public misconceptions

[Interactive Civilian]

The only thing I eat that is organic is honey but it is also my honey that I harvest so its damn near free.

Unless, other than honey, you pretty much only consume table salt, rocks, and water, I'm going to have to bet that this isn't the case.

_{or was that the misconception you wanted to point out?}

[Meteorswarm]

The only thing I eat that is organic is honey but it is also my honey that I harvest so its damn near free.

Unless, other than honey, you pretty much only consume table salt, rocks, and water, I'm going to have to bet that this isn't the case.

_{or was that the misconception you wanted to point out?}

And what's wrong with eating rocks?

Now excuse me, my gypsum casserole is done.

[Interactive Civilian]

The only thing I eat that is organic is honey but it is also my honey that I harvest so its damn near free.

Unless, other than honey, you pretty much only consume table salt, rocks, and water, I'm going to have to bet that this isn't the case.

_{or was that the misconception you wanted to point out?}

And what's wrong with eating rocks?

Now excuse me, my gypsum casserole is done.

mmmmmm... Gypsum Casserole

Heh.. This talk of organic food reminds me of a time I went with a friend to a temple here in Bangkok that is closely associated with "organic" farming and has shops and food stalls around selling only "organic" products. He sometimes takes the whole "organic" thing overboard and I sometimes give him crap about it. Anyway, we were there walking around for a bit, and he got thirsty, so he went from shop to shop looking for bottled water to buy. He couldn't find any, and eventually said something like, "What the hell?? Why doesn't anyone here sell water?"

I replied, "Because it isn't organic?"

He was not amused.

[Ingolifs]

I usually just say that chemistry requires a different kind of thinking. Not better or harder, nor worse or easier, just different. If they ask me to elaborate, I tell them I can't because psychology isn't my field. Then I ask them if they want to know something really cool about ester (they do not).

When i'm asked, I try to make analogies to things they would've experienced.

I describe the process of solving the structure of an organic compound akin to solving a crossword. A large, detailed crossword where the clues can be ambiguous and unreliable.

Much the same goes for all of organic chemistry. One attempts to perform reactions to generate a specific product, using highly generalised rules of thumb that describe what similar compounds might do under similar conditions. The chemist can't rely on these rules in the same way a physicist might rely on, say, the law of conservation of matter. Everything the chemist does he must take with a pinch of salt because of this. Analysis of results must be done in a logical manner, often forcing people to be both careful and highly systematic in their thinking. One also needs to be aware of all the variables at play and how they might affect a given operation. This extends not just to reaction conditions (reagent type, reagent purity, quantity and nature of solvent, heat, time, presence of water) but also to the post-reaction purification processes and how specific processes might affect certain things.

As a job, it's probably comparable to forensics or some such.

[Sabatini]

That science (here I mean "science" as far as it relates to (possible) experiment) makes statements about the way things are.

Observation determines how things behave, and so experimental science makes statements about how things behave. Some people object to quantum mechanics for reasons such as "it can't tell us what electrons are," not realizing that humans aren't capable of identifying what electrons are beyond establishing that they belong to equivalence sets of "things that behave this way." The equivalence might not be an "equivalence" in the intuitive sense, but it works for the purposes of science and is all that science can ascertain. Humans don't, as far as I can see, have a better practical definition of what something is than how it behaves, i.e. what its observable properties are: our best identification is characterization. More ontological statements are the subject of philosophy.

[Meteorswarm]

Heh.. This talk of organic food reminds me of a time I went with a friend to a temple here in Bangkok that is closely associated with "organic" farming and has shops and food stalls around selling only "organic" products. He sometimes takes the whole "organic" thing overboard and I sometimes give him crap about it. Anyway, we were there walking around for a bit, and he got thirsty, so he went from shop to shop looking for bottled water to buy. He couldn't find any, and eventually said something like, "What the hell?? Why doesn't anyone here sell water?"

I replied, "Because it isn't organic?"

He was not amused.

Seriously, though, why do you guys all get so upset about a word gaining a new meaning? "Organic" food is obviously not the same meaning as "organic chemistry," and pretending it is so you can get all smug when they're used differently by people using "organic food" entirely correctly is just being a jerk. It's not a misconception, it's just a word gaining a new meaning, one that's been accepted for more than 70 years.

[lulzfish]

Heh.. This talk of organic food reminds me of a time I went with a friend to a temple here in Bangkok that is closely associated with "organic" farming and has shops and food stalls around selling only "organic" products. He sometimes takes the whole "organic" thing overboard and I sometimes give him crap about it. Anyway, we were there walking around for a bit, and he got thirsty, so he went from shop to shop looking for bottled water to buy. He couldn't find any, and eventually said something like, "What the hell?? Why doesn't anyone here sell water?"

