Microplastics Found In Human Stools For the First Time (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics.

The new paper, which was presented Monday at a gastroenterology conference in Vienna, could provide support for marine biologists who have long warned of the dangers posed by microplastics in our oceans. But the paper suggests that microplastics are entering our bodies through other means, as well. To conduct the study, they selected volunteers from each country who kept food diaries for a week and provided stool samples. Dr. Philipp Schwabl, a researcher at the Medical University of Vienna who led the study, and his colleagues analyzed the samples with a spectrometer. Up to nine different kinds of plastics were detected, ranging in size from .002 to .02 inches. The most common plastics detected were polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate -- both major components of plastic bottles and caps.

Comments

Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[drnb]

I always preferred the Mexican imported Coca Cola in glass bottles. I suspect the taste improvement was not from cane sugar vs fructose syrup but rather due to glass bottle vs plastic. Beer also tastes better in glass bottles, cans often have an inner plastic coating on the metal. I wonder if the some of the plastic particles are coming from such food packaging? The plastic taste I find annoying has to be coming from something.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people carry potable water and other drinks in used plastic bottles in their rucksacks during the day as they study and move around the cities and work. Some older non-residential buildings may have water that is not safe to drink, so the people bring their own. That's one of the possible vectors.

  That glass bottled beer may also be from the batches that are not rushed during football seasons for example. You can taste the dropping quality during events like the world cup of a certain Danish beer brand that feels its products are "probably the best in the world". That quick and dirty beer is always canned.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Anonymous Coward]

The plastic taste I find annoying has to be coming from something.

Your imagination.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't actually, I've literally never seen this. You see it in tinned vegetables that need it, but the "coating" is aluminium-oxide on coca cola.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[arth1]

Glass bottles?

Examine the bottle cap more closely.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything is bad.
The question is; is it worse than the alternatives?

We can't wait for perfect to come a long and punch us in the face. We have to go for slightly better than whatever we are doing right now.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Anonymous Coward]

BPA we pretty much know how to deal with. Dont store the cans in hot places like a closed car, and dont cook your food in the can. Personally id rather a BPA lined can, at least i know what i am dealing with than some mystery "BPA free" lining. Guess what when they take the BPA out of the plastic they replace it with some other chemical, likely not as well studied as BPA is. They dont just say oh we're just going to keep making the plastic exactly the same as before and just not put the BPA in the mix. The BPA served a purpose and you cannot just take it out without replacing it with something else that serves that same purpose as closely as possible.. If you could just take it out and not put something else in it;s place, the plastics companies would have done it long ago since that means they were just spending money on an ingredient in the mix that was not needed.

You gotta think with your head sometimes. If they could have saved a buck taking BPA out of the mix it would have already been done a LONG time ago. They just replaced it with something else when every mommy on social media started whining and spreading around scare mongering stories.

Re: Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[MachineShedFred]

Except it is highly recyclable. Glass just happens to be more expensive than plastic.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in the industry. All aluminum and steel cans have an internal coating. Some types are more visible but they all have it.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Kokuyo]

I think it's about the carbon-dioxide. Coke from PET just tastes flat.

But it is interesting... for me the hierarchy is:
1 - 250ml glass bottle
2 - 330ml Aluminium can
3 - 330ml glass bottle
4 - A whole lot of nothing
5 - More of the same as in 4
6 - PET if I have a belly ache
7 - from tap only if I really crave the sugar...

For water I go with tap as that is still the cleanest and best tasting water around in Switzerland. For beer I don't care much whether it's glass bottle or can.
What remains? milk and juice from tetra pak.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect the taste improvement was not from cane sugar vs fructose syrup but rather due to glass bottle vs plastic.

You are mistaken. HFCS soda tastes vile compared to actual sugar.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[thegarbz]

Most probably it has to do with the different source of sugar. Coca Cola tastes different in every country regardless of which bottle you get it in. As for beer it could very likely be the case that the beer in the can is fresher. Glass bottles are not ideal for beer in the way they are stored and exposed to light. Beer is sensitive to light which is why many beers use as dark of a glass as possible. In cans beer is kept fully airtight, light tight, and nitrogen blanketed. I always ask this question during brewery tours and the answer is always the same: cans are better for the beer, but our customers think it's cheap which is why we ship it in bottles instead.

Now just remember this tibbit next time you're drinking a Corona. Maybe it's not a bad beer that is only remotely palatable when combined with lemon, but rather it just went off on account of ignoring hundreds of years of experience of exposing beer to light in clear glass bottles :-)

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Daralantan]

I'd imagine it's cane sugar + glass affecting the taste. I only base this off of my former roommate loving Throwback Mountain Dew and not liking the regular as much. And he only had

In general what you drink out of can also affect the taste. Glass, plastic, aluminum, etc. I've also heard of a study that makes it sound as though size can affect it too. I believe it was done by the IFT, and stated that a large number of people in their tests reported coffee as tasting sweeter when drank from a wider mug? Doesn't make sense to me, but apparently that was what they found in the study.

Re: Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[TeknoHog]

Except it is highly recyclable. Glass just happens to be more expensive than plastic.

Glass bottles are more expensive to ship: they are heavier, need more protective padding, and they also take up a bit more space. Also, broken glass on the streets. So while glass has certain upsides when it comes to beverages, there's the whole chain of logistics to worry about.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[NicknameUnavailable]

BPA we pretty much know how to deal with. Dont store the cans in hot places like a closed car, and dont cook your food in the can.

So what you're saying is it's a preemptive attack to ensure that when they start the zombie apocalypse all the plebs inadvertently turn themselves into effeminate numales by scavenging canned foods and are easily overtaken by the more masculine zombie hordes?

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Nidi62]

I always preferred the Mexican imported Coca Cola in glass bottles. I suspect the taste improvement was not from cane sugar vs fructose syrup but rather due to glass bottle vs plastic.

I don't like the Mexican versions of Coke/Sprite, but you can get the American formulas in glass bottles as well and I've always thought that the Sprite taste so much better in a glass bottle vs plastic.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[110010001000]

Coke itself is much more harmful than any microplastics.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[jellomizer]

I think the taste difference is primarily the amount of Cane Sugar vs Corn Syrup. However other factors is the degree of carbonation. Plastic bottles (and cans) hold a very high degree of carbonation. While for glass bottles with metal caps, there is a degree of a slow leak espectially when the pressure is very high, then it stabilizes to a lower carbonation level. A lower level of carbonation makes the drink taste more sweet.
If you are drinking it out of the bottle, we get other factors which may factor in the taste. Plastic bottles will buckle and bend, so you can get bigger gulps while glass bottles limit how much you can sip from the vacuum it creates, thus giving you a smaller portion. There is also the fact that glass isn't a good insulator of heat that plastic is (there was millions of dollars in R&D put into making plastic soda bottles sweat like glass before people started buying them) so your drink is a bit colder (numbing taste buds)

Re: Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[PrimaryConsult]

Initial cost, yes. But if we did it like Canada where bottles are returned to the bottler to be refilled instead of crushed and reprocessed, it eventually pays for itself after 10 or so refills. Of course this would have to be coupled with an appropriate bottle deposit to encourage returning (or at least high enough to allow the manufacturer to recoup costs if someone discards the bottle after it's only been refilled once or twice).

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[gtall]

And if they didn't, the contents might react with the metal.

Re: Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[DigiShaman]

Not to mention that take a lot of energy to heat and form glass! Plastics OTOH are in fact stored energy in of itself, we just refuse to burn/combust them (a form of "recycling") back into useful energy for our electric grid.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[DigiShaman]

Not might, it would. Coca-Cola contains a fair amount of phosphoric acid.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Applehu Akbar]

but glass is bad for the environment

No it isn’t. Broken glass looks ugly until it erodes into pebbles, but it’s inert silica that has no effect on adjacent biology.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple explanation- you still have dog food stuck around your mouth.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[blackest_k]

You have no idea how canning plants work ingredients go into the cans are sealed and then cooked.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[hey!]

Which is what any high-end chef or experimental psychologist will tell you: a lot of taste comes from imagination -- or at least expectations. That's why fine cuisine restaurants put so much effort into arranging food on the plate; if they slapped it on any old way it would taste different.

Human sense perception has Bayesian inference baked in at the neurological level. The colors you see, for example, are the product of both the light impinging on the retina and also the brain's prior knowledge of the scene .

This is a fact that accounts, I believe, for at least some police shootings of unarmed suspects. The human visual system does not have the bandwidth or acuity to instantaneously take in a whole scene; instead it picks out a few details and constructs, entirely within the brain, an HD picture of the world. But it's more of an animation than it is a movie. Until you actually direct your fovea to the cellphone in the suspect's hands, it's just a dark blob on your retina. If you "know" there's a gun, your brain replaces that blob with a very clear picture of a gun.

So it's quite possible, likely even, that the mere knowledge a drink came from a glass bottle could actually alter the taste, even if there is no chemical difference. That doesn't prove there is no chemical difference, however. You need a blind test to see whether human sensory organs can actually pick up the difference.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Mr. Droopy Drawers]

Blind taste tests show no preference for one or the other.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[ArchieBunker]

Yeah a small surface area that makes minor contact versus the entire container?

