buy these bars at Whole Foods Market.
OK I slit my wrists and you were spot on, the headache went away almost immediately. However I have been unable to stem the bloodflow and now I feel quite weak and dizzy. Can you suggest something for this? Also if you have any tips for removing blood stains from carpets and keyboards I would very much appreciate it...
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This is very important. The Big Pharmaceutical corporations have been trying to get natural medicine banned for years. Instead of taking herbs, vitamins, minerals, and other natural and very inexpensive remedies, Big Pharma wants to drug everyone.
You can mix dandelions and dog spit in a jar and sell it as a cure for baldness and impotence as long as you put a tiny thing on the bottom of the screen that says it's not intended to treat or diagnose anything. 95% of the herbal medicine market is an obvious scam. Thank God they're finally trying to do something about it. It drives me crazy watching those damn commercials. If I want a placebo for my erectile dysfunction, I'll eat a bull penis like anyone sensible would.
It's really a bad quality product change if it is allowed. People that want to make/buy a chocolate substitute, can do that /now/ without calling it chocolate; They can market a chocolate flavored snack without calling it chocolate... People who really want the good stuff, shouldn't end up with 'chocolate flavored' items...
--
+1 for low user id
There is a reason the FDA's summary is so vague---the proposal isn't about chocolate. Well, not just about chocolate. The proposal is supported by a substantial range of food manufacturer's and distributors, touching on chocolate, meat, poultry, frozen food, and more.
The proposed changes affect divergences from standard labeling guidelines for a lot of reasons, including things like "improvements in nutritional properties", "use of safe suitable flavors and flavor enhancers", "alternate manufacturing processes", etc.
You can read the whole thing yourself (pdf warning) here. See especially the last 4 pages or so.
Is the change in guidelines a good thing for consumers? I don't know. I don't know enough about food manufacturing to judge.
REVOLUTION!!!!!!
First they came for my fats, and I said nothing. Then they came for my carbs, and I said nothing. Then they came for my sugars, and I said nothing.
But NOT MY FUCKING CHOCOLATE!
(insert Star Spangled Banner here)
One nation. One struggle. One destiny.
I had a dream! A chocolatey dream!
For those who haven't read the book, the message is: WHO FUCKING CARES? IS THIS REALLY WHAT YOU IMAGINE YOUR TAX MONEY SHOULD BE PAYING FOR?
Abso-fricking-lutely. When I buy chocolate, I want to know that if someone wraps dog feces in aluminum foil, they can't say, "No, that's what we call chocolate. No refunds, you already ate three-quarters of it." Enforced accurate labeling and definitions is absolutely what I want the government to be doing.
Hershey owns both Scharffen Berger and Joseph Schmidt chocolates, but has thankfully let them continue their good work.
? releaseID=743393
http://www.thehersheycompany.com/news/release.asp
Worse yet, some are producing 'diet' chocolate with sugars like maltitol, which does not get absorbed in the stomach like most sugars. But the bacteria in the large intestine can metabolize maltitol, and they produce lots of gas...
As a dentist who is trained in pharmacology and who doesn't stand to benefit from pharma money, I would fully support the FDA regulating the wild wild west that is herbal medicine. FWIW I'm Asian and I grew up in an herbal culture.
If you were in England I would recommend a tasting at the L'Artisan du Chocolat factory in Ashford Kent. http://www.artisanduchocolat.com/ArtisanduChocola
Fine chocolate does not age well, does not travel well, and is wasted on an untutored pallet- just like fine wines, cheeses and scotch. There are many chocolatiers in New York, google for a factory-shop that does tastings.
Locally made, fresh, quality chocolate is something else. Hersey's is to Godvia as Godvia is to Michel Cluizel. There is a Michel Cluizel in NYC: http://www.chocolatmichelcluizel-na.com/about_us.
Eugene Debs: "Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization"
What crazy ass world do you live in?!
The world before modern medicine was a pretty shitty place if you got sick. Sure, there are local herbs etc that have been used--with HIGHLY varying success--in every part of the world, forever. This is as true of America and Europe than it is of China, though I take your obsession with China means you're "one of those" who think we can look east for all our answers, and believe this with near religious fervor. Do you HONESTLY believe that "Chinese herbs" have a better track record than Western medicine... REALLY?!
