The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice • Hacker News Board

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#271

Post by eadz » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 12:12 AM UTC

stevenstremciuc wrote: post #218

eadz wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being Anti-GMO doesn't make someone on the wrong side of science. The dangers of GMO from a economic perspective are worthy of worry on their own. If you haven't seen Food Inc, then I would recommend that as a starting point to learn how dangerous the monopolisation of the food industry can be to society. The farmers in Peru want to protect their existing biodiversity, something North America has lost thanks to Monsa…

Can you please go into further detail and provide evidence (preferably not an emotionally written wordpress blog post) for your claim regarding the wind-born (blown) cross pollination resulting in patent fees? This is something I have heard again and again but googling for "Monsanto wind blown seeds" [1] seems to return a fair amount of articles/research not supporting your statement. [1] - https://www.google.com/sea…

Corn seeds are not wind blown, the pollen is. It is a fact that GMO Non-GMO corn cross pollination happens, and when that does your seeds become tainted. To collect and replant those seeds is patent infringement. Wikipedia has a lot of information about Monsanto court cases.

Monsanto actually has a page "busting" the myth, but I'm going to link to it because it clearly states that monsanto has the right to enforce patent fees in this case.

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/gm-seed-accidentally...

Here is the quote: Monsanto has a long-standing public commitment that “it has never been, nor will it be, Monsanto’s policy to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits are present in a farmer’s fields as a result of inadvertent means.”

So they are saying that, yes they own those patent rights, but no they won't enforce them. It's pretty clear cut that one has a legal obligation to pay monsanto, but they're being nice by not enforcing their rights. ( If you watch Food Inc, you'll see how nice they are about non-enforcement in reality ).

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#272

Post by jakejake » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 12:47 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #233

jakejake wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Withholding the information sure doesn't seem very "scientific" to me. It seems like the opposite of what science is about.

You have to ask yourself, why are you privileging this particular information over everything else that could be on the label? They can't reasonably print everything that's in the food, especially if any part of it contains pieces of plants or animals - the living stuff has so much chemistry in it that you'd have to attach a book to each product to just list them. So producers already have to be picky. Also, I'm not…

Why do we put vitamin C on the label? Why sugar content? Why not carbon atoms? Why anything? The FDA (supposedly) requires labels for things that are considered important by health professionals and consumers. If enough people want to know about GMOs, then it's important. Not labeling GMOs or any other ingredients or by-products that might be seen as "gross" to the consumer, is only about protecting the food manufacturers.

I think it's a BS argument anyway because the average consumer, given two bags of apples that look identical, is going to buy the one that is cheaper. And if for some reason the public decided to never touch GMOs, then so be it. Food manufacturers can make their products in a way that consumers want to buy them. That's a free market. Not being shady and hiding information.

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#273

Post by dcosson » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 1:34 AM UTC

001sky wrote: post #240

will_pseudonym wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood the glycemic index stuff. It didn't seem to fit my experience. I just researched this, and I came upon this article: http://www.foodrenegade.com/glycemic-index-vs-glycemic-load/ I had never heard of glycemic load before today, and I'm always reading articles about nutrition science. It seems like fruit and veg have relatively high glycemic indices, but low glycemic load--which means that they're…

For example, carrots have a high GI of 47, but you have to eat a pound and a half of them for there to be a steep rise in blood sugar. carrots are full of water, not to mention roughage, so they don't have high caloric density per unit mass/weight the glycemic load is precisely articulating the index number adjusted per unit mass to account for stuff like caroots or beets etc. So basically if you ate de-hydrated frui…

> In practice, you can dilute glycemic index using fat and protein in addition to water.

And people really don't understand this. For instance, you basically can't find full-fat yogurt in an American grocery store. Instead there's 20 kinds of non-fat yogurt packed with sugar, which have a much higher glycemic load than yogurt with the same amount of sugar and fat would. But they're all advertised as being healthy because they're non-fat. It's crazy.

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#274

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 3:44 AM UTC

jakejake wrote: post #272

TeMPOraL wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to ask yourself, why are you privileging this particular information over everything else that could be on the label? They can't reasonably print everything that's in the food, especially if any part of it contains pieces of plants or animals - the living stuff has so much chemistry in it that you'd have to attach a book to each product to just list them. So producers already have to be picky. Also, I'm not…

Why do we put vitamin C on the label? Why sugar content? Why not carbon atoms? Why anything? The FDA (supposedly) requires labels for things that are considered important by health professionals and consumers. If enough people want to know about GMOs, then it's important. Not labeling GMOs or any other ingredients or by-products that might be seen as "gross" to the consumer, is only about protecting the food manufact…

> I think it's a BS argument anyway because the average consumer, given two bags of apples that look identical, is going to buy the one that is cheaper.

