So maybe the huge worry people had after the news that WHO would classify it as cancerous was a little too much. I think the media could have reported on it in a bit more responsible way.
Not a shock.
Food scares are almost always over blown (except obviously tide pods).
People thought MSG was going to kill everyone. People thought Cholesterol was the key to good health. Even fat in moderation is perfectly fine.
But Fish will kill you with mercury, uncooked pork will kill you with everything (which is unlikely to happen in the first place, but also most pork you get is already cooked, at least sausage and hams). Salmonella is definitely going to kill you. Your kitchen is going to burn down, Fried food will end your life, and all processed food is bad.
Remember Supersize me? Remember the guy who ate two big macs a day for multiple years. That SINGLE guy should have been the end of the entire documentary, because he basically showed “Yes you can eat McDonalds in moderation and have a healthy life.” But instead “McDonalds is going to kill you with super sized food.”
The fact is you’re probably more likely to get Ebola than most of these things actually contributing to your death… though speaking of disease myths…
These things rush in, kill a business or a company, and then are forgotten, and then 10 years later new science comes out and goes “Btw it wasn’t as bad as people thought… try it out”
And even then, small amounts will make you immune. No seriously, I saw it in a documentary called the Princess Bride.
It depends on what substance it is. I wouldn’t try and test this theory on plutonium, but some allergenic stuff can have vaccines made for them.
As a side note, i don’t think the skinny guy from Super Size Me who eats 2 Big macs a day is a picture of exemplary health. Dude is either a genetic outlier or he will drop dead of a coronary one day.
All of those could be explanations. Here’s another one.
Big macs are 583 calories… two big macs are about 1100 calories… aka perfectly reasonable in a healthy diet. I forget if he ate two a day or two in some meals, but a nutritionist would ok that Calorie count.
Morgan Spurlock pushed “no one can eat here and be healthy” but he constantly pushed for combo meals ate in one sitting, and supersized every time they asked. That’s like someone going into a bar and saying yes every time the bartender goes “Want another one” and then going “OMG I’m so wasted and got alcohol poisoning” he set the rules up to make sure he failed, because no one is saying eat a combo meal at Mcdonalds for three meals a day.
The thing is it WOULD be interesting if he looked into why he can maintain a reasonable weight while eating it… but of course they didn’t because that would prove Mcdonalds isn’t the worst thing ever. Morgan had two goals. Prove Mcdonalds is unhealthy (And ignore contrary evidence) and make an entertaining documentary. He did the later, but I feel like he never even came close to the former because his methodology was shit.
He’s not all that special or unhealthy. 2 big macs is about 1k calories, if you get them as two meals with coke it’s about 2k calories. If that’s your food for the day it’s perfectly fine for a moderately active person. The sodium is probably the most dangerous part and just drinking more water would likely keep that in check as well.
People seem to not understand that not everything is about calories. There’s a fuck ton of grease and fat in that food. You might not exactly gain a ton of weight but you’ll be coating your arteries with all of that fat. A little fat is good. We all need fat. But the amount of fat that is in fried and red meat is very high. Too high to be eating everyday even if you’re within calorie limits
I think it’s incumbent upon adults to see media blitzes as probably exaggerated and studded with misinfo.
If you don’t buy the initial wave, the accuracy of news goes way up.
The problem is most people aren’t doing that, and even those who do get second hand/rumors/stories from other people and eventually succumb to misinformation.
I’ve heard many times that X is cancer causings. I wish it was one wave that you could ignore but this shit gets repeated entirely too often, and even if it’s not, the misinformations operates outside of the individual, because downstream products (diet coke) moved away from this because of bad PR.
The constant stupidity around food makes science look really really bad and I bet it’s the biggest contributor to people not trusting doctors and climate scientists. Personally I’ve become something like an antivaxer but with food. If people have been eating it for hundreds of years I trust it regardless of what studies say, and if it’s newfangled processed food I don’t trust it, also ignoring any study. I can easily see why some people wouldn’t differentiate between these alarmist food studies and the much more legitimate areas of science. It’s wrong but I understand exactly where they’re coming from.
Plus the reporting on it.
At a certain point, people start saying things like “X is supposed to be bad now, but give it 5 years and it’ll probably be healthy again!” or “they say you’re not supposed to do Y anymore…”.
Because, of course, most people get their information from news sources who are always trying to find the next superfood or poison that we’ve all been consuming for hundreds of years. And often, many of the things were taught when we’re younger are no longer considered correct, or at least fully correct, anymore.
So at a point people just get tired, ignore all of it, and just do whatever they were going to do anyway, because from their perspective, scientists can’t make their mind up anyway.
Supersize Me: “Wow, if I eat garbage at a 3000+ calorie rate a day, I’m gonna feel like shit! Please give me awards and adoration and play me in every high school health class!”
Even the tide pod thing was over blown. No one was actually eating them, it was just a meme.
I mean, unless this article is a fabrication, I think that’s enough deaths for concern.
Not suggesting in any way that it was the fault of the mfr, but to me that’s plenty to justify folks wanting something done to curb it.
And I curse those folks every single time I have to smash through the lid of my Persil laundry discs with brute strength because the lids are actually people-proof. 🙂
About the MSG hysteria, it’s not even rooted in actual medical data, just run-of-the-mill xenophobia, which in itself is absolutely wild to me. It’s like a whole chunk of the population collectively decided to develop the palate of a toddler, turning up their nose to “foreign” food.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate “Researchers, doctors, and activists have tied the controversy about MSG to xenophobia and racism against Chinese culture,[62][63][64][65][66] saying that East Asian cuisine is being targeted while the widespread use of MSG in other processed food hasn’t been stigmatized.[67] These activists have claimed that the perpetuation of the negative image of MSG through the Chinese restaurant syndrome was caused by “xenophobic” or “racist” biases.[68][69]”
I didn’t dive deep on MSG just to not sound like I’m ranting about that specifically but you nailed it. It was more about Chinese restaurants (at least that’s how I heard it) and I remember my parents saying we don’t go to Chinese restaurants during the hysteria.
Sucks because I love Chinese food, and Thai, Korean, Japanese and more.
