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More problematic may have been using sugar of lead to sweeten wine. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/sugar-of-lead-a-d...

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I was about to post that myself: the dangers of lead acetate. IIRC, that sweetener is what deafened Beethoven as well, and I'd call it a good argument for minimally-processed/natural food...

Sounds more like a good argument to avoid sugar of lead.

There are plenty of natural poisonous berries. Doesn't mean we should start using them as sweeteners instead.

That's certainly true, but that doesn't mean I trust sucralose and stevia extract (or food-grade aluminum, or long-term storage in BPA-bearing plastic).

Nor do I trust certain natural additives or physical processing methods; chemical is full of unknowns, but natural can be harmful too. I try to avoid white flour and added sugar, for example, and I have my doubts about how good of an idea it was to breed all this sweetness into modern fruit...

>chemical is full of unknowns, but natural

Nature is chemicals. What you are saying is that you trust the chemical outputs of the chaotic natural environment more than the ones produces by scientists.

I'm way too late responding to this, but yes, I do; the chemicals of nature (except for recent extracts like sugar and white flour) are things we co-evolved with.

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