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[cayenne8]

This is a fact that accounts, I believe, for at least some police shootings of unarmed suspects. The human visual system does not have the bandwidth or acuity to instantaneously take in a whole scene; instead it picks out a few details and constructs, entirely within the brain, an HD picture of the world. But it's more of an animation than it is a movie. Until you actually direct your fovea to the cellphone in the suspect's hands, it's just a dark blob on your retina. If you "know" there's a gun, your brain replaces that blob with a very clear picture of a gun.

It is fairly simple to keep from this type situation.

1. Freeze, when encountering the police in a stop, just be still. Don't move until directed to.

2. Go out of your way to show empty hands, don't be holding a cell phone, etc....show plainly your hands are empty.

3. Actually this should be #!...DON"T FUCKING RUN.

4. Obey officers commands, don't smart off, don't talk any more than you need too (being quiet is one of the first things your lawyer would tell you, you have the right to remain silent...REMAIN SILENT as is your right).

These simple 4 steps would keep the majority of folks from getting shot by the police when they do not need to be shot.

When did common sense go out the door?

It is legal to carry guns in your car here...no license required.

When you get pulled over here...you shut off the engine, keep movements slow...and put both hands on the steering wheel in plain site and wait for officer to approach you.

I usually tell the officer, "I have a loaded gun located xyz".....at that point, they usually ask me to get out of the car...some retrieve the weapon, some don't and just run a check on my DL. No one gets excited, no one gets shot.

Being respectful, and moving slow and deliberate and obeying officers commands make stops pretty quick and uneventful....especially if you are not committing a crime.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[dyslexicbunny]

I've never had Corona with lemon. Just lime. Is lemon better?

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the GP was referring to the black guy who was killed in his own back yard because he was talking on a cellphone. He wasn't stopped or even contacted by the police. They just shot him.

Additionally I find the notion that untrained civilians need to learn how to deal with encounters with trained professionals and should shoulder some or all of the blame if they get killed ludicrous.

Unpopular view time: what I'd like to see is for each police and sheriff's department in the US to be systematically shutdown, after a shadow force is build which is trained in the UK by British police (maybe some other country will work too, I just know the UK police first hand and they're not known for assuming violent intent with everyone they stop, and are trained to defuse situations rather than defend themselves against non-existent or unlikely to be harmful aggression - cue people with counter-examples, but compare the incidents of those counter examples to the volume of police shootings we're seeing today in the US), the shadow force becoming that department's replacement.

That might involve paying police more to get more qualified individuals. I'm fine with that. Raise my taxes.

Re: Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[brianerst]

Am I the only one old enough to remember that we did exactly that in the US until the mid-70s? Every soda bottle had a hefty deposit (usually half the cost of the soda itself) which made it routine to return bottles to get your deposit back (or, more typically, to get the next 8-pack of bottles). The bottles were returned to the bottler, washed, sterilized and reused. Chipped or damaged bottles were recycled or trashed. There was an entire system built around this - bottlers, drivers, supermarkets all coordinating the reuse of those bottles.

Eventually the economics and convenience of aluminum cans (and, later, plastic bottles) took over. The savings in purchasing and shipping costs just completely wiped out that industry.

I'd be fine going back to the old model but I suspect most people wouldn't.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Pascoea]

Aaaah, the joys of being isolated. As illustrated by the "I just know the UK police first hand". You know SOME of the UK police, maybe even a lot of them.

I have met a few police officers (some in good situations, some in not-good ones) and in every situation, the officers were calm, collected, mostly professional, and didn't shoot me. Do you know where I have met most of the police officers? In areas with low violence rates. They aren't mentally conditioned to see guns, because for the most part they don't see guns on suspects. Go 15 miles down the road from me (downtown Minneapolis) where 2 people got shot last weekend, do you think the cops down there are more likely to be wary of what someone is carrying in their hand? What about the cop from downtown Chicago, where on average 10 people are shot per day? Whether you like to admit it or not, that is a real threat that officers have to be aware of.

Now, to the point where I agree with you. Police SHOULD be better trained and better paid. The US spends $600b+ on military, and $100b on law enforcement. (And another $80b on incarceration, but that's a different story) I'd much rather see $50b (or $100b) diverted from the military to better pay and training for our law enforcement.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[hey!]

I have no doubt that the steps you recommend will improve your chances, but that's dependent on the experience and expertise of the cop. You can get yourself shot for trying to comply with officer commands. For example the officer tells you to raise your hands, and then thinks your cell phone is a gun.

Following orders can also get you shot if you misunderstand police commands. There was a black guy recently who got tasered by a cop apparently for that reason. The cop told him to sit on the curb. Then he told him to put his legs straight out. Then a second cop told him to "cross his legs", so he pulls his legs back to sit cross-legged (instead of crossing them at the ankles as the cop intended). The first cop shot him, essentially for complying with the second cop's instructions.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[painandgreed]

I always preferred the Mexican imported Coca Cola in glass bottles. I suspect the taste improvement was not from cane sugar vs fructose syrup but rather due to glass bottle vs plastic.

I would say it is the sugar in large part. I came back from Canada with Coke with sugar in a 2 liter bottle. At a movie night a friend hosted, I did the "Pepsi Challenge" with the sugar coke and fructose coke. Identical packaging and that was even hard to tell apart if you didn't read the list of ingredients. Every single person (about a dozen) picked the sugar Coke as tasting better.

Re: Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[illiac_1962]

Thank God all those microplastics just pass right through.

Re: Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[PrimaryConsult]

Eventually the economics and convenience of aluminum cans (and, later, plastic bottles) took over. The savings in purchasing and shipping costs just completely wiped out that industry.

I'd be fine going back to the old model but I suspect most people wouldn't.

I agree, sadly. I find it interesting that everyone is gung ho about saving the environment until it means a direct impact to convenience or the bottom line. There's quite a few of so-called environmentalists who can't be arsed to rinse out and return a bottle for the 5c deposit (or into a dedicated recycling bag to be put out on recycling day), or heaven forbid they drink tap water instead of buying a case of Poland Spring at Costco every week...

Then there's me, who doesn't particularly care what happens to this planet beyond my lifespan, yet I spend the effort to insure every metal or plastic in my home is getting rinsed and recycled (or at least making it to the recycling truck... what they do with it after is on them).

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[thegarbz]

Sorry you're 100% right, mistranslation. I've spent way too much time in Europe. They are served with the green thing.
English: Lime
German: Limone
Dutch: Limoen

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Darinbob]

Probably because you're never taken dog food and heated it up in the skillet like you do with canned goods meant for humans?

Re: Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Eloking]

Except it is highly recyclable.

In theory, yes.

In practice, not so much.

The problem lies in color separation. A single piece of broken green glasses can corrupt a ton of white glass bottle. You cannot mix the color. Then there's the near infinite variation in glass bottle color, especially in the wine industry. The recycling industry is trying to automate the whole process, but colored piece of reflective glasses is quite difficult to handle in volume. So far, the only things worth recycling (economically speaking) are standard beer bottle. All the same brown/green/white.

For aluminum cans, no matter what color it is, you put them all in the same oven.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[arth1]

The cap has less surface area and if transported correctly comes in contact with the contents of the container less than the walls do.

You might be young, and not remember back when the layer between the glass bottle and cap was first cork, and then soft foam. Both were prone to small pieces breaking off, because you rub the intermediary between the glass and the metal, pretty hard, and even more so when you open the bottle. I would not be surprised if the same happens with the harder plastic used now, but that what rubs off is going to be microparticles. Looking at a Mexicola cork here, I see scuff and stress marks on the plastic inlay, so I don't think that's an unreasonable guess.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[drnb]

Most probably it has to do with the different source of sugar.

I sense a distinct plastic taste. Perhaps it has more to do with taste buds coming in contact with the container when drinking from the bottle itself.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[drnb]

I'm also now thinking about the taste buds actually coming into contact with the plastic or glass.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[Swave An deBwoner]

We've gotten a bit offtopic here but I'll leave you some stuff about two high-profile shootings of folks who should not have been killed while obeying the officer's instructions.

People habitually do things even when told not to; reaching hand towards back might be to scratch an itch, pull up one's pants, etc. Police need better training and maybe higher pay to attract more talented people.