Vitamins--PURE NATURAL VITAMNS (that means they're good, right?)--can at most cause a "tummyache" you claim. Let's see... this is all from a VERY quick google.
Overdoses of...
Vitamin A -- "can lead to liver damage, hair loss, blurred vision and headaches."
Vitamin B3 (niacin) -- "Niacin can have life-threatening acute toxic reactions" (wikipedia)
Vitamin D -- "can cause the buildup of calcium deposits that can interfere with the functioning of muscles, including heart tissue"
Ok, so you admitted diarrhea, nausea, upset stomach etc as vitamin sideeffects, from the list above we can add liver damage, and in some cases death. Well dang, what a SHOCK, those are almost the exact possible side effects you listed as coming from BIG SCARY PHARMA!!!
How ludicrous can you get. Really, I would think slashdotters should be able to be a little more questioning of things...
Incidentally... tobacco.. natural, bad DRUG. Marijuana? Natural drug. Alcohol? Natural drug. I think it's safe to say that natural things can have bad side effects, and can be called "drugs," friend..
And here I thought chocolate was a candy, an indulgence, a culinary luxury to be enjoyed for it's own smooth deliciousness. Who knew that I should be conditioning myself to tolerate only pure "Cacau" bars, just as I might do with fish oil, so I can rest smugly in my chocolate snobishness.
But wait, processing the bean discards much of the natural taste and benefit. Better to eat the beans whole, directly from the tree, than to pollute them by the touch of man or machine. This is truly the way of the chocolate elite.
And I hear that chewing the leaves is enjoyable, too. I especially like the leaves!
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
The same can be said of Big Pharma's drug push. Again, look at VIOXX. Nowhere in the marketing did it say there's a chance you can get a heart attack.
And they got the crap sued out of them for it. What's your point?
The crazy sad thing is that I agree with you about choice--that's my dislike of the government speaking though, and not my drinking your anti-corporate koolaid though.
"Vegetable oil" is a synonym for "heavily processed, hydrogenated oil which will kill you but makes good financial sense to the corporatised US food production industry"
t ml
3 471-trans-fat-interesterified-fat-cvd
e goil.htmle ption.htmld rogenatedoil.htm
It is poisonous bloody stuff. If you want to know why America (in particular) and western nations (in general) are all suffering out of control obesity and diabetes epidemics you need to look no further than the replacement of natural oils (peanut, coconut and butter), with so-called "healthy" polyunsaturates. Countries like India uses huge amounts of butter (ghee) and coconut oil and you don't see them with rampaging blood sugar levels, heart disease and all of the other side effects of eating crap like "Crisco" and margarines.
Ask yourself why these types of oils never spoil? If you leave margarine out of the refridgerator for a week, does it go off? Why? It doesn't go off because it is not bio-degradeable. If it is not biodegradable, then how is your body meant to metabolise it? Of course it can't, so what it does is "put it aside" and get on with the job of digesting everything else. After sufficient time of course your body will have put enough fat aside that you become fat. Fat builds up around the pancreas and voila, you've got diabetes.
So why do we eat this crap? Because US food interests want you to. The problem for US business interests is that most natural oils such as peanut, olive and coconut/palm oil are not produced in the US. The US does produce gobs of corn and soy however, not to mention that canola rubbish. The problem is that these crops do not produce much edible oil naturally, it has to be processed out of them. Another problem is that the resulting oils are quite unstable, meaning they react to oxygen (oxidize) quickly and spoil. This is a problem for the manufacturing, distribution and retail industries however, who really like long shelf lives and cheap storage (non-refrigerated). So what the industry does is to hydrogenate their oils, which means superheating the oil and passing it through hydrogen to fuse hydrogen molecules to the receptors that would normally fuse with the oxygen. This makes for an oil that is extremely stable but an unfortunate side effect is that it also becomes virtually undigestable. Sure you can eat it and you won't turn blue and die in a week, but then the same can be said for smoking too. Remember how corporate interests insisted that smoking couldn't hurt you until only a few years ago? Well the edible oil industry is no better than those criminals. They too use bogus science and massive amounts of money to produce a steady stream of lies and bullshit regarding the health benefits of eating processed vegetable oils. This began during the thirties and over time it has worked so well that the US is now the most overweight and unhealthy nation on earth, with other western nations scrambling to follow suit.
