Vinegar has an incredibly strong taste you should be able to detect in anything, so it's not a super strong example in this case. It can be less strong than vinegar and still be overpowering.
There's no way to know for sure. The best option is arguably buying from local producers, who have established reputations for organic operation. But beware of mainstream "organic" designations, because there are huge loopholes.
Also, the truly horrible aspect of this is how persistent these endocrine-disrupting chemicals are, and how they bioaccumulate up the food chain. And not just in the environment, but also in our bodies. In particular, in our fat, given that they're for the most part lipophylic.
Even worse, they're persistent across generations. I recall estimates that, for some compounds, mothers' milk accounts for ~20% of total lifetime exposure. We have indeed been well and truly fucked.
You can’t. Best thing you can do is buy certified organic, which would preclude a lot of nasty agricultural practices. There’s no industry certification for pesticide-free. Certified organic allows natural pesticides, some of which are harmful.
I feel like this isn't well-enough understood in my circles. Many people I know and talk to about it seem to think that organic means no pesticides, which is indeed far from true.
Interestingly enough, something similar came up when we were looking for car seats for the first time, years ago. We were trying to limit flame retardants, which was(is still?) almost impossible. The best we could do was contact manufacturers and ask them what they used and how the fabric is made and flame retardant applied. At the time there was one pretty new, really expensive car seat company that basically implied that their car seats had no flame retardant at all, which wasn't true because otherwise they would not meet standards, and a bunch of popular bloggers and (at least minor) celebrities were promoting it as chemical-free, when it really, really wasn't.
In the end we found one brand that was OEKO-TEX certified and actually told us what they used and how they used it, which was about the best we could hope to get.
How many people know what pesticides their organic foods/producers use? I hardly know, and I care about this stuff more than just about anyone I know.
How long ago was this? California, which had been the primary driver of the flame retardants being added nationwide, recently updated the regulations. The labeling now will state that no flame retardants were added.
It was years ago, not recently. It was still when all car seats were definitely treated with additive flame retardants.
I have been excited that CA is reversing on flame retardants. It was hard to find certain kinds of furniture without flame retardants. Every kind of kids pajamas that relatives gave as gifts had flame retardants. I don't remember about strollers for sure, but it seems like even many strollers had it, but that could be wrong.
"Chemical-free" is an abbreviation of "dangerous chemical free," or in some cases (for car seats, not so much food), "chemically inert." Nobody would ever have a reason to specify that something should contain no chemicals at all, so the word "dangerous" is dropped in what is essentially an application of Huffman coding. ;)
Artificial toxin/poison/dye/fragrance-free. You can shove as much naturally occurring toxins in the product as you like, and both marketers and regular people will agree it's "chemical-free".
And that's side-stepping the whole "artificial" vs. "natural" nonsense. 'spacehome may be pedantic in this context, but in general, he's right - regular people have their model of the world ridiculously out of sync with reality. Which is of course readily exploited by advertisers selling "chemical free", "natural", "organic" products, which are no better (and sometimes worse) than the "artificial" ones, but still command a premium price.
The types of mommy-bloggers and non-a-list celebs who would think dihydrogen monoxide is a caustic toxin. It's a certain type. You'll know them when you see/read them. ;)
Well it actually is both of those things, if you sit in it long enough you'll melt, if you breathe it in you'll die, so maybe they're smarter than you think :)
> Best thing you can do is buy certified organic, which would preclude a lot of nasty agricultural practices.
Instead they use higher quantities of different nasty, outdated chemicals that were grandfathered. Repeated studies show that eating organic does not change the amount of pesticides found in consumers' blood. Organic food is not healthier.
But, I gather there is some further link between food -> blood level traces that you're actually talking about. Do you have a good link on how that study was performed?
My wife and I buy most of our meats and vegetables directly from a farm. We have the farm owner's number on hand, and can call and ask. We can also ask to be there at the slaughter if we'd like or to visit the animals before hand. Surprisingly, it's not that much more expensive than whole foods for us. The farm is about a 20 mile drive from where we live. We like it.
I found the program online. Didn't need any special contacts or anything.
