Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere • Hacker News Board

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#61

Post by baxtr » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

subcosmos wrote: post #20

ams6110 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's much more likely that the diabetes epidemic is linked to the insane levels of carb/sugar intake and obesity of so many adults.

We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics. Check out this study, where they fed mice water, water+fructose, or water+fructose+BPA. At the end of the experiment, only the BPA containing solutions had elevated liver fat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X1...

But what about other countries than the US? Japan, Europe? They use lots of plastic too. I haven’t heard of a diabetes epidemic there yet though.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#62

Post by dogma1138 » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:39 PM UTC

teslabox wrote: post #18

dogma1138 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refined oils have nothing to do with being rancid it’s an extraction technique that uses heat instead of pressing. Refined oil will go rancid in the kitchen just as easily as cold pressed and you will noticed since it will smell sweet and then putrid. Common cooking oils including canola do not oxidize well nor do they dry well which is why you would not use them on say wood because they will not dry and will just go…

> Refined oils have nothing to do with being rancid it’s an extraction technique that uses heat instead of pressing. The petroleum distillate hexane is used to extract the oil from seed meal, then is boiled off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil#Solvent_extracti... The specific step I'm referring to is "steam deodorization": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil#Deodorization

And this has nothing to do with the oil being rancid deodorization is used to remove any water soluble solvents that may have been used in the process of extracting the oil.

If you are going to link to Wikipedia at least bother reading the damn article.

If you want to talk about the potential health impact of oils then erucic acid consumption might be a topic for discussion despite the lack of conclusive research on the subject so excessive canola oil consumption might be an issue despite it being capped at 2% in the US and 5% in the EU if you consume enough of it you might cause cardio vascular damage if the existing correlated data also indicates causation.

But vegetable oils in general are not bad and are not sold as rancid that’s wrong, if you want to be on the extreme edge of the safe line then you can substitute canola oil with coconut, sunflower or peanut oil quite easily and these days also without paying a premium.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#63

Post by allover » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:39 PM UTC

subcosmos wrote: post #20

ams6110 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's much more likely that the diabetes epidemic is linked to the insane levels of carb/sugar intake and obesity of so many adults.

We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics. Check out this study, where they fed mice water, water+fructose, or water+fructose+BPA. At the end of the experiment, only the BPA containing solutions had elevated liver fat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X1...

> We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill,

People reach obesity from overeating, no matter what their choice of calorie-dense foods, but it's typically sugar or fats, and sugar is the cheapest/most available.

Being obese is clearly a causative factor towards T2B [1]. How are these obvious truths 'running on a treadmill'?

[1] https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-and-obesity.html

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#64

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

fredsir wrote: post #58

toomuchtodo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is much much harder to consume enough fats to have the same caloric intake as carbs. That’s the whole reason keto works.

That's irrelevant. It's still the fat that causes type 2 diabetes. That doesn't mean keto can't work because it clearly can as long as it doesn't lead to overconsumption of fat. Also there are different kinds of carbs. As long as you keep to whole-food carbs, you practically can't eat too many (except for a few kinds like nuts and seeds and avocados) because you will be full long before it's too much. It's a differen…

This is not true (whole food carbs vs processed food). Carbs are carbs, and should be avoided as much as possible (no more than 20-30g/day).

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#65

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

robotkdick wrote: post #36

WalterBright wrote: post #8

Plastics should be taxed.

Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers. Given the higher cost of other materials, changing consumer behavior (which is not easy, but it's happening right now, and achievable through further exposure and education) may be the only way to change producers' behavior. While a tax seems like an easy fix, it may also cause the government to come to…

Producers use plastic because it is the cheapest material that works for their use. Raise the price of plastic, and that equation changes.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#66

Post by tzs » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

ultra-jeremyx wrote: post #16

The real tragedy here is the lack of the Oxford comma in the headline.

The bigger tragedy is that there isn't even a good reason to argue over whether or not Oxford commas should be used.

People think there is a good reason, namely that there are some lists that are ambiguous with the comma that are made non-ambiguous by removing it.

However, as far as I've been able to tell, in all such lists the ambiguity is there because there are commas in the sentence serving to mark appositive phrases. If dashes were used instead of commas for the appositive phrase, then the presence of an Oxford comma in the list would not cause ambiguity.