Now they want to stick that crap in chocolate. It's getting to the point that you wont be able to buy anything that isn't filled with this rubbish.
Essential reading:
The Oiling of America
http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/oiling.h
Other good sites;
http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=7
http://www.thescreamonline.com/essays/essays5-1/v
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/DiabetesDec
http://www.jctonic.com/include/healingcrisis/12Hy
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
The multi-billion dollar "Big Pharmaceutical corporations" are evil, lying and care for nothing but profit, whereas the multi-billion dollar "alternative medicines" industry is love, truth and fluffy bunnies?
How about Matthias Rath? He has convinced many in the South African government that AIDS is not caused by HIV, AIDS should be treated by vitamin supplements (which he just happens to sell) and antiretroviral medicines are a worse than useless, and advocating their use is genocide.
AIDS is killing 900 people per day in South Africa. A sizable fraction of those deaths can be laid directly at the door of "alternative medicine" in general, and the South African government and Rath in particular.
Big Pharma need someone to stand over them with a big stick to try to keep them honest. So do alternative medicine peddlers. The difference is that, occasionally, the big stick gets used on Big Pharma, but the snake-oil salesmen opperate with impunity in Alternative Medicine, playing Russian Roulette with other people's lives for their own profit.
Don't ban the 'remedies' - but do ban the lies and unsupported wishful-thinking published about them.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Soooo many problems with your post. 1. Those "natural remedies" did not evolve with us or for us -- they evolved for their own survival. They just happen to have chemicals in them which affect human physiology in some way. 2. Side effects? St. John's Wort + certain cheese + certain red wines = death. All 3 at usual dosing. Enjoy. 3. This freedom you want requires accurate information about efficacy and side effects, but your post advocates sticking our head in the sand and assuming "nature" always has OUR interests in mind. All natural remedies are chemicals, just like drugs. They are drugs, they just have been discovered in nature rather than synthesized. If you believe in science and not voodoo, you'd want them to be tested for efficacy. Herbal remedy producers (corporations, just not as big as Big Pharma) don't want testing because then the vast majority of them will be shown to be ineffective. All drugs, and remedies, have benefits and risk. Some are quite obvious, but most benefit/risk calculations really require a certain level of expertise, which the American public simply does not have. Thus, the snake oil people can sell you unregulated dreck and you feel you're in control. Meanwhile, you waste money.
As a type-1 diabetic, I get sick and tired of hearing people talk about how eating this that and the other thing gives people diabetes. NO! YOU'RE WRONG!!! It can give some people type-2 diabetes. Type-1 diabetes is unpreventable. I get so tired of people acting as if it's my fault I have type-1 diabetes. It's not! When talking about diabetes, you should always make the distinction between type-1 and type-2. Type-2 can be caused by eating crappy chocolate too much, but type-1 can't. GET IT STRAIGHT! If you're still confused, see this: this. They do an OK job at clarifying. Or go and google type-1 vs type-2 diabetes. See what you get. But please don't go telling people that such-and-such causes diabetes. Because chances are you're WRONG.
Really? I was under the impression that today's life spans are remarkably longer and medicine substantially more effective than not only anything in recorded history, but definitely more than so-called "natural" medicine you see nowadays.
That's because the FDA doesn't regulate herbs and vitamins, which is where the requirement for listing adverse side effects comes from. If all of a sudden the FDA stopped regulating pharmaceutical drugs, would you somehow think they were better because of a lack of warnings? Of course not.
Even though you're throwing evolution around in your argument, you obviously don't understand a goddamn thing about science. We are not "f'ing" with mother nature. We are fixing the system. Our evolution is not perfect. There is no such thing as "Mother Nature". You are a complete fucking idiot. Herbal healing is just another long line of ideas that claim that science is going too far and we need to resort to the traditional ways of thinking, be it Christian Science, acupuncture, or any number of other bullshit ideologies.
The only way to know the truth of how drugs affect our bodies is through science. I know that there is scientific evidence for specific herbs' uses in medicine, and that's fine. Herbs certainly have valid uses. But to claim (as you seem to be doing) that traditional herbal medicine is superior to modern medicine simply because of some adverse side effects and lobbying power by pharmaceutical companies is to ignore nearly the entire body of scientific study on medicine! You can't cherry-pick which scientific ideas you want to accept, simply because some conflict with your pre-conceived view of the world.