I replied, "Because it isn't organic?"

He was not amused.

Seriously, though, why do you guys all get so upset about a word gaining a new meaning? "Organic" food is obviously not the same meaning as "organic chemistry," and pretending it is so you can get all smug when they're used differently by people using "organic food" entirely correctly is just being a jerk. It's not a misconception, it's just a word gaining a new meaning, one that's been accepted for more than 70 years.

I thought he was making a joke about how you can't organically farm water. Or can you?

[gmalivuk]

Besides, it was the other direction that "organic" changed first. They're organic molecules because they're so common in organisms, and were thought originally only to come from living things.

[Velifer]

The only problem I have with "organic" food is that the standards (where they exist) are part pseudo-science, and they wrap what is almost exclusively a marketing practice in a false veil of scientific blessing. This pushes scientific literacy backwards. Of course, I could say this about any emotional policy decision.

So yeah! I hate public misconceptions that the winning side in a policy debate must have been supported by the better science.

[Meteorswarm]

The only problem I have with "organic" food is that the standards (where they exist) are part pseudo-science, and they wrap what is almost exclusively a marketing practice in a false veil of scientific blessing. This pushes scientific literacy backwards. Of course, I could say this about any emotional policy decision.

So yeah! I hate public misconceptions that the winning side in a policy debate must have been supported by the better science.

I don't think your argument is as one-sided as you make it sound: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food#Environmental_impact, but I'm not going to argue this further in this thread since it's off topic.

[Cithoge]

One misconception that really bothers me (and it's not even in my field!) is:
"Any and all radiation is really dangerous, and being exposed to it will turn you into a cockroach"

[gmalivuk]

You mean like, "but that's microwave radiation you're using to heat your food! You'll get cancer for sure!"?

Yeah, and you use infrared radiation, which is higher energy than microwaves, when you cook in an oven. And when you take it out of the oven, you're exposing it to even higher energy *visible* radiation. Why, compared to microwaves, that's practically hard gamma rays!

[Roĝer]

Don't forget the cancer you can get from even-lower-energy mobile phone radiation!

[Rackum]

One misconception that really bothers me (and it's not even in my field!) is:
"Any and all radiation is really dangerous, and being exposed to it will turn you into a cockroach"

This is the one that I have to deal with the most as an RSO. You even mention the word radiation around someone, even if you're referring to a form of non-ionizing radiation and people start to freak out. It's gotten to the point where if it's not a form of ionizing radiation I generally won't call it radiation - stick to terms like RF, infrared, UV, etc instead. Of course, if you are performing an ionizing radiation survey and you pick up ANY reading people think they're going to spontaneously genetically mutate ... even though the reading is in uRem (basically background reading).

[Talith]

"Why bother with imaginary numbers? They're just made up right?" Admittedly this doesn't crop up too often because you don't normally get introduced to complex numbers unless you're in education but certainly some of class mates found it hard to grasp what they were useful for when first introduced.

[Velifer]

...people think they're going to spontaneously genetically mutate...

Well, finally they're getting something right.

[mercutio_stencil]

Try working in Food Science. At least with Chemistry or Physics, it sounds academic and unapproachable. That affords you a bit of respect, Food Science on the other hand....

Everyone eats, so everyone thinks they understand food. The number of times I have to sit and grit my teeth through people personal theories about how wheat, or soy, or tumeric or whatever is the cause of all their problems. It's enough to make me crazy.

And for what it's worth, the lab down the hall from me actually did the first 'conventional vs. organic' test. The results: Organic foods had higher nutrient levels. Of course, the part that didn't make the evening news was that it was only detectable in the lab grown food. When they repeated the test with supermarket produce, they found no significant difference.

[Cobramaster]

Tell them you are a chemist and you do a lot of work with food. No lying in that statement since cooking is a less likely to blow up or kill you if you mix something wrong form of chemistry.

[SWGlassPit]

There are only a couple of things I buy organic, and I don't do so because they're organic. I tend to buy organic milk, as the organic milk available to me has a shelf life almost double that of the non-organic milk, and since I like milk but don't drink all that quickly, this keeps me from losing half of every gallon I buy to spoilage. Also, the organic milk I buy just tastes better than the non-organic milk, but my theory for this is simply that the milk is fresher than the non-organic milk available to me.

I also prefer to buy locally-sourced honey, but that's because I tend to get hayfever in the spring/summer, and eating the local honey tends to help with that. (Backed up by clinical science or not, it seems to have worked for me, and I prefer the taste anyway)

The only other time I'll buy organic food, especially produce, is if it looks or tastes better or, due to market forces, is cheaper than the non-organic alternative.

