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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

#131

Post by raverbashing »

Baloo wrote: post #84
ch4s3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most of agricultural history people didn't eat raw vegetables at all, and only some raw fruits. Before the advent of modern agriculture night dirt was a common fertilizer and a serious vector for disease. It's still unsafe to ear raw fruits and vegetables in parts of the world with bad sanitization. I know a few people who have gotten seriously ill consuming fresh pressed fruit juice in North Africa.

It's a nice anecdote, but I've lived and travelled in various African countries and never been sick from consuming fruit, vegetables or pressed juice. I'd be much more worried about eating poorly butchered and stored meat. The idea people throughout history didn't eat raw fruits and vegetables is also quite wrong. Again, after living in rural communities, they largely eat what they can get - which includes a lot of r…

The only anecdote here is yours, because food-borne diseases are very common and a significant source of misery across the developing world

(That is, if you don't have undetected Helminthiase or some other disease)

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

#132

Post by nikkwong »

fsckboy wrote: post #122

how are we supposed to parse this?: "High-pesticide-residue FV intake was unrelated whereas low-pesticide residue FV intake was inversely related to all-cause mortality" high pesticide consumption was unrelated (so had no effect on mortality), while low pesticide intake had inverse relation to mortality (low pesticide = high mortality)?

Inversely related to mortality. I.e low pesticide intake reduced morality.

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

#133

Post by xenator »

nikkwong wrote: post #132
fsckboy wrote: post #122

how are we supposed to parse this?: "High-pesticide-residue FV intake was unrelated whereas low-pesticide residue FV intake was inversely related to all-cause mortality" high pesticide consumption was unrelated (so had no effect on mortality), while low pesticide intake had inverse relation to mortality (low pesticide = high mortality)?

Inversely related to mortality. I.e low pesticide intake reduced morality.

I'm still confused. Morality or mortality?

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

#134

Post by DoingIsLearning »

fsckboy wrote: post #122

how are we supposed to parse this?: "High-pesticide-residue FV intake was unrelated whereas low-pesticide residue FV intake was inversely related to all-cause mortality" high pesticide consumption was unrelated (so had no effect on mortality), while low pesticide intake had inverse relation to mortality (low pesticide = high mortality)?

The expectation is that FV consumption decreases all cause mortality.

This agrees with the observation that low-pesticide residue FV intake was inversely related to all-cause mortality.

If High-pesticide-residue FV intake was unrelated to all cause mortality it could mean that there is a detrimental effect in High-pesticide-residue FV that offsets the expected benefit of FV.

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

#135

Post by kickout »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #121
kickout wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you think controlled environments don't use chemicals to control pests??? They do, and they use them a lot, because controlling pests and pathogens is physically hard no matter how hard you try. Vertical farming is way, way more energy intensive than regular outdoor based farming for the simple reason is outdoor farming can use the sun. That sole fact basically kills vertical farming for all but the highest of margin…

Controlled environments, are, well, erm, controlled, so something like a hydroponic greenhouse normally wouldn't use pesticides at all - pests should not be getting in at all. If the greenhouse uses normal soil then ofcourse it's not totally isolated, but still i'd expect them to use less

Having spent alot of time in controlled environments, the name is misleading. These are chip making clean facilities. I'd guess >99% of CE facilities have to spray pesticides.

Thrips, white flies, and other insects are _very_ common.

ETA: to add info for you. CE usually implies the control is from inputs (water, nutrients, light) not physical access.

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

#136

Post by gruez »

xyst wrote: post #58

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.

>I can't wait until vertical farming becomes cheap enough to overtake traditional farming methods

There was a recent post about "World’s largest vertical strawberry farm" that recently opened[1], and the price quoted for the product was "$20 for 8 strawberries". That still seems terribly expensive, at least compared to conventional produce. What technological breakthroughs are on the horizon that would reduce that price to levels that are comparable to conventional produce?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31454883

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

#137

Post by kgr »

xenator wrote: post #133
nikkwong wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inversely related to mortality. I.e low pesticide intake reduced morality.