Asked to produce license and registration, so he wasn't told to not move. Shot dead anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Philando_Castile

On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile,[a] a 32-year-old black American, was pulled over while driving in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and killed by Jeronimo Yanez, a St. Anthony, Minnesota police officer. Castile had been driving a car at 9:00 pm with his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and her four-year-old daughter when he was pulled over by Yanez and another officer in a suburb of Saint Paul, MN.[3][4] After being asked for his license and registration, Castile had told Officer Yanez that he had a firearm, to which Yanez replied "Don't reach for it then", and Castile said "I'm, I, I was reaching for..." Yanez said "Don't pull it out", Castile replied "I'm not pulling it out", and Reynolds said "He's not..." Yanez repeated "Don't pull it out"[5] and then shot at Castile seven times.[6]

Told to cross legs and crawl towards the officer. Crawled on all fours, reached towards his back. Shot dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver

As Shaver and an acquaintance exited his room, officers pointed weapons at them and gave them orders for several minutes with frequent admonitions that failing to comply with them would get them shot.[4] Eventually, Sergeant Langley ordered Shaver, who was laying prone, to cross his legs. Moments later, he ordered Shaver to push himself "up to a kneeling position." While complying with the order to kneel, Shaver uncrossed his legs and Sergeant Langley shouted that Shaver needed to to keep his legs crossed. Startled, Shaver then put his hands behind his back and was again warned by Sergeant Langley to keep his hands in the air. Police Sergeant Charles Langley yelled at Shaver that if he deviated from police instructions again, they would shoot him. Sergeant Langley told Shaver not to put his hands down for any reason. Shaver said "Please don't shoot me". Upon being instructed to crawl, Shaver put his hands down and crawled on all fours. While crawling towards the officers, Shaver paused and reached towards his waist behind his back. Phillip Brailsford opened fire with his AR-15 rifle, striking Shaver five times and killing him almost instantly. Shaver was unarmed.[5][6][7][8]

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[ConceptJunkie]

In Mexico, "limon" seems to be used for both. I spent some time with some folks in Mexico City, and they offered me Lime Shebert, which was had the word "Limon" on the label.

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[thegarbz]

Yeah to confuse it the word is used for both in some other European languages, and means Lemon in others, however in the group of North and West Germanic languages, English is the outlier. All other North and West Germanic languages call a Lemon > Citron. It's almost like they borrowed this one word from the Romance languages to confuse the heck out of people.

Someone trolled the world good :-)

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[ConceptJunkie]

The fact that English is an amalgam of Romance and Germanic languages is fascinating to me, just as it's fascinating how many of our words originally come from Greek (especially when you are talking about science).

Re:Coca Cola in plastic vs glass

[thegarbz]

That is also not uniquely english. Sciency words seem to come from greek in most european languages. It's easier to have a technical conversation on chemistry with someone than ask them how their weekend was.

Re:I heard somewhere that...

[binarybum]

I heard that too. I'll quote it here so you know what "that" is that I am referring to:

"In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics."

Olympics of poop

[binarybum]

I hope they looked for more than just plastics. The international scope of this study could finally allow us to complete a poop olympics of sorts. Whose poop had the highest amount of micro gold? What about the highest amount of bitcoin (is that in poop?) Which country had the runniest poop? The highest tensile strength? And finally, are the Russians doping their poop?

Re:Olympics of poop

[Anonymous Coward]

Other way around. BItcoin is 100% poop.

So What

[labnet]

Plastics go in, plastics go out? Whats the problem?
Do they get into the blood stream? Do they degrade in the body and produce toxins?

Re:So What

[Crashmarik]

Obesity in American shows no signs of slowing, and the reasons why it’s so widespread can be traced to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle that keeps people inactive, and eating, for more hours of the day.

The problem is especially concerning among children and teens, according to the latest study published in Preventive Medicine. The study analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination survey from 2003-2004 and 2005-2006. More than 12,500 people ages 6 to 84 years wore activity trackers to log how many of their waking hours they spent active and how many they spent sitting

http://time.com/4821963/teens-...

Seems some people have a pretty good idea

Re:So What

[ArylAkamov]

Depending on the plastic, it can mimic estrogen when ingested (See: Xenoestrogens).
I suspect this has a lot to do with our recent strange cultural changes.

Re:So What

[quantaman]

Plastics go in, plastics go out? Whats the problem?
Do they get into the blood stream? Do they degrade in the body and produce toxins?

Some go out, we don't really know if they all go out. And even if they all go out we don't really know everything they do along the way. Do they produce toxins, produce bio-active molecules, or even have a physical effect on biological processes?

My understanding is that most researchers think they're benign... but there's a lot of weird byproducts of our modern economy making it into our bodies, it's hard to imagine there are no negative consequences.

Re:So What

[religionofpeas]

Plastics don't make people fat. People get fat because they eat too much. In theory it is possible that certain chemicals in the plastic cause people to eat more, but it is much more likely that hyper-palatable processed foods can do this job on their own, without need for plastics. The food industry employs very smart people who's job it is to get you hooked on their products.

Re:So What

[ShanghaiBill]

Seems some people have a pretty good idea

No they don't. Your citation basically says that "people got fat because they got fat". It identifies no underlying cause.

Following WWII, food became much cheaper in America. Working hours became shorter. Jobs involved much less physical labor. People zoned out in front of the TV. All of these things happened DECADES before obesity rates started to rise.

Then in the 1980s, with no significant change in any of the above trends, obesity rates started to SOAR. Climbing, not 5%, not 10%, not even 100%, but 200%, tripling the rates of the 1970s. Why did that happen? Nobody has come up with a plausible explanation. And, no "they got fat because they gained weight", is not an explanation.

Re:So What

[ShanghaiBill]

Plastics don't make people fat.

False. Some plastics, including BPA and DEHP have been shown cause obesity. The effect is strongest when exposure is prenatal or in early childhood.

People get fat because they eat too much.

Thanks for stating the obvious. Now explain why a hundred million people suddenly starting eating more in the early 1980s. Food didn't get cheaper. Jobs didn't get easier. TV shows didn't get better. So what was the cause?

Re:So What

[Crashmarik]

No they don't. Your citation basically says that "people got fat because they got fat". It identifies no underlying cause.

People got fat because they weren't going out and exercising as much.

Well lets see what you had happening around 1980
You had video games becoming a big thing.
You had more television via cable in 1980, back when All In The Family was the best show on television and the original Battlestar Galactica was the best science fiction, there really wasn't much pull from the idiot box All of a sudden you had HBO playing things you actually wanted to see and without commercials then Skinemax came along and started piping just short of hardcore porn into the home yeah that changed the dynamic.

Re:So What

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called, Kids dont go out to play any longer cause some stranger might touch their naughty bits.

What else became more common in the 80's. Lets see TV with 24/7 cable channels. Kids being raised in front of the TV. Video game consoles, Computers, the internet, iphones and ipads. Now a days you just see kids sitting around with their face buried in some I device not moving a muscle other than their thumbs for hours at a time.

It's called, people sit in cubicles all day and rarely if ever exercise.

It's called, food proportions that are way larger than they should be

There is so much more that is more logical than some "mystery contaminant"

Re:So What

[religionofpeas]

Some plastics, including BPA and DEHP have been shown cause obesity.

You're reading too quickly. My first sentence meant that plastic on its own doesn't cause obesity. I explain that in the next two sentences.

Now explain why a hundred million people suddenly starting eating more in the early 1980s. Food didn't get cheaper.

I already explained. Food became much more palatable. We got a lot more quick snack type foods, plus snack foods that are masquerading as regular food, like muffins and donuts for breakfast, and pizza/french fries for dinner. More fast food instead of home cooked meals.

Re:So What

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they do, a number of killer whale populations are dying out because they haven't been able to raise viable offspring in over a decade due to the infertility caused by plastics that have worked their way up the food chain in a process known as bioamplification.

Effectively what happens is that because the larger an animal gets, and the higher up the food chain, it eats more smaller things down the food chain, and in turn over time accumulates far more toxins (in this case plastics) to the point that in the larger predators in the chain it reaches harmful levels. In killer whales in regions where they're dying out it has reached the point at which it's sufficiently high as to make females infertile and males impotent, or when calves are born, the mothers milk is sufficiently toxic as to cause death in a relatively short space of time.

The good news is that not all killer whale populations are affected, that those populations whose prey happens to be non-predatory, i.e. the prey live of algae or similar as opposed to other fish, do not suffer the effects of bioamplification to nearly the same degree because there isn't a long food chain for the buildup of toxicity from plastics to occur. In this respect therefore, nature is already selecting around this problem, which is a good thing for the long term viability of killer whales as a species, but bad for the local populations and the ecosystems that depend on them.

What it means for us should be fairly clear, and as someone who hates veg and loves a good steak or a nicely seasoned slab of chicken more than anything, I hate to admit it, but the safest way to avoid the health risks is obviously going vegan. As a long lived species bioamplification could be a particular problem for us because the toxicity of plastics is long lived, and so it will continuously build up through our long life times and likely be a big problem in the decades to come.

Re:So What

[ShanghaiBill]

Food became much more palatable. We got a lot more quick snack type foods

No we didn't. I grew up in the 1960s. We had Twinkies, DingDongs, HoHos, all sort of chips and dips, and Velveeta "cheese". Pringles were available in 1968. McDonalds was everywhere.

All these piles of junk food caused almost no change in obesity rates compared to the 1940s and 1950s. Then the 1970s came. No increase in obesity.

Then the 1980s came. There was no significant change in availability of junk food, processed food, or fast food. But there was a sudden and dramatic change in metabolisms.

Re:So What

[ShanghaiBill]

It's called, Kids dont go out to play any longer

Helicopter parenting became common more than a decade after the obesity epidemic started. Also, in the beginning of the epidemic, obesity rates rose faster in adults than in kids.

Lets see TV with 24/7 cable channels.