What's shocking is that buying from a farm is _more_ expensive than Whole Foods for you (or for anybody else for that matter). The price they charge wholesalers can be easily 1/10th of what you pay at a grocery store for a lot of common items, probably not beef, but vegetables for sure. To even consider the inconvenience of shopping at a farm, I'd have to see some serious cost advantages, of which there aren't any as far as I can tell.
From the farmer's perspective, it is a bit of an inconvenience to sell you anything less than a whole animal.
The fixed costs of an on-farm slaughter building or mobile slaughter truck are comparable to the facility that processes thousands of animals per hour, but spread out among fewer animals. If you want it cheaper, best be prepared buy live and do the slaughter and butchering yourself, and plan some meals around organ meats. Or there are independent butchers that will chop up any dead thing you care to bring to them, that are a necessary convenience for hunters that want to fill a chest freezer with venison every November. They can do cows and chickens, too. They aren't picky. But not all of them are able to do the slaughtering part.
Vegetable prices, I just don't get. If I am coming to your farm stand and taking the cabbage away still covered in mud and slugs, what exactly am I paying extra for? How is it that the veg farmer can't beat the grocery store price?
"Look, you don't have to bother with petty sales 1 kilo here, 2 kilos there and waste your whole day/pay somebody else to do the sales, I'll take 10 tonnes but for 30% of your normal price - look at this pile of money, it can be yours now!"
Surely the farmer must realize that the buyer is not eating all that, and will be reselling it. They are then competing with their own produce.
Also, they don't always pay someone to do sales. A lot of farm stands have honor boxes, Or they do pre-paid farm shares and just deliver to a drop-off point. There are a lot of ways for veg farmers to get paid directly for their produce, and they are all somehow less convenient and more expensive than going to a grocery store. Do they just not go to Kroger or Publix or Piggly Wiggly or wherever to see what they have to beat?
It's inconvenient for the farm to sell directly to you, although I agree with you that if you buy in any kind of reasonable amount (eg a quarter / half of a cow) you should (and in my experience this has been the case) see incredible reductions in cost.
Buy from a farmers' market, and ask. Most of the sellers will know off the top of their heads exactly how their crops have been grown and what was/wasn't used, and if they don't, that's a seller to avoid.
As an added bonus, farmers' markets tend to be cheaper than supermarkets even as the food is better. It mystifies me that they aren't more commonly used and have a reputation as being for rich hipsters (i.e., like Whole Foods).
Depends on where you live. Within very easy driving distance from me (or a rigorous bicycle ride) are farmers markets that, put together, are open from 8:30AM to 6:30PM. If you're working the second shift (lucky you, I only ever got first or third) you'll have no problem being able to get to one of those at least once a week.
They’re for rich hipsters because they’re very expensive, rarely open, and very small. In SF, vegetables at farmers markets and Whole Foods are 2-5x the cost compared to any Chinese grocery like New Mei Wah
in sf, the civic center (heart of the city) farmers market has a lot of farms catering to asian and lower income folks. the prices are pretty comparable to new may wah. think $1 bags of a couple pounds of produce.
the alemany farmers market is also similar in terms of cost and availability of produce. not too hard to avoid the ferry building and fort mason type hipster farmers markets :) not as easy as the markets in terms of hours/access, but...
Farmer's markets aren't cheaper in sf. The quality is definitely better than whole foods - but some of the other retailers have great produce and lower costs than the farmers markets. I am not trying detract from farmer's markets as they are an important part of the ecosystem - but they are pretty bougie in town.
That's unfortunate. I suspect it's a supply-and-demand thing: SF probably has more residents per capita who want to buy from farmers' markets than anywhere else in the country, and so prices rise accordingly. That definitely isn't the case in most places though (not even Seattle), so I stand by my advice for everyone else.
People sell stuff at farmer's markets that they don't actually grow themselves. There's very little oversight.
And even if they do sell their own produce, who knows where they're growing it, or if they've had the soil tested for contaminants, or if they're being honest about pesticides and fertilizers.
Never been to a cheaper farmer’s market in my life. I’ve lived in New York, Chicago and Baltimore. Intrigued by this concept. Can’t
imagine it actually exists anywhere.
