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Carbs cause cancer - Scientific proof

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  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,576 Member
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    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Do you think that some dumb human (or simply ignorant human) may have eaten that mushroom thinking it's good, natural food?

    I know it's so, as when I was a kid in Alaska we were educated about that mushroom because it looks like an edible one and was a common mistake for foragers.

    Some dumb humans drink chlorine bleach and play deadly games with crossbows. That doesn't make bleach food or crossbows toys.

    For the mushroom, it doesn't even have to be dumb humans. Even wilderness survival and mushroom experts die from time to time eating wild mushrooms they were sure they had classified properly.

    Right, they thought it was food.

    So do some foods become not foods retroactively when they kill people? Fugu is a delicacy made of the puffer fish - make it wrong and you're dead. When it kills someone, was that fugu not food, but other fugu is food?

    What about almonds? Wild varieties can vary in their level of cyanide, enough to be poisonous. Does such an almond retroactively stop being food?
    Acorns similarly are poisonous and domesticating them too difficult because the genes for it are on multiple alleles of inheritance unlike almonds. You'd need some Mendelian diagrams to become the would be acorn farmer, particularly given the life time of the plant. Still, cooking them makes them edible, and some varieties are safe even raw (don't try it oneself). Are they food or not?

    Google tells me a simple definition of food is:

    any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink, or that plants absorb, in order to maintain life and growth.
    synonyms: nourishment, sustenance, nutriment, fare;


    I'm good with that. Poisonous substances wouldn't fit that definition, even if they look like or are a botanical relative of something that does.

    So if there is an animal that could eat that mushroom and survive, it is food?
    That still avoids the question about things that are, in fact, the same thing. A poisonous almond is only one gene off from regular one. Does the gene stop it from being food, even if we only find out post mortem - well we don't find out if we're the mortem, but still...

    The mushroom would be food for that creature, but that wouldn't make it food for humans.

    And yes, absolutely if we consider something food and then find out it is killing us we should stop considering it food. What sense would there be in continuing to eat something that harms us just because we used to eat it?

    Time for a hike.

    At the risk at sounding like cookie monster, does that mean almonds are sometimes a food, and sometimes not a food?

    Yeah, sure. Sometimes a food for us and sometimes a food for some other creature. Some almonds are food or us and some are not. Do you think otherwise?
  • stealthq
    stealthq Posts: 4,298 Member
    edited March 2016
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    No food that I know about 'causes' cancer as we think of cancer today. While carbs as in the OP can increase the risk of developing cancer carbs did not 'cause' cancer.

    We all have cancer cells in our bodies today but we do not say we have 'cancer'. Cancer in a medical sense comes long after we have had cancer cells in our bodies. When the cancer cells become a mass/tumor and/or is spreading to other body parts is when we can best detect cancer in the body.

    What 'causes' cancer as I understand it today is a weak/failing immune system that does not kill cancer cells before they start to divide.

    What causes cancer is a series of mutations that result in cells with seven specific traits - the 'hallmarks of cancer'*.

    While it can be a failing of the immune system that allows the full progression to occur, it isn't necessarily so. Some pre-cancerous and cancerous cells don't present features necessary for a healthy immune system to recognize them as a problem to be removed. Some simply replicate too quickly for a healthy immune system to keep up. Some actually benefit from the initial default response of a healthy immune system.

    ETA: these are not necessarily fixed, just the seven currently recognized
  • senecarr
    senecarr Posts: 5,377 Member
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    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Do you think that some dumb human (or simply ignorant human) may have eaten that mushroom thinking it's good, natural food?

    I know it's so, as when I was a kid in Alaska we were educated about that mushroom because it looks like an edible one and was a common mistake for foragers.

    Some dumb humans drink chlorine bleach and play deadly games with crossbows. That doesn't make bleach food or crossbows toys.

    For the mushroom, it doesn't even have to be dumb humans. Even wilderness survival and mushroom experts die from time to time eating wild mushrooms they were sure they had classified properly.

