Slashdot Mirror
How the Sugar Industry Tried To Hide Health Effects of Its Product 50 Years Ago (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: About 50 years ago, the sugar industry stopped funding research that began to show something they wanted to hide: that eating lots of sugar is linked to heart disease. A new study exposes the sugar industry's decades-old effort to stifle that critical research. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, recently analyzed historical documents regarding a rat study called Project 259 that was launched in 1968. The study was funded by a sugar industry trade group called the International Sugar Research Foundation, or ISRF, and conducted by W. F. R. Pover at the University of Birmingham. When the preliminary findings from that study began to show that eating lots of sugar might be associated with heart disease, and even bladder cancer, the ISRF pulled the plug on the research. Without additional funding, the study was terminated and the results were never published, according to a study published today in PLOS Biology. The study in question investigated the relationship between sugars and certain blood fats called triglycerides, which increase the risk of heart disease. The preliminary results from the research, called Project 259, suggested that rats on a high-sugar diet, instead of a starch diet, had higher levels of triglycerides. The rats that ate lots of sugar also had higher levels of an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase in their urine, which at the time was thought to be potentially linked to bladder cancer, says study co-author Cristin Kearns, an assistant professor at the UCSF School of Dentistry.
Wait, what? Are we talking HFCS or GMO or Sugars or what? Fuck, dude, pick your poison. Not everythiing is horrible for you. Do you hate turkey too?
Think of all the rats that could have benefited had this study been properly completed and released.
Read some of crusader Gary Taube's books to find out how institutions like Harvard and many more succumbed to industry research money that makes sugary foods an integral part of today's diet and yes, the ubiquitous Food Pyramid. Bought.And.Paid.For.
Sugar's an addictive drug, like opoids, nicotine, even social media and gaming. This is one of the US's favorite business models: addiction-- Profit!!
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
If you think you "know" anything, you have no clue about how science works.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
They'd be running the streets singing "pour some sugar on me".
Started out as a kid, before I knew it was hooked on Cap'n Crunch. Within a few years it was harder stuff - twinkies, mars bars, ju jubes. There's no end. Before it hit me, I was buying up chocolate bunnies after easter and binging on them for days and was looking forward to Christmas only for the delicious Turtles. And they say it's not a drug. They're crazy.
Everything in moderation.
My sister raised her kids on candy, cookies and baking goods. She wanted to please them but they all ended up with a lot of cavities and they're fat. Along with the sugar is fat. Lots of it. They love to smother things with cheese. Also the baked goods have a lot of fat (mostly butter). When we were raised, our mother liked to bake and the products were pleasing delicacies It was fun but I got more cavities than I should have.
Now, I drink a couple of sodas per day but not to excess. I get some exercise and don't eat high fat foods. I'm doing fine. Just had my checkup and my physician commented that my cholesterol and blood work looks fine.
I despise artificial sweeteners. They leave bad aftertaste IMHO.
Again, moderation is the key. Sugar ain't all that bad.
Yeah...I EAT MEAT!
Low Carbohydrates and pretty much any meat I want.
I just WORKS!
If you think you "know" anything, you have no clue about how science works.
Fine. People who understand how science works know that the best available explanatory theories for observed phenomena indicate that climate change is substantially the result of human release of CO2, and that GMOs are safe.
Of course, new evidence may be discovered tomorrow that upends these conclusions. That's science. But it's really unlikely.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
"GMOs are safe" is a nonsensically overgeneralized statement. It's entirely dependent on the *specific* GMO being discussed. The whole point of a GMO bioweapon for example is to NOT be safe.
If you're specifically talking about GMO foods, then the answer is a definite "it depends". Golden Rice, etc seem quite safe, as do many survival- and yield-boosting enhancements. But the GMO food market is dominated by things like Monsanto's poison-resistant crops, which might be fine on their own, but exist for the specific purpose of allowing the plants to be saturated with chemicals that are both known to be toxic to humans, and to be absorbed into the "food" part of the plant.
And then there's the very definite secondary risks of monoculture that inevitably accompany enhancing yield, etc. of a comparative few crop strains, which makes them far more vulnerable to disease and other blights. You know that weird cloyingly sweet candy flavor that's called "banana" despite not tasting remotely right? That's actually what bananas used to taste like, before the commercial banana monoculture was hit by a plague that rapidly drove our preferred species to extinction. Too dense a population with too little genetic variation is *extremely* vulnerable to plagues.
Not to mention the very real risks of allowing Monsanto and friends to have a legal stranglehold on the food supply, which they have already shown themselves to be eager to abuse at every opportunity.
And of course if you want to go full "Frankenfood", there's no reason you couldn't engineer corn, or anything else, to produce any of a wide range of highly toxic substances that would make them as lethally poisonous as the most deadly of mushrooms. And there are in fact already GMO crops (not deployed...I think) designed to produce their own pesticides internally - not immediately fatal to humans, but most pesticides can do nasty things to us if consumed in large enough quantities. And no amount of scrubbing will wash off a pesticide that's produced within the fruit itself.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It's all poison.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This article is about the food industry covering up the dangers of sugar for 50 years, the same way tobacco covered up the dangers of smoking. So why is it so unlikely to suspect that the chemical industry is doing the same thing with GMOs?
We have a pattern of multinational corporations covering up shit that will kill you and/or ruin the environment. What changed in the past 50 years to make you think that wouldn't be their operative pattern today?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Whatever works for you dude. Eating fats upon fats upon protein works great for me. Salt + butter + not-carbs, and I am great. Add carbs into any of that, your "processing" doesn't even begin to factor into it, and all get it is fat, sick (constant allergy/flu-like symptoms) and depressed probably from the first two.
My first venture onto a keto/atkins diet, I had my blood pressure drop from medium high to "wow you're doing just fine", my triglycerides went from 390 to 95, weight from 235lbs to 190lbs, and I got completely off all diabetes-related medication - all within the span of 10 weeks. Apparently that's simply the way my body was designed to eat. Might not be the way your body was designed to eat, that's all fine and dandy, good luck with figuring that out. But they're going to have to pry the salt and saturated fats from my cold dead hands.
The only thing I know for sure is that when it comes to food, I really can't trust studies. Take any stance you want, and somebody has a study to "prove" it. Such useless BS. Dr Atkins nailed it when it comes to the uselessness of nutritional science in America in the mid-to-late 1900s, and I sure am glad as hell he spoke up.
The sugar industry and the AHA and FDA have already been responsible for so many thousands upon thousands of man-years lost to diseases like type II diabetes, do you really want to keep shoveling that shit for them? Haven't people figured out why health care costs are so bloody much higher than the rest of the world? Hint: it's what you put in your mouth, and it ain't butter.
This article is about the food industry covering up the dangers of sugar for 50 years
s/covering up/not funding studies that show/
There's a fairly large difference there. There are plenty of independent and government studies of GMOs.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
First it was liquor and tobacco were bad for you now it is also sugar. How is anyone to live a vegan lifestyle?
Actually, some GMO's are really unsafe.
Like corn that contains gluten. That's a particularly nasty one that already happened (easy to google - GMO corn taco bell).
I imagine anything with nut genes or shellfish genes inserted would also be pretty bad (potentially fatal).
If GMO is so great - LABEL IT.
Seriously - if it were just priced 10% lower and labeled as GMO, within 10 years most people would be eating it at full price and not care any more.
And people who were sensitive to gluten wouldn't be hospitalized after eating a corn taco shell.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
A study funded by turkeys suggest turkey is the worst possible meat for you to eat. They found all sorts of health issues related specifically to turkey, especially he kind eaten on holidays. The study further found that any animal that the turkeys didn't like were actually beneficial to your health.