If you're going to try and be conservative at least extend the effort to remove any and all references to scientific ideas from your post. That's what the "smart" conservatives do. I wish I could find language to explain the contempt I feel for your ideas. No matter how venomous my words may seem they will not project the absolute hatred I have for whoever has convinced you that this bullshit is anything remotely resembling the truth.
The Codex Alimentarius, the international standards body for food, has a standard for chocolate. They require >35% cocoa solids for "chocolate". And they limit other fats:
"The addition of vegetable fats other than cocoa butter shall not exceed 5% of the finished product, after deduction of the total weight of any other added edible foodstuffs, without reducing the minimum contents of cocoa materials. Where required by the authorities having jurisdiction, the nature of the vegetable fats permitted for this purpose may be prescribed in applicable legislation.
What are the numbers in the FDA proposal?
Could you provide some links please.
If I'm going to boycot Nestle and tell other people to follow my example, which I will if you can substantiate your claim, I prefer to have facts.
I googled 'Nestle "2 months" "baby formula" "new mothers" Africa' and didn't find anything that supports your claim about Nestle intentionaly trying to cause the women to not breast feed. I did find some articles that talked about when Nestle gave samples of powdered fomulae to women who did not have access to safe water and that the women also, in an effort to streach out what they had been given, added more water than was called for. There where deaths due to malnutrition (caused by the thinned formule) and dysentary (caused by the contaminated water) which considering that the women where likely malnurished, and therefore not lactating anyway, and drinking contaminated water it is hard to say without more info if the children died as a result of Nestle's actions as you insinuate in your comment. It apears that Nestle just showed poor judgment in not providing premixed fomula. There was no indication of criminally wrongfull intent by Nestle, nor was there anything about the fomulae itself being dangerous, they just wanted to get the women to use their product, they do the same thing everywhere.
I am not defending Nestle for their actions.
I am however asking you to substantiate your claims with facts and not rumor or inuendo.
The world already has enough people who act on rumors and inuendo, ignoring substantiated facts, they're called politicians.
Sugar isn't used because of the HUGE subsidy our Democratic Congress put on sugar in the 1970's to save a few hundred farming jobs in Lousiana. This caused the loss of over 50000 manufactureing jobs in the Candy industry, as well as the "New Coke" fiasco. The US pays about 5x the world market price for sugar. Its so bad that it is cheeper to import sweetened drinks from Mexico and distill the sugar out of them than buy the sugar(and this has been done even though it is illegal smuggling.) So our current congress has furthered the subsidy by giving money to sugar beet "farmers"(think corporations) in California in the last budget bill to fund our soldiers. When the corn grower industry(more big corporations) figured out they could make a sweetener they lobbied to continue the price subsidy for sugar. Of course the widespred usage of corn syrup happens to co-inside with the large increses in type II diabetese and obesity in this country. This price subsidy is also killing our efforts for ethanol fueled cars. Ahhh the joys of unintended consequenses. When will liberals learn that there will always be unintended consequences to government solutions to problems?
"95%"
I'm not going to bother to ask for a cite as that number is clearly made up. Next time make it, like, 97.2% or something.
The number is way off though. Before 1900 nearly all remedies were herbal; they've been in mankinds pharmacopia for about 7000 years according to recoded history and even chimps have been shown to know what roots and twigs to eat if they're sick.
Got a sore throat of a cough? Eat a teaspoon of tobasco or any hot hot thing. The heat numbs the throat instantly and expectorates the crap in your lungs. Or you can get guffenesin in a white pill. Same thing. Guess where it came from?
A Chinese remedy for "bad heart" is earthworm tea. Western medecine picked up on this a decade or so ago and calls it "Lumbrecin". It's still worms.
Of course there are bullshit herbal remedies, but there's lots and lots that actually do something. So I'm calling bullshit on the "95%" number. I too can pull numbers out of my ass.
You can't patent herbal remedies. Cogitate on that for a bit and understand big pharma pushes new drugs on doctors on a near daily basis. In fact if you look at the development of modern pharmocology you'll see that at the beginning of the 20th century we had mostly natural elixers and by the end these were gone in favour of "patent medecine" that now defines the western pharmocopia. To say most herbal cures won't work shows a remarkable lack of understanding of medecine. Many more work than do not. I don't know what the number is - but neither do you.