Toll roads, long driving, competition and dealing with parking and paying to set up in a high-demand area are all problems farmers face at large city markets. Go almost anywhere else and you'll indeed be surprised.
It is certainly the case in the Central Valley in California. I got great wine grapes for $1/pound as well and wonderful organic persimmons for that same price. However, that area has a bunch of actual farmers.
Those are all fairly large cities. I find, living genuinely pretty close to the farms themselves, that the farmers market around here is pretty affordable. And nicely does accept things like WIC.
Have you been making a (literal) apples to apples comparison though? I find that farmer's markets in my area (Seattle) can be cheaper than Whole Foods for organic locally sourced things in season but definitely more expensive than going to a regular grocery store.
So just take the farmers' word for it? How do you know the farmer is actually selling produce with pesticides as organic since they are more profitable?
Ask yourself: whom would you trust more? A physical person in front of you, who's whole life depends on her business or a company which is legally set-up to maximize profit?
But the USDA organic accreditation doesn’t mean pesticide free unfortunately. They still use a tonne (actually more by quantity) of pesticides, and those pesticides aren’t proven to be safer. E.g. Rotenone is shown to damage mitochondria, but is fine to be dumped on “organic” crops. So sadly it’s still actually very debatable whether you’re better off going organic or not.
Edit: think of “USDA Organic” label as more of an industry marketing gimmick that allows them to triple prices, than any genuine intent to produce safer foods.
This was true when I lived in Georgia, but in San Francisco the farmer's markets are easily double the price of grocery stores like Safeway and Costco.
I used to get a box of produce from an organic farm that I trusted completely and that I'd visited in person on several occasions. Without that level of transparency (which is available in many places if you look for it) you're going to have a harder time.
Careful, though - if you live in an area that's been populated for a long time, that may increase your exposure to lead. Maybe get the soil tested first.
And if you live in an area that used to manufacture semiconductors (and possibly contaminated with heavy metals), it is recommended that you use a certain kind of plastic sheet between the dirt in the ground and the topsoil that you buy at a store. There are these square wooden frames made for these kind of farm plots.
Thanks! In case anyone is curious, I found the excerpt that had what I was looking for (the list of specific endocrine disrupting compounds). From page 2:
"The probabilities had been based on assessment of the toxicological and epidemiological evidence for 15 exposure–response relations between EDCs (PBDEs, organophosphate pesticides, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, di-2-ethylhexylphthalate, bisphenol A, benzylphthalates and butylphthalates, and exposures to combinations of these substances; appendix) and disorders (loss of intelligence quotient [IQ] points and consequent intellectual disability, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, adult and childhood obesity, adult diabetes, crypt-orchidism, testicular cancer, male factor infertility, early cardiovascular mortality due to reduced testosterone, leiomyomas, and endometriosis) with use of a modified Delphi approach to achieve consensus."
Maybe email the authors? Its weird to see people asking to steal something straight up on HN. Its a product, has a price, and people dont want to pay it, and $31.50 is cheap.
That's the cost though. I can complain all day about how expensive everyone's startup product is, but that's the price. Is it wrong for me to steal those products?
If I run a lemonade stand where my lemonade is free (because I'm a nice guy) but the bridge everyone knows to use to get to my house has a toll, is it stealing to ask if there is a non-tolled bridge to get where I am?
I'm afraid the case isn't that simple for academic publishing.
The authors, i.e., scientists who conducted the research, usually pay a lot of money (typically 1500--2500 USD, depending on the journal) to the journal to get their paper published (of course, after peer review). In this process, neither the authors nor the reviewers get any payment for their work, although they put the most amount of efforts into it. On the other hand, most research papers are funded by the taxpayers, yet the products, aka the published papers, are behind the paywall for individual citizens. The publishers did nothing except typesetting, publishing, and maintaining an online database, but they profit the most from a researcher's work. Besides, some journals may even require the authors to sign away their copyright, meaning the publisher legally owns the work.
In my humble opinion, this is a kleptocratic model and I have no idea why academia has tolerated this for years. But I'm not suggesting any disruptive way to enforce social justice. I just want to emphasize that requesting the papers directly from the authors is totally legal and fair use, if someone does not feel comfortable to use sci-hub.
