Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 72 posts

Re: Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

#61

Post by dang »

mrbtc wrote: post #58

OP here. This post quickly made the front page of HN, but after just a few hours, has now disappeared and doesn't appear anywhere when you page through hundreds of top stories. Could this be censorship requested by investors, related to YCombinator? Does this sometimes happen? https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/impossible-foods#sec... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-impossible-foods-fundrais...

The thread triggered the overheated discussion detector, formerly known as the flamewar detector, which is software that kicks in when a discussion seems to be generating more heat than light. We monitor those software penalties pretty closely, and turn them off in cases where the thread was just happily active. I don't think this discussion meets that bar, though. Diet threads are surprisingly prone to repetitiveness and anger, as are threads about GMOs, and this one alas combines the two.

> Could this be censorship requested by investors, related to YCombinator? Does this sometimes happen?

No. YC wouldn't ask us to do something that stupid. The trust of this community is approximately 100% of the value that HN has for YC. Neither YC partners nor we on the HN side would ever jeopardize that.

Re: Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

#62

Post by [deleted] »

mrbtc wrote: post #60
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just guessing. 56 comments, 39 points. Not always true, but more comments than points is often an indicator that the spam protection will trigger. Which it sounds like it did here. So got weighted off the front page.

Thanks, good to know. Hopefully its just that and a moderator can check in at some point.

[deleted]

Re: Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

#63

Post by [deleted] »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #19
DVassallo wrote: post #5

The potential downside of GM food is human extinction. In the 80s and 90s the beef industry meddled with nature and started feeding animal meat to cows. The result was a disease that could have killed us all if we had eaten contaminated beef in the previous 10 years. If the genetic conditions that make people susceptible to vCJD were more common or universal, we might not be here today [1]. Grass-fed beef can be assu…

The potential downside of not worshiping Roko's Basilisk: Superintelligent Godess is similarly human extinction. She kills all pagans, you see. That's her thing. Kill the non-believers. Which is everyone, currently. Come to think of it...there are a literal infinitude of things which may result in our extinction. Zombies. Aliens. Rogue trapezists. Who knows! But we don't sweat the zombie thing. There's not sufficient…

[deleted]

Re: Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

#64

Post by tptacek »

DVassallo wrote: post #56
tptacek wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does mad cow have to do with GM? Ironically: the process that begat mad cow: also "natural".

Eating meat-fed cows is not natural. Eating trans fats is not natural. Eating GM foods is not natural. The first two proved to have catastrophic harm. Why are we confident GM foods are safe? We’re treating no evidence of harm as evidence of no harm. And we’re doing it on a global scale.

It sounds like "natural" just means "stuff you don't approve of". Some of your list overlaps mine, others don't. That's fine, but it's kind of a boring argument.

Re: Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

#65

Post by DVassallo »

tptacek wrote: post #64
DVassallo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating meat-fed cows is not natural. Eating trans fats is not natural. Eating GM foods is not natural. The first two proved to have catastrophic harm. Why are we confident GM foods are safe? We’re treating no evidence of harm as evidence of no harm. And we’re doing it on a global scale.

It sounds like "natural" just means "stuff you don't approve of". Some of your list overlaps mine, others don't. That's fine, but it's kind of a boring argument.

“Natural selection” is the process that makes something “natural”. If it hasn’t passed the test of time, it’s not natural. Which part of my list doesn’t overlap with yours? You consider Impossible Foods natural?

Re: Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

#66

Post by dragonwriter »

DVassallo wrote: post #51
dragonwriter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes: meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts... Yes, but if you zoom out to categories that broad, GM food still fits within them. GM foods are not any less like foods eaten tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago than anything else we eat.

The same was said for meat-fed cows and trans fats. Turned out their consumption had fatal consequences.

> The same was said for meat-fed cows and trans fats.

Meat fed cows and trans fats were products of the same relatively (compared to both the inherent nature and existing regulatory framework requiring proof of safety of novel food element of and faced by GMOs on the former case, and the latter of those in the latter case) uncontrolled evolution of food supply that characterizes the long history of “safe” food against which GMOs are contrasted.

Re: Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

#67

Post by DVassallo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #66
DVassallo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same was said for meat-fed cows and trans fats. Turned out their consumption had fatal consequences.

> The same was said for meat-fed cows and trans fats. Meat fed cows and trans fats were products of the same relatively (compared to both the inherent nature and existing regulatory framework requiring proof of safety of novel food element of and faced by GMOs on the former case, and the latter of those in the latter case) uncontrolled evolution of food supply that characterizes the long history of “safe” food agains…

I’m not sure what you mean, but there is no proof of safety for GMOs. No evidence of harm is not evidence of no harm. The only adequate test is the test of time, and testing on the global population is highly irresponsible.

Re: Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

#68

Post by mrbtc »

dang wrote: post #61
mrbtc wrote: post #58

OP here. This post quickly made the front page of HN, but after just a few hours, has now disappeared and doesn't appear anywhere when you page through hundreds of top stories. Could this be censorship requested by investors, related to YCombinator? Does this sometimes happen? https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/impossible-foods#sec... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-impossible-foods-fundrais...

The thread triggered the overheated discussion detector, formerly known as the flamewar detector, which is software that kicks in when a discussion seems to be generating more heat than light. We monitor those software penalties pretty closely, and turn them off in cases where the thread was just happily active. I don't think this discussion meets that bar, though. Diet threads are surprisingly prone to repetitivenes…

Thanks for your reply.

Re: Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

#69

Post by kybishop »

fortran77 wrote: post #50
kybishop wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a celiac, I certainly don't. Even for those that aren't celiac, making the claim that gluten is healthy is dubious at best. I'd also imagine there are many more celiacs out there than those with soy allergies.

Gluten is extremely healthy. The few actual celiacs I've met would have certainly liked to be able to eat another cheap, healthy source of non-animal protein. Soy allergies according to CDC are about 1.2% of general population. This makes it about twice as common as celiac disease (from NIH numbers) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22850429

Where are you getting that 1.2% number? This is the only study I've found citing that number, but it is _not_ for the general population, but for atopic (read: hypersensitive) children. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070118/

I've yet to see any indication that gluten is healthy. I also don't see how "what celiacs want" is relevant to the health discussion.

EDIT: Just as anecdotal evidence, I've literally never met anyone with a soy allergy or intolerance, but know tens of people with celiac disease/intolerances, and at least 10 that are officially diagnosed (myself and mother included).

Re: Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

#70

Post by kybishop »

Robotbeat wrote: post #34
samcat116 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Gluten allergies or intolerance seem to be on the rise. Probably makes sense to exclude it if they wanna be the future of food.

Why would gluten allergies and intolerance be on the rise?

I believe there are two factors contributing to the perceived rise:

1. The US has lagged behind Europe significantly in their knowledge and diagnosis of celiacs disease/intolerance, so more people are finally being diagnosed. 2. The wheat in the US today is significantly different from the majority of European wheat [1]

https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/is-american-wheat-differen...

Post reply on HN