Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

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Rule of thumb: if your food, beverage, dye, or aromatic scent readily undergoes chemical reactions, it might not be safe.

Alcohol is quite chemically reactive:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol#Reactions

Burnt or charred food has loads of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) that have lots of potential for chemistry (delocalized electrons = very reactive). They pose extreme cancer risk, and might be one of the most important things you frequently encounter that you can remove from your diet! Don't eat burnt food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycyclic_aromatic_hydrocarbo...

If reactive substances reach your DNA, they could cause mutation. DNA mutation brings you closer to developing cancer. Even if these substances don't reach your DNA, they could cause other deleterious effects to your cellular biochemistry that might have downstream impact.

Proteins, fats, and carbs are much less dangerous than some of the other things we ingest, inhale, and apply.

It helps to know some basic chemistry and biochemistry. It's all about the chemistry. Cancer is a disease state caused by biochemical phenomena.

(Fun fact: Oxygen is one of the most reactive things you put in your body. But there isn't any escaping that. The reaction is how we sustain life.)

I think people know that a piece of meat on a grill that is totally burnt black is not healthy. And likewise I'd throw away or at least scrape off burnt toast.

Browning on foods is a huge source of flavor though (Maillard reaction I think), is this also a concern? It seems like an occasional steak with thin grill marks could be worth it, but I have no idea where to draw the line on this, compared to something like alcohol, because there is no study for how many grams of burnt food you can eat per week etc.

I consider myself well informed and I had no idea burnt food was unhealthy. I would just figured it was carbon, and I don't have any reason to believe carbon would hurt me.

You're one of the 10000 today https://xkcd.com/1053/

I think this is a very well known thing that I learned as a small kid, but I (and my family) still rather eat a bit of black on the outside of the meat than eating still raw parts in the middle (for pork and chicken that is). It's all about juggling risks.

People eat smoked foods all the time.

> Alcohol is quite chemically reactive

Every single reaction listed there involves a violently reactive partner: sodium, phosphorus tribromide, concentrated hydrochloric acid, you know, the stuff you ingest daily. Even the esterification needs a strong acid as catalyst.

> carbs are much less dangerous

Fun fact, carbohydrates have multiple alcohol groups and are in fact more reactive than ethanol. They actually react with proteins, even without the help of enzymes, while ethanol doesn't.

Something about your logic doesn't add up.

> Alcohol is quite chemically reactive:

All food is quite chemically reactive; that is one of the main points of eating.

I've never thought about it this way. Being very much not a chemist or biologist, are there any decent sources for reactivity of... commonly ingested things? Or any articles with more on this?

Reactivity is really hard to measure.

You'd have to specify the pressure and temperature first. Fine enough, human body fever temps to freezing, and then maybe a few atm to vacuum.

Then the really hard part comes in: you have to specify the reagents. Water, saline, air, ok. But the carcinogens really come in on all the ways the human body mixes with everything. You got all the enzymes, the buffers, the solutions, the biles and secretions, the hyper complex bio-chem that is a single pancreatic cell, etc.

I don't think such a matrix would be possible to report out without having a complete understanding of every human's biology in all it's strange wonderful forms.

Another fun fact, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs or "paws") are commonly observed in interstellar space and a substantial reservoir of carbon overall!

The 3.6 micron band from the IRAC camera on the Spitzer space telescope has a strong PAH flourescence feature in the band (absorbs UV, emits vibrational mode IR). The 3.6 micron wavelength is commonly colored green in composites, so if you see lots of green nebulosity in images from Spitzer, those are likely mainly PAHS.

> if your food, beverage, dye, or aromatic scent readily undergoes chemical reactions

That would also include anything acidic and basic, so essentially, any vinegar, baking soda, fruits, ...... Among proteins, there are enzymes that catalyze chemical reactions.

On alcohol and char, I agree. But, the general statement is too broad to be true or useful.

What about carbonated beverages? Those react with a lot of stuff

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