While the system isn't perfect, advocating stealing someones product seems so backwards for a startup accelerators forum.
>The publishers did nothing except typesetting, publishing, and maintaining an online database,
Lets not act like this is nothing, if the authors wanted they could have self published but likely their results wouldnt be accepted, so not only do they provide the infrastructure, it also provides credibility which has its own worth..
The system has been less than perfect for years, but so are many things, Im just surprised to see it considered acceptable behavior on HN, where as if anyone suggested people torrent other works would be shutdown immediately.
Not arguing with you directly (just a general reply), just surprised at the hypocrisy that HN'ers will support when it benefits their self interests.
By endorsing this business model, you are placing the profits of businesses above the right for children to learn regardless of their economic situation.
Life isn't fair. Never was and never will be. Why is no one upset at the authors for publishing it via this method? They could have self published. It's business, it always will be business to ignore this would be to ignore reality.
Participating in unethical business models makes you complicit in the evils of their externalities. If you don't have an ethical objection to hiding academic information from the poor, then by all means engage in commerce with them. Acting morally is a choice - you can make your own.
With that viewpoint you are going to have some very difficult quandaries in life to deal with. While I appreciate your intent it's just not how the world works, has ever worked or will work. No one is hiding this information, it costs $31.50 USD, or email the authors (they will likely provide it for free).
Can someone explain why this comment was flagged to death (I vouched for it)? These are all mainstream publications. It's not exactly a controversial claim that the sperm counts and testosterone levels of US men are in decline. In fact, it's backed up by years and years of epidemiological data. I'm not convinced by the parent's assertion that these trends have "feminized" men, but low testosterone levels are associated with sundry negative health outcomes (heart disease, depression, etc), with significant evidence for causality.
The comment author's original (GP) comment had some extraneous political references, but nothing flag-worthy. I'm fairly liberal, and yet I'm disappointed by how many fellow liberal react irrationally to Jordan Peterson's name. Disagreement is fine, but this urge to aggressively shut down any discussion of issues like gender relationships, or the role of men and women in society, is not a healthy thing for our society. Yes, neo-Nazis don't merit a platform, but counter to what he may have read from your Twitter pals, Peterson is far from being a neo-Nazi (and has routinely railed against Nazis both old and new).
I can have a rational discussion with my strongly feminist wife about these issues, even when we disagree. Yet people are shutting down for a comment for providing well-sourced data on the decline of testosterone levels and sperm counts. Frustrating.
The comment you are replying to is not currently flagged to death. The GP is and probably because of framing.
I post as openly female on HN. I appear to be the only woman to have spent time on the leaderboard.
In my experience, you can successfully have good discussion about such issues here, but you really need to meet a high bar of etiquette to do so, basically.
I wanted to up vote you, but did some research and turns out that both the FDA and the European Food Safety Authority have not found evidence that it is:
"The current assessment concluded that glyphosate does not have oestrogen, androgen, thyroid and steroidogenesis (EATS)‐mediated endocrine disrupting properties based on the facts that no endocrine‐mediated adverse effects were identified in apical studies; the weak evidence seen in a limited number of supplementary in vitro studies was inconsistent with the findings of the acceptable OECD (Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development) tests and it was not expressed in vivo in the OECD Level 4 and 5 studies; and no EATS‐mediated endocrine mode of action was identified. Since the database available to reach this conclusion was quite comprehensive, it was concluded that the data gap identified in the previous EFSA conclusion (EFSA Journal 2015;13(11):4302) was adequately addressed."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257596/ "Surprisingly, Roundup is always more toxic than its active ingredient... We conclude that endocrine and toxic effects of Roundup, not just glyphosate, can be observed in mammals."
"The cytotoxic, and potentially endocrine-disrupting effects of Roundup are thus amplified with time. Taken together, these data suggest that Roundup exposure may affect human reproduction and fetal development in case of contamination. Chemical mixtures in formulations appear to be underestimated regarding their toxic or hormonal impact."
This may be the current assessment for mammals, but there is insufficient evidence about the endocrine effects on non-mammals. I know the original link and discussion is in relation to humans, but it's worth noting.