[gmalivuk]

this keeps me from losing half of every gallon I buy to spoilage.

They do sell it in half-gallons, you know...

my theory for this is simply that the milk is fresher than the non-organic milk available to me.

I don't doubt that the taste is different, but I do doubt that this is why, because if it lasts twice as long then at least for the second half of that it's definitely not actually fresher.

[Technical Ben]

I think that it "could" under certain circumstances. But I don't know the shelf life of milk. If we say up to 3 weeks. Brand A takes 2 weeks to be milked, stored and shipped (perhaps they do it slowly to save money, or store in bulk) and lasts for one week. Brand O would be fresher if it was milked and put on the shelf in a day or two, and lasts 2 weeks. I know some fruit can be up to 12 months old by the time it hits the supermarkets. Not sure about milk though, as UHT lasts a long time.

I could not find any time-scales on the internet, but I found somewhere I can Moooogle for the answer.

[Roĝer]

Milk that lasts two weeks? In the Netherlands fresh milk usually has an expiry date a week after sale, and it certainly does not have to travel further here. How is your milk treated?

[oxoiron]

Milk that lasts two weeks? In the Netherlands fresh milk usually has an expiry date a week after sale, and it certainly does not have to travel further here. How is your milk treated?

Pasteurization, you may have heard of it.

EDIT: That wasn't intended to be insulting, but upon rereading it, I can see how it might be interpreted that way. I was just giving you shit. Carry on.

[eSOANEM]

Milk that lasts two weeks? In the Netherlands fresh milk usually has an expiry date a week after sale, and it certainly does not have to travel further here. How is your milk treated?

Pasteurization, you may have heard of it.

Here in the UK our use by dates (on normal supermarket milk) are at best five days after sale and it's all pasteurised.

[oxoiron]

Maybe if you spell it with a 'z', the milk lasts longer.

[gmalivuk]

How about homogenization? Is that not done as much in the UK, possibly affecting use-by dates not because it'll go bad but because separated milk is deemed less appetizing?

[achan1058]

When it comes down to it, a PhD is much more hard work than intelligence. In chemistry at least, the limiting rate of progress is the time it takes to perform reactions, purify them, etc.

I suppose someone doing a PhD in mathematics would probably have to be a fair bit smarter than the average though.

The limiting rate here is drawing examples, running computer programs and staring at data, etc. It isn't much better unless you are really, really smart.

This is the one that I have to deal with the most as an RSO. You even mention the word radiation around someone, even if you're referring to a form of non-ionizing radiation and people start to freak out. It's gotten to the point where if it's not a form of ionizing radiation I generally won't call it radiation - stick to terms like RF, infrared, UV, etc instead. Of course, if you are performing an ionizing radiation survey and you pick up ANY reading people think they're going to spontaneously genetically mutate ... even though the reading is in uRem (basically background reading).

I thought radiation can be spontaneous, radiation or not.

[evilbeanfiend]

How about homogenization? Is that not done as much in the UK, possibly affecting use-by dates not because it'll go bad but because separated milk is deemed less appetizing?

its almost impossible to buy non-homogonised (hetrogonised? ) milk here. its also pasteurised

[Zalzidrax]

I found the answer why organic milk tends to have a longer shelf life than the non-organic kind:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-organic-milk-lasts-longer

Probably somewhat applies to the Europe vs. America bit too.

[Mr_Rose]

Yeah, you can get dusty cardboard cartons of UHT milk in any supermarket in the UK, usually from the other side of the shop to the fridges though - next to the boxed fruit juices, and they have an average shelf life of forever, though not as long as Coca-Cola. Pasteurised is sold from he refrigerated section and has been known to go south inside the sell-by-date.

What we need is a way of completely sterilising the milk without cooking it or otherwise altering he flavour. Anyone know what hard x-rays do to milk proteins?

[Meteorswarm]

Yeah, you can get dusty cardboard cartons of UHT milk in any supermarket in the UK, usually from the other side of the shop to the fridges though - next to the boxed fruit juices, and they have an average shelf life of forever, though not as long as Coca-Cola. Pasteurised is sold from he refrigerated section and has been known to go south inside the sell-by-date.

What we need is a way of completely sterilising the milk without cooking it or otherwise altering he flavour. Anyone know what hard x-rays do to milk proteins?

Well, it'd be not organic, since most standards don't allow for irradiation. Would probably be totally edible, though, and I'd bet rather unchanged except for minced DNA.

[gmalivuk]

Yeah, but if organic ends up meaning "can't be processed in any way that reduces the chance I'll get an infection from it (except heat because infrared radiation is totally cool on account of having been invented long enough ago to be more 'natural')", then fuck it.

