I would have thought the main ingredient in KFC is heart disease

The problem, as always, comes back to basic economic inequality.

In real terms, average household income has been in decline for the past 35 years. As a result of this, most people can't afford to buy decent food.
So they buy fast food and processed crap. Even the staples they do buy, like chicken, have to be way cheaper than they should be to pay the farmer, and treat the birds properly.

You rely on the government for national defense, you idiot. You know why? Because in the real world you can't defend yourself from foreign armies and terrorists. You depend upon the police for protection no matter how many guns you might have.

Where the disconnect here is the idiotic notion that we don't need government for things like health care regulation. The reality is ACA didn't just come out of the blue. It came from an obvious systemic problem within the overwhelmingly market controlled system.

You can keep mindlessly babbling all you want that government intervention is always bad, but that is turning an idiotically blind eye to basic US history, where there are ridiculous number of examples the government getting involved to effectively regulate industries are undeniably good, like the Meat Inspection Act, Food and Drug Administration, making it illegal to put lead in paint, regulations for car safety, regulations on buildings so you can't for example put asbestos in the walls, requiring labels on food so you know what ingredients are in them, so you could avoid nuts if you have a deadly nut allergy.

You know why? Because, despite your delusions, you can't inspect all your food, wear a mask when you walk into every building you go into to protect from asbestos, know that the tires you are buying don't have an excessively high chance of blowing off your car and killing you, ensure the air you breathe doesn't have too much lead in it, etc. etc. etc.

You're dependent on the government for all that, and it has massively improved your quality of life, and it has nothing to do with your self pride or dignity, so cut the utter bullcrap.

Police Squad/Naked Gun ripoff. I hope those ingredients were dog friendly, seems like a lot to eat, over 4 human portions. Could be sick, for the sake of a joke.

As an interesting parallel; my dog started losing his hair. I went online to figure out the cause and learned a lot of good information. Food sensitivity causes canine hair loss, corn based diets are bad for dogs, large inexpensive name brands use suspect ingredients...there were tons of forum discussions available with information. Pages of talk with people's experience trying to correct the problem. Inevitably, they fed the dog such and such terribly expensive food and the problem went away...then the manufacturer must have changed the formula because it came back...tried new ultra expensive dog food which fixed the problem....

Everyone obviously loved their dogs and they were doing everything they could to fix it. Same story over and over, tons of money spent.

Until I noticed one random comment that was different; "seasonal pattern baldness". Nothing you can do, it's incurable and comes and goes with the seasons.

So all the anecdotal experience, one food fixed it then the brand changed and it came back...all of it was random chance as the problem naturally came and went. But when the answer was provided, you can't fix the problem, it was completely ignored.

I believe people reject that they can't control things in life. Isnt this what makes people reject science and turn to naturalism and religion? The idea that you can reshape the world, in your own mind, into something you can control.

I'm not a fan. I don't think this is possible at any star level of the Sift to get even 10% of the images posted to be more beneficial than harmful to conversations. Using other people's images to make your own point discourages thought, and our required level of commitment to at least verbalizing your arguments yourself is one of the key ingredients that makes this such a great community.

@eric3579 has mentioned several times that there's little advantage to it. If there aren't any advantages and there are obvious predictable disadvantages, then it's a bad idea. Can anybody give examples of embedded images in comments that would benefit the Sift to such a degree that they outweigh the obvious negatives?

As @dag has said, it'll mostly be imgr etc. memes. These images are usually meant to end conversations, not foster them, so once an image like that has been dropped into a thread, it's not likely anybody will continue talking on that thread (within the comment stream).

Allowing images would encourage people to do a quick drive-by chirp or just be funny rather than actually engage. If someone posts a meme answer, I can't very well quote the meme and ask them to elaborate, nor will I waste my time explaining how I disagree with it.

I've had lots of engaging conversations with people I disagree with on the Sift because we have to use words. If those people had used a meme instead as a shortcut to their own more precise idea, they wouldn't have been forced to articulate themselves, and I wouldn't have answered.

So, no, not at any level.

Taco Bell is about the most ready-to-switch to 3D printed food of any restaurant. I think they have 5 basic ingredients they would just squirt out onto different carrier mediums.

Stevia is too new to make any real determinations on. Currently, there is a lot of uncertainty. Just because something comes from a plant doesn't make it safer. Almonds used to be loaded with cyanide before we eliminated the trees that had those kinds of almonds. There have been recent studies questioning the safety of stevia, and this will likely be dealt with over the next decade. Unfortunately, certain countries have gotten around the necessary procedures for sufficient scientific inquiry because they are marketing it not as a food additive or sweetener but as a dietary supplement, which makes it easier to avoid such scrutiny. Unlike xylitol, which is perfectly fine for human consumption and has been shown to inhibit growth of oral bacteria that leads to caries and plaque, stevia is simply an unknown at this point.

However, stevia has also been around for a while. It has been a product since the 90s and has been banned and un-banned in numerous countries. European reports have shown that it is safe, but it is also still banned in many countries there.