Eat only bread and fish. Drink only water and wine. I call it the Jesus diet. Have you ever seen a Jesus statue that wasn't lean with 6 pack abs? Of course, longevity only ensured for 30-35 years, YMMV.
This can affect the health of millions of people. They should be put on trial and jailed when found guilty.
Table-ized A.I.
I know for a fact that the Sun is the center of our solar system
You are wrong. The barycenter of the solar system is outside the sun.
Please tell me how knowing this means I have no clue how science works.
Science is not about "knowing" things, it is about evidence. The preponderance of the evidence says that climate change is real, and that GMOs are safe. But we don't "know" these things.
Then they should put a fucking label on it.
This is authoritarian logic: "Labels should not say what's IN a product, but what's NOT in a product."
You're willing to turn that level of control of your life over to a corporation that would throw a baby off a bridge if it meant a 0.2% jump in stock price.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Table sugar (also called sucrose) and HFCS both consist of two simple sugars: fructose and glucose. The proportion of fructose and glucose in HFCS is basically the same ratio as table sugar, which is made of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Both sweeteners contain the same number of calories (4 calories per gram).
But the fructose and glucose in table sugar are chemically bonded together, and the body must first digest sugar to break these bonds before the body can absorb the fructose and glucose into the bloodstream. In contrast, the fructose and glucose found in HFCS are merely blended together, which means it doesn't need to be digested before it is metabolized and absorbed into the bloodstream. Because of this, theories abound that HFCS has a greater impact on blood glucose levels than regular sugar (sucrose). However, research has shown that there are no significant differences between HFCS and sugar (sucrose) when it comes to the production of insulin, leptin (a hormone that regulates body weight and metabolism), ghrelin (the "hunger" hormone), or the changes in blood glucose levels. In addition, satiety studies done on HFCS and sugar (sucrose) have found no difference in appetite regulation, feelings of fullness, or short-term energy intake. How can that be?
Well, the body digests table sugar very rapidly, too. And both HFCS and table sugar (sucrose) enter the bloodstream as glucose and fructose—the metabolism of which is identical. There is no significant difference in the overall rate of absorption between table sugar and HFCS, which explains why these two sweeteners have virtually the same effects on the body.
Sugars are a subset of carbs.
Athletes favor eating complex carbs over simple carbs like sugars.
So why is it so unlikely to suspect that the chemical industry is doing the same thing with GMOs?
Because a genetically modified plant is still made of the same stuff as any other plant. The proportions of these chemicals in these plants might be different but the fundamental chemistry is unchanged. If the proportions of the chemicals is different then the cause of any health issue is in the chemicals, not the genetics.
Suppose I have two different potatoes. One is a common variety of potato but was grown in soil that is rich in chromium. The other was grown in more typical soil but has been genetically modified in a way that makes it take chromium from the soil more efficiently. If someone shows up with poisoning from chromium do we blame the potato farmers for planting in high chromium soil or for planting a GMO?
If this is from growing crops in chromium rich soil we'd probably have the soil treated and the farmer would be held blameless. If this was from a GMO then we'd have people ready to have this farmer tarred and feathered. Both cases the farmer had no intent to harm anyone, and the poisoning would have been out of ignorance. It also would likely have been from someone eating a lot of "organic" potatoes from the same local community garden. Buying potatoes shipped in from long distances means the risk of such kind of poisoning is rare as the potatoes would be mixed from many locations.
Barring some freak side effect like a potato taking up a heavy metal from the soil the ability for a GMO to pose any health risk is non-existent. GMOs don't suddenly gain the ability to produce some crazy chemical structure. These plants must still be able to process air, water, and sun like any other plant. We can test for things like heavy metals, or bacteria growing on the plant, or whatever. We test for many of such risks and we treat plants for others, like using radiation to kill the bacteria on plants.
If you think that irradiating plants is also bad then you are doubly stupid. Stupid for thinking GMOs are bad and stupid twice over for thinking irradiating plants is also bad.
Think what you want though, that just means more potato chips for me.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You should learn how research into food substances works. There's very little that's done without industry input.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Like corn that contains gluten.
Bullcrap. Corn, whether GMO or not, does not contain gluten.
(easy to google - GMO corn taco bell).
I googled it, and came up with ... nothing. There was not a single reference to GMO corn containing gluten.
I imagine anything with nut genes or shellfish genes inserted would also be pretty bad
You can imagine anything you want, but unless you can cite an example of a real (non-imaginary) GMO product available to the public that actually contains those genes, then your imagination is irrelevant.
Actually, some GMO's are really unsafe.
Time for fun - I'll get you the tin foil.
Like corn that contains gluten.
Corn (even GMO corn) does not contain gluten. Some people refer to the storage proteins in maize 'glutens', but that's not the same thing.
That's a particularly nasty one that already happened (easy to google - GMO corn taco bell).
StarLink - the event that, even after extensive testing, didn't have any demonstrable health effects at all?
I imagine anything with nut genes or shellfish genes inserted would also be pretty bad (potentially fatal).
Only if you insert particular genes, and that's why nobody is dumb enough to do that.
If GMO is so great - LABEL IT.
When it's useful information, it is. Buy any bag of seed and you'll be able to find out exactly what traits are in it.
When it comes to consumer products, there's no point - almost every corn or product in the US contains a mix of GM and conventional crops - the whole point is that they're interchangeable after they're harvested.
within 10 years most people would be eating it at full price and not care any more.
They already are - surprise!
And people who were sensitive to gluten wouldn't be hospitalized after eating a corn taco shell.
Then they'll be free to complain that the new cell tower that hasn't been turned on yet is aggravating their 'WiFi sensitivity'.
https://www.theonion.com/study...
Table-ized A.I.
You've made a compelling argument for why GMOs should not be protected by intellectual property laws.
We can agree on that.
You are what you eat. You can have all of my potato chips, friend.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"GMOs are safe" is a nonsensically overgeneralized statement. It's entirely dependent on the *specific* GMO being discussed.
What about "the collection of GMOs that are currently available or in development", or "industry practices and the regulatory regime that allows GMOs into the food supply".
exist for the specific purpose of allowing the plants to be saturated with chemicals that are both known to be toxic to humans
Glyphosate has been used since the 70s, and would still be used with or without GMOs. Resistance to it allows crops to be sprayed with more of it at once, rather than having to spray more often and with herbicides that are more likely to cause human health issues.
and to be absorbed into the "food" part of the plant
What? Sorry, but I haven't even heard that claim before.
secondary risks of monoculture that inevitably accompany enhancing yield
We have more varieties of available now than we did after we started using hybridized crops more than half a century ago.
commercial banana monoculture was hit by a plague
So thank goodness we can now stick a single gene into multiple varieties, rather than having to cross them and hope we transfer the trait we want without sacrificing too much of the genetic diversity between them.
a legal stranglehold on the food supply
That's too vague to even be called a conspiracy theory. What do you think they're going to do, specifically?
there's no reason you couldn't engineer corn, or anything else, to produce any of a wide range of highly toxic substances that would make them as lethally poisonous as the most deadly of mushrooms
Yes, and that would be an interesting plot for a work of fiction that's fast and loose with the science. Just as with the previous quote, what's the point? Even if you somehow managed to get some of it into the food supply and somehow the toxic crop wasn't noticed due to dead animals or farmers, there's an extensive recall system already in place. Why not skip the hard part just put poison in the food before it's shipped?
