[mmiyer]

"chemicals are those ingredients with scary names" is not a useful definition - unless you think foods containing 3-Methylbutanal are problematic (bananas [1]). You have to be more specific, otherwise you end up deriding ingredients based on how they sound rather than how safe they are. HFCS for example, is 55% fructose and 45% glucose while regular sugar is 50% fructose and 50% glucose. So since fructose might be worse for the body (although this is disputed and it might be that glucose is worse), HFCS might be a little worse but it really is the quantities of sugar that matter than the kind.

1. https://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/ingredie...

[fragmede]

Could be worse! You might have ingested some dihydrogen monoxide!

[spease]

What’s great about this comment is how damn complex just fucking water is.

You’ve got tap water, which can have chlorine or chloramine added to it. Yes, the water that you drink can be chlorinated. They do this because it kills off microbes that might be living in the pipes between the water distribution center and your faucet, because right now we believe that ingesting trace amounts of chlorine is better than contracting bacterial disease from your drinking water.

Then you have water that’s run through your filter, which might cut down on some larger particles.

Then you have reverse osmosis, which removes smaller particles, and usually includes a carbon filter. This can actually be harmful over long periods of time because the reverse osmosis process removes the trace magnesium etc that you usually get from water and lead to mineral deficiencies.

Then you have distilled water, which has been vaporized and condensed. Same risk applies as reverse osmosis water.

And then you have deionized water, which has gone through an extra filtration step. Not usually intended for drinking, and same risk of mineral deficiencies with long-term consumption applies.

Now, in the context of “remove everything artificial”, deionized water is probably the closest to being pure H2O. On the other hand, you need to additives to avoid health issues from drinking that.

On the other end of the scale, tap water sounds horrible-it’s chlorinated!

And I suppose if you keep going, you get to a point where you find the nearest natural lakebed composed of non-saltwater and just stick a straw into it. That’s probably the most “natural” source of freshwater, with absolutely zero additives, save for local pollution. There’s probably plenty of fecal matter from the local wildlife, but that’s natural, right? Note: Please do not try this at home or anywhere else.

So that’s…six varieties of water, each with their own profile of additives or “chemicals”. And in practice the water you get in your food is probably just going to be a mix from the municipal water supply, runoff, local wells, moist fertilizer, etc.

So before we even get to the chemicals in the food, we have to worry about the chemicals being put into the food to grow it. Oh, plus the chemical composition of the soil…hopefully there’s no heavy metals nearby, some plants are particularly greedy about snatching them up.

So it’s a really complex problem. We can’t just say “no chemicals in food”. It’s just not that simple.

[kelipso]

Of course it means added chemicals. You cannot be this pedantic and still have a normal conversation. Well...you can but it's very annoying.

[spease]

Casual conversations are not about the technical aspects of food production and distribution that has been refined for thousands of years.

Also, chemistry? As a subject? Incredibly pedantic. The exception is the rule for practically everything.

There are formulations of medications that are selecting for this one shape of the particular molecule which has otherwise identical composition. And that may determine insurance coverage.

If you don’t want to have pedantic discussions, organic chemistry is not going to be a pleasant topic for you.

Odds are none or very few of the people on hacker news are farmers or chemists deeply involved with the agricultural industry, but I imagine this would come across about as favorably as a hacker news perspective on farmers complaining about the way apps on their phone work. Or complaining that computer nerds have ruined John Deere tractors by making them impossible to repair.

Ie it’s going to totally lack any sense of nuance about the business, politics, and logistical constraints involving the existing solutions.

[kelipso]

I skimmed all of that but I gather you are saying don't talk about food production unless you are an expert or you want to be pedantic or some bullshit like that. Everyone eats food, everyone can influence food production in one way or another, whether through grocery habits or local or national politics. There is absolutely no way I would want to be associated with such a limiting viewpoint such as yours.

[spease]

What you’re doing is spreading unqualified FUD towards the work of scientists and engineers involved in bioengineering. We don’t need more ignorant opposition to STEM in the US. We already have large swathes of the population rejecting vaccines with an excellent safety record because taking their chances with an unknown disease known to do permanent neurovascular damage was more “natural”.

[kelipso]

As opposed to you encouraging naivite among the general population about bioengineered products? We do need a good amount of opposition to this incredibly naive viewpoint that so many people like you have of accepting whatever nonsense some scientist says as unquestionable truth. If the people involved in bioengineering feel so strongly that the population need to take particular drug, make that argument scientifically instead of going into histrionics about FUD or whatever.

Trust in scientists have plummeted in the last few years because of very good reasons (vaccine mandates, for one). Trust is hard to build back up, so if you want the trust back, you will have to do the decades long hard work of building it back up instead of complaining about it. It's not coming back just because you complain about it.