Comment by JSR_FDED
9 hours ago
This is a lighthearted topic and a well-written article.
But what it reveals about our relationship with food is a little unsettling. The intensely chemical nature of Doritos and the whole notion of turning flesh into something alien - it’s all very far removed from food as a source of nourishment and of natural origin.
Naturalism as an argument is a fallacy. Do you hunt down and beat wild pigs alive with your bare hands before carving them out? Oh, no? Well it seems like you're not "natural" enough. Do you drink milk from the udders of animals? Or do you treat it processes to clean it of pathogens, such as sterilization?
Is the Rhode Island Red chicken which constitutes most of the worlds breeds, that has been bred for 100 years to exclusively stand in a single spot, peck and eat as much as possible and show as little interest in its surroundings to be easier to handle, natural?
Is the tomato, banana or potato you buy at the farmers market, to which Bayer owns the genetical rights, that is 10x the size of the "natural" version, natural?
If you think a little bit about the origins of most sources of nourishment we have day-to-day you can find yourself in a very difficult space to draw naturalist lines
It's only a fallacy in the same way that the slippery slope is a fallacy, ie when used as a logical basis in and of itself. There's nothing wrong with either one when used appropriately in context.
I mean, of course, there's a spectrum when it comes to eating food that is "natural". On one extreme side, you have beating wild pigs and drinking from udders. On the other extreme, you have... whatever the fuck is in Doritos and soda pop. Part of figuring out your own dietary practices is finding the right spot along that spectrum, to at least attempt to draw that line yourself.
Yes, a lot of people who simply complain about vague "chemicals" in food are nutters, but I don't think that means that I'd be OK with eating every mass-produced-food-like-product offered for sale.
There's tens of thousands of different "chemicals" in the chicken breasts that we have no idea how it works. Not only that, they're living things, cells, that replicate, can become cancerous, and are known to contain human pathogens (Salmonella, bird flu).
In fact, Salmonella kills 420 people per year in the US alone and infects 1.35 million people [1]. That is a whole lot scarier than tartrazine. Of course, it's 100% natural and organic!
[1] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/inspection/inspection-programs/ins...
author here - i have no view on the toxicity of tartrazine other than its declared food safe.
its important to note though that there is no mystery or chemical nastiness behind the transparency effect - it's just changing the refractive index of water!
It’s a great article and I hope you don’t think I’m trying to assign any kind of agenda to it (on your part or mine). For some reason while reading it, it evoked a sense of queasiness in me - entirely my issue. Perhaps the contrast with the healthy vegetables I’d just eaten and an appreciation for the animal that contributed to my meal put me in an unusual state of mind.