And there are in fact already GMO crops (not deployed...I think) designed to produce their own pesticides internally
Bt corn has been grown for 20 years now. The delta endotoxin is very insect-specific, has been studied extensively, and is even used in organic farming.
But the fructose and glucose in table sugar are chemically bonded together, and the body must first digest sugar to break these bonds
The bonds get broken when the sucrose gets into contact with an acid, so basically as soon as it hits your stomach. That's why there's little difference in practice between eating HFCS or sucrose.
Take someone with an LDL of 50-70 (ideal, hunter-gatherer levels), feed them saturated fats and/or cholesterol, and cholesterol skyrockets.
Hunter gatherers didn't eat meat or eggs ?
I know for a fact that the Sun is the center of our solar system
You are wrong. The barycenter of the solar system is outside the sun.
Actually, its position varies over time--sometimes it's inside the Sun, and sometimes it isn't.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The difference with GMO is we don't know of any mechanism that would allow a GMO plant to harm you in general. When a plant is modified it generates slightly different proteins, dna and rna than normal. However, we would not survive as a species if we just absorbed those things directly into us. It would be a HUGE security compromise for the immune system. What our digestion process does is break them all down into simple molecules and that process destroys anything we do with GMO. Outside of creating a direct toxin with GMO there is almost no way to harm someone with them and even then that is quite difficult to do on accident and it is trivial to screen for known toxic proteins.
It is just inherent to how your body is built that GMO represents essentially zero risk to it. Certainly the same or less than organic food.
If you seriously think that GMO is bad for you then you would need to propose a mechanism that would allow GMO to be bad for you that Organic food does not share and then test that mechanism. So far studies have found no different in health outcomes or any such mechanism.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Because a genetically modified plant is still made of the same stuff as any other plant. The proportions of these chemicals in these plants might be different but the fundamental chemistry is unchanged. If the proportions of the chemicals is different then the cause of any health issue is in the chemicals, not the genetics.
You've made a compelling argument for why GMOs should not be protected by intellectual property laws.
How you made the leap from what I wrote to anything concerning the validity of intellectual property laws is baffling.
If we're going to get rid of laws restricting the growing of plants then let's do something about opium and marijuana. We got a good start on marijuana already, we just need to push that a bit further.
You are what you eat.
Moo.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
But the fructose and glucose in table sugar are chemically bonded together, and the body must first digest sugar to break these bonds
The bonds get broken when the sucrose gets into contact with an acid, so basically as soon as it hits your stomach. That's why there's little difference in practice between eating HFCS or sucrose.
The acid is consumed by the process and must be replenished, which takes energy, hence why there's more than a little difference in practice between eating HFCS and sucrose.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Cold turkey is hell. Ask any dopehead.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Somewhere in there is an Erdogan joke, but I'm too tired to find it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We know how this ends, it costs you an arm and a leg.
Well, at least an arm.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What scientists (and athletes) have known for some time now is that a calorie is not just a calorie, and a carbohydrate is not just a carbohydrate. The nature of the nutritional source matters, even if the end product of its metabolism is the same caloric energy equivalent. And the reason, quite simply, is because different nutrients are converted to energy through different metabolic pathways in the body. In the past, the importance of this fact was not well-appreciated; even though some researchers had sought to point this out, they were largely regarded as being on the fringe of mainstream nutritional science. Much has changed, however, with the elucidation of these specific pathways and the more recent revelation of the relationship between the human gastrointestinal system and the microbiome that it contains.
To address your specific points, the energy content of a "complex" carbohydrate (e.g., what we commonly think of as starches or long-chain polysaccharides) is extracted more slowly than a simple carbohydrate (e.g., what we think of as "sugars" which are generally mono- or disaccharides). Comparatively, insulin levels do not rise as quickly in the digestion of the former; there is more "processing" to be done by the body to break those long chains down and ultimately get to the glucose that cells then directly utilize to create ATP. So the first lesson is that anything that slows the rate of gastric emptying, or the rate at which blood glucose elevates after a meal, is going to have a beneficial effect on insulin regulation. The second thing to understand is that fructose is a pentose sugar that is exclusively metabolized via the liver, unlike glucose. Sucrose (table sugar) is composed of one glucose and one fructose molecule. High fructose corn syrup is essentially sucrose with a higher proportion of fructose, making it sweeter (as fructose is sweeter than glucose). Complex carbohydrates are not high in fructose. But we now have ample evidence that the consequence of long-term, excessive fructose consumption in a low-fiber diet causes liver damage in the form of hepatic steatosis and inflammation. The liver and pancreas work overtime and can't keep up. In fact, this is precisely what foie gras is: overfeeding geese with corn mash until their livers turn to fat, except in humans, this result is self-induced due to the neurochemical effects of sugar consumption.
Regarding endurance athletes, I would not say that they are necessarily healthier: they have optimized their bodies for physical exertion (higher VO2max, lower resting HR, greater muscular efficiency, higher lean muscle to fat ratio, etc), but this does not exactly translate to better overall health as measured by factors like total longevity and disability-free lifetime. In fact, we know that many of these athletes suffer from long-term health complications as a result of their training and competition, such as arthritic disease. In any case, if we are talking about how they are able to consume vast quantities of food yet remain lean, this is simply a matter of energy consumed versus energy expended. Yet the quality of the diet remains important even if there are no obvious signs of metabolic damage--sure, they might not get a fatty liver because gluconeogenesis kicks in, but even they know that they can't just drink 10 liters of soda to carb load.
The main driver of obesity in the United States is gross overconsumption of food relative to the energy needs of the average sedentary American. This is the imbalance in the basic caloric equation (energy in > energy out). And I say it is "gross" not in the "yuck" sense, but in the "it's REALLY WAY over the top" sense, because we're seeing people eat upwards of 3500-4000 calories per day when their expenditures are in the 2000 range. The secondary driver, which is what we might think of as "kicking the liver while it's down," is the extreme preponderance of calories from refined sugars, which do not trigger the satiety response as quickly as the equivalent energy co
Barring some freak side effect like a potato taking up a heavy metal from the soil the ability for a GMO to pose any health risk is non-existent. GMOs don't suddenly gain the ability to produce some crazy chemical structure.
1) Roundup-ready GMOs on average get sprayed with more Roundup than non-resistant plants would, leading to a higher load of pesticides (which get absorbed into the plant), not because the GMO produces them, but because the GMO allows them.
1.a) This overuse leading to Roundup resistance in weeds, then needing even more pesticides, has also been published for a number of years.
2) "BT" GMOs contain genes from Bacillus thuringiensis, expressing an insecticide. B. thur. is used in organic farming (spores and Cry proteins sprayed on crops) because it is deemed mostly safe to the environment, but it seems research of effects on human health is "insufficient". I would think there is a bit of a difference between a topical application that can be washed off, and a systemic production of the insecticide.
Uh, No! No! No! GMO's are engineered to produce insecticides in the plant itself.
GMO's are not engineered to be healthier / more vitamins / whatever; they are
engineered to get to market; to ensure that the money invested in their seed carries
all of the way through to the consumer. This is not necessarily a bad thing -- but what's
bad is the insecticide hasn't had enough time to be thoroughly tested as to its effects
on humans (or pets, farm animals, etc.).
CAP === 'lessen'
Damn I wish I had some mod points to throw at you. Well played.
-- Powered by GNU/Linux
To address your specific points, the energy content of a "complex" carbohydrate (e.g., what we commonly think of as starches or long-chain polysaccharides) is extracted more slowly than a simple carbohydrate (e.g., what we think of as "sugars" which are generally mono- or disaccharides)
There's actually not much difference. Even a complex carbohydrate like bread or pasta will start to raise blood sugar within 15 minutes.