    Right, they thought it was food.

    So do some foods become not foods retroactively when they kill people? Fugu is a delicacy made of the puffer fish - make it wrong and you're dead. When it kills someone, was that fugu not food, but other fugu is food?

    What about almonds? Wild varieties can vary in their level of cyanide, enough to be poisonous. Does such an almond retroactively stop being food?
    Acorns similarly are poisonous and domesticating them too difficult because the genes for it are on multiple alleles of inheritance unlike almonds. You'd need some Mendelian diagrams to become the would be acorn farmer, particularly given the life time of the plant. Still, cooking them makes them edible, and some varieties are safe even raw (don't try it oneself). Are they food or not?

    Google tells me a simple definition of food is:

    any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink, or that plants absorb, in order to maintain life and growth.
    synonyms: nourishment, sustenance, nutriment, fare;


    I'm good with that. Poisonous substances wouldn't fit that definition, even if they look like or are a botanical relative of something that does.

    So if there is an animal that could eat that mushroom and survive, it is food?
    That still avoids the question about things that are, in fact, the same thing. A poisonous almond is only one gene off from regular one. Does the gene stop it from being food, even if we only find out post mortem - well we don't find out if we're the mortem, but still...

    The mushroom would be food for that creature, but that wouldn't make it food for humans.

    And yes, absolutely if we consider something food and then find out it is killing us we should stop considering it food. What sense would there be in continuing to eat something that harms us just because we used to eat it?

    Time for a hike.

    At the risk at sounding like cookie monster, does that mean almonds are sometimes a food, and sometimes not a food?

    Yeah, sure. Sometimes a food for us and sometimes a food for some other creature. Some almonds are food or us and some are not. Do you think otherwise?

    I think almonds are food, I'm just not particularly interested in eating the high cyanide variety, a bit too bitter.

    It sounds like food in your view is in some kind of quantum superposition - Schrodinger's food - it is both food and not food until we have survived or not survived eating it.
  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,576 Member
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    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Do you think that some dumb human (or simply ignorant human) may have eaten that mushroom thinking it's good, natural food?

    I know it's so, as when I was a kid in Alaska we were educated about that mushroom because it looks like an edible one and was a common mistake for foragers.

    Some dumb humans drink chlorine bleach and play deadly games with crossbows. That doesn't make bleach food or crossbows toys.

    For the mushroom, it doesn't even have to be dumb humans. Even wilderness survival and mushroom experts die from time to time eating wild mushrooms they were sure they had classified properly.

    Right, they thought it was food.

    So do some foods become not foods retroactively when they kill people? Fugu is a delicacy made of the puffer fish - make it wrong and you're dead. When it kills someone, was that fugu not food, but other fugu is food?

    What about almonds? Wild varieties can vary in their level of cyanide, enough to be poisonous. Does such an almond retroactively stop being food?
    Acorns similarly are poisonous and domesticating them too difficult because the genes for it are on multiple alleles of inheritance unlike almonds. You'd need some Mendelian diagrams to become the would be acorn farmer, particularly given the life time of the plant. Still, cooking them makes them edible, and some varieties are safe even raw (don't try it oneself). Are they food or not?

    Google tells me a simple definition of food is:

    any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink, or that plants absorb, in order to maintain life and growth.
    synonyms: nourishment, sustenance, nutriment, fare;


    I'm good with that. Poisonous substances wouldn't fit that definition, even if they look like or are a botanical relative of something that does.

    So if there is an animal that could eat that mushroom and survive, it is food?
    That still avoids the question about things that are, in fact, the same thing. A poisonous almond is only one gene off from regular one. Does the gene stop it from being food, even if we only find out post mortem - well we don't find out if we're the mortem, but still...

    The mushroom would be food for that creature, but that wouldn't make it food for humans.

    And yes, absolutely if we consider something food and then find out it is killing us we should stop considering it food. What sense would there be in continuing to eat something that harms us just because we used to eat it?

    Time for a hike.