Yeah, I agree.

> And if for some reason the public decided to never touch GMOs, then so be it. Food manufacturers can make their products in a way that consumers want to buy them. That's a free market. Not being shady and hiding information.

So they do, and that's why we have organic food industry, which is even more shady than the original one. The reason we have this argument is that looking at why public decided to never touch GMOs makes one facepalm. It's mostly pseudo-science wrapped in FUD, perpetuated ad nauseam in popular press - creating fear and then playing off it. It's good for making money selling articles or ad views. It's not good for making this planet a better place for everyone.

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#275

Post by eru » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 3:48 AM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #214

eru wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water#Drinking_disti...

Distilled water is not "pure H2O." If I'm not mistaken there is only a few facilities in the world that can make pure H2O. Pure H2O has no flavor and will kill you if you drink too much of it. Distilled water or reverse osmosis machines only remove -most- things from water. I believe there is an episode on National Geographic channel from the show "Going Deep With David Rees" where he visits a lab that makes Pure H20…

> [...] and will kill you if you drink too much of it.

Only if you don't eat anything at all with it.

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#276

Post by ionised » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 10:23 AM UTC

aaron695 wrote: post #182

To those who aren't religious like this author Coke is always better than juice. It has caffeine in it a least which is good for you. Of course sugar free Coke is close to good for you compared to the toxic juices and Coke. Water is only better than sugar free coke in that it teaches you not to continuous rely on the addictive sugary taste and better on your teeth.

Do you really believe this?

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#277

Post by mokkol » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 12:51 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #266

mokkol wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate this mentality. Why does it have to be proved to be sure it is unhealthy? It should be the other way around. It has to be proved to be healthy for you to eat it. Back in the day, smoking wasn't proved that it was unhealthy while it was common sense that it was.

The mentality is not accidental, it is a cornerstone element in propaganda related to health and environmental concerns. It used by oil companies, agro-businesses, and other industries, and of course tobacco companies. As part of their campaigns over the years they have instilled those ideas pretty well at at fundamental level in everyone's minds specifically that: 1) Stuff is safe unless we have hard scientific evid…

Hearing my own thoughts when I'm reading your comment. Cheers for writing it down in clear english!

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#278

Post by jheriko » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #179

jheriko wrote: post #113

i'm not sure i care that much tbh. this is a tiny part of the price i pay for being able to buy it in a shop from bulk suppliers rather than having to juice my own fruit... besides that, i don't think its a heavy price to pay - i'm not sure i really see the harm tbh. its not like they are flavouring it with deadly toxic poisons.

For me, it just doesn't taste nearly as good. Try it fresh if you haven't recently. It's barely the same beverage at all.

oh sure. this is definitely the case... but we all notice this right? its not really a secret and i don't think it needs scaremongering about.

i can remember asking my parents about this 20+ years ago the first time we bothered to squeeze our own juice, as the first response after tasting it... they didn't give me a page of information about the process exactly but it seems obvious that they knew this already from past experience.

i guess maybe there is a problem today that people just won't even try fresh orange juice...

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#279

Post by undersuit » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 10:19 PM UTC

What I really hate about re-flavored juices is that we grow the fruits in the first place. It seems like a waste to spend all this effort growing a fruit tree, watering it, pruning it, grafting it, and applying pesticides, herbicides and fungicides only to have the final product just ground up for the sugars. I hope at the very least farmers are using orange cultivars we consumers don't like to eat and taking the subpar oranges from a harvest before they deoxygenate the juices and throw out the rest.

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#280

Post by MrGando » Tue, Dec 01, 2015, 6:58 AM UTC

lemevi wrote: post #198

MrGando wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concede that it's very unlikely to taste the difference between a GMO/non-GMO tomato. But are you okay with Montsanto's practices? There's good science that basically explains that their business model is not doing the best for the planet or the people living in it. It is, indeed reducing bio-diversity as far as I know. Also, their practices are super shady, having lived in latam all my life, I saw the way they got…

Genetically modified foods are not any more harmful than regular foods. If you have a problem with Montsanto then talk about Montsanto, and not spread fear and doubt about a technology that is wholly beneficial and may lead to many lives saved.

I'm not talking about GMO being more harmful than regular foods. I am, indeed, making a point about Montsanto.

There's much, much more than meets the eye about GMOs, how Montsanto is using the seeds and the actual repercussions of it. The debate, is not around 'GMOs being more harmful', at all.