I know for a fact that the Sun is the center of our solar system
You are wrong. The barycenter of the solar system is outside the sun.
Please tell me how knowing this means I have no clue how science works.
Science is not about "knowing" things, it is about evidence. The preponderance of the evidence says that climate change is real, and that GMOs are safe. But we don't "know" these things.
The preponderance of evidence... which if all science was done by people of 100% integrity, would indeed be reassuring.
But scientists are very clever, and after they do all the hard and skilled research work, comes time to interpret and report results. And now we are into the realm of funding, and influence, and politics, and so on, where spin and bias may rear their ugly heads. For example, the filing cabinet effect, where evidence which contradicts the preferred hypothesis, simply gets interpreted as mistaken and left in the filing cabinet.
So the preponderance of published evidence, is not really in itself reassuring.
It is odd, because there are many institutions in society which used to be authorities and assumed to be right, and should be trusted, like the police. But eventually, we grew to learn that institutions may have problems, like for example, institutional racism in the police. Now science is generally still held with high regard, as it in a way, ought to be, but it is still something practiced by people, and human nature and bias and survival are still factors, so it would be odd if they did not exert influence over the institution of science as they do over other institutions.
The other weird thing is that people seem to have a hard time holding in mind these two notions at the same time:
1. pre-modern religious fundamentalists who believe their thousand year old book is absolutely true, are indeed irrational and should be criticised.
2. modern science is very successful at producing knowledge, and nevertheless, it is not all the same quality across all fields, and within fields, there are some things which are in fact better understood than others, and the social and political side of human practice does influence things, sometimes a little, or negligibly, and sometimes a lot, and you can't really know either way just basing it on one's preferred views and beliefs -- only time can tell, and sometimes, a lot of time.
And lastly:
3. the details matter, and they matter a lot -- citing consensus on climate change is very vague, as what matters is exactly what effect it will have and how severe it will be, and here you would have to look at how they actually survey the consensus and what exactly people think they are agreeing to and why -- these details matter yet climate change is politically turned into this big us vs them, "scientists vs denialists" claptrap which helps nobody -- that polarisation is deliberate and meant to make people feel bad for being on the "wrong" side -- and if you think that is scientific, then we all know of the famous bridge for sale. it is unfortunate... but many many vested interests in society are all vying for our support.
That is really for me the take home message of these "big science fraud" stories. Humanity has problems with integrity, with "removing the log from one's own eye" to put it one way, or philosophically, the issue of fallibility -- you cannot know if you are right (a fact the CC people try to get around by with saying "well gee you just want to wait while the planet burns" -- which is wrong, it does not mean waiting, but it does mean you include the risks of being wrong in your analysis, especially when unintended consequences rear their ugly head) -- so we must all proceed with humility.
And not to worry this does not put anyone into the fundamentalist 6000-year old Earth idiocy -- for they are the last people to admit their own fallibility.
My first venture onto a keto/atkins diet, I had my blood pressure drop from medium high to "wow you're doing just fine", my triglycerides went from 390 to 95, weight from 235lbs to 190lbs, and I got completely off all diabetes-related medication - all within the span of 10 weeks.
Keto doesn't do anything for dieting, that's not how it works or what it's "designed" to do. It's used as a panic-move energy source for your brain when you are out of bloodsugar since fats cannot pass the blood-brain barrier.
If you started at 235lbs then you were at the upper echelon of overweight at least (unless you're 7"+ tall), and basically any change in diet would reduce your weight.
This is a well-known problem and is the reason why so much diet research is shit - when you include extreme outliers in your study (you take a bunch of obese people for your tests) you can expect results simply from taking them away from their pre-existing diet. I.e. if you take a 300lbs man away from his regular schedule, he will lose weight just from that. If you feed a 300lbs man print ads from your local newspaper, he will lose weight simply because he doesn't have enough time to eat like he usually does. But consuming print ads will not do much for a normal person.
Finally, no body is designed to eat ketons on a regular basis since the construction of those is destructive to your muscle mass and overall health.
Starts to rise, but doesn't spike up and then crash. So yes, a difference.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The acid is consumed by the process and must be replenished, which takes energy
How much energy ? The problem is that the glucose and fructose are entering the blood stream. A little bit of energy spent on replenishing acid isn't going to do much damage prevention.
we don't know of any mechanism that would allow a GMO plant to harm you in general.
How about a GMO plant that has been designed to withstand high levels of herbicide, allowing the farmer to spray the crops with that stuff, and it ending up in our diet ?
Starts to rise after 15 minutes, peaks around 1 hr, drops after 2. Pretty much all carbs do that.
Weight for weight, a slice of bread peaks your blood glucose higher than table sugar.
The acid is consumed by the process and must be replenished, which takes energy
How much energy ?
Enough for the net energy extracted from HFCS to be higher than the net energy extracted from sucrose. Even in the fractional percentages this adds up due to the volume of sugar/HFCS consumed.
The problem is that the glucose and fructose are entering the blood stream.
True.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I know for a fact that the Sun is the center of our solar system
You are wrong. The barycenter of the solar system is outside the sun.
I think that's rather the point. Science continues to refine knowledge, and past a certain point it gives approximations that are close enough that most people don't have to care that they're wrong. Assuming that the sun and moon go around the Earth is close enough that you can predict seasons, tides, and so on with a reasonable amount of accuracy. Knowing that it is the other way around gives you more accurate understanding of seasons, but is basically only important to meteorologists and people running space ships. Knowing that the complex N-body system of the solar system revolves around a point that is sometimes in the is closer to the truth, but is well past the point of utility for most people.
Similarly, we still teach Newton's laws of motion even though quantum mechanics and relativity mean that we know that they're wrong, it's just that they're wrong by an amount that is far less than the errors from measurement for anything that most people will ever deal with.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The cells in your body can’t use fructose directly, it must first be metabolized by the liver (a process very similar to how alcohol is metabolized) which has all sorts of secondary effects. There’s actually a really good presentation you can watch from UCSD that shows how it all works and why large amounts of sugar and HFCS are the cause of so many health issues today.
I print, therefore I am.
Excellent video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
And not to worry this does not put anyone into the fundamentalist 6000-year old Earth idiocy -- for they are the last people to admit their own fallibility.
I'm a Calvanist, you insensitive clod!
Sadly enough what people do and don't believe from science crosses the political spectrum.
For the most part if Science says that something is Bad then the Conservatives have an issue with it.
If Science says that something is good or at least neutral, then Liberals have an issue against it.
While there is and has been corruption within the scientific community. It usually amounts to stopping researching a topic, before the final results come in, or if the results come in and you don't like it, you try an other angle.
Sadly with our countries leadership, they seem to put more weight in the scientists who are paid for and under pressure to find evidence towards their employers goals, vs scientists who are paid by a grant without any expected results as a benchmark.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Okay, so not an outlier. I dropped a couple of inches of waist and maybe 15 lbs. going keto. I'm now I'm 5-10 and 160lbs, but was not obese before. I also dropped triglycerides from "you're going to die tomorrow" to normal and brought up my good cholesterol to normal levels. Everything they can measure in a blood test got better. I've been eating this way for ~7 years. No problems with muscle mass. I have more endurance and strength than I had on a more traditional diet. Energy level is more consistent, I sleep better, the acid reflux went away (and comes right back if I have a big carb meal so I know it wasn't weight), and I'm not fucking hungry all the time. Stuff I didn't even realize was a problem got better. Bacon, eggs, butter, sausage, a little cheese, and nuts are the staples in my diet.
