cardiacattack: descantforhope: mudphudkangaroo: writingbiologi...

[Health and Medicine]

cardiacattack:

descantforhope:

mudphudkangaroo:

writingbiologi:

zooophagous:

adamygdalam:

probablyasocialecologist:

dr-archeville:

hectocotyli-everywhere:

ohnofixit:

the-exercist:

fitblrholics:

If you look at the ingredients list and it’s a bunch of words you don’t even know… neither does your body (x)

Just like if you break apples and grapefruit down into their chemical components, I’m willing to bet that most people wouldn’t recognize the “ingredients” either. It’s a bunch of words you don’t even know:

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Don’t use these scare tactics - Chemicals aren’t inherently bad. Literally everything is made up chemicals. Trust me, your body knows what niacin is. It knows how to digest fructose and calcium sulfate. Even if you only consume the most basic and “real” foods that are pulled directly off the vine, you’re still ingesting a series of chemical compounds that you probably can’t pronounce. That’s okay. 

thanks to drhoz for submitting!

“If you can’t pronounce it, it’s bad for you” is literally the worst pseudo-scientific scaremongering bullshit tactic. I hate it so much.

I’m pretty sure you can pronounce “arsenic”, but that doesn’t change the fact that arsenic is highly toxic. On the other hand, you couldn’t pronounce “cycloadenosine monophosphate” or “nicotine-amide-dinucleotide-phosphate”, though both of them serve vital roles in human biochemistry and you would die if your body wouldn’t produce them.

Cyanide: Easy to pronounce, very bad for you.

Eicosapentaenoic acid: Difficult to pronounce, very good for you.

It’s more important to know what the chemicals are and why they’re in there.  Anti-intellectualism helps no one.

– James Kennedy, ‘Chemophobia’ is irrational, harmful – and hard to break

I’m gonna keep reblogging this until my knuckles fall off.

This is especially hilarious because grapefruit is well known for being dangerous for some people because of how it can interact with certain medications. Do fruit loops do that?

“Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.” - Paracelsus

Fava beans are like *known* to fuck up certain people with G6PD deficiency - which is insanely common.

Ok look. This is nuts. Are fruit loops healthier than an actual piece of fruit? Pretty much no, never. Individual quirks of metabolism aside, I can’t think of a single reason I would ever tell someone to eat fruit loops over actual fruit. Every time I see this it’s like a smart off to say stupid shit. I guarantee I do more biochem on a regular basis than most (and you can ask other docs that know me, like @notacleverturnip, I do so much biochem all the time). I don’t give a fuck about pronunciation, I’m just trying to stop people from getting diabetes. The chemical scare tactic is not particularly useful but neither is telling someone that the ingredient list on fruit loops is like the same fucking thing as an apple. I swear to the gods of biochem and nutrition if this post (in all of its iterations, I don’t care for the scare tactics either) comes around again I’m going to throw a blog tantrum. Again.

No one is saying fruit loops are healthy or the same as an apple. They’re saying you shouldn’t make eating decisions based on whether you can pronounce the ingredients or not. There’s obviously way more to nutrition than that, but fruit loops aren’t dangerous just because the ingredients are difficult to pronounce. That’s literally all this post is trying to say. It’s by no means a recommendation that fruit loops are super great and healthy.

Via