Median and average hours of TV watching did not significantly increase in the early 1980s.

Computers, the internet, iphones and ipads.

Those came a decade (computers) or more than two decades (iphones and ipads) after the obesity epidemic started.

Now a days you just see kids sitting around with their face buried in some I device

That is a consequence, not a cause.

Re:So What

[religionofpeas]

McDonalds was everywhere.

If you're trying to say that home cooking and eating out did not change between 1960 and 2000, you're simply wrong.

https://america-loan-service.s...

also, ingredients in food changed dramatically, based on attempts to make food both cheaper and more addictive:

https://www.slickwellness.com/...

More cheeses eaten (just an example, you can try finding graphs for all kinds of high calorie junk food)

https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdo...

Was there a dramatic increase in plastics in the 80s ? Does increase in plastic cause people to eat more cheese ?

Re:So What

[Calydor]

Video games didn't become a thing for everyone and their grandmother until well into the 90s. In the days of the Amiga, the NES, Genesis etc., computers and gaming were the territory of the geeks and nerds. Who ironically were stereotyped as skinny little twigs compared to the football team's quarterback.

Re: So What

[ShanghaiBill]

Economic downturn

There was an economic dip in 1982, then the economy boomed for a decade. So why didn't people get skinnier?

Video games and home entertainment arrived in the 80s

Only for a tiny fringe. They became mainstream in the 1990s.

Cheese and milk products added to everything

Nope. That happened decades earlier. Also there is no evidence that milk causes obesity.

Re:So What

[codeButcher]

Plastics go in, plastics go out? Whats the problem? Do they get into the blood stream? Do they degrade in the body and produce toxins?

Seems science does not know yet. The above study can't tell whether all of it comes out again... just that something comes out that thus must have entered.

It seems the concern is that >b>microplastics are of a size that would allow them to pass through cell membranes or perhaps even be incorporated in cell structures. Does some break down and release active compounds? Does it cause mechanical damage or weakness? More study needed.

Re:So What

[Crashmarik]

This is a DESCRIPTION of the problem, not an EXPLANATION. It doesn't explain why obesity rates TRIPLED. What CAUSED a hundred million people to stop exercising and start eating more? Why didn't they stop in the 1970s or the 1960s instead? There was a massive change in metabolisms for no apparent reason.

Jeebus no, a Description of the problem is saying Obesity increased X percent. Saying it happened because people weren't getting as much exercise is an explanation.

These two statements are mutually exclusive

Video games actually became big in the 1990s, and mostly they displaced TV watching.

Median and average TV hours did not change much from a decade earlier

The first one is also likely false.

Also, the early 1980s were part of the disco years, and long distance running was a fad.

Have you ever been to disco ? Alcohol isn't exactly low cal, but admittedly the coke might offset he calories, the rest of the experience is hardly a workout.

The number of long distance runners is miniscule if the videogamers could actually move fast enough to catch them they could easily overwhelm them like a zombie horde.

FWIW these people peg the number of Americans that have run a marathon at .5%
http://www.marathontrainingsch...

Re:So What

[Crashmarik]

They were already getting big by the end of the 70s
You had the NES out by 83 it sold I want to say 50 million plus units ? have fun look it up and correct me.

Re:So What

[mentil]

Aspartame became available in the early 80s, all major diet sodas had switched to it by 1985. It was used internationally as well.
A more likely cause is the sudden generational rise in Gen X women going into the workforce instead of cooking meals at home all day like the prior generations'. Obesity is inversely correlated with time spent cooking at home.

Re:So What

[JBMcB]

Other explanations are either restatements of the problem ("people suddenly began eating more", "people suddenly became more sedentary") or are unsupported by evidence, such as blaming it on HFCS, which is an "American thing" yet the obesity epidemic is a worldwide phenomena.

People began eating more and were more sedentary are not restatements of the problem. They are direct causes. You then would need to figure out why people are eating more or are more sedentary. Also, though it's a worldwide problem, the rate varies greatly from country to country, and even within areas of each country.

Re:So What

[AmiMoJo]

Oh god, don't say that!

It will start the next Soy Boy panic, Paul Joseph Watson will have to defend selling Brain Force Plus in plastic bottles, Reddit will be full of endless threads about the plastic content of anything you might conceivably ever put in your mouth.

Re:So What

[omfglearntoplay]

Hopefully benign. Someone needs to study if those micro plastics encourage bad gut bacteria when the plastics are passing through or getting stuck on the gut lining. How about the news about the parasitic worm that helps improve good gut bacteria?

https://www.the-scientist.com/...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

Re:So What

[nitehawk214]

As far as "hating vegetables" goes, most people I know that hate them only know vegetables as this thing that comes in a can or a freezer bag and mom boiled the fuck out of. I loved my mom's cooking, but when it came to having 2 working parents, there was no time to cook fresh meals.

Fresh vegetables and direct, high, heat is your friend here. Grill if you can go outside, wok or broiler if its cold out. Don't use too much oil, get just a little char on it, and you are good to go.

Re:So What

[ShanghaiBill]

Saying it happened because people weren't getting as much exercise is an explanation.

No it isn't, because it doesn't explain why "lack of exercise" caused no significant increase in obesity in the 1960s and 1970s, and then in the early 1980s causes a dramatic increase.

Why was 1985 different from 1975?

Re:So What

[ShanghaiBill]

People began eating more and were more sedentary are not restatements of the problem.

Yes they are just restatements.

They "problem" you need to explain is NOT "why are some people fat?"

The problem is "Why was there no significant rise in obesity in the 1960s and 1970s, and then a sudden and dramatic increase in the early 1980s?"

How do you explain the change?

Re:So What

[ShanghaiBill]

Japan is an outlier with only 3% of their population considered obese compared to America's 33%. What are they doing differently?

Japan is the world's 3rd biggest consumer of HFCS (after America and Mexico). So it's not that.

Re:So What

[MooseTick]

"Video games actually became big in the 1990s"

That's flat out wrong. In the 80's there were both Atari and Nintendo systems along with a variety of other video game options.

Re:So What

[MooseTick]

The 1980s is the decade that the microwave over arrived in nearly every middle class and up household. I'd attribute the ingredients in those early microwave food items and the ease of food prep added to people eating more.

Re:So What

[shess]

Food became much more palatable. We got a lot more quick snack type foods

No we didn't. I grew up in the 1960s. We had Twinkies, DingDongs, HoHos, all sort of chips and dips, and Velveeta "cheese". Pringles were available in 1968. McDonalds was everywhere.

So ... I can't tell if it's aging that does it, or what, but not long ago I had a Twinkie, and I was like "WTF is this?" I remember Twinkies being decent and subtle when I was young, but now they're literally tasteless, like eating very clean dirt. Each individual part is so bland and basic, it tastes like the color. And HoHos/DingDongs/LittleDebbies are much the same. On the one hand, I think it's plausible that I've changed, but other things like Doritos and Pringles don't really seem different to me, so I'm also wondering if maybe the formulation they use has changed. Like they've made 100 "Consumers can't taste the difference" changes, and now you could taste the difference, but the frog has already been boiled.

Re:So What

[Darinbob]

Also they eat too much of the wrong things. This is especially apparent with poorer people because more foods that are high in fat, starches, and sugar tend to be cheaper.

Re:So What

[Darinbob]

I don't remember people eating that junk food in large quantities in the past. Ie, you ate one twinky with lunch as a treat, but then no more junk food for the day. I don't recall much snacking between meals in the past either. Today though, there are doritos at work, high schools have vending machines, college students do late night snack runs, and so forth.

Re:So What

[Solandri]

To play video games in the 1980s, most of us went to the arcade. For me it was a half mile hike and climbing over a brick wall. Or you rode your bike over to a friend's house who had a home video game console (which weren't as good as the arcade games).

TV viewing has been ramping up steadily. It didn't suddenly spike in the 1980s. In fact it flattened out in the 1980s due to video games.

Actually, thinking back to my trips to the arcade, I'd say the biggest change is that parents don't let their kids play outside alone anymore. My parents gave me a bike as a present, and would let me go anywhere as long as I told them where I was going, and was back in time for dinner. My friends and I made several 10+ mile bike trips around the city. So I'd place more blame on the media for exaggerating the danger of child abductions by strangers.

Re:So What

[Crashmarik]

No it isn't, because it doesn't explain why "lack of exercise" caused no significant increase in obesity in the 1960s and 1970s, and then in the early 1980s causes a dramatic increase.

That's a differen't question. It's like saying Newton's law of gravity and laws of motion don't explain the motion of the planets, because they say nothing about what gives matter inertia or how gravity is transmitted.

Re:So What

[Crashmarik]

Changes in child rearing likely were a factor as well.
I'd point out that I never heard the term cocooning applied to lifestyle before the 80s

Re:So What

[ShanghaiBill]

The 1980s is the decade that the microwave over arrived in nearly every middle class and up household.

Nope. They were introduced as a consumer appliance in the 1960s, and became common in the early 1970s. Their adoption was not correlated with any significant change in obesity rates.

Re:So What

[ShanghaiBill]

So ... I can't tell if it's aging that does it, or what, but not long ago I had a Twinkie, and I was like "WTF is this?"

