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Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

sciencedirect.com

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Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#51

Post by riffraff »

kaylz wrote: post #23

This is part of the reason I really want to move out of the U.S. Other countries are much more strict with what they allow in their food. I understand that I can pay more for organic produce and meat, but for a supposedly first-world country, you'd think decent produce would be a given.

> organic produce and meat

be careful: organic may still allow a ton of things that are bad for you, such as copper sulfate in the EU.

While the idea of organic produce is great, the implementation is deeply misleading: tell people petrol derivatives are legit in "bio" fruit and enjoy their confusion :)

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#52

Post by xanaxagoras »

kickout wrote: post #19
Pet_Ant wrote: post #3

Doesn't say that they controlled for organic fruit (ie low pesticide) being more likely to be chosen by people who are already heath conscious.

Absolutely nothing about organic production implies less pesticide. Opposite is true actually.

Pesticide is a big category and a lot of pesticides are themselves organic and non-toxic. Presumably the troubling pesticides from the study are more along the lines of Roundup and less along the lines of horticultural vinegar, but they don't say so explicitly in the abstract. They do quote another study, "interventions switching individuals from conventional to organic diets result in a dramatic decline in urinary pesticide metabolites".

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#53

Post by Etheryte »

nostromo wrote: post #35
kaylz wrote: post #23

This is part of the reason I really want to move out of the U.S. Other countries are much more strict with what they allow in their food. I understand that I can pay more for organic produce and meat, but for a supposedly first-world country, you'd think decent produce would be a given.

So you'd rather everyone pay more for food based on your personal preferences? Even though there's a lot of evidence that these foods are entirely safe...

This is a pure strawman argument, the parent comment said none of those things. Regarding entirely safe, this is a comment thread on a study that says they're not entirely safe.

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#54

Post by ceejayoz »

nostromo wrote: post #35
kaylz wrote: post #23

This is part of the reason I really want to move out of the U.S. Other countries are much more strict with what they allow in their food. I understand that I can pay more for organic produce and meat, but for a supposedly first-world country, you'd think decent produce would be a given.

So you'd rather everyone pay more for food based on your personal preferences? Even though there's a lot of evidence that these foods are entirely safe...

> So you'd rather everyone pay more for food based on your personal preferences?

The counterpoint here is "so you'd rather everyone pay more for health care decades from now to save a few bucks on groceries now?"

> Even though there's a lot of evidence that these foods are entirely safe...

The US requirement for a lot of chemicals is "generally recognized as safe", which, in practice, means "we don't know that it's not safe yet". When we find something's unsafe, industry frequently switches to something similar that's still GRAS (because no one's been using it) but likely has the same issues. Europe takes a stricter approach.

Example: BPA in plastics, which has now been replaced with BPS and BPF.

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#56

Post by ch4s3 »

biorach wrote: post #17
DecentAI wrote: post #4

Can anyone provide a hopeful development update as to what efforts if any are underway in the farming industry to genuinely move past herbicides and pesticides of this kind?

Organic farming exists. Consumers can move past herbicides and pesticides by paying more (sometimes much more) for their food, and cooking more from scratch. Of course this is easy for wealthy first-world dwellers. Less so for low income families in places with less diverse supply chains. Organic farming has lower yields (those pests otherwise killed off by the pesticides end up eating a lot of the produce) and is mo…

> Organic farming exists.

Organic especially in the US, but also in the EU, doesn't mean no herbicides and pesticides[1][2]. Some of the non-synthetic insecticides are FAR more dangerous for people[3]. A popular organic pesticide from the recent past worked by destroying cell mitochondria in a vast swath of eukaryotic cells, nasty stuff.

[1] https://www.global-organics.com/post.php?s=2018-02-02-are-pe....

[2] https://www.pan-uk.org/site/wp-content/uploads/List-of-activ...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20220513165751/https://blogs.sci...

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#57

Post by mecsred »

fbanon wrote: post #39
mecsred wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without antibiotics we could cultivate more resistant humans. That's probably not a situation anyone wants, pencillin was huge for a reason. Now looking into alternate forms of resistances while still enjoying modern treatments, theres an idea.

Bad analogy. Cultivating more resistant humans would raise a bunch of ethical questions.

That's the point of the analogy. Use of pesticides in some part allows us to have stable and cheap access to food. There are similar ethical arguments to be had about restricting pesticides.

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#58

Post by xyst »

I can't wait until vertical farming becomes cheap enough to overtake traditional farming methods. Pesticide use will be a thing of the past while all of our food is grown locally in controlled environments. Optimizing for food taste instead of pesticide or weather resistance.

Not to mention the reduced carbon footprint (due to transportation), significant decrease in water usage, and increased efficiency.

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#59

Post by ceejayoz »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #47
lm28469 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trend of "we fucked up big time and need to create additional waste to take negate our fuck ups" is really worrying. Installing ultra sonic cleaners, reverse osmosis machines, AC units, &c. in every single of our houses/flats won't be sustainable

What are people's problems with AC units? An AC unit is more sustainable than a furnace burning fossil fuels and electric heaters. They are just as sustainable as heat pumps.

If developing-world nations like Bangladesh start seeing wet bulb temperatures incompatible with life - and we're getting close in spots; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet-bulb_... - having to supply AC to tens of millions of people in areas without the electrical infrastructure to reliably run them is... a problem.

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#60

Post by MarkMarine »

Tagbert wrote: post #30
DecentAI wrote: post #4

Can anyone provide a hopeful development update as to what efforts if any are underway in the farming industry to genuinely move past herbicides and pesticides of this kind?

As Sri Lanka recently found, it is difficult to feed all of your people by switching to organic. As much as I appreciate the benefits of organic and do try to buy it when reasonable, I recognize that organic farming takes more land, water, and labor to produce the same volume of food as non-organic. It works for a low volume, premium price model for some people but not for everyone. I feel like our best bet to reduce…

That’s because GMO means roundup resistant in a whole huge section of its use case, and farmers are just making it rain roundup on the food. I read an article about (American) farmers using roundup to get wheat to dry and open after harvest. Basically coating the wheat right before sale.
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