    At the risk at sounding like cookie monster, does that mean almonds are sometimes a food, and sometimes not a food?

    Yeah, sure. Sometimes a food for us and sometimes a food for some other creature. Some almonds are food or us and some are not. Do you think otherwise?

    I think almonds are food, I'm just not particularly interested in eating the high cyanide variety, a bit too bitter.

    It sounds like food in your view is in some kind of quantum superposition - Schrodinger's food - it is both food and not food until we have survived or not survived eating it.

    I still like the definition Google gave. If it nourishes me without harming me, I'm going to call it food and not agonize over the minutiae. If some things are hanging half in and half out of the box I'm okay with that.
  • erikfarrar
    erikfarrar Posts: 35 Member
    edited March 2016
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    Citation, for anyone who is interested. From U Texas Med Center. http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/25/3/532.abstract

    "Cases [people with lung cancer] were more likely to smoke, be heavier smokers and had lower BMI,
    physical activity levels, and years of education."

    There was a lot about how cases "with >12 years education" had worse diets which correlated with lung cancer risk -- but if you think of why they had worse diets, an argument could probably be made that they maybe had lower-paying jobs which made them unable to afford more nutritious foods. And maybe those lower paying jobs were in industrial or manufacturing or jobs which lent them towards increased exposure to lung carcinogens.

    I dunno. I thought the correlation is tenuous at best, and certainly a far, far cry from causation.

    EDIT: I'm a researcher at the institution whence that study was published. Not my field, but still.
  • senecarr
    senecarr Posts: 5,377 Member
    Options
    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Do you think that some dumb human (or simply ignorant human) may have eaten that mushroom thinking it's good, natural food?

    I know it's so, as when I was a kid in Alaska we were educated about that mushroom because it looks like an edible one and was a common mistake for foragers.

    Some dumb humans drink chlorine bleach and play deadly games with crossbows. That doesn't make bleach food or crossbows toys.

    For the mushroom, it doesn't even have to be dumb humans. Even wilderness survival and mushroom experts die from time to time eating wild mushrooms they were sure they had classified properly.

    Right, they thought it was food.

    So do some foods become not foods retroactively when they kill people? Fugu is a delicacy made of the puffer fish - make it wrong and you're dead. When it kills someone, was that fugu not food, but other fugu is food?

    What about almonds? Wild varieties can vary in their level of cyanide, enough to be poisonous. Does such an almond retroactively stop being food?
    Acorns similarly are poisonous and domesticating them too difficult because the genes for it are on multiple alleles of inheritance unlike almonds. You'd need some Mendelian diagrams to become the would be acorn farmer, particularly given the life time of the plant. Still, cooking them makes them edible, and some varieties are safe even raw (don't try it oneself). Are they food or not?

    Google tells me a simple definition of food is:

    any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink, or that plants absorb, in order to maintain life and growth.
    synonyms: nourishment, sustenance, nutriment, fare;


    I'm good with that. Poisonous substances wouldn't fit that definition, even if they look like or are a botanical relative of something that does.

    So if there is an animal that could eat that mushroom and survive, it is food?
    That still avoids the question about things that are, in fact, the same thing. A poisonous almond is only one gene off from regular one. Does the gene stop it from being food, even if we only find out post mortem - well we don't find out if we're the mortem, but still...

    The mushroom would be food for that creature, but that wouldn't make it food for humans.

    And yes, absolutely if we consider something food and then find out it is killing us we should stop considering it food. What sense would there be in continuing to eat something that harms us just because we used to eat it?

    Time for a hike.

    At the risk at sounding like cookie monster, does that mean almonds are sometimes a food, and sometimes not a food?

    Yeah, sure. Sometimes a food for us and sometimes a food for some other creature. Some almonds are food or us and some are not. Do you think otherwise?

    I think almonds are food, I'm just not particularly interested in eating the high cyanide variety, a bit too bitter.

    It sounds like food in your view is in some kind of quantum superposition - Schrodinger's food - it is both food and not food until we have survived or not survived eating it.

