The Vegetable Detective

http://craftsmanship.net/the-vegetable-detective/

by joahua • 11 years ago

60 24 11 years ago

Gys• 11 years ago

'A molecular biologist is finding what could be dangerous levels of heavy metals in plants like kale, often called the “queen” of the vegetable kingdom. And they’ve shown up the most in organic varieties.'

Seems as if there is no food ingredient that is really safe, always ? Something that can be trusted to be healthy whatever.

gweinberg• 11 years ago

Why would there be? Plants weren't put here for our benefit any more than animals were. It would be an astonishing coincidence if the optimal diet consisted of any one thing. Unless it was maybe breast milk.

DennisP• 11 years ago

Although the problem here isn't the plants themselves, it's heavy metal pollution.

theseatoms• 11 years ago

Is there good information available regarding soil nutrient density for the plants that we eat? I've seen surprisingly little discussion of this topic in the healthy eating community, which I assume is due to lack of data.

My layman's understanding is that the nutrient density of the soil is equally (if not more) important to the "healthiness" of vegetables than the particular species of plant itself. It's almost common sense, on some level.

shanusmagnus• 11 years ago

I'm kind of alarmed at how not-alarming people are finding this. The idea that eating the foods we most need to eat for health will result in heavy metal poisoning via a vector about which there is no regulatory control or even awareness is a pretty big deal.

jqm• 11 years ago

This is definitely something that deserves more attention. The long term effects of trace amounts of heavy metals is something very alarming indeed.

dllthomas4• 11 years ago

I hope someone more serious is looking into it (or has already done so) but my alarm is checked by the crack-pot flags this guy's raised for me. Most obviously that he tries to demonstrate P(A|B) by testing P(B|A) - if you don't understand basic statistics, your conclusions are suspect.

dllthomas4• 11 years ago

"To test this link, Hubbard started playing a little game. Whenever the clinic would send him someone with the kind of chronic problems associated with thallium, or any other complaints that were hard to pin down, Hubbard would scribble kale on a little note-card and turn it face-down on his desk. After a short work-up, he’d ask the patient to list his or her favorite vegetables. Over and over, people would mention the crucifers, especially kale. Hubbard would nod, say he expected as much, then show them the note-card on his desk to prove it."

Compelling.

What are the odds things would turn out any different with the rest of the population of Marin?

branchless• 11 years ago

I often wonder what water high water-content fruits like strawberries have been subjected to. An interesting article but I don't think I'll knock broccoli on the head just yet.

shanev• 11 years ago

Every food pretty much follows a Gaussian curve in terms of benefit. There's an ideal amount, with too little being bad, and too much being bad. All plants have some form of natural toxin as a defense against being eaten. Even broccoli has oxalic acid which can lead to kidney stones in high amounts. Cooking helps mitigate these, as well as sourcing from an organic farm or your back yard. But it's always safer to eat a variety of vegetables, so you distribute whatever toxins each one has, natural or man-made, and get varied nutrients. There's no silver bullet.

dllthomas4• 11 years ago

"sourcing from an organic farm or your back yard"

Sourcing from your back yard (and to a lesser degree, a single farm; and to a still lesser degree a single geographic region) means you're not eating veggies grown in a variety of soil compositions, even if you are eating a variety of plant species.

The most extreme way this can fail (that's common enough to note) is if the soil in your back yard is high in lead.

gohrt• 11 years ago

I realize that most readers are innumerate, but this sort of bombshell reporting really calls for numbers and a proper statistical analysis.

dllthomas4• 11 years ago

It's not just the readers that are innumerate, unfortunately.

ekux44• 11 years ago

Snopes argues this article should be disregarded for lacking rigorous data. http://m.snopes.com/kale-not-safe/

bwblabs• 11 years ago

I stopped reading after this sentence:

"One kale sample reported thallium at 1.14 ppm, nickel at 20 ppm, and aluminum at 120 ppm. (As has been widely reported, aluminum is often suspected as a cause of both autism and Alzheimer’s disease.)"

It's pretty controversial claim that aluminum is related to Alzheimer's disease http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/guide/controversial-claims-r...

randomdestructn• 11 years ago

Not sure why you're being downvoted for this comment. That was one of the red flags for me as well.

"Often suspected" is a deliberately misleading and alarmist way to present the current scientific data on the relationship between aluminium and Alzheimer's disease.

The Vegetable Detective

Related Stories