I've seen several writing guides that recommend using dashes for appositive phrases when there are other commas in the sentence. All we have to do is remember to do that (or better always use dashes for appositive phrases), and then it will never be ambiguous (as far as I know) to use the Oxford comma but may be ambiguous to not use it, and so always using the Oxford comma would become the only sane choice.

There was a discussion of this a few months ago here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16345138

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#67

Post by subcosmos » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

allover wrote: post #63

subcosmos wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics. Check out this study, where they fed mice water, water+fructose, or water+fructose+BPA. At the end of the experiment, only the BPA containing solutions had elevated liver fat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X1...

> We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, People reach obesity from overeating, no matter what their choice of calorie-dense foods, but it's typically sugar or fats, and sugar is the cheapest/most available. Being obese is clearly a causative factor towards T2B [1]. How are these obvious truths 'running on a treadmill'? [1] https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-and-obesity.html

The treadmill is the endless debate over whether or not fats vs carbs are more obesogenic. This debate continues ad-nauseum and distracts from more nuanced explanations.

High fat consumption raises inflammatory profiles through mechanisms that are poorly understood. Carbohydrates seem to cause similar inflammation, but this is largely do to advanced gylcation end-products created from fructose, specifically.

Overeating is not interesting. The reason people do overeat is very interesting, and if you hit the literature you find that this is largely driven by damage to the hypothalamus by environmental exposure.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#68

Post by c3534l » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

newswriter99 wrote: post #33

Aloha wrote: post #9

I strongly suspect that within about 50-100 years something will evolve that can digest all of this plastic. Which will probably cause us as a society to move back to glass and metal as storage components.

"within about 50-100 years" That's how bottlenecks work, but not evolution. No species is going to evolve in the next century which will be able to suddenly break down plastic and turn it into energy/nutrients. The ones that do, mostly bacertium and fungi, were pre-disposed to doing so, and didn't suddenly X-men their way into consuming plastic. As for organisms such as the Chinese mealworm that "eats" plastic bags,…

> No species is going to evolve in the next century which will be able to suddenly break down plastic and turn it into energy/nutrients.

Such a species already exists: https://www.sciencealert.com/new-plastic-munching-bacteria-c...

There are also bacteria that can break down nylon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria

I don't understand why people are so dismissive of ideas that are a simple google search away.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#69

Post by akvadrako » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

newswriter99 wrote: post #33

Aloha wrote: post #9

I strongly suspect that within about 50-100 years something will evolve that can digest all of this plastic. Which will probably cause us as a society to move back to glass and metal as storage components.

"within about 50-100 years" That's how bottlenecks work, but not evolution. No species is going to evolve in the next century which will be able to suddenly break down plastic and turn it into energy/nutrients. The ones that do, mostly bacertium and fungi, were pre-disposed to doing so, and didn't suddenly X-men their way into consuming plastic. As for organisms such as the Chinese mealworm that "eats" plastic bags,…

Species can evolve very fast - in this experiment from a couple years ago E. coli evolved from minimal antibiotic resistance to almost immunity in about 100 days:

https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-this-amazing-video-shows-...

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#70

Post by harshreality » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

subcosmos wrote: post #20

ams6110 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's much more likely that the diabetes epidemic is linked to the insane levels of carb/sugar intake and obesity of so many adults.

We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics. Check out this study, where they fed mice water, water+fructose, or water+fructose+BPA. At the end of the experiment, only the BPA containing solutions had elevated liver fat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X1...

There's a notable lack of dose-response relationship in most of the collected data, and n=12 for each group doesn't inspire confidence even if in some cases the p-value suggests significance. There are already a lot of measurements taken and included in the table where differences were not that large. Were other measurements taken and not reported in the table? Has anyone attempted to reproduce this?

Most importantly, though, that study doesn't indicate whether the effects, if they end up being reproducible, are caused by BPA alone, or the combination of BPA+sugar. It's well known in other scenarios that toxins, when combined with inflammatory foods like sugar, are far worse than they are in the absence of inflammatory foods.

I'm fairly convinced that BPA is slightly bad, I just think alternative plastics may turn out to have other compounds that are also bad, given horrible diets, and the best solution may be to fix the diet, rather than try to eliminate all toxins related to modern plastics (and the same argument may apply to pesticides). Other toxins from modern living will undoubtedly pop up, and if they all cause different and problematic diseases in combination with bad diets, but not so much in combination with good diets, how much energy do we really need to put into studying and eliminating toxins in a giant game of whack-a-mole?