Comment by wemwemwem
3 hours ago
This is simply not true. A calorie is a calorie might be true, and its hard to know which is healthier for any single fresh vs storage example but plenty of chemical processes are going on. It could certainly be the case that a small number of storage examples where particular changes occur cause particular risks that account for a significant portion of cancer.
Respectfully, that's a crock of nonsense.
"It's not at absolute zero, therefore there's some chemical process going on, therefore we don't know if it's causing significant portions of cancer"?
The number of things you can say that about is frankly infinite. You have zero reason to believe that any of the "chemical processes" that happen to an apple (or any food) in long term storage have anything to do with cancer.
This is a great example of correlation not equaling causation. You might as well say that writing years starting with a "2" could cause particular risks that account for a significant portion of cancer because of the different motions of our hand affecting our lymphatic system etc etc.
Irresponsible fearmongering with no foundation whatsoever.
Science is building hypothesis and testing them. It is not saying it seems unlikely so I don't care. You can look up the changes to green beans depending if they are fresh, shipped a huge distance without bring frozen or frozen. Some nutrients change, these changes could affect satiety which could affect obesity, but you just don't care?
> Science is building hypothesis and testing them.
Bad science is building hypothesis and promulgating it publicly alongside zero evidence whatsoever.
The discussion is about stored apples specifically causing increased cancer rates, paired with an arbitrary woo categorization of "living" vs "dead" food. OP wondered why this did not occupy a larger portion of public discourse. Again, this hypothesis exists alongside humans writing more years whose first digit is "2", as evidence-supported cancer progenitors.
> Some nutrients change, these changes could affect satiety which could affect obesity
Yes, if you walk back the "living vs dead" woo concept and expand the scope to more varieties of foods than just apples and more processing methods than passively storing otherwise intact fruit, then you exit the zero evidence crackpot zone.
Lots of crackpot woo theories are similarly half a step away from real evidence-supported theories. Another example would be biodynamic agriculture, which looks a lot like organic and integrated farming practices right up until you get to the part about burying ground quartz stuffed into the horn of a cow so you can harvest cosmic forces in the soil.
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Stored apples are not causing cancer.
I'm staying in my lane when I say it could, you are out of your lane when you say it couldn't. The fact of the matter is that an apple is chemically different depending when you eat it and we don't have cancer studies from before we began storing apples. Be a scientist or not but don't pretend to be one while making assertions you can't possibly prove. The Helicobacter pylori theory had an uphill battle because a lot of people just want to assert things instead of taking a scientific approach. I did not say the storage of apples is the most likely cause of cancer I said a high number of situations similar to the storage of apples means that some percentage of them could be explanations. The scientific response to that is "obviously".
You can write this same exact comment when saying that 5G might cause autism or the covid vaccine might cause cancer.
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