I'm still confused. Morality or mortality?

If you eat low-pesticide fruits and vegetables, you're less likely to die. If you eat high-pesticide fruits and vegetables, your chances of dying are unaffected, which is surprising because you would expect that increased fruit and vegetable consumption would decrease your chances of dying. So, it seems that the potential health benefits of eating fruits and vegetables is negated if they contain high levels of pesticide.

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

#138

Post by notriddle »

MrYellowP wrote: post #88
nostromo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yes, it's perfectly safe to spray poison, which is meant to kill living beings, onto food. Absolutely. Common sense is wrong, of course. Poison is safe. Any evidence suggesting otherwise is obviously just fabricated. Gasmasks, used when applying insecticides manually, are just for show. Laws outside of the US, which prohibit certain use of chemicals, are just random. Common sense prevails yet again.

This is a strawman. Nobody wants to eat pesticides.

"Common sense" was that you don't eat the poison. You remove it from the food first. You also remove any soil on the food, and if the food is sold in a box or can, you don't eat that, either.

The thing I want to learn, because I'm more interested in learning than I am in reveling in how right I am, is whether common agricultural poisons can be rinsed off with a bit of tap water, or if they're too sticky or too easily absorbed for that to be sufficient. Apparently they can't be washed off this easily, which is annoying, because I rather like buying my apples without worms in them.

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

#139

Post by outworlder »

Baloo wrote: post #84
ch4s3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most of agricultural history people didn't eat raw vegetables at all, and only some raw fruits. Before the advent of modern agriculture night dirt was a common fertilizer and a serious vector for disease. It's still unsafe to ear raw fruits and vegetables in parts of the world with bad sanitization. I know a few people who have gotten seriously ill consuming fresh pressed fruit juice in North Africa.

It's a nice anecdote, but I've lived and travelled in various African countries and never been sick from consuming fruit, vegetables or pressed juice. I'd be much more worried about eating poorly butchered and stored meat. The idea people throughout history didn't eat raw fruits and vegetables is also quite wrong. Again, after living in rural communities, they largely eat what they can get - which includes a lot of r…

> It's a nice anecdote, but I've lived and travelled in various African countries and never been sick from consuming fruit, vegetables or pressed juice.

That's all and good, but how do you even know that? One can live with parasites for quite a while before noticing any symptoms.

I come from a 'third world' country. We really wash our fruits and specially our vegetables. Even though they might come from large farming operations, you can still have people without proper sanitization handling them after taking a dump.

Heck, there are still places where you cannot enter a body of water without worms piercing your skin and having a party in your intestines. Our elementary school curriculum was pretty extensive on diseases and specially parasites.

> The idea people throughout history didn't eat raw fruits and vegetables is also quite wrong.

They did. People also died a lot. Although a berry growing somewhere in the wilderness will probably have less of a chance of carrying diseases or parasites that infect humans (on the account of not having encountered other humans). After farming? All bets are off.

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

#140

Post by sithadmin »

asdff wrote: post #127
bcrosby95 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a side effect of building the wrong structure for the environment. If you ever go to the south take note of the architecture in the old homes and even rowhomes where working class people lived. The cielings will be very high, and there will be second window above the doorway perhaps. The windows will have awnings. There will be porches with large overhangs shading living rooms and dining rooms inside the dwellin…

Building with classic Southern US techniques doesn't negate or even significantly reduce the need for air conditioning. Without AC, these types of structures still become incredibly hot during the summer; they suffer from mold and material damage from humidity; they required workarounds like sleeping on a screened-in porch during the summer instead of inside the house, because the house itself was too sweltering to tolerate, even at night. If you were lucky enough not to be laboring outside in the South during the summer, you spent a large part of your day sitting around being miserable. It was a major contributor to the south's lag in economic development, and a strong contributor to historically poor public health and life expectancy.

They're also not particularly efficient in terms of space utilization, making them unfeasible for sustainable, 'walkable' neighborhood development.

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