The placebo effect is quite reproducable - a friend did his thesis on this and the cure rate for it is 2-5% for all diseases across the board including cancer. (red ones work the best, green the least) In my mind this explains obvious bullshit lie Bach flower remedies and homeopathy.
But don't diss da 'erb, mon.
Need Mercedes parts ?
The reason they aren't regulated as drugs is historical and political. Many were "grandfathered" in as GRAS when early laws such as the Pure Food and Drug Act were passed. When the FDA attempts to regulate them, the manufacturers can point to the law and scream to their congressmen that the FDA is breaking the law -- which it is.
Of course, not all herbals work as claimed. There is no shortage of crooks pushing bogus cures or impure formulae, and they're going to congregate where legal oversight is the weakest.
Some examples of herbs that work are too obvious to be successfully denied. Willow bark contains salicylates, providing the same mechanism for pain relief that the chemically related aspirin provides. Peppermint relieves indigestion. Foxglove provides digitalis, a heart medicine.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Hello, I couldn't help but spot this argument and decided to throw my two cents in.
a d-this-instant, Google it if you actually care) state of well being. This is where the more 'traditional' medicines are making a strong comeback along with new ideas of how to live healthy.
Cheers,
Socguy.
Firstly you are correct when you say that the world before modern medicine was a pretty shi**y place. Almost anything could kill you, like, say a broken leg which could leads to loss of blood or infection. Brain trauma, giving birth was a particularly dangerous undertaking, and a chariot accident was no picnic either. Anything like that happens to me and or someone I care about and you'll see me taking them to the hospital without delay. Western Medicine simply has no equal at this kind of thing.
On the other side of the coin, we are living FAR longer than we ever did in the past (due mainly to proper nutrition and sanitation!) and Western Medicine has a far poorer track-record dealing with the new diseases of the affluent world; Cancers, arthritis, diabetes, joint deterioration and so on (you're getting old!). So our society is re-examining what it means to be healthy. Back in the day, the absence of disease or obvious injury was enough, now health is something that can be achieved to a greater or lesser degree. This means that no matter how healthy you are now, you can always strive to better your condition. (Stop eating all those fatty foods!) The UN now defines health something like this: The complete physical, mental, social, spiritual and (something-else-I-can't-pull-off-the-top-of-my-he
The first statement is blatantly incorrect, the second is not relevant, and the third is clearly written by someone with no clue about chemistry. Hydrogenation has the purpose of transforming liquid oils containing unsaturated bonds, such as the peanut oil, into fats that are solid at room temperature (i.e. saturated fats). Saturated fats, which are completely natural, don't have any unsaturated bonds that can be oxidized either. A side effect of hydrogenation is that some unsaturated trans bonds are formed. How about reading a source with less bias and more scientific references? Trans fats on wikipedia:
- Increased risk for coronary heart diseases: yes.
- Cancer: no scientific consensus.
- Diabetes: no scientific consensus.
- Overweight (compared to other fats): no scientific consensus.
No scientific consensus tends to mean that there are one or two studies that show a very small effect and other studies that don't show any effect at all. Even if such na effect exists, it is likely not significant compared to other health risks many people are taking (lack of exercise, smoking, breathing polluted air, to name a few).Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Again, you are missing the point. Herbal remedies have not been scientifically tested. We don't know which of these remedies are good, which are bad for you, etc. Side effects don't need labelled, in short, we don't know which remedies are worth truly exploring. Classifying them as drugs just means that the same testing and quality assurance guarantees that exist for pharmaceuticals exist for herbal medicines. You want equality, but you're not going to get it by keeping herbs untested and unproven.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
WHAT???
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
so try and replace peanut butter with Peanut-Vegetable Margarine and then try to stomach it..double points if both use olestra.
Storm
Definitely there is crap here as well, lots of it, shelves of it, can you say "snickers" or "mars bar", lots of cloying candy crap, but pretty well every corner store has a couple of bars of decent chocolate, pretty well every half sized supermarket sells 70% cocoa content bars. And this is the UK, laughed at for its crap food across the rest of Europe.