All animals with a nervous system have hormone-secreting structures, analogous to the endocrine system of mammals. Several studies have highlighted serious sub-lethal neurological impacts of glyphosate (not as a formulation) on agriculturally-important arthropods. I'm not aware of any conclusive research, but it seems reasonable to anticipate some of these effects may be related to endocrine signaling. Either way, the toxicity is clearly more severe for non-mammals, and their disease burden has direct and indirect costs to us.
EPA selected glyphosate for screening based on the widespread use of the chemical. Not because it was suspected to be endocrine disruptor for any real reason. After tier 1 screening did not find any evidence no other testing was considered necessary.
Regardless of whether glyphosate (the "active ingredient" so they say) is an endocrine disrupter, which is controversial, there is no question that Roundup - the pesticide formula containing glyphosate in certain proportion with a host of other ingredients, the formula which is secret, contains other ingredients with known toxic profiles.
Glyphosate gets most of the (cooked up) research to the detriment of the people being exposed to many other mostly ignored co-formulants. Here is a study that says as much: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4808927/
>It was demonstrated for the first time that endocrine disruption by GBH could not only be due to the declared active ingredient but also to co-formulants. These results...challenge the relevance of the acceptable daily intake (ADI) value for GBHs exposures, currently calculated from toxicity tests of the declared active ingredient alone.
The purchase of Monsanto by Beyer has to be dumbest corporate acquisition ever. After all these years it is now that the lawsuits are coming in as the science and leaks start pilling up providing the fodder.
Even dumber is that Beyer is retiring the brand Monsanto which will result in Beyer itself being named in the lawsuits and media.
They probably thought they could shake it off like Dow chemical when they aquired Union Carbide and claimed they are no longer responsible for the Bhopal disaster.
Monsanto teamed up with Bayer to gain influence within the EU. Monsanto was having trouble bribing EU officials. Bayer already have them in their pockets. Might not be good for PR, but Monsanto was terrified because the EU almost banned Glyphosate last year. Bayer itself does not have a good PR image either.
They're going to make a killing by bundling products to farmers, or they'll do what DuPont did and spin out part of Monsanto into a standalone company designed to burden that spinoff with as much debt and liability as possible.
Consider the possibility that some such chemicals are good for society. For example, exposure to pseudoestrogens may reduce violence. Medical literature doesn't really have a category for this -- there is only 'burden and cost' of environmental effects, assuming that any change from evolved human biology is bad.
But it seems like evolved human biology is a little too violent for the society we want, and perhaps we'd benefit from even more X in the water/air/food supply.
This is a perfect example of naive intervention. there is no evidence that pseudoestrogens may reduce violence and I have no idea how you came to such a ludicrous conclusion.
Is it because you believe the myth that high testosterone causes violence? That "roid rage" people normally picture when thinking of people who do steroids is actually people who neglect or don't put enough effort into post cycle therapy or aromatase inhibitors to LOWER their estrogen levels.
Yes taking steroids greatly increases Estrogen levels as well and this is the main reason many men who have done steroids without proper cycling have some semblance of breasts...
If anything this "violent" society you speak of is most likely a result of these pseudoestrogens / xenoestrogens and other endocrine disrupting chemicals.
In this case, it's a weak correlation across a meta-analysis of 45 independent studies. While I'd agree that further research would probably be beneficial, this is a result that already includes some further research.
To be cynical regarding that link, there are 2 separate facts presented but not a good explanation of why the two are related.
1) A chinese electricity company began collecting wireless sensor data in 2014
2) In April 2018 their profits were up $315M
Did they begin doing more business? Did their competition remain the same? Are they subsidized by the government somehow?
So many reasons why a utility company could be more profitable, they should explain the connection between the monitoring and profitability, otherwise someone can probably show you evidence that switching brands of office coffee increase profitability 200%.
The issue is that you are not getting proper hormone replacement therapy with those. You are getting random levels of chemicals that mess up your hormone balance.
Ask anyone on hormone replacement therapy what happens when they skip a dose or mix up the dosage. Depression, headaches, migraines, suicidal thoughts etc.
Not something you want the entire society to experience.