Not saying it's for everyone (the wife does terrible on a high fat/low carb diet), but some folks do really well on it.
They are definitely both pretty bad in any significant quantities (quantities which are common for most Americans).
There are several top ultra-marathon runners that do low carb....
http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/12099/944-zach-bitter-is-an-ultramarathon-world-champion-fueled-by-lchf/
love is just extroverted narcissism
Not for me. A bagel or a couple of pancakes will leave me ready to pass out in an hour or two. Eggs and bacon I am good all day and can skip lunch if I want.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Studies can and have trivially checked for herbicide and pesticides in the food and from what I remember it was not significantly different than organic foods. Remember there are many old herbicides and pesticides that are classified as organic that farmers use and some of them are really not that safe.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Look around - glyphosphate and many other pesticides and herbicides get absorbed into plant tissues, especially when used at extremely high concentrations.
Oh? Exactly how many species of roundup-resistant corn are there?
Have you not noticed Monsanto repeatedly suing farmers whose crops have been involuntarily pollinated by their crops? Not to mention the fact that if you're growing Monsanto crops, you are legally required to buy new seed every year, rather than being able to replant saved seed as traditionally done.
Personally I think a lot of the problems with GMOs could be alleviated by eliminating patents on DNA - remove the immediate profit motive, and you remove both the both the legal threats and the motive to design crops for non-humanitarian purposes.
Lots of toxic things are used in organic farming - natural does not mean safe. All "Organic" protects *you* from is certain classes of synthetic toxins, it's real benefit is reducing environmental pollution. And delta endotoxins have in fact been found to have rather serious effects on mammals, though generally not in naturally-formed crystals for some reason.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Cold turkey is hell. Ask any dopehead.
It's all right with swiss cheese and a little horseradish
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You are what you eat.
Almost. You are what you don't poop.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Correct except for bananas. They never tasted like artificial banana, which is a synthesis of only one of the flavonoids in a banana.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually it turns out eating too much protein is bad, too. It inhibits weight loss and can cause kidney problems. But the fat is still fine, and mixing fat with carbs is still the worst. French fries are the devil's dicks. (Of course it's plural dicks. He's the devil.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The people suppressing information like this for their own profits should be labelled MASS MURDERERS, and history should remember them that way. If they are still alive, they should be punished for their crimes against humanity.
Same applies to the folks at Exxon who knew decades ago what their product would do to the world.
Don't forget the Tobacco industry.
Read Taubes' book The Case Against Sugar. Some of the same people who "worked" the PR for Tobacco did the same for the sugar industry.
Do you know why people can inhale cigarette tobacco so easily and deeply? It's by using tobacco blends, and by soaking the leaves in .... sugar.
Tobacco was for adults. Sugar is for everyone. It's part of every special occasion, it's now woven into the fabric of our society. Tobacco is expensive, sugar is cheap.
And most importantly, we all know tobacco is harmful. We all think sugar is harmless.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Fuck, they're still doing it RIGHT NOW!
Just stop. Your basic facts about HFCS makeup and metabolism are wrong and therefore I assume the rest of what you are saying is shilling.
Unlike what you said, HFCS has four common versions with different quantities of fructose: HFCS-42 has 42% fructose. There is also, HFCS-55, HFCS-65, and HFCS-90, containing 90% fructose. Soft drinks typically use HFCS-55 or HFCS-65, but of course there's nothing on the labels to indicate which version of HFCS is being used.
Also, unlike what you said, fructose is not metabolized identically. Unlike glucose, fructose is metabolized nearly entirely in the liver, which is where the triglycerides are coming from (re: the article).
Disappointed that whoever modded you up didn't at least check Wikipedia first.
I can see why this can be addictive. The brain gets a chemical satisfaction response, just like with a drug, so why not keep it buzzing happily?
In the end, it comes down to knowing your body and how it deals with caloric intake vs what is burned. Some people have inefficient digestive systems and can eat without weight gain. Some have efficient systems that extract more energy from the food, so they need to reduce the amount of that food to avoid weight gain. If the food amount is difficult to reduce, then eat food with less calorie density (more veggies). I try to eat a balanced diet (with an occasional treat) and exercise regularly. I've been disciplined (or lucky) to be the same weight for the last 25 yrs.
My two main issues with GMO are:
1) it promotes mono-culture (there is a BEST seed that everyone uses), and
2) only the modifications themselves need to be shown as safe (for the FDA), not the new organism in totality.
That second point is kinda scary as adding a new protein to an organism can have far reaching consequences, but they only need to show that the new protein isn't bad for people eating it, not that the organism, when exposed to the new protein doesn't produce something unsafe. That is a big distinction.
Mono-cultures are dangerous because a single event can wipe out an entire crop worldwide, look at bananas:
Cavendish bananas entered mass commercial production in 1903 but did not gain prominence until later when Panama disease attacked the dominant Gros Michel ("Big Mike") variety in the 1950s. Because they were successfully grown in the same soils as previously affected Gros Michel plants, many assumed the Cavendish cultivars were more resistant to Panama disease. Contrary to this notion, in mid-2008, reports from Sumatra and Malaysia suggest that Panama disease is starting to attack Cavendish-like cultivars.
Note: this isn't a GMO issue, it is a mono-culture one, but it happened once (Gros Michel), and it looks like it will happen again soon (Cavendish). As a side note, the switch to Cavendish is why banana flavor doesn't taste like banana, that flavor was based on the sweeter Gros Michel.
Maybe, but it is an example of a mechanism that would allow a GMO plant to harm you, even if it hasn't been a problem so far.
Keto doesn't give you muscle mass problems when you ingest it, it's the body's own way of producing keto-bodies that is the muscle-destroying variant. It will also cause horrific breath.
Now, when you say you went on keto, does that mean you also started counting calories and lowered your daily intake? And perhaps started exercising a bit more?
Found the millennial without taste in music.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We've had this article up since May of this year: https://www.nerdfitness.com/bl... The history of sugar, and what they're doing today to take advantage of current market trends.
Ok guys, stop it. Everyone knows WE'RE the center of the Universe.
I tend to rant.
AFAIK it is not about the energy required to produce more acid, but the time constant required to produce said acid. Your stomach carries some acid at all times, but it takes ~2 hours to digest a meal in the stomach, more if it is a lot of meat or other hard to digest food. During that digestion, acid is continuously produced to break down the meal. If you ate some table sugar with that meal, it is not going to get broken down instantly, but rather it will gradually get broken down with the rest of the meal as acid is available.
As far as eating HFCS vs table sugar on an empty stomach, again it depends on the amount, but in general, they are about the same assuming there is enough pooled stomach acid to convert the table sugar immediately.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Everybody is different. But I found the same success as above. Cut out all carbs and you'd be surprised I think but just try it for your self
That was actually an interesting read.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
or exhale....
Literally none of them are poisons.
Shut the fuck up, you clown.
Yet all the cow-funded commercials I see keep saying Eat Mor Chikin. Its so hard to find a trusted source these days
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
The bonds get broken when the sucrose gets into contact with an acid, so basically as soon as it hits your stomach. That's why there's little difference in practice between eating HFCS or sucrose.
The acid is consumed by the process and must be replenished, which takes energy, hence why there's more than a little difference in practice between eating HFCS and sucrose.
Acid isn't consumed in breaking up fructose and glucose.
I knew what this video was going to be before I clicked it. It's almost entirely horseshit. So of course it's the most commonly referenced source whenever anyone brings up sugar.
