The apparent cancer rate is increasing because we’re detecting more cancers. The rate of deaths due to cancer has actually dropped over time, both because treatment is better and because of environmental improvements like better air quality and declining rates of smoking.
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My favorite example of these stories about the supposed medical risks/benefits of coffee was from a few years ago: it claimed that heavy coffee drinkers lived on average two years less than people who didn’t drink coffee at all. However, the heavy coffee drinkers were awake for two years longer out of their lives than the non-drinkers, so it was a wash.
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Totally [surfer-dude accent optional].
Just about every public door in CA has one of the Prop 65 stickers on it. Nobody. Cares.
Hell, the plastic, the print, and the adhesive on the Prop 65 stickers might all be on the Prop 65 list.
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So. Much. Cognitive. Dissonance.
Agreed on all counts. The initiative system in California is itself a form of cancer. It has done far more harm than good to the state.
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Only when you pry it from my cold, dead hands…
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Along with diabetes and tooth decay. I had a wonderful female friend who’s liver exploded from too much of a sweetener substitute. I’m pretty sure high fructose corn syrup will give you cancer. Yet the shelves at your favorite grocery store are loaded with these products. The FDA is absolutely worthless.
I usually refuse to sign petitions to put matters on the ballot. Many are thrown out by courts because they are unconstitutional, poorly written, etc. those that are challenged can take years to be ruled upon, sent to the Court Appeals, State Supreme Court, and US Supreme Court. Look at the proportion of voters who are clueless and/or just plan stupid. A few years ago some idiot wanted to put on the ballot a proposition that homosexuals can be murdered. A state legislator is being recalled, not a proposition, and someone told me that it was disgusting that people’s signatures were invalidated because they did not match the names under which they are registered. I told him that it says on the page that is signed that the signature must match the registration. He was shocked.
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California’s economy is the sixth largest in the world, so yes, as Arthur Miller once wrote, “attention must be paid.”
Where a substance in the food stream has not been studied for its effects on humans, whether it actually increases the risk of cancer or any other bad outcome or not in humans, it actually makes sense to require a warning label on the basis of just animal studies, or even just in vitro lab bench studies. If that’s the best evidence, go with it.
But coffee has been studied, very extensively, in humans. It has long been suspected of creating an increased risk of heart disease, because there is definitely association between coffee drinking and higher rates of heart disease. But once you correct for other factors (for example, coffee drinkers are more likely to smoke, therefore you have to correct for smoking status), the association becomes so weak that it has never been generally accepted that coffee is a risk factor for heart disease. While the main focus of such studies, which have involved thousands and tens of thousands of human subjects, has been on heart disease, they also looked at mortality from all causes. Cancer never popped out in these studies.
For coffee, and therefore every substance in coffee, we have much better evidence than possible from animal or in vitro studies that coffee does not create a greater risk of cancer. Few things in the food stream have actually been studied for their effects on humans, so it’s not wrong to have laws that require warning labels based on weaker evidence – but only if there isn’t stronger evidence.
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At Target I would guess that half of the food for sale is junk food and overly processed food. So many resources are wasted making junk food. What is the matter with this country? As Robert McNamara said, “What is good for GM is good for the country.”
The Research and Methodolgy class in college was probably the most important class I took. It certainly made me see the world in a different way.
I did research using a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, 7,12 dimethybenz[a]anthracene (DMBA for short). Burn something, plants. meat, gasoline, whatever and this chemical will be present. Sometimes there’s a lot, sometimes not much. I will still drink my morning Joe however. And I’ll keep looking out for that meteorite
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All food cooked above the temperature of 120 degrees produces acrylamide.
The problem with avoiding acrylamide in cooked food, especially meat, is if you don’t heat the food above 130 degrees, there’s a danger of harmful germs or bacteria remaining in the food.
Good luck.
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180 degrees isn’t low enough to avoid acrylamide production. For that you have to stay under 120 degrees, and most cuts of meat cooked that way would spoil before it was finished.
So this judicial decision is kinda like the ATF bump stock decision? Sounds as if it’s not about the judge but about the letter of the law. Which nevertheless will be used to rant about activist judges.
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I’m only allowed one cup of coffee in the morning because coffee makes me mean. Maybe there should be a warning label for that.
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Just last year they were saying drinking two cups of coffee a day was good for your heart and health.
I don’t really care what they say. As long as you eat actual food - not margarine and fake shit, then you’re fine as long as you don’t eat too much.
Cancer rates are higher because we cannot go one fucking hour in this country without hearing the word “cancer” anymore and I don’t think it’s healthy to constantly concentrate on all the ills that man is heir to.
Fuck it - just live.
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Watch out for Dihydrogen Monoxide. DHMO can kill. It’s rarely labeled and it’s everywhere!
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Oh dear God what is wrong with black olives? I love black olives! Is there anything I love that is not bad for one’s health?
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