What is your normal diet? Do you eat a lot of sweets?

I eat mostly my own produce from my garden and orchard. I raise my own chickens. I only buy staples like flour and oil. I consume very little salt or sugar.

My daughter gave me a Twinkie a few months ago. It tasted amazingly good.

I haven't tried HoHos.

Re:So What

[ShanghaiBill]

Aspartame became available in the early 80s

Aspartame is correlated with weight gain, but no more so that the artificial sweeteners it replaced, and most people that gained weight in the early 1980s did not consume diet soda.

A more likely cause is the sudden generational rise in Gen X women going into the workforce

There was no sudden rise in women entering the workforce in the early 80s. The main rise had happened decades earlier, and was not correlated with any significant rise in obesity rates.

Re:So What

[Obfiscator]

This is something I've noticed, too. If I go for a while (even only a few days!) without free sugars, all desserts taste incredible. If I've been eating non-fruit desserts and snacks fairly regularly, I'm often disappointed by things like simple cakes and cookies and prefer denser, more concentrated desserts like cookie dough and brownies.

Re:So What

[codeButcher]

Plastics don't make people fat.

False. Some plastics, including BPA and DEHP have been shown cause obesity. The effect is strongest when exposure is prenatal or in early childhood.

Chemicals like that, used as plasticizers in plastics, are called xenoestrogens - they bind to estrogen receptors, some molecules in preference to "real" estrogen, and thus cause estrogen-like effects. Estrogen plays a role in storing fat (which is the main reason why the normal female has a higher body fat percentage than the normal male). But it is a positive feedback loop in that adipose tissue also produces estrogen.

A male body has some estrogen just as a female body has some testosterone. There is some conversion between these hormones (very similar molecules). The balance also varies with age and a myriad of other factors (hence endocrinologists asking so much to see you).

A lot of xenoestrogens have been discovered. Some have other uses than plasticizers (e.g. pesticides, or parabens, which are ubiquitously used as preservatives in all manner of cosmetics). Some xenoestrogens are plant-based and occur in nature (e.g. in soy, flax seed).

My feeling, based on my experience about the real world, is that the obesity epidemic has no single cause that can be easily found and eradicated - my opinion is that it is more likely a combination and interaction of factors - perhaps some are chemical, some may be psychological (change in attitudes/culture/lifestyle).

But if the epidemic is brought on by some recent change(s), then it stands to reason that a lifestyle like our grandparents had might stave it off. It's neither easy or cheap to eat a diet of unprocessed foods, mostly made from fresh produce, seek organic produce or garden your own, cook in cast iron or stainless steel on a stovetop not in a microwave, store in glass containers, wear natural fabrics like cotton and linen, minimize the chemicals you put on your skin or inside your gut, etc. etc. etc. It can be done, but part of it requires a mindshift away from popular culture's dictates, which is the hard part for many people.

Re:So What

[MooseTick]

Yes, they were introduced in the 60s, but their proliferation happened in the 80s as the chart in the link indicates: https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/...

EIGHT SAMPLES

[Anonymous Coward]

EIGHT SAMPLES

But we don't know

[fredrated]

how much plastic there was in people's stool before the industrial revolution!

Re:But we don't know

[Waffle Iron]

The majority of stool samples collected from archeological sites have been found to be contaminated with microgutta-percha and microshellac.

Re:But we don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful! You're going to be labelled a plastic poop denier!

Re:But we don't know

[cascadingstylesheet]

how much plastic there was in people's stool before the industrial revolution!

You jest, but some very interesting stuff has been added to food over the centuries (sometimes by the eaters themselves). Not very clean sawdust in flour, for example.

Re:But we don't know

[nitehawk214]

Not much, but the Romans added lead on purpose.

Re:But we don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful! You're going to be labelled a plastic poop denier!

I will never deny the existence of Mitch McConnell.

I thought Mitch was made of cocaine?

Terminology

[burtosis]

Microplastics seems to span the range from 5mm down to 10nm but this seems too broad to me if you are talking safety. 5mm is roughly 20 thousandths of an inch and that's fairly macroscopic with a very small surface area to volume. Even 2 thousandths is visible and not that small, around the size of a salt grain you find in a restaurant dispenser. As you get smaller, the surface area to volume rises, as does the reactivity making very fine particles dangerous. This is why macroscopic titanium dioxide is common in food, but nanoparticles of it are actually toxic and pose health risks, and similarity why if you hold a lighter to a brick of metal nothing happens but if you do the same to metal powder suspended in air, or a fluffy fine steel wool, it burns profusely. I would be far more worried about the particles close to 10nm as the large ones look quite chemically inert, that's why they take so long to break down.

Re:Terminology

[sheramil]

Microplastics seems to span the range from 5mm down to 10nm but this seems too broad to me if you are talking safety. 5mm is roughly 20 thousandths of an inch and that's fairly macroscopic with a very small surface area to volume.

I really hope you meant 5nm, because five millimeters is roughly one fifth of an inch, but if that was the case, it implies the previous sentence would have been "from 5nm down to 10nm", which doesn't make much sense.

Re:Terminology

[mark-t]

It's safe to say he didn't mean 5nm, but meant actually 5 um, which is, by the way, about 20 thousandths of an inch.

Re:Terminology

[jrumney]

More likely 5 micron. The other thing I would take issue with there is the "surface area to volume" being relevant. Surface area and volume have different units, and are thus not directly comparable. If we're talking spherical particles, they all have the same proportions.

Re:Terminology

[burtosis]

More likely 5 micron. The other thing I would take issue with there is the "surface area to volume" being relevant. Surface area and volume have different units, and are thus not directly comparable. If we're talking spherical particles, they all have the same proportions.

This demonstrates an understanding below the 8th grade level. For any fixed shape, the volume scales as the diameter (or any fixed point to point in the shape) to the third power while the surface area scales to the second power. For example on a sphere the volume is 4/3 pi r^3 while the surface area is 4 pi r^2. Therefore the ratio is proportional to the size, tiny particles have massive surface area to volume while large ones do not. This is a fundamental property of mathematics and physics and affects everything from the fact large objects cool far slower than small ones of the same shape to complex things like why insects can't get larger than a certain size because they don't have lungs and rely essentially on diffusion.

Re:Terminology

[burtosis]

Yes, unit conversion can be a pita. However let's look at it simply. There are 25.4 millimeters in a inch. So if you have one inch, multiply by 25.4 to get mm. Take 0.02 inches (20 thousandths) multiply 0.02 by 25.4 and it's 0.508mm. Somehow my .5 got autocorrected and I didn't see it so it was just a typo, that dosent affect anything substantial with respect to the argument of the danger of plastic particle toxicity.

Re:Terminology

[quanminoan]

Also particle shape matters, many nanoparticles that are spherical are benign, but when "sharp" they puncture cell walls and resist encapsulation resulting in a pile of dead cells trying to remove the particle.

Re:Terminology

[metadata7]

Or to put it mathematically. If you double the radius of a sphere, you get 8 times the volume but only 4 times the surface area. So much more volume compare to surface area. Reducing radius has the opposite effect.

Re:Terminology

[burtosis]

I wouldn't necessarily call them benign but yes being pointed makes it much worse including (all else being equal) more reactive in the general case as well.

Re:Terminology

[jrumney]

You are the one demonstrating understanding below 8th grade level. You are comparing numbers without regard to the units. By your logic, if I use imperial measurements, the ratio of surface are to volume is reduced by one order of magnitude. Problem solved! A sphere is a sphere, the proportions are the same, no matter the scale.

Re:Terminology

[burtosis]

The proportionality ratio is unitless. It dosent matter what units you use, if you double the distance between two fixed points for any closed shape the volume goes up 8x while the surface area goes up 4x. You divide both volumes and both areas so the units cancel. You just moved down to 5th grade. Please learn basic algebra before replying next time.

Re:Terminology

[jrumney]

if you double the distance between two fixed points for any closed shape the volume goes up 8x while the surface area goes up 4x

Because volume is 3 dimensional and surface area is 2 dimensional. Comparing them as a ratio is meaningless, not unitless.

Re:Terminology

[burtosis]

Yes, it's because of the dimensionality and the ratio between your initial size and final size by scaling them both linearity and invariantly is extremely important across geometry, physics and engineering. It's why small objects are extremely reactive (surface area affects reaction rate and the amount of reactant scales with volume) and large are not, why large objects cool very slowly (surface area dictates heat transfer rate while the volume affects mass) and small objects quickly. It has noting to do with a choice of units, that is arbitrary. Take your initial not understanding like and adult and move on.

So What-do the locomotion.

[Ostracus]

I think the point is that plastics aren't suppose to be there in the first place.

Re:yuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Philipp Schwabl, a researcher at the Medical University of Vienna who led the study, and his colleagues analyzed the samples with a spectrometer

I wonder how much that job pays.

I heard the pay was shit.

