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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

> I’m not questioning the health or merit of added chemicals (“natural” or “synthetic”)

Oh good, I thought you were afraid of chemicals

>I’m questioning the health or merit of so-called foods that are so devoid of flavor or color that we have to add back in chemical flavorings and colors to make them palatable.

Wait what? I thought you weren't questioning the health or merit chemicals? People like orange juice (more specifically, not from concentrate), and the cheapest way to produce something that resembles that is to store them in oxygen-free vats and add back flavor packs. Who cares if chemicals were used to achieve that flavor?

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When consumers buy juice labelled "natural" or "100% juice" they expect juice that hasn't had anything added or taken away from it, especially not something that doesn't actually exist in nature.

The article was written to inform consumers about what they're actually getting and how they're getting deceived.

While I appreciate what the other wrote, it came across somewhat as an anti-synthetic piece that plays off of fear rather information. We shouldn't be labeling these as non-concentrate, but I don't see a reason to be particularly concerned about it.

"Natural" has pretty much 0 value as a label. What is natural and not natural would vary depending on which person you ask the question on the street... This is just marketing.

There is a line past which an overwhelming majority of people would reasonably object to a "natural" or "100% juice" label on orange juice, in the same way that pure ethylvanillin could not reasonably be labeled 100% natural vanilla.

It seems clear to me that the label has some value, it's just a matter of placing the line.

The label is unregulated. And for example my definition of natural is : appears in nature, without human intervention. By this definition, there is very few items items in a grocery shop that are natural... Any farming is unnatural for example.

Crude oil is "natural" but you probably wouldn't want it in your OJ. ;)

I don't think he was questioning the health or safety of the additives, I think he was questioning the nutritious list of oranges or the foodstuffs that lack flavor. This would make sense given that humans have evolved to taste and enjoy flavours based upon the nutritiousness of that food.

Human beings evolved senses to perceive food which will aid in the individual's survival on the plains of the African savannah. There's no reason to believe that food perceived to be flavorful necessarily contains the correct nutrients for us, and (more importantly) contain them in the right amounts. Otherwise if we can all just trust our taste buds then nutritionists would be all out of jobs.

Actually, there is a good reason to believe that natural flavours that taste good to us do so because they're healthy and contain the correct nutrients for us, and our bodies even can know about when we've consumed enough of them.

This book outlines all of that http://www.amazon.ca/Dorito-Effect-Surprising-Truth-Flavor/d...

If you don't want to read the whole book, here's the audio from a program called The Agenda with Steve Paikin with the author of The Dorito Effect. http://podcasts.tvo.org/theagenda/audio/2301343_48k.mp3

> Who cares if chemicals were used to achieve that flavor?

He should have just said he was questioning the health of those chemicals. That's what I would say.

Except he never provides any proof that any of the chemicals named are harmful in any way. His claims are

1. Juice produced at industrial scale are loaded with sugar and are less nutritious than actual fruits (true, but also true of any juice, industrial or otherwise)

2. Juice produced at industrial scale is "unnatural" (also true, depending on your definition of "natural", but merely asserting that they are unnatural doesn't mean they're good or bad for you - naturalistic fallacy)

He can't assert that the chemicals are in fact bad for you because there's no proof of it, as mentioned elsewhere in this comment thread, and by his own admission these are the exact same chemicals you'd find in oranges anyway

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