[Meteorswarm]

Yeah, but if organic ends up meaning "can't be processed in any way that reduces the chance I'll get an infection from it (except heat because infrared radiation is totally cool on account of having been invented long enough ago to be more 'natural')", then fuck it.

Yeah, I do think they need to get a bit more sensible with those standards. It's not like irradiated stuff (with x-rays at least, it's not like we're using a-rays or something) is going to hurt you, unless I'm wrong. Especially since I like organic food for the better farming practices it tends to encourage (with caveats that I'm aware of), and I know that SCIENCE can be useful, it'd be nice to have a real "organic" standard that I care about and a "Luddite Certified" standard for those pining for days before the invention of the rock.

Er, it's an annoying misconception that irradiated food is bad for you.

Or something on topic.

EDIT: It's worth noting, though, that less-preserved food can often be worse for you because it lets the food handlers get sloppier. Stuff sits in warehouses longer because it can, is dropped on floors, etc., and you can wind up losing a lot of the things that whatever preservation method you choose doesn't protect. For example, anti-spoilage treated fruit still loses vitamins and the like as it goes past when it would have spoiled, but since the grocer can keep it in storage longer, you're more likely to get the diminished product than a really nice, fresh one. "Luddite" standards help prevent that by forcing food to be fresh, since it would have spoiled without the help of science.

[Posi]

Milk that lasts two weeks? In the Netherlands fresh milk usually has an expiry date a week after sale, and it certainly does not have to travel further here. How is your milk treated?

Pasteurization, you may have heard of it.

Here in the UK our use by dates (on normal supermarket milk) are at best five days after sale and it's all pasteurised.

Canada. A product sold on its expiration date should be consumable by a typical family without spoilage. People still act as if it magically knows to go bad on the date that it expires.

Also, I eat organic peanut butter. It simply has a much nicer ingredients list: peanuts. It taste about a million times better than non-organic peanut butter (you can actually taste the peanut over the sugar!).

[Velifer]

Also, I eat organic peanut butter. It simply has a much nicer ingredients list: peanuts. It taste about a million times better than non-organic peanut butter (you can actually taste the peanut over the sugar!).

Ooh! Can I add that to the list of annoying public misconceptions? That an "organic" sticker has some bearing on the ingredients list! Agricultural Marketing Service National Organic Program "Organic" = multiple ingredient food which is 95-100% organically produced content.

[gmalivuk]

"Luddite" standards help prevent that by forcing food to be fresh, since it would have spoiled without the help of science.

Except, luddite ideas often also include things like buying "fresh" food is better than buying frozen food, nutritionally. Even though freezing vegetables very soon after picking them means most of the nutrients remain right up until you prepare it for dinner, whereas leaving it sit in transit and in the store for even a few days means many of the useful chemicals we want have broken down by the time it makes it into your dinner preparations.

A product sold on its expiration date should be consumable by a typical family without spoilage.

Here, at least (USA), some things have a sell-by date and others have a use-by date. I think the former is most useful for supermarkets to know when they have to take something down, but the latter is much better for shoppers who have a good idea of how long it's likely to take them to finish something off.

[mercutio_stencil]

the real problem with milk is it goes bad in a dozen ways at once. Not only is it the perfect growth medium for micro-organisms, but it's swarming with it's own enzymes that can degrade quality, not to mention good old fashioned chemical oxidation of lipids. To make a really shelf stable milk, it would have to have all the bacteria removed (radiation could do that), the enzymes degraded (don't know how to do this one) and packaged in an o2 free environment.

and all without changing the flavour profile. Anyone up to the challenge?

[gmalivuk]

the enzymes degraded

In addition to almost certainly changing the flavor, wouldn't this also take out a fair amount of the nutritional value dairy products are supposed to have in the first place?

[mercutio_stencil]

well, it depends just how clever you are. There are ways to denature enzymes without loosing nutrient value. Think SDS, only less toxic.

As far as organic, it doesn't bug me so long as you treat it like a legal definition because that is all it is. It makes no health claims, no environmental claims, it just meets the legal requirements.

What really irks me is people who denigrate high fructose corn syrup, and advocate replacing it with a 'natural sweetener' like honey. Do they not realize the two are 95% identical? That doesn't mean they're both healthy, but in moderation, neither will cause issue.

[Whelan]

A product sold on its expiration date should be consumable by a typical family without spoilage.

Here, at least (USA), some things have a sell-by date and others have a use-by date. I think the former is most useful for supermarkets to know when they have to take something down, but the latter is much better for shoppers who have a good idea of how long it's likely to take them to finish something off.

As far as I know we have three in the UK, Best before dates; whichare aguidline as to when they should be eaten, Sell by dates which are when the shop should have sold them by, and Use by which is the hard limit. You usually only find one of them on any given product though.