Comment by whodev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whodev | Hacker News Reader

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> Appeal to nature isn't a fallacy

It most certainly is.

> The appeal is to have a diet more in line with our evolutionary past.

Our evolutionary past is full of death and disease from what we ate. Humans have been drinking alcohol for centuries and there is strong scientific consensus that it causes cancer. Just because it's what humans have been doing doesn't mean it is safe and we should continue it.

> A) derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and that a couple studies have confirmed is probably safe...

> B) derive it from petroleum (as current US yellow food dye is) that a couple studies say is probably safe.

You say "derive it from petroleum" like they pump it directly from the well into your food. Petroleum is composed of hydrocarbons, it's very useful and is used in a lot of different applications. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it is dangerous.

If it's a fallacy then it's one I plan to keep falling for because it's useful.

No one inhales six apples in a sitting but I sure have eaten 200g of chocolate in an hour before.

It's useful to go for more "natural" foods because they aren't designed to make me eat as much of it as possible. Even if fruit loops were as healthy as an apple the apple still wins because the fruit loops are deliberately engineered to encourage you to eat more of them.

> No one inhales six apples in a sitting

If hard ciders count then I sure have.

> It's useful to go for more "natural" foods because they aren't designed to make me eat as much of it as possible.

I'm not saying that fruits, vegetables, legumes, and other foods you get from nature aren't healthy, of course they are. The fallacy is to say that because it's natural it's inherently better then an artificial or synthetic counterpart. Instead of worrying about if the food dye in your fruit loops uses red bell peppers or is synthetically extracted from petroleum, how about we worry about people consuming too much ultra-processed, high calorie, and low nutrional foods. That will make a greater impact on the general populations health here in America. Banning additives and food dyes won't stop people from eating 2000 calories of fried oreos.

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