Yarva Demonicus Erdogan.
Change, change the form of man.
Free the prince forever damned.
Free the might from fleshy mire.
Boil the blood in heart of fire.
Gone, gone the form of man,
Rise the demon Erdogan!
???
Found the millennial without taste in music.
You repeat yourself, sir!
What a stupid claim. I know for a fact that the Sun is the center of our solar system and the Earth rotates around it based on the sceince of Astronomy. Please tell me how knowing this means I have no clue how science works.
Well, based on the "sceince" of astronomy, I "know" for a fact that the sun, Sol, is the center of the Solar system not because of science, but by definition. The center of the Solar system is Sol. That's why it's the Solar system. It is the system of Sol, the star that is our sun.
Further, Earth does not rotate around Sol, Earth orbits the Barycenter of the Sol system, which is very close to the Barycenter center of Earth and Sol, which is fairly close to the center of Sol.
Thank you, come again!
Setting aside the AGW argument, it is entirely possible that everyone who ate GMO corn (or pick your GMO crop) will have liver failure in 20 years (or pick your unintended consequences, hell, we could accidentally kill all the bees with a insecticide producing plant or an accidental cross pollination of said plant in the wild). The near term side effects are fairly well know. The risks when released from the lab are un-knowable. The long term health effects are only poorly understood at best because to get real results, you need 20 years of testing. The truth of the matter is that we have been doing just fine with crop yields and commercial farming. I believe the stat is that if the US alone actively farmed all currently available farmland and we didn't pay farmers to plow crops under or not plant fields, we could not only feed ourselves, but every hungry person in the world (people that can't grow enough food on their own). GMO is a solution looking for a problem, and doing it in a dangerously unquantifiable way.
If strawberries are too expensive because of the labor to pick them, the solution is not to grow 5lb mutant strawberries, the solution is to invent methods of growing and harvesting that lend themselves to automation or sell growing kits for people to grow their own in a small green house or some other of a thousand options.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
It's actually amazingly difficult to find peanut butter that doesn't have added sugar. Recently I was in the store and had to grab 4 or 5 brands before I found one that didn't have sugar in it, and the print is small enough to be hard to read.
An amazing amount of work input simply to not be sugared up.
First off, I generally agree with your post, with the exception of point one. I find it highly ironic that you later quote that very book (Mathew 5:7 Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye.)
Your assumption is predicated on the false narrative propagated by the God haters that belief in the Bible is blind faith. While is it certainly true that many people do blindly believe (and by the way, blindly believing that one should love every person as they love themselves, being faithful to their spouse, not stealing, lying or murdering are hardly things to be scorned) not all believers have blind faith, many have reasoned faith. There are many of us that have arrived at our faith through skeptical investigation. If you are a true skeptic, a true seeker of truth, you need to read "Case for Christ" https://www.amazon.com/Case-Ch...
If you chose to continue in your bigoted ignorance, just be aware that it is your personal choice and not a reflection on the reality of the matter.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Sir,
You are factually inaccurate. It is not acid which cleaves sucrose into fructose and glucose. Instead, an enzyme in the small intestine called sucralase does this, and splits a water in order to do it. It doesn't take significant energy.
Reference:
http://healthyeating.sfgate.co...
(which get absorbed into the plant)
Citation required. At least if you're going to be claiming that absorption lasts long enough for it to be present when the plant is eaten.
I would think there is a bit of a difference between a topical application that can be washed off, and a systemic production of the insecticide.
Yes...there's far lower quantities of BT in the GMO version, and we get to control which parts of the plant produce BT instead of hosing down the entire plant.
If strawberries are too expensive because of the labor to pick them, the solution is not to grow 5lb mutant strawberries, the solution is to invent methods of growing and harvesting that lend themselves to automation or sell growing kits for people to grow their own in a small green house or some other of a thousand options.
unless, of course, it IS the solution, and study bears that out. Stating that it is "wrong" doesn't mean it's not worth investigating.
obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/1901/
i don't think you actually googled it, maybe you bing'd or yahoo'd it?
first (non promoted) link on my search comes up with this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
im pro GMO, but let's all be honest with ourselves here
retraction.. i suppose it doesn't specifically refer to gluten.. just the recall
the more you know
So you know that, do you?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
How many people do you know who are not over 7 inches tall?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
First- It was CRY protein allergy- not gluten allergy. Sorry about that- it was late.
Second "allergic taco shells" turns up dozens of pages of responses so I don't think you googled very hard.
Here are a couple.
http://www.culinarylore.com/fo...
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/fl...
As I said, LABEL IT.
Then people can make an educated choice. If you sell GMO food at a slightly lower price people will buy it.
Stop trying to force them to eat it. Stop trying to hide it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You've clearly not spent much time with athletes, we eat a LOT of sugary food. Forgetting that, explain why energy gels, which are pretty much liquid sugar, are an essential item? Why aren't the top runners keeling over from a heart attack after each race despite consuming the equivalent of many tablespoons of sugar? (Yes, this is dramatic, but it stands that athletes, despite consuming loads of sugar, rarely suffer from heart disease during their careers.)
Is sugar causing heart attacks, or is this article flat-out wrong? Because we have people in their late 30's having heart attacks with an increasing frequency, and almost none of them are endurance athletes who eat a lot of sugar. So you CAN eat sugar and not increase your rates of heart disease. So it likely isn't a central part of the cause, because many of the biggest consumers of sugar aren't showing any sign of the effects.
Agree with pretty much everything you've written, not sure why my post was modded down..
The point being: sugar itself is definitely not 'the cause' as the article suggests. The athletes I know consume a LOT of sugar, as I post above, energy gels are an essential food, which is basically just liquid sugar. Marathon runners and road racers would all be dying of heart attacks during the event given the tone of the article. It's just not true, and like you said, sugar can 'kick you when you're down', but so can a LOT of other things. Sugar may be "linked to heart disease", but singling it out is pretty insincere.
(Bonus points for encouraging people to eat more fiber, something like 97% of the US population don't eat enough. There's an epidemic that needs attention.)
Not if it's decent bread.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Are there candy flavors that actually *do* taste like what they claim to be?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Enjoy your DNA being permanently altered.
I'm not having my DNA altered, so...
Wait, was that a threat?
Personally I think a lot of the problems with GMOs could be alleviated by eliminating patents on DNA - remove the immediate profit motive
If you want to destroy capitalism, or if you just want to end patents on plant varieties, that's fine. But neither of those are specific to GMOs.
Lots of toxic things are used in organic farming - natural does not mean safe.
I didn't mean to suggest that - I'm pointing out that it's an issue that's only tangentially related to GMOs. As with the previous quote, you can't use X as an argument against GMOs if X applies to both GMO and non-GMO farming fairly equally.
And delta endotoxins have in fact been found to have rather serious effects on mammals, though generally not in naturally-formed crystals for some reason.
I couldn't find a reliable source for this, but I'm open to being convinced.
All "Organic" protects *you* from is certain classes of synthetic toxins, it's real benefit is reducing environmental pollution.
Well, it changes the mix of chemicals you're exposed to, yes. As for the last part, you realize that some of the main benefits of GMOs are reduced use of sprayed chemicals and diesel, right? Heck, the reduced topsoil loss from no-till farming alone probably makes GMOs more environmentally-friendly than many organics.
Have you not noticed Monsanto repeatedly suing farmers whose crops have been involuntarily pollinated by their crops?
No, because that doesn't happen.
