Title is misleading: it's lead chromate (that producers mix into turmeric power) that does the killing, not turmeric.
i've always felt economist is always anti-asian, particularly anti-indian.
How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
121–130 of 200 posts
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I guess that’s my point. Perhaps there are some things useful in Ayurveda but I suspect the vast majority is pseudoscience that was a best guess for the resources available at the time. Not suggesting this traditional medicine is a religion but that it’s similar to a lot of the dietary restrictions from history. They had some use for the time but perhaps not useful now. I know more about Chinese traditional medicine…
> lots of it is pseudoscience.
I can get behind the feeling of the word, but I absolutely hate this word as it has generally been used in the sense that everything modern (science, technology, people) is smarter/more advanced than anything that is old.
If something was produced as a result of a rational thought process (no ghosts, demons, Gods involved), I would be loathe to call it pseudoscience even if it didn't work most of the time. For e.g. building, clothing, weaponry that works in one climate/area may not work if you transplant it to another place on Earth. That does not mean that the techniques used are pseudoscientific in nature. They were the science of that place and time.
> If you visit a traditional doctor he feels your wrist for a while and is able to create diagnoses with that along with looking at you and talking.
A lot of traditional medicine practitioners today are probably quacks. It is possible that something of import was lost over hundreds of generations of knowledge transfer. As we have access to modern medicine that can quickly relieve symptoms, looking into what was lost might be considered to be a waste of time by some when an easier alternative is available.
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#123> To heighten their colour, the rhizomes from which the spice is extracted are routinely dusted with lead chromate, a neurotoxin. The practice helps explain why South Asia has the highest rates of lead poisoning in the world. The turmeric is not to blame here. It’s the idiots that demand bright yellow food without regard to whether it is poison, and the disgusting people who manufacture said poison to meet that deman…
Nobody is blaming the plant. Obviously it’s the evil people adding an adulterant to a dietary product. I don’t see how you can victim blame here. People absolutely should be able to pick the best looking alternative on the shelf without fear of being fed a neurotoxin. I’d like to see the argument rendered for how it’s their fault rather than the person poisoning them. PS real turmeric looks like it came from a willy…
> I don’t see how you can victim blame here.
You can blame multiple people. And nobody is saying the blame is equal. IMHO, there is a non zero amount of blame on cultures that promote “colored” food.
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#124Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#125Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#126Here's a much more detailed article about how the researchers were able to get traders in Bangladesh to stop using lead chromate:
https://undark.org/2023/07/19/the-vice-of-spice-confronting-...
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I guess that’s my point. Perhaps there are some things useful in Ayurveda but I suspect the vast majority is pseudoscience that was a best guess for the resources available at the time. Not suggesting this traditional medicine is a religion but that it’s similar to a lot of the dietary restrictions from history. They had some use for the time but perhaps not useful now. I know more about Chinese traditional medicine…
And, interestingly, some of it was surprisingly effective. For example:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16566952/
TCM figured out what is essentially the best modern malaria treatment centuries ago.
And boiling water was very sensible. Nowadays we treat our water differently, but before modern sanitation and water treatment, drinking unboiled water was quite dangerous. In much of Europe, people would drink beer when available instead of water, which was likely still an improvement, but alcohol is rather unhealthy. Drinking plain boiled water when thirsty was an excellent idea.
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is reminiscent of the Austrian antifreeze wine scandal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Austrian_diethylene_gly... That was only a few wineries though, and it was pretty quickly caught and harshly punished. This is apparently a whole industry where the practice of poisoning consumers with lead is normalized.
Not really comparable. The glycol is only ~4 times as damaging as the alcohol that wine contains anyway, and there were no known health issues triggered by it.
don't you think by saying "there were no known health issues triggered by it" you are committing a statistical fallacy? Just because something has not bee observed does not mean it is not there....
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
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What does ingesting mercury or lead fight against? While I understand modern medicine does sometimes use things that are toxic, it usually in net fixes what was needed. What does lead and mercury help with when eaten?
"What does ingesting mercury or lead fight against?"
Mercury? It'd handle bowel complaints, like constipation. You can follow the Lewis and Clarke expedition by the mercury contamination of their campsites from the mercury laxatives used.
Lead? The opposite, it would control bowel complaints, specifically diarrhea.
Also source: I hold a First Responder's certification and have had to deal with poisoning of this nature before.
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#130The last three paragraphs read very strongly like propaganda to me, which makes me wonder if the subject (tumeric adulteration) was chosen as something to write about just to put pressure on Bangladesh's and India's current rulers.
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> The British Empire might have disappeared but a segment of the English elite continue to believe that the former colonies must be run based on ideas that emerge from their superior intellect.
Everyone and their dog knows that lead is dangerous. You don't need to have a "superior intellect" to realize this.
> Most governments in Africa, Asia and South America must have first hand experience with why (and how) NGOs are funded in their countries by the West
Most of these governments are corrupt to the bone.