For those of you think that it is "natural" and thus safer, I urge you to look up the naturalistic fallacy on wikipedia before going any further here. It has also been used as a sweetener by certain tribal peoples for centuries, so that means absolutely nothing as far as science goes, but it will still sway many people over, just like traditional herbal Chinese medicines like tiger penis powder and rhinoceros horn powder.

However, it is not a "natural" substance whatsoever, even though that word means nothing in nutrition anyways. Basically they take a small amount of Rebaudioside A from the stevia plant and use a bunch of alcohols and other chemicals to extract out the active sweetening ingredient and then crystallize it. This is then renamed steviol. It is significantly less sweet than most of the other sweeteners, except maybe saccarin, at only about 150x the sweetness of sugar.

Basically, Stevia is probably not bad for you, although the verdict is definitely not in on this one. It is no more "natural" than any of the other sweeteners. You need more of it to reach the same level of sweetness as your other sweeteners so dosage could be an issue. But you have to understand that each of the companies that makes these sweeteners has to find a way to sell their product. So, what do they do? They claim that their sweetener is "natural" and "safe" which implies that all of the other sweeteners that came before it aren't, and as evidence by my previous tirades, this is simply not the case. But they profit from our unwillingness to look at the data for ourselves and play on our natural tendencies to trust them.

In short, we are not certain about stevia yet, but we are certain that sugar is bad and aspartame is fine. However, you probably shouldn't eat any processed food, but we already know that in our bones. We all know that cooking up a delicious meal from simple ingredients is the best way to eat healthy but we don't do it because we are lazy. I am just as guilty of this as the next person. We can only dream of a future similar to "The Invention of Lying" where marketers aren't allowed to lie to us and can simply say that their food is bad for you but you drink it because it tastes good and because you have been for years. A world where they can't market to our children so we don't all grow up addicted to halloween candy or cereals that are more sugar than grains. The best way to do this is to cut your cable from the television and live on the internet with AdBlock installed. Then those fuckers can't get at you as easily.

Sure lucky760, I'll do Splenda, since some varieties of Coke Zero have Splenda in them.

First off it is important to note that the majority of the anti-sweetener "science" has been done by one man: Dr. Joseph Mercola. Now, watch out here, because his name is deceptive. You see, Mercola is an osteopathic physician. Osteopathy is a form of pseudoscience that believes that all pathology can be solved by manipulation of the bones and muscles. There is little science to back up these claims because they are clearly insane and worthy of ridicule. So, much like his doctorate, the claims he makes against sweeteners are pseudoscientific. A number of his beliefs are: that AIDS is not cause by HIV but by psychological stress; that immunizations and prescription drugs shouldn't be prescribed but people should instead buy his dietary supplements; that vaccinations are bad for you and your children (a belief which is the cause of recent outbreaks of whooping cough, measles and mumps); and that microwaves are dangerous machines that irradiate their products (they do, but not with the kind of radiation he is thinking of). Since he made a movie called Sweet Mistery: A Poisoned World, he has been at the forefront of anti-sweetener rhetoric. If you watch the movie, note how hilariously bad it is at actual science; the majority of the "evidence" is people claiming side effects after having ingested something with a sweetener in it (anecdotes are worth nothing in science except perhaps as a reason for researching further). So, you have a movement against something seen as "artificial" by a man who is not a doctor, not a scientist and is clearly lacking in the basics of logic.

Now, Splenda. Created by Johnson and Johnson and a British company in the seventies, it's primary sweetener ingredient is sucralose. The rest of it is dextrose, which as I have said above, is really just d-glucose and is safe for consumption in even very large quantities. So really, we are asking about sucralose. Sucralose is vastly sweeter than sucrose (usually around ~650 times) and thus only a very small amount is needed in whatever it is you are trying to sweeten. The current amount that is considered unsafe for intake (the starting point where adverse effects are felt) is around 1.5g/kg of body weight. So for the average male of 180lbs, they would need to ingest 130g of sucralose to feel any adverse effects. This is compared to the mg of sucralose that you will actually be getting every day. The estimated daily intake of someone who actually consumes sucralose is around 1.1mg/kg, which leaves a massive gap. Similarly to aspartame, if you tried to ingest that much sucralose, you would be incapable due to the overwhelming sweetness of the stuff.

There is some evidence that sucralose may affect people in high doses, but once again, this is similar to the issues with aspartame, where the likelihood of you getting those doses is extremely unlikely.

The chemistry of sucralose is actually way too complicated to go into, but suffice it to say that unlike aspartame, sucralose is not broken down in the body at all and is simply excreted through the kidney just like any other non-reactive agent. The reason that it tastes sweet is because it has the same shape as sucrose except that some of the hydroxy groups are replaced with chlorine atoms. This allows it to fit in the neurotransmitters in the tongue and mouth that send you the sensation of sweetness without also giving you all of those calories. Once it passes into the bloodstream it is dumped out by the kidneys without passing through the liver at all.