Not to mention the fact that if you're growing Monsanto crops, you are legally required to buy new seed every year
I know this is a nitpick, but you can always purchase non-patented seed and reuse that to your heart's content, or plant seed you saved from before you planted the patented stuff, or possibly even just purchase a license to replant. You aren't 'trapped'. But, yes, as with any other patented product, you need permission to make copies.
rather than being able to replant saved seed as traditionally done.
People stopped doing that with corn when hybrid vigor was discovered. And what's with the Luddite overtones? When farmers bought tractors (and kept having to buy new ones) they stopped breeding their own work animals 'as was traditionally done' - was that a bad thing?
Pretty big leap from eliminating GMO patents to destroying capitalism. And last I heard you can't patent plant varieties unless they're GMOs. Eliminating GMO patents simply reduces the worst excesses of capitalism as applied to one of the most potentially dangerous technologies our species has ever developed.
And I'm not arguing against GMOs in general - I specifically said many GMOs actually seem quite beneficial. But when discussing commercial GMOs it's disingenuous to ignore the reality of how genetic modification is actually being used - i.e. most commonly to allow farmers to radically increase the amount of toxins they apply to the crops.
I found several papers googling "delta endotoxin dangers", you're welcome to investigate. But like I said, it sounds like the forms produced directly by plants don't show serious problems.
"some of the main benefits of GMOs are reduced use of sprayed chemicals" - two words: "Roundup resistance"
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Well, I apologise.
The post I wrote was aimed at one group of people.
It's the people who spin science as being the antidote to religion and superstition. And that meme also shows up in climate change, where advocates claim that, if you don't accept "the science" then you are an irrational blind believer — I see articles which "point out" that Evangelical Christians are one of the largest groups which reject climate change. And so it is like how climate change "denialists" are often described as "flat Earthers".
So when I was writing that post, I was trying to address that view. But to do that, perhaps clumsily, I was trying to make clear, by exaggerating, that I was definitely not in the blind belief camp, even though, yeah, I was posting about the issue of fallibility in science.
Ie. that people can actually be rational and question consensus science, without being flat earthers, or for that matter, being the same people who believe the world is 6000 years old. Which is why I kept mentioning the "it's 6000 years old" part of religion. Like how we qualify "Muslim extremist" rather than just "Muslim".
So I went with the exaggerated separation of the two, but that largely because it is already so separated in many people's minds, and that's because of all the deliberate political spin, which is trying to throw all climate change critics into the "irrational", "right wing", "religious fundamentalists" bucket.
Now rather, to your point, which I accept. And actually I not only agree, I'd like to elaborate on it if I may.
See, religion is very old, and that presents a difficulty whenever religion is mentioned in conversation and debate.
Humanity is arguably 200,000 to 2 million years old, and we have developed through time, through a number of distinct cultural stages. The philosopher Jean Gebser for example, splits it into six stages: archaic, magic, mythic, mental, integral.
But we can use just three: pre-modern, modern, and post-post-modern (I skip post-modern as that deconstruction was a messed up, false start, blind alley).
Point is, the structure of our thinking and perceiving and judging and valuing, changed and allowed more complex forms of social grouping to emerge. We didn't just go from small tribes of 150 people, to living in megacities of 20 million, without altering how our minds worked.
So here's the thing: religion is old and has been around through all these stages, and consequently, the world's religions contain all these stages, within them, in one form or another.
So for example, the age of Abraham, which is the age of giving laws -- that law-giving function was a new way to organise social systems. It was a huge advancement over pagan ways, and this law-giving shows up in other parts of the world also, albeit in different guises. Social order, harmony, and submitting to the good of the group, and repressing one's selfish impulses, and becoming of service. Which yes, can be in the spirit of service to a higher power.
So religion is old, and people who reject it, can always point to the archaic (although technically, the mythic-membership parts, which arose a few thousand years ago), and claim that, see, religion is irrational blind faith and something to be eradicated. Hellooo Dawkins.
So religion is old, yes, but then came modernity -- the Western Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, yadda yadda. And around the time that happened, the Church was powerful, and, in part, what the new doctors and philosophers of modernity were rebelling against, were the rigid dogmatic and oppressive aspects of the dominant institutions -- including the Church. So whilst these new thinkers were busy creating modern art (the Renaissance) and modern science, and modern medicine, they simply skipped over altogether the concept of modern religion -- and so in the West, religion, at that moment, was thrown in the trash can.
That was an unfortunate move, as it blocked religion at the pre-modern stage, trapping it in the past. The reject
Pretty big leap from eliminating GMO patents to destroying capitalism. ... Eliminating GMO patents simply reduces the worst excesses of capitalism
That's fine. If you were just an anti-capitalist using fears of GMOs as a politically-convenient tool we could skip the minutiae of GMOs and go for the root cause.
And last I heard you can't patent plant varieties unless they're GMOs.
Plant Patent Act of 1930? I'm sure that was a response to Luther Burbank making Roundup Ready cherries in the 1920s. /s
how genetic modification is actually being used - i.e. most commonly to allow farmers to radically increase the amount of toxins they apply to the crops.
It allows increasing the amount that can be used at one time, but because one large dose is more effective than two half-sized ones the total amount used can actually decrease. That's why per-acre herbicide use hasn't changed much since GMOs started being used commercially.
I found several papers googling "delta endotoxin dangers"
I found several web pages, and all were of the kind that lead to the kind of profound ignorance you've shown in the last two items I quoted. Again, I'm open to being convinced, but only by reliable (preferably peer-reviewed) sources.
"some of the main benefits of GMOs are reduced use of sprayed chemicals" - two words: "Roundup resistance"
That's not even an argument, I have no idea what you're alluding to. Resistance was predicted before anyone even started working on GMO crops, everyone in modern agriculture is aware of the potential problem the and current plans to mitigate it (e.g. refuges), nobody in agriculture believes it's going to cause anything worse than farmers rotating what kind of herbicide-resistant crop they plant. I can't wait for you to explain what you meant.
Sure, but have you actually made a real effort, and tried to find the best arguments and evidence against global warming, which may be out there?
Huh, hadn't heard of the Plant Patent Act before - "excluding sexual and tuber-propagated plants" probably has somet6hing to do with keeping it out of the news.
I agree - so keep looking for *papers*. And lay off the ad-hominems when you can't even be bothered to look for what I suggested. I can't help it if your Google profile doesn't lead them to offer you papers on the first page.
>"some of the main benefits of GMOs are reduced use of sprayed chemicals" - two words: "Roundup resistance"
What's confusing? Resistance is edited into crops, specifically to increase the amount of toxins that can be used, the exact opposite of the benefits you're touting.
Yes, reducing the need for any-cides is a potential benefit - but it's not what's getting the major investments. And, as I already pointed out, for the most part they amount to having the plants make their own toxins rather than spraying them. Which absolutely helps with the runoff problem, but also makes it impossible to wash away before eating. And there's also the risk of crossbreeding into wild relatives, which we've already seen with several GMO traits. Which can be a major problem if they poison important links in the ecology - like bees or butterflies.
Basically most of the groups editing crops appear to be doing so with an eye only to short-term profits, with little to no consideration for long-term unintended consequences. And the power they're wielding is great enough that they can cause massive damage that will be all but impossible to reverse. (And don't even get me started on gene-drives...).