Grandprize goes to the guy who thought of this

[Crashmarik]

He's obviously full of poop

It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[Anonymous Coward]

It is caused by High Fructose Corn Syrup consumption and obeisity does correlate directly to that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup

See the graph showing the sharp rise in total corn based sugars in the 1980's and 1990s, in the *USA*.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#/media/File:US_Sweetener_consumption,_1966_to_2013.svg

Your idea of "unsupported by evidence" is laughable.
HFCS is pure calories in carbohydrate form. The exact thing needed to get fat.
HFCS's consumption rise corresponding to people getting super fat.

Whereever HFCS consumption increase, so the people became fat.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[Anonymous Coward]

HCFS certainly plays its part, but not because it's any worse for you than sugar, because it's cheaper. Companies started putting it in everything, so our consumption skyrocketed.

Re:It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[ShanghaiBill]

It is caused by High Fructose Corn Syrup consumption and obeisity does correlate directly to that

Correlation is not causation. HFCS consumption went up in America along with obesity. But many other countries also became obese, some worse than America, and they did NOT consume much HFCS, because they have no corn lobby pushing it.

Dietary surveys of Americans show a weak correlation between HFCS and obesity. Many people that avoid it got fat. Many people drinking several sodas per day stayed skinny. Some sodas are made with cane sugar, and people that drink those get fat at the same rate as people that drink HFCS soda.

There is plenty of evidence that all types of sugar are bad for you in excess. There is not much evidence that HFCS is worse than other sugars.

Animal studies are inconclusive. Some show a correlation of HFCS with weight gain, but most do not.

NIH: Lack of evidence that HFCS causes obesity

List of countries by BMI. America is 17th.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[ShanghaiBill]

HCFS certainly plays its part, but not because it's any worse for you than sugar, because it's cheaper.

It is only cheaper in America, where corn is subsidized and cane sugar tariffs are sky high. In the rest of the world, cane sugar is cheaper.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[ShanghaiBill]

Fast wasnâ(TM)t a common meal until the 80s.

Yes it was. Fast food took off in the 1950s, and spread in the 1960s and 1970s. The result was almost NO increase in obesity. Then in the 1980s, with no significant change in fast food availability, obesity rates dramatically increased.

People werenâ(TM)t slurping frappucinos all day.

Frappuccinos were not a fad until well into the 1990s, a decade into the obesity epidemic.

People worked active jobs not sitting in offices.

Jobs were becoming less "active" for decades, with no increase in obesity. There was no significant change in the early 1980s.

Itâ(TM)s calories.

Of course, but saying "people got fat because they ate more" does nothing to explain WHY obesity suddenly skyrocketed with no significant change in availability or affordability of food, no significant change in opportunities for exercise, etc. Why did a hundred million people suddenly start eating more?

Re:It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[dunkelfalke]

and they did NOT consume much HFCS, because they have no corn lobby pushing it

About that. Other countries use the same shit, just not necessarily made from maize. Here in Germany, for example, it is called "glucose-fructose syrup" and is usually made from potato starch, but the difference between that and HFCS is miniscule. From my personal experience American food is way sweeter compared to the more or less similar stuff in Germany, though, that might be key difference.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[NormalVisual]

Of course, but saying "people got fat because they ate more" does nothing to explain WHY obesity suddenly skyrocketed with no significant change in availability or affordability of food, no significant change in opportunities for exercise, etc.

But there *was* a significant change in opportunities for exercise - computer/network usage became much more widespread during that time. All of a sudden, files were available without leaving one's desk to go find it in a file cabinet, and files could be easily sent between people without having to get up and walk across the office to bring a piece of paper in person. Printers got a lot cheaper and subsequently more common, so you didn't have to walk to the computer room to get your documents off the single expensive one the company had. It doesn't sound like a lot, but over time, all that inter-office activity could equate to a mile or more of walking every day that simply went away. Similar computer-related reductions in physical activity likely affected a broad spectrum of jobs. Even as a programmer, I can see that my own actvity level at the office declined between the mid-80's and mid-90's owing to technological advances.

Obviously that's not the sole cause of global chunkiness, but the point is that the obesity rate could very well be due to a lot of "obvious in hindsight" factors that have been overlooked up to this point.

Re:It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[gtall]

It probably had nothing to do with HFCS since the sugars in it are not all that different from cane sugar. More likely is that American manufacturers decide to put sugars into every damn type of processed food. HFCS were simply cheaper. Foreign manufacturers selling to the American public got in on the act to compete and then decided to pump up the sugar content for their domestic consumption.

Large amount of sugar is simply bad for you no matter where it comes from.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[PrimaryConsult]

A good way to support or refute this theory would be to look at obesity numbers among public transit users versus drivers. Overwhelmingly, public transit use requires more walking (and in the case of Subways/Els/Metros, also involves stairs). Anecdotally, I see less overweight people in Northeast US cities where traffic / parking constraints make driving impractical.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[dryeo]

Lots of HFCS here in Canada, yea free trade.

Re:It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[drinkypoo]

HFCS is pure calories in carbohydrate form. The exact thing needed to get fat.
HFCS's consumption rise corresponding to people getting super fat.

Yes, but it's not because "HFCS is pure calories in carbohydrate form", it's because HFCS was used to replace not just sugar but vegetable oil. HFCS is barely different from table sugar, the difference is literally not meaningful. But it is very different from vegetable oil. Oil goes rancid but sugar is more or less eternal until metabolized, it will keep for ever and ever. And when you put it into a recipe it affects the texture. When you combine it with citric acid, it does this without making the product sweeter, and both the sugar and the citric acid act as preservatives so it enhances shelf life both by eliminating fats which will spoil, and also by increasing the acidity which results in a Ph that doesn't want to grow mold. But it also results in increased caloric content, and in excessive sugar consumption. The fats are much better for you.

So yeah, if you use HFCS to replace vegetable oil, you're gonna have a bad time. Using it replace sugar, on the other hand, is just fine — flavor aside.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[drinkypoo]

Fast food took off in the 1950s, and spread in the 1960s and 1970s. The result was almost NO increase in obesity. Then in the 1980s, with no significant change in fast food availability, obesity rates dramatically increased.

In the early days, McDonalds had one size of burger (what is now their smallest burger) and one size of fries (which is now their smallest size.) And they didn't offer 32 oz sodas, either.

Why did a hundred million people suddenly start eating more?

Stress.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[ShanghaiBill]

computer/network usage became much more widespread during that time.

Nope. Desktop computers were very rare in the early 1980s. They didn't really take off until the late 80s and early 90s. Obesity rates rose fastest among the poor, the people least likely to use a computer.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[ShanghaiBill]

In the early days, McDonalds had one size of burger (what is now their smallest burger) and one size of fries (which is now their smallest size.) And they didn't offer 32 oz sodas, either.

The "plus" portion sizes were a reaction to the obesity epidemic, not the cause.

Stress.

How was 1985 stressful in a way that 1975 was not?

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[XxtraLarGe]

How was 1985 stressful in a way that 1975 was not?

M.A.D.?

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[illiac_1962]

Sugar is sugar...and that includes any refined grains such as wheat. Easily recognizable because they have to add vitamins back in. It is not worth going down the rabbit hole debating the different effects of hfcs and cane sugar. You will just end up giving the food giants an out to switch back to cane sugar and people will keep getting diabetes and you will pay the bill.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[illiac_1962]

That food is loaded with sugar (refined flour and sweetener). It also devoid of the wide spectrum of nutrients required to feed a human being. As such you get hungry very quickly after consuming it because you are literally starving. This creates a feedback loop where people naturally order more because they have to stuff themselves to get any gratification. Fast food restaurants basically serve agricultural waste.

Re:It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[Solandri]

The "High Fructose" in High Fructose Corn Syrup just refers to it having more fructose than regular syrup (which is about 10% fructose, 90% glucose). HFCS used in foods is about 42% fructose, 58% glucose. HFCS used in soft drinks is about 55% fructose, 45% glucose. There's a 90% fructose variety, but it exists just to make shipping easier, and is mixed with syrup at the destination to produce the 42% and 55% varieties of HFCS.

These ratios of fructose to glucose HFCS is about the same as in most fruits. In particular, berries and pomogranites are nearly identical to HFCS, and apples have an even higher concentration of fructose. And obesity was never associated with liking apples or other fruits.

It's the quantity of sugars people are consuming which is the problem, not the type.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[squiggleslash]

To be honest, computer networks were rare until the very late eighties, early nineties, and until the mid-nineties paper memos were more common than email. Early email clients weren't exactly office friendly, Ethernet was expensive on a per-PC basis (it cost more to add an Ethernet or ARCNet card than a printer, for the most part), and most office workers didn't even have a PC; so yeah, the GP is right, the dates don't add up. If the obesity panic started in the 1980s, then it wasn't us.

There's a bunch of theories, but one of the most convincing to me is that the diet foods fads really started pumping themselves into high gear in the 1980s. But that's because of the obesity, right? Well, could be, but there's always been a market for weight loss products.

Diet Coke came out in 1982, which was too early to be a response to the problem.

What do we know about Diet Coke? We know that recent studies have shown that sugar substitutes, such as those in Diet Coke, appear to be harmful to stomach bacteria.