    I still like the definition Google gave. If it nourishes me without harming me, I'm going to call it food and not agonize over the minutiae. If some things are hanging half in and half out of the box I'm okay with that.
    Again with pushing threads towards chit-chat.
  • lisawinning4losing
    lisawinning4losing Posts: 726 Member
    edited March 2016
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    In other words, the breaking news is that processed junk is bad for you while natural foods are better for you. Go figure.

    faasuux4gmi5.jpg

    Do you really consider the item in the pic to be "food"?

    Some things that are food for us are poison to othe species and vice versa. Nature has no obligation in making things palatable to us.

    Which is a totally different subject. Someone said "natural foods" are better and someone responded with a poisonous mushroom. I'm just not sure what the point was.

    There was no point to it at all. Just sarcasm and asshattery. I just see it as entertainment now.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,013 Member
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    In other words, the breaking news is that processed junk is bad for you while natural foods are better for you. Go figure.

    Asbestos is a natural thing. So is uranium.

    But are they natural foods?

    I don't know. I thought the point being made was that just because something is natural doesn't mean it is good for you. And just because something is processed doesn't mean it's not good for you.
  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,576 Member
    edited March 2016
    Options
    kimny72 wrote: »
    In other words, the breaking news is that processed junk is bad for you while natural foods are better for you. Go figure.

    Asbestos is a natural thing. So is uranium.

    But are they natural foods?

    I don't know. I thought the point being made was that just because something is natural doesn't mean it is good for you. And just because something is processed doesn't mean it's not good for you.

    Yes, I am aware of the change in subject. That was my point.

    If the point was to show that natural foods are not always best, then why not show an example of that? By using ridiculous non-food examples it suggests there are no examples to be found using the subject at hand, which was natural food
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
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    erikfarrar wrote: »
    Citation, for anyone who is interested. From U Texas Med Center. http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/25/3/532.abstract

    "Cases [people with lung cancer] were more likely to smoke, be heavier smokers and had lower BMI,
    physical activity levels, and years of education."

    There was a lot about how cases "with >12 years education" had worse diets which correlated with lung cancer risk -- but if you think of why they had worse diets, an argument could probably be made that they maybe had lower-paying jobs which made them unable to afford more nutritious foods. And maybe those lower paying jobs were in industrial or manufacturing or jobs which lent them towards increased exposure to lung carcinogens.

    I dunno. I thought the correlation is tenuous at best, and certainly a far, far cry from causation.

    EDIT: I'm a researcher at the institution whence that study was published. Not my field, but still.

    @ericfarrier you do raise good questions that are not addressed in the article. Thanks
  • tomteboda
    tomteboda Posts: 2,171 Member
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    erikfarrar wrote: »
    Citation, for anyone who is interested. From U Texas Med Center. http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/25/3/532.abstract

    "Cases [people with lung cancer] were more likely to smoke, be heavier smokers and had lower BMI,
    physical activity levels, and years of education."

    There was a lot about how cases "with >12 years education" had worse diets which correlated with lung cancer risk -- but if you think of why they had worse diets, an argument could probably be made that they maybe had lower-paying jobs which made them unable to afford more nutritious foods. And maybe those lower paying jobs were in industrial or manufacturing or jobs which lent them towards increased exposure to lung carcinogens.

    I dunno. I thought the correlation is tenuous at best, and certainly a far, far cry from causation.

    EDIT: I'm a researcher at the institution whence that study was published. Not my field, but still.

    Not just job exposure, but there's no control for home environmental exposure to carcinogens either, as near as I can tell. I'm not going to look up the sources, but I recall that this is one of the major arguments for "environmental justice", that people on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale generally experience poorer air and water quality than those on the higher end. I know this is something that in my state the pollution control agency is pushing pretty heavily (even in places it makes absolutely -0- sense like rural communities with next to no pollution loads).

    N.B.
    I went to grad school many years ago at the institution from which this paper came. It's not my field either.

This discussion has been closed.