Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by minsc_and_boo » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

lathyrus_long wrote: post #153

minsc_and_boo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cohorts are huge (120,000+ people) and they controlled for a number of other factors in the analysis, so I don't think sample error is here to blame for why they observed high-pesticide fruits/veggies having less health benefits than low-pesticide fruits/veggies.

The p values are small enough that the correlation seems likely to be real, even after lots of dredging through that dataset. I'm less sure about the causality, though. It's also possible they've just discovered that richer people (a) live longer, and (b) like organic produce. They controlled for various factors (note 1 on table 2), but none that seem like usefully strong proxies for income or wealth.

The study doesn't seem to claim causality, just that this is their second study showing the same results, and that further study is needed.

I'm not sure how controlling for income/wealth would matter, given that the study is all nurses and they control by ethnicity.

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

#192

Post by maerF0x0 » Thu, May 26, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

TFYS wrote: post #159

andai wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using education as an example, I think great harm has come as a result of making it a government monopoly. Not sure how it is in the US but in Europe there's not really a free market with regards to how children are taught. So there's no room for a competitor to come in and say "we can do it better", because when this happens (and it does happen occasionally) they are just shut down by police. The school I went to wa…

Don't you think leaving education to the free market would make it harder for kids from poor backgrounds to go up in life? When everyone uses the same system, it's in everyone's best interest to fund it and make it as good as possible. You won't get the best results, but at least everyone gets a decent education.

> it's in everyone's best interest to fund it and make it as good as possible.

Often this is addressed through a voucher system. Single Payer (or subsidizer), multiple provider.

Eg: gov't gives a voucher for $10k per head, you're free to shop for the best schooling your money can buy (perhaps even online!)

Aside: this exact concept can apply to healthcare too

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

#193

Post by maerF0x0 » Thu, May 26, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

isitmadeofglass wrote: post #174

andai wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using education as an example, I think great harm has come as a result of making it a government monopoly. Not sure how it is in the US but in Europe there's not really a free market with regards to how children are taught. So there's no room for a competitor to come in and say "we can do it better", because when this happens (and it does happen occasionally) they are just shut down by police. The school I went to wa…

I live in Denmark, which is in Europe. I’m extremely courious as to where in Europe you are actually from, because if there’s is one thing that is the same across the entirety of Europe from my experience, it is that no-one from a European country would ever talk about “Europe” like it was a uniform thing when talking about laws or public institutions. School in France is extremely different from school in Finland et…

> it is that no-one from a European country would ever talk about “Europe” like it was a uniform thing when

As an immigrant to the US who's been to a dozen or so states, I'd add it's also inaccurate to talk about the US as a uniform thing or group of people

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

#194

Post by andai » Thu, May 26, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #192

TFYS wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think leaving education to the free market would make it harder for kids from poor backgrounds to go up in life? When everyone uses the same system, it's in everyone's best interest to fund it and make it as good as possible. You won't get the best results, but at least everyone gets a decent education.

> it's in everyone's best interest to fund it and make it as good as possible. Often this is addressed through a voucher system. Single Payer (or subsidizer), multiple provider. Eg: gov't gives a voucher for $10k per head, you're free to shop for the best schooling your money can buy (perhaps even online!) Aside: this exact concept can apply to healthcare too

I like this idea! In fact I have wondered what effect it would have on government if citizens could literally vote with their dollars, ie. democratically decide how government funds are allocated. So every year each citizen would be allocated ( yearly budget / total population ) dollars and could choose how their dollars are spent.

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

#195

Post by lathyrus_long » Fri, May 27, 2022, 11:55 PM UTC

ldiracdelta wrote: post #187

lathyrus_long wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A matter of degree, maybe. Certainly there's a degree of understanding that's cheaper than just blind heavy spraying, and that any grower would thus be foolish not to obtain. I've often seen "IPM" used to refer to systems that went beyond that though, incurring higher cost for lower ecological impact. For example, the guidelines linked below note explicitly that > Practices contained in this protocol are considerably…

Conventional IPM programs use more toxic, but muuuch less volume of pesticides. Organic programs user "better" pesticides, but much much more. Which is better? We'll, it depends on how fast those pesticides break down and what those degraded molecules are. It depends on how much volume is applied to the produce. It depends on if it accumulates in the flesh of the produce. What if a pesticide outrageously lethal to hu…

> Conventional vs organic is not clear cut.

Certainly agreed. Note that the guidelines I linked above do permit certain synthetic pesticides, despite their somewhat confusing use of the word "conventional" in the text that I quoted. For example, cyflumetofen is synthetic, and it's in their lowest-risk category. Copper hydroxide products are permitted under OMRI organic guidelines, but forbidden or restricted here.

I generally like the idea of more restrictive voluntary guidelines based only on safety to the ecosystem and consumer, and not on naturalness like for "organic". I haven't seen much commercial uptake, though.

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

#196

Post by lathyrus_long » Sat, May 28, 2022, 1:04 AM UTC

minsc_and_boo wrote: post #191

lathyrus_long wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The p values are small enough that the correlation seems likely to be real, even after lots of dredging through that dataset. I'm less sure about the causality, though. It's also possible they've just discovered that richer people (a) live longer, and (b) like organic produce. They controlled for various factors (note 1 on table 2), but none that seem like usefully strong proxies for income or wealth.

The study doesn't seem to claim causality, just that this is their second study showing the same results, and that further study is needed. I'm not sure how controlling for income/wealth would matter, given that the study is all nurses and they control by ethnicity.

Surely this relationship is noteworthy only to the extent it's potentially a causality? The authors are careful not to make explicit claims, but most discussion here is about that possibility. The title of this HN submission is too ("could negate"), though the title of the paper itself is more cautious.

After more carefully reading the paper, I think the premise of my original comment was completely wrong though. The study apparently had no information on whether the participants were eating conventional or organic produce. Rather, they categorized by type of fruit or vegetable, converting the average results of tests for residues to a score from 0 (best) to 6 (worst) with a somewhat arbitrary heuristic. For example, grapefruit scored 0, and spinach scored 6.

That eliminates the spurious correlation I speculated about, though others may exist; it would be interesting to know which specific fruits and vegetables accounted for most of the effect. That heuristic also increases the risk of data dredging; I wonder how many versions they tried before they got their result. As to the residues, it seems they considered all pesticides equally, even though some are strongly suspected to be much more dangerous than others. It would be interesting to repeat the analysis considering only residues of those suspected to be most (or least) dangerous, to see if their effect gets bigger (or smaller).