What else happened in the 1980s? Well, everything went "low fat". Because fat is fattening, I mean, it's right there in the name, right? But they replaced the fat with sugar, because low fat stuff tastes awful. Have you ever had full fat yogurt? Oh my God, it's fucking delicious. Hard to get it these days because yogurt's a healthy thing, which means the only version they market heavily is the diet stuff, because people who buy yogurt want it to be low fat because they think that's healthy. But "low fat" yogurt is full of sugar.

So, no real decrease in calories, the food industry marketing stuff with an implied message of "Eat and drink as much of this shit as you want, it's low fat therefore you won't get fat!", and meanwhile Coca Cola and Pepsi are killing your digestive system.

Not hard to figure it out.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[ShanghaiBill]

Lots of HFCS here in Canada, yea free trade.

No, blame restrictions on trade. Under NAFTA rules, HCFS is tariff free since is made from American/Canadian corn. Cane sugar, while inherently cheaper, has high tariffs because it is (mostly) produced outside North America, and cane farmers in Florida and sugar beet farmers in Canada have enough political power to block reform.

If we had free trade, HFCS would mostly disappear, and we would all buy sugar from Brazil.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[NormalVisual]

Desktop computers were very rare in the early 1980s. They didn't really take off until the late 80s and early 90s.

Not disputing your facts about the obesity rates being notably tilted towards the poor nor your conclusions, but I worked at a ComputerLand in 1984-5 and saw tens of thousands of dollars' worth of XTs, ATs, Compaqs, Apple IIs, Macs (yeah, some people actually bought the 128K ones), printers, and other hardware go out the door each week, primarily to business customers in a relatively small metro area. Also saw plenty of the ATs come back until IBM got their drive issues worked out. Somewhere around here I still have some of the "stacked" RAM chips from the original ATs.

Re: It is High Fructose Corn Syrup

[dryeo]

Huh? I was talking about free trade allowing tons of products in with HCFS rather then us producing stuff with cane sugar and exporting it to the US. Cane sugar has almost no tariffs on it into Canada, C$31 a tonne compared to C$372 a tonne for America and even higher for Europe and higher again at C$1079 a tonne in Japan. Source, which admittedly might be biased, https://sugar.ca/International.... Cane sugar is quite cheap in the grocery store here.

Little thought experiment here

[Crashmarik]

Take a look at what the food you eat comes packaged in.

I'll take mine as an example
Breakfast: Oatmeal, bacon and eggs. Oatmeal packeaged in a plastic container, bacon in a plastic pouch, eggs in in plastic foam carton
Lunch: Salami onion and cheese on rye (good jewish rye not that supermarket crap): Salami plastic pouch again, cheese plastic pouch, rye bread paper bag
Dinner: Stir fried vegetables (from my garden)

Of that only the food I grew myself, and the Rye I got from a kosher baker didn't have plastic involved, and I am not all that sure about the Rye. Is it any wonder there's plastic in poop ?

The question is what effect does it have ? Probably none as food grade plastics are indigestible and aren't going to be spending that much time in your digestive tract. Kids after all have been eating the damndest things since time immemorial

Re:Little thought experiment here

[techno-vampire]

eggs in in plastic foam carton

Unless you make a habit of eating the eggshells, that's not going to be an issue.

Re:Little thought experiment here

[Crashmarik]

No but I do crack the eggs and egg shell often gets in the pan with the egg.

Re:Little thought experiment here

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a user error problem, you shouldn't be getting any egg shell in your pan. Maybe try cracking the egg on a flat surface and then pulling the shell apart over your pan?

Re:Little thought experiment here

[Crashmarik]

You're kidding, I hope

Re:Little thought experiment here

[thegarbz]

Why are your eggs in a plastic carton? Ours are in cardboard.
Why is your salami in a plastic pouch? Ours just hang on string in supermarkets inside natural skins often coated in a layer of Penicillium.
Why is your cheese in a plastic pouch? Ours is sliced off a wheel that is encased in wax.

Note I'm legitimately asking. Is it a choice or are products not available in a more natural packaging to you?

On the flip side I'm getting off my high horse to say that same place I buy the above from has decided to individually wrap (or buy individually wrapped) paprikas. They also offer for sale plastic wrapped "organic" avacados, presumably so you can tell them apart from the non-organic variety. Whomever came up with that idea needs punch in the face.

Re:Little thought experiment here

[ortholattice]

"With proper recycling, lightweight plastic is actually easier/better to recycle than paper."

Our pressed-paper egg cartons go into the compost. They soak up water and degrade quickly.

Re:Little thought experiment here

[burtosis]

Unless you make a habit of eating the eggshells, that's not going to be an issue.

Would that be true if small plastic particles worked their way into the bloodstream of the hen?

Re:Little thought experiment here

[burtosis]

Have you ever seen the classroom demonstration of glitter used to show how germs or fine particles spread? There are some pretty good videos of a single dose of contamination spreading everywhere during a single class. There is a reason glitter is called the herpes of art supplies. Do you know how smell works? Gases and particles must physically work thier way to the sensory organs inside your nose, so when that co-worker farts and you smell it, you are physically in contact with fecal particles as well as various gasses involved. Flush your toilet? Well then fecal particles go everywhere including all over your toothbrushes and house. It's just that the particles make up a very small percentage of the total mass around your house or items so they don't get noticed. The same is true for plastic dust particles. They are generated all the time, everywhere, and a kosher bakery or home grown vegetables are no exception. There will be particles all over them because, for example, they are present in the dirt in your yard as well as all over inside your house. Things like clothes dryers generate massive volumes of them. So realize that just because something appears "artisan" or "organic" dosent mean it's magically free of all contamination. The only real question is how much not if it's there or not.

Re:Little thought experiment here

[Ichijo]

To my knowledge, "food grade" means that, when used appropriately, the plastic does not leach chemicals into the food.

Another aspect of food grade plastic is matching the appropriate type of plastic to the food in question. Foods that are highly acidic or that contain alcohol or fats can leach plastic additives from the packaging or container into the food. As a result, you should only use plastic containers that are FDA approved for the particular type of food the plastic will come into contact with.

This suggests that stomach acid could cause certain food-grade plastics to leach chemicals into your stomach and possibly into your bloodstream. If you have information to the contrary, it would be good to know!

Re:Little thought experiment here

[DaFallus]

Take a look at what the food you eat comes packaged in.

I'll take mine as an example Breakfast: Oatmeal, bacon and eggs. Oatmeal packeaged in a plastic container, bacon in a plastic pouch, eggs in in plastic foam carton Lunch: Salami onion and cheese on rye (good jewish rye not that supermarket crap): Salami plastic pouch again, cheese plastic pouch, rye bread paper bag Dinner: Stir fried vegetables (from my garden)

Of that only the food I grew myself, and the Rye I got from a kosher baker didn't have plastic involved, and I am not all that sure about the Rye. Is it any wonder there's plastic in poop ?

The question is what effect does it have ? Probably none as food grade plastics are indigestible and aren't going to be spending that much time in your digestive tract. Kids after all have been eating the damndest things since time immemorial

Let me make sure I understand. You go out of your way to get bread from a kosher baker, and make a point of how its good Jewish rye and not supermarket crap, and then slap on crap salami from a plastic pouch instead of buying some wrapped in paper from a butcher?

Re:Little thought experiment here

[Crashmarik]

Well this is how the food nearby me is packaged. Even salami in its own casing comes in some form of plastic blister pack.

Just as a side note while replying I realized the food I grow and harvest I collect in a plastic basket.

Re:Little thought experiment here

[Crashmarik]

Well seeing as food includes lemon juice and vinnegar plus a variety of digestive enzymes, or in the case of cheese, being inert is most definitely part of the spec.

Re:Little thought experiment here

[Crashmarik]

After I wrote my comment I realized I used a plastic basket to carry the vegetables.

Re:Little thought experiment here

[Crashmarik]

Take a look at what the food you eat comes packaged in.

I'll take mine as an example
Breakfast: Oatmeal, bacon and eggs. Oatmeal packeaged in a plastic container, bacon in a plastic pouch, eggs in in plastic foam carton
Lunch: Salami onion and cheese on rye (good jewish rye not that supermarket crap): Salami plastic pouch again, cheese plastic pouch, rye bread paper bag
Dinner: Stir fried vegetables (from my garden)

Of that only the food I grew myself, and the Rye I got from a kosher baker didn't have plastic involved, and I am not all that sure about the Rye. Is it any wonder there's plastic in poop ?

The question is what effect does it have ? Probably none as food grade plastics are indigestible and aren't going to be spending that much time in your digestive tract. Kids after all have been eating the damndest things since time immemorial

Let me make sure I understand. You go out of your way to get bread from a kosher baker, and make a point of how its good Jewish rye and not supermarket crap, and then slap on crap salami from a plastic pouch instead of buying some wrapped in paper from a butcher?

The baker is next to the supermarket I buy all my bread there. They also do excellent pastry.

Re:Little thought experiment here

[thegarbz]

Just as a side note while replying I realized the food I grow and harvest I collect in a plastic basket.

At least it's not a single use plastic bucket. ....

I hope.

In related news

[thadtheman]

For the first time humans stolls have been examined for the presence of microplastics.