Another major difference between the pseudoestrogen problem and proper hormone replacement: consent.
The general public has not consented to poorly-understood, poorly-controlled hormone therapy.
Most of us are already nonviolent, so the proposed decrease in violence isn't even possible for us. The only net effect, therefore, is likely negative.
It's kind of like saying that a minority of men have a testosterone deficiency, so let's put it in the water supply. Doesn't it sound more insane when formulated that way?
The entire society is, in fact, experiencing it today, with 1000s of chemicals, as the Lancet article describes. Most are harmful. But if there are some beneficial ones in there, the medical literature doesn't seem to have a way to account for them.
Somewhat playing devil's advocate (I don't particularly buy the specific pseudoestrogen example here), there's a real reporting bias in these random environmental studies. Assume that the environment is always changing, and that some of these changes will be good, some of them will be bad, and most of them will be neutral. If a change is bad, then eventually some study will discover it, there will be a widespread press cycle, and outrage will eventually attempt to revert it. If a change is good, however, it will probably never get published, and if it does it will likely not generate much notice.
This is as much a statement about psychology than about biology, and what the definitions of "good" and "bad" are. Us paying more attention to potential negative consequences than positive ones is an example of loss aversion, and the resulting pressure to repress change (because negative changes get more airtime than positive one) is an example of status quo bias. They're often rational from the POV of an individual - you exist by virtue of being well-adapted to the present environment, and so any change in the environment is more likely to harm your own fitness function than individuals who do not yet exist - yet they're irrational from the POV of the system, where you would expect good and bad changes to occur in equal numbers and individuals who are no longer suited to the current environment to be replaced by ones who are.
Come to think of it, this may be behind the observed effect where any radical technical innovation or societal change that happens in your teens and twenties is an awesome opportunity to be capitalized on, while any such change that happens in your thirties or later is a threat to the natural order of things. In your late 20s and early 30s you typically make (nearly) irrevocable commitments in life that are the best adaptations you have to the world as it exists then; any change that happens afterwards will relatively benefit younger people who have not made such commitments more than it will benefit you. For biological changes the benefits are shifted even earlier: any change in the environment that affects relative survival rates will benefit people yet to be born more than people already born, because the latter have already won the evolutionary lottery while the future winners among the former still face selection pressure.
Wish you weren't downvoted because there are probably people in power who think along the same line.
7-UP soda used to be lithiated and there have been proposals to add lithium to drinking water (mood stabilizer). People have suggested that fluoride in drinking water can achieve the same. Of course testosterone levels have been cut in half among comparable men over the last 20 years. So endocrine disruptors in our environment are something to look into.
Regardless of whether or not one agrees with your position (that our society could benefit from even more X in the water/air/food supply), it would need to be the stated purpose of distributing X in order for it to be acceptable. If the increased distribution of X is simply a side-effect, then it is unacceptable (even if the end result is viewed positively by some).
Damn, that's quite the conspiracy theory. So are you arguing that radical SCUM-style feminists have pushed the commercialization of persistent estrogenic chemicals? To basically chemically castrate troublesome men?
Although it's quite the SF trope, I can't imagine how it's plausible. Simple careless greed is the most likely reason.
You might love reading Brave New World (if you are not purposely paraphrasing it here), kinda blew my mind in high school so not sure what effect it would have on adults now.
Brave New World? After all, maybe slavery, exploitation, the Holocaust and potential "AI overlords" (I Robot-the-movie-style) are overall "good" for the (majority of) society. But I'd still try to avoid any (all) of them.
I just wanted to say (and the edit window is gone), although I disagree with you, I want to encourage discussion, even of controversial ideas (I know, I have plenty!). It's a shame you're downvoted.
This is not a good comment for Hacker News and it breaks several guidelines. Please don't post like this, no matter how you feel about what you're replying to.
The benefits of nicotine on focus, concentration and mental ability are reasonably well established. It is unfortunate that it comes packaged with so many nasties in cigarette smoke. Of course you can get nicotine inhalers that avoid this problem. To avoid too much of a blast/crash, you can spray it onto the skin.
I think if nicotine were discovered for the first time today it would be considered a wonder drug.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jafc.7b03118?source...