In sum, if sweeteners were bad for you, they wouldn't be allowed in your food. Science is not against you, it is the only thing working for everyone at the same time. The reason sugar has gotten around this is because we have always had it. If you want to be healthier, don't drink pop, drink water or milk (unless you are lactose intolerant, then just drink water). Don't drink coconut milk, or gatorade, or vitamin water. Assume that when a company comes out with something like "fat free" it really reads "now loaded with sugar so it doesn't taste like fucking cardboard." Assume that when a company says something is "natural" it is no more natural than the oils you put in your car. IF you want to live and eat healthy, stay on the outside of the supermarket, avoiding the aisles. All of the processed food is in the aisles, not on the outsides and the companies know that you don't want to miss anything. Make your food, don't let someone else do it. And never, ever buy popped popcorn, anywhere, the mark-up on that shit is insane.

You're right. It is about context. But this video distorts the context.

Manhattan has a population of almost 1.8 million people. If you don't live in a major metropolitan area, please try to wrap your head around that number first. That's not all of NYC, that's just Manhattan.

When the director of this video said "The biggest ingredients for this to happen is tons of people, passing by and mixing with tons of other people. Its a numbers game. Eventually you run into an asshole..." he wasn't joking.

Higher density population increases the chance of seeing or experiencing things that are unpleasant. If you sat on your porch in bumfuck whogivesashitville long enough, you will eventually see some unpleasant things. It just happens faster where there are more people. And the culture IS different in cities then it is in rural areas. People are more used to being constantly near each other and interacting.

I'm not excusing the behavior of some of the assholes in this video. What I am really saying is that, at worst this video is a bullshit grab for money. At best it's a failed attempt to help women or educate/change the culture to be less misogynistic.

"Did you actually watch the video?" Yes. Did you notice this was two minutes out of 10 hours?

Misogyny exists. Harassment exists. Abuse exists. Domestic violence exists. Rape exists. We should all work to end it. This video just muddies the water on all those issues in what I think is a clear money grab.

/cynical

"The biggest ingredients for this to happen is tons of people, passing by and mixing with tons of other people. Its a numbers game. Eventually you run into an asshole..."

Who said that? The guy who made this video.

edit: Link

Sugar cube = 4 grams

Another thing he kinda glossed over is this is ADDED sugar. Sugar that is only present to make a thing sweet. Not including the sugars present in the REAL ingredients of any of those items.

My wife had the same kind of symptoms. She was diagnosed with Celiac disease and irritable bowel by her GP. And I learned the hard way to double check that I get gluten free chow. A night with her alternating between throwing up and curling up in a ball on the bathroom floor means I read the ingredients label on everything... twice. Moral of the story I guess is go see a doctor.

Understanding why so much anecdotal evidence exists is certainly worthwhile! The following link cites many studies on double blind tests for MSG sensitivity.

http://www.businessinsider.com/msg-allergy-doesnt-exist-2013-8

Glutamatic acid (which is what MSG turns into after solubilizing in water, along with a sodium ion) is one of the 20 amino acids that is the basis for all proteins and life, since the beginning of life on earth. It is in relatively high concentration in every cell of your body. Consuming MSG would be akin to consuming 'protein' in your diet, and is commonly labeled as protein in food labeling: http://www.truthinlabeling.org/hiddensources.html

Consuming too much protein in your diet can cause problems, but you need to be eating it to a relatively obvious excess (a gallon of milk per day). Weightlifters who protein supplement far too much quickly experience heart problems.

The business insider link suggests that there are some people who could potentially be sensitive to Glutamate, and be activating the vagus nerve in the stomach...though it seems to be speculative in that article.

The idea that another ingredient is causing the problem is far more likely. Americanized chinese restaurants all taste the same, because all of their food comes from the same place. A group in China has monopolized the american chinese restaurant market, and provides food and resources at unbeatably low prices. To remain competitive, almost all american chinese restaurants invariably purchase from this group. Given China's track record of putting all kinds of crazy stuff in their produce, it seems entirely likely that some ingredient other than MSG is a much more likely culprit.

I know a couple of people in particular who have reacted extremely badly to chinese restaurants in america, and even went to the emergency room for it. Given the details of their story (a mystery glob of black sauce that they ate from the black sauce egg tray), I could only imagine what kind of horrible things they could have ingested other than MSG. 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' may indeed be a relatively accurate term for what people are experiencing.

Hmm, if i was to produce a confection from the best possible ingredients, i would very much like that the whole chain from start to finish know what they are aiming at. Meaning that if your first part of chain has no idea what comes out the other end, he can't know instinctively what traits are good in the raw material.

Fair enough, but you could just skip that step... I certainly don't ever plan to sieve eggs, but I thought the recipe looked pretty good or I wouldn't have posted it

Actually I thought it might be a good norimake ingredient instead of the usual Japanese style omelette, but obviously sliced lengthways not into rolls.