The key is "micro"

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is that plastics have been in human stools for years and years. If you take a laxative you are taking plastics. PEG. You can look it up. It's used to hold water and is used also in nasal gels.

Nothing new hear except that the Internet Generation is so clueless that anything and everything make them say, "WOW, I'm so smart now."

No - 5mm is 1 fifth of an inch

[Anonymous Coward]

You Americans really need to get with the metric system - this love for a pre-revolutionary standard of measurement is confusing and unpatriotic

New kind of dupe?

[Mathinker]

Is this a new kind of "in-line" dupe? Wasn't the old kind good enough????

In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics.

Re:New kind of dupe?

[cyn1c77]

Is this a new kind of "in-line" dupe? Wasn't the old kind good enough????

In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics.

This is better. You can enjoy the same article longer, all at once.

Small problem now, but

[Tablizer]

microplastics grow up to be room-sized Barney action figures.

Plastic in stools? It's been in chairs forever!

[BobC]

How the hell did this story make it onto /.?
Has no one there ever been to Ikea?

Small sample size

[jmhysong]

Now when they say "small sample size"...

3D Printing!

[Anonymous Coward]

A whole new meaning to 3D printing: do it yourself, at home... with your ass.

Great. It seems humankind is about eliminating itself. OK, we worked hard towards that, we deserve it.

In a pilot study... In a pilot study...

[Tristao]

Researchers also found that those same stool samples are responsible for many glaring oversights in copy-pasting frontpage articles. Researchers also found that those same stool samples are responsible for many glaring oversights in copy-pasting frontpage articles.

Vegans are protected?

[fbobraga]

... by don't eating fish?

* I'm a vegan, and just want to know

Re:Vegans are protected?

[ceoyoyo]

Microplastics are found extensively in water. Most animals drink water. Including vegans.

Re:Vegans are protected?

[fbobraga]

simple filtering water is not enough to avoid it?

Re:Vegans are protected?

[ceoyoyo]

It seems it's hard to filter out 10 nm particles. You can do it, but it's hard (expensive) to do at industrial scales. Industrial scales like water treatment for farms and cities.

Re: Taste buds touching plastic bottle

[dehachel12]

I would bet even carbons escape from diamond. At nano-scale NOTHING is sure.

"found for the first time"

[zmooc]

(...) found for the first time (...)

That's a bit of an odd way to state this; my guess it that they just didn't bother to look any ealier. I'm pretty sure that just about anybody looking at their shit through a microscope in the 1990s would have been able to find plastic in there as well. Probably people professionally looking at shit have encountered endless heaps of plastic in shit already. No surprises here whatsoever.

And?

[cascadingstylesheet]

And? Is there some provable harm from them?

Probably trace amounts of lots of interesting stuff in our waste ...

Water bottles

[pz]

Give that we recently learned that merely opening a water bottle was sufficient to impart microplastic particles into the water, these results should be no surprise.

Jumping from microplastics in stool to microplastics being ingested from oceanic sources, well, that doesn't pass the simplicity test when there's a far more germane answer, like they drank bottled water as many Europeans do.
 

Do editors edit?

[CrimsonAvenger]

From TFS:

In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics.

Note that there are four sentences in the above quote. The first and third are identical, as are the second and fourth.

Which suggests that either the editors are idiots, or that they don't bother to read what they type....

Re:Do editors edit?

[burtosis]

Which suggests that either the editors are idiots, or that they don't bother to read what they type....

Why can't it be both?

OLD: Nobody was making a deal of it.

[bussdriver]

All but mined SALT has plastic in it. Probably for decades now if we had been tracking it. What can one expect from SEA SALT! Never understood why people thought it was better or more natural than land or chemical salt.

Microplastics MOSTLY come from clothing and other TINY FIBER sources because it takes a long time to break the plastics into microplastics. Already small plastics are most the way there. Every time you wash clothes you're releasing some... don't know why that wasn't news... maybe it was long ago? (or not in a formal study but I read about it decades ago.)

The simplicity test is not a test, it's an initial filter at best, a presupposition or precept for smart people to balance out their bias towards the complexity abyss. Reality is too complex, interconnected for humans to fully grasp so it's comical to assume that simplicity actually exists except on a highly specific abstracted context.

What's the big deal?

[mark_reh]

I bought a couple plastic stools at Ikea last week. My cats occasionally sit on them, but I bought them mostly for humans.

Advantage

[morgauxo]

Let's use this to our advantage. Find a way to make vitamins and vaccines long lived and embed them into plastics. Then make all the plastic producers mix them into everything. We can finally eradicate Measles and there is nothing the encephaletic anti-vaxers can do about it!

Well no shxt!

[oogoliegoogolie]

Nearly 100% of our food and drink comes in plastic containers, or metal containers with an internal plastic coating, or wrapped in plastic. Even fruit & vegetables all have those little annoying plastic code stickers.

Then everything we don't eat but use on a daily basis is made of plastic or comes in plastic containers-keyboards, mouse, pens, pencils, phone/tablet protectors, computer accessories, power tools, yoga pants, stretchy athletic clothing, shoes, socks, gloves, toothbrush, brushes, dental floss, body wash, shampoo, to name just a few.

On top of that everything we buy is comes in plastic shrink molding or wrapped in layers of plastic.

Is it really surprising that some of this stuff wears off and gets into our bodies?

Re:Well no shxt!

[Tony Isaac]

Well, actually, "shxt" was exactly what the researchers WERE looking at!

There's a silver lining to microplastics

[KlomDark]

Because plastic is technically an energy source (Very burnable, just horribly polluting), and there is so much more of it everywhere, floating in the ocean and all over the place, eventually some microbe is going to have the right mutation to digest it and will have a food source with no competition for quite a while.

So once this microbe evolves, all this shrieking about plastic pollution will quickly go away as it will all get digested.

With all the microplastics, it increases the surface area of the plastic to incredible amounts, making it far more likely for any microbe with plastic-digestive capabilities to be in contact with it.

I can't wait!

(Push)

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Microplastics Found In Human Stools For the First Time

The study had some fits and starts before it got off the ground.

"Check this stool sample for microplastics."

"I can't see any."

"They're really tiny. Look closer."

"I still can't see any."

"No, they're really, really tiny. Look closer. Much closer. Much, much closer..."

Re: Taste buds touching plastic bottle

[RenderSeven]

Diamond decomposes to graphite (slowly) since that is a lower energy state. But somehow De Beers' "Graphene Is Forever" ads didnt catch on.

The new "man made" global warming?

[p51d007]

You watch...this will be hooked onto by the leftist, as a new "crisis". Wouldn't surprise me people back in the 60's through 80's also had trace amounts of "microplastics" in their stool samples too.

Skinemax?

[Somervillain]

Cinemax has always been softcore, even by 80s standards. I know it's a small part of your point, but I am a stickler for my pornography. :)

Correction: "Skinemax came along and started piping just short of SOFTcore porn into the home yeah that changed the dynamic."

Re:Skinemax?

[Crashmarik]

Fair enough.

could provide support

[epine]

Betteridge bound and gagged in the trunk, but I can still hear him thumping.

The new paper, which was presented Monday at a gastroenterology conference in Vienna, could provide support for marine biologists who have long warned of the dangers posed by microplastics in our oceans.

Because salmon poo is a great delicacy of human cuisine.

Is this the kind of support that helps to persuade people who can't think straight, or the other kind of support which normally travels without the five-letter valet beginning with the letter "c"?

Re:Taste buds touching plastic bottle

[Darinbob]

Do a double blind taste test. A lot of people have imagined tastes that don't always hold up when tested. For instance, have a wine tasting with expensive and cheap stuff and see who can determine which is which.

Mexican Coca-Cola tastes better because it's got cane sugar instead of corn syrup. Also in general, formulations of various products vary by the country in which they're made. Ie, try a taste test of kit-kat chocolates from different countries.

No worries

[hughbar]

I don't use a stool, I use chairs.

Plastic is pretty diverse

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Hello,

    Plastic is actually pretty diverse stuff chemically. Enzymes that can unzip one type of plastic are pretty unsuited to others. Also, a lot of plastics are spiked with chemicals like chlorine that aren't usually incorporated into standard molecules used by life and thus aren't likely to be all that metabolizable by just about anything.

    What's more, just because something *can* digest plastic doesn't mean that it'll be that efficient about it. Lignin, a component of wood, is pretty resistant to any sort of digestion. Dead trees can take years to decay. Most forms of life just find an easier food source than lignin leaving that to a few specialists.

  I'm not sure this microbe will evolve quickly if at all, and if it does, I'm not sure it'll really remove the issue on a timescale faster than humans add to the problem.

--PeterM

Why not ban it

[aeeneas]

Regulatory bodies should've banned non-biodegradable plastics a couple of years ago. Why are they still protracting the issue?

Re:Taste buds touching plastic bottle

[Obfiscator]

I was thinking about this a couple months ago and did a double-blind taste test with my girlfriend (Mexican coke in a glass bottle vs. American coke in a plastic bottle). Neither one of us identified one as tasting better than the other.

YMMV.