We had the same battle here if you remember about 10 years ago with European Union food people trying to get huge numbers of British "chocolate" bars relabelled as not-chocolate, The Sun newspaper and the other red tops threw a wobbly. Shortly after that an American friend of discerning taste introduced me to proper chocolate (higher cocoa content) in France and then I realised yup, now I see why these food guys in Belgium and France wouldn't feed their dog on the stuff I've been eating.
US chocolate is pretty poor generally though in my experience, I think over there you have to go to expensive boutiques to find what you get in an average ASDA/Walmart or Tescos here.
WOW - There's a lot of misinformation floating around here! Obviously this is a topic that's near and dear to many of your hearts!
I'm the technical director of a chocolate company. I've been making chocolate for many, many years.
The proposal from the GMA isn't directed just at chocolate, but would include it. It essentially calls for the use of 'all safe and suitable' sweeteners and oils. Chocolate has a standard of identity, which means that the government controls the definition of chocolate. That definition can be changed (white chocolate actually didn't legally exist until a few years go, at which time a white chocolate section was added to the CFR) - however it takes many, many years to do so (white chocolate took over a decade).
This is driven by a number of things, which include, but are not limited to:
1) the desire to be able to legally call sugar free products sugar free chocolate, when formulated to meet the other standards
2) the desire to harmonize global chocolate standards - most of the rest of the world allows the use of up to 5% CBE (cocoa butter equivilants - these are oils that are chemically the same as cocoa butter, but are usually - not always - more economical).
ANY change would be required to be labelled, so no one would pull anything over on you, same as it is today. Mfr's would be able to choose to do this or not, it would not be a requirement, so it's not that all chocolate would change overnight. My take on it is that the GMA has written this petition so broadly as to be ridiculous, hoping that the FDA allows on a portion of what was asked for. It will likely take years before the FDA even acknowledges it 8-)
All wine contains naturally occurring sulfites. Almost (probably 99.5%+) every wine of any quality made anywhere in the world also contains added sulfites. In large part this is to kill unwanted ambient yeasts and bacteria that could either contaminate the wine or produce unwelcome fermentation characteristics. But even in wineries kept clean enough to avoid bacterial contamination, and where ambient yeasts are used instead of cultured ones, sulfites are still almost always added to the fermented wine. That's because a buffer of sulfites is necessary to react with free oxygen in the barrel/tank and in the bottle, plus whatever oxygen slowly seeps in through the cork (or other closure; stevlin screwcaps are less oxygen permeable but not completely impermeable). Otherwise the wine gets oxidized. And, in general, the naturally occurring sulfites are not enough, especially if the wine is going to be aged for any length of time. Indeed, the irony of people who ignorantly complain about the "added sulfites" indicating cheap or industrial wine is that the wines with the highest levels of added sulfites are generally the greatest wines in the world, as they are the ones intended to be aged potentially for decades.
Now, there are a very few wines that do not contain added sulfites. Some are meant to be oxidized--primarily these are amontillado sherries; the only oxidized table wines I can think of are certain relatively obscure wines from the Jura region of France. Also, there is a burgeoning movement toward "natural" wines; the term is rather loosely defined, but is intended to go beyond organic and biodynamic wine-making, which refers only to the viniculture (that is, the farming), and also encompass a pure and "non-interventionist" approach to vinification as well. In general, "natural" wines are organically if not biodynamically grown, use ambient yeasts instead of cultivated yeasts (this is a big one), do not add sugar before fermentation to raise alcohol content, do not leach off excess alcohol, do not add or subtract acids, do not contain artificial additives to change color or taste, do not ferment or age with oak chips or dust or staves, do not add lab-synthesized tannins to round out their tannin profile, and do not undergo a process known as micro-oxygenation in which very tiny amounts of oxygen are pumped through wine to speed up the aging process and mimic the slow exposure to oxygen that leaks into the oak barrels in which many expensive wines are aged. (Yes, all of these techniques, and more, are very commonly used in the making of wine from all quality levels.) They typically do not add sulfites before fermentation (it would kill the natural yeasts). Some of them eschew the use of artificial temperature controls during vinification--they ferment at whatever temperature it is outside.