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Huh, hadn't heard of the Plant Patent Act before ... I agree - so keep looking for *papers* ... lay off the ad-hominems
I realize I'm being harsh (though technically they aren't ad-hominems), but I'm trying to communicate how badly mis-educated you are on this subject. You seem like an intelligent person, but nearly every verifiable fact you've mentioned is wrong, misunderstood, or one that I don't know for certain and you refuse to back up with an actual citation. Like this:
What's confusing? Resistance is edited into crops, specifically to increase the amount of toxins that can be used, the exact opposite of the benefits you're touting
A basically correct fact, but a completely incorrect interpretation. For example, take a farmer with weed problems:
Using conventional crops (ones produced by irradiating seeds), he might spray the maximum dose of an herbicide that won't kill his crops (say 60 lb). But because this doesn't kill the off completely, two months later he has to repeat, using another 60 lb to hold them off until harvest. So he applies a total of 120 lb of herbicide.
If he planted a GMO crop (with a single gene from another plant inserted deliberately) that's resistant to the herbicide, he can now spray 100 lb. This kills off the weeds completely, but leaves his crop untouched. So he never needs to spray again that year.
So yes, the GMO "increase the amount of toxins that can be used" at one time, but counter-intuitively reduces the amount that gets used overall. And none of that has anything to do with in vivo production of bt pesticide - it's the sprayed herbicide that would be used anyway.
As a bonus, it reduces the amount of fuel used (lower CO2 emissions) as well as the labor and wear-and-tear cost on equipment. If even lowers the amount of pesticide residue because the amount of time between spraying and harvesting is increased, giving it more time to break down naturally, and because the 'food part' hadn't even formed yet when it was sprayed.
If you are a true skeptic, a true seeker of truth, you need to read "Case for Christ" https://www.amazon.com/Case-Ch...
I personally found "A Case For Christ" to be really weak, overall. I think that any attempt to "prove" the validity of Christianity is pretty misguided, actually, and will always be doomed to failure.
That said, I consider myself a Christian, and I'm a "practicing" one by many of the definitions you might care to use. I just find it kind of silly to expend so much effort on establishing historicity of anything in particular from scripture. It's comparable to arguing about whether there really was a good Samaritan, for instance - the point of the parable wasn't the historicity of Samaritans or a particular guy who helped someone, it was the moral meaning, which doesn't change at all if the story is fictional.
Arguing about the historical existence of the good Samaritan is essentially unknowable, you either take it on faith or don't.
Jesus was a real person who historically existed and tens of thousands of people were first hand witnesses to his supernatural acts, including coming back to life after being 100% dead. Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or just plain ignoring historical fact. The key question is who he was. Was he who he said he was, was he demon possessed (as claimed by the Pharisees who also recognized his supernatural power), or was he an insane megalomaniac master illusionist with followers willing to propagate his deception, keep his secrets even after he figured out a way to die, cause a solar eclipse as he was dying, along with an earthquake (it was spectacle enough to convince the pagan Roman soldiers the he was actually the son of God) and simultaneously shredding the temple veil that was guarded at all times and then come back to life and then disappear in a cloud never to be seen by his closest friends again. Saul/Paul saw him on the road to Damascus and he appeared to a few in visions, but not to the 11 original Apostles who were all subsequently martyred for their beliefs... You would think that Judas would have spilled the beans when he betrayed Jesus, but he didn't.
The point of knowing the facts behind your belief grounds you in reality and gives you reasoned faith, which is far stronger and more durable than blind faith, which may get you to heaven, but which may be eroded by modern Atheists, Agnostics, mystics, etc. Blind faith is the reason that most people today think that science supports Atheism and religion is diametrically opposed to science (except that most scientists from the last 400 years were devout Christians).
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Arguing about the historical existence of the good Samaritan is essentially unknowable, you either take it on faith or don't.
Arguing about the historical existence of the good Samaritan is pointless, because that wasn't why Jesus told the parable. Having "faith" that the good Samaritan existed is missing the point.
The point of knowing the facts behind your belief grounds you in reality and gives you reasoned faith, which is far stronger and more durable than blind faith, which may get you to heaven, but which may be eroded by modern Atheists, Agnostics, mystics, etc.
The "facts" you've cited in defense of the historicity of various miracles surrounding the death and resurrection of Christ are missing the point similarly to the good Samaritan issue above. First of all, there are perfectly mundane answers to all of those observed phenomena, and generations of arguing between dogmatic Christian "literalists" and dogmatic anti-theists have failed to produce any conclusions one way or the other. It's just another iteration of an endless cycle of unproductive argument. What you are calling "reasoned faith" is just blind faith with icing - that is, a bunch of rationalization and reinterpretation to produce a veneer of empiricism around scripture. Really, it's an attempt to build a rhetorical argument with evidence so compelling that people must succumb to belief - but that's not how Christ won hearts, so why do Christians try to operate that way today? Faith cannot exist without the possibility of doubt.
Blind faith is the reason that most people today think that science supports Atheism and religion is diametrically opposed to science (except that most scientists from the last 400 years were devout Christians).
People today think that science supports atheism because Christians have publicly opposed fundamental, central theories of biology, geology, and astrophysics in their rejection of evolution and the big bang theory. Christians have done this to themselves, not because of blind faith, but because of trying forcibly assert the superiority of their worldview.
The type of argument that Strobel puts forth in A Case for Christ, and which you put forth in your earlier reply, is pretty much the weakest argument (and the least supported) of all arguments for the Christian faith. "Jesus existed, so you must become a Christian". Charles Manson existed, and we've got much more evidence (and plenty of eyewitness accounts) about Joseph Smith's miracles - so why don't we believe in their philosophies? Do you see Buddhists or anybody else doing the same thing? It's absurd. You attempt to re-frame the faith discussion into the realm of an empirical system of thought which did not exist for the first ~1600 years of the church's history. You are bringing apples and oranges to a gun fight.
Instead, follow Christ's model. A real biblical "literalist", in my mind, would be someone who has sold everything he has and given it to the poor. The way Christ and early Christians reached people was not through their unassailable rhetorical proofs, but through their subversive beliefs and practices showing poor and sick people had just as much (or even more) intrinsic worth than the monarchs and the rich merchants. The best argument for Christianity is that Christ's teachings have the power to address the most dysfunctional parts of human nature, and heal broken people. In my mind, that's what a real "rational" faith looks like - it admits that matters of faith are inherently unprovable (isn't that why a "childlike faith" is promoted in the Bible?). Simultaneously, faith can be empirical because you put the principles to the test in your own life - is forgiveness and prayer for your enemies a better way to live than holding on to bitterness? Is it better to give to the poor than to buy ourselves more gadgets? Is love truly a more worthwhile pursuit than wealth or power? In Christian terms, that's the power of personal te
That does seem to be one of the big promises in the marketing literature - but from what I can find it sounds like it's not really the reality. In part because weeds are evolving resistance as well, meaning that farmers need to use ever-increasing amount of Roundup to get the same results. That's not the *recommended* tactic, but it's the cheap and easy one, so it's what gets used.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That does seem to be one of the big promises in the marketing literature - but from what I can find it sounds like it's not really the reality.
I'm sure marketing over-promises, like always. On the other hand you already know what I think of your sources.
In part because weeds are evolving resistance as well, meaning that farmers need to use ever-increasing amount of Roundup to get the same results. That's not the *recommended* tactic, but it's the cheap and easy one, so it's what gets used.
OK, we'll assume that the regulatory plan fails miserably, no other similar product for another herbicide appears, and farmers keep being short-sighted to the point of absurdity. The worst that happens is that weed get resistant to Roundup, farmers switch back to conventional crops and other herbicides (that nothing is resistant to because people haven't been using them) and we end up in the same place we were in in 1990. Keep in mind that Roundup has plenty of competition - as soon as the increased cost of buying Roundup (on top of the premium for the seeds) is more than the savings in labor/fuel/etc then they'll switch back without hesitation.