And some of them, very few, do not add sulfites after fermentation to preserve their wines. They are hoping that very careful vinification will protect their wine from bacterial contamination, and the proper preservative balance of alcohol, acidity and tannin will allow their wine to last a few years without oxidizing; they believe the lack of sulfites gives their wines a freshness and purity that is missing from other wines. (Note that this approach is pretty much only possible with dry red wines--dry so that ambient yeasts would not cause refermentation, and red because tannin is needed to stave off oxidation.)
As for the notion some people that the sulfites in wine give them a headache, this is poppycock. Almost always these people complain about red wines, while in fact whites have higher levels of sulfites, because they don't have tannins (which are also preservatives). Perhaps these people are reacting to something else in red wine (like tannin, or other anti-oxidants which are more prevalent in reds), or perhaps it's just psychosomatic. (Apparently studies have confirmed that Red Wine Headache really does exist in certain people, although the cause is not yet known. Additionally, some p
There was a huge "scandal" about it when Sunny Delight was popular here in the late 1990s and all of a sudden it was all over the papers when someone realised "OMG!!!! IT'S NOT REAL JUICE, IT'S JUST SQUASH!!!!11111". Like, you don't say.
(Then there was even more scandal when there were reports of kids turning yellow through drinking the stuff. I know it's crap, but how much of the damn stuff were these parents feeding their kids?)
I hate all those crappy "juice drinks" that come in fruit-juice like packaging, but contain (at best) 25-50% fruit juice, with the rest made up from citric acid, sugar and God-knows-what. For what it is, it's fine, but I'm willing to bet that they're designed to fool countless morons into thinking they're fruit juice (and that they succeed).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Read a book on chocolate in my cooking phase. It's a lot like coffee with less opportunity to explore bean varietals: purity, freshness, some qualities of the grind and flavorings you might find pleasant. Freshness for instance. Godiva originally commanded its price because it was the one that shipped in refrigerated cars.
If American manufacturers want to sacrifice purity with crap ingredients, that's just something else to buy elsewhere.
Hey one reasonable response out of 3. Not bad by /. standards.
.... skin cancers expected to be diagnosed this year.
"And some of them, very few, do not add sulfites after fermentation to preserve their wines. They are hoping that very careful vinification will protect their wine from bacterial contamination, and the proper preservative balance of alcohol, acidity and tannin will allow their wine to last a few years without oxidizing; they believe the lack of sulfites gives their wines a freshness and purity that is missing from other wines. (Note that this approach is pretty much only possible with dry red wines--dry so that ambient yeasts would not cause refermentation, and red because tannin is needed to stave off oxidation.)....."
was exactly what I was talking about. A friend of mine was fired from a vineyard for exposing exactly this practice. Sulfites are primarily added to lesser wines. So, though you are far more informed than I am on this topic, my original point seems to be corroborated by the facts, even as you present them. A truly good wine would not add them because it would be made in a clean environment avoiding bacteria.
As for white wine: Who actually drinks that noxious crap?
Heart disease, cancer, and obesity are on the rise, or already at all time highs. Last I checked those were three of the main killers in this country.
For those other critics who wanted some numbers:
American Heart Association estimates for the year 2004 that 79,400,000 Americans have one or more forms of cardiovascular disease (CVD). So 80 million of 300 million of us have heart disease. That's about a quarter of us, or one in four.
From a Harvard study: Obesity is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality, causing some 2.6 million deaths worldwide each year.....In 2002, the corrected prevalence of obesity in the U.S. population was 28.7% for adult men and 34.5% for adult women, more than 50% higher than previously estimated. So one in three of us is obese and will die sooner (probably) as a result of that.
From the Cancer cure foundation: Over much of the 1990s, deaths from cancer declined slightly in the US, but the number of Americans diagnosed with certain cancers--including breast, skin and liver cancer--inched up. So less people are DYING of cancer, but more people are being diagnosed with it, and probably living shorter life spans.
From a report issued by the Center for Disease Control: Cancer is the second leading cause of death among Americans. One of every four deaths in the US is due to cancer. In 2006, about 1.4 million Americans will receive a new diagnosis of invasive cancer, and 564,830 Americans will die of this disease. These estimates do not include the more than 1 million cases of
So, yeah, I think public health has diminished and PEOPLE ARE DYING because the FDA is not protecting them from carcinogens in the food, and other toxins that lead to heart disease.
And if you see it any other way, I'm sorry, but you are STILL a complete and utter moron with no knowledge about the topic.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.