That is why I included these qualifiers. Things such as alcohol and relatively sedentary lifestyles are either common enough to be well-studied, or pervasive enough to be unavoidable.
There are some risks that come with our environment that we do not evaluate in the same way as we evaluate the choice to start a new medication, because the costs of disentangling ourselves from these incredibly common things are higher (in what I estimate to be a typical human utility function with normal time-discounting; your results may vary) than the opportunity costs of declining to try a new supplement.
Further, there is a sort of natural experimentation occurring with these substances which a large number of people consume; if there are substantial negative side effects to them, odds are good that they will become obvious in others before they become a problem for some given person. We reassure ourselves that, since this has not happened, we have some fairly decent evidence that these popular substances are not terrible. New, rare, and unpopular drugs do not have this “natural experiment” advantage.
You’re basically making an argument against anything “new, rare, and unpopular”, but that argument applies equally well to drugs, food, and lifestyle.
Remember the original issue? “Drugs are risky”, but what is a drug? If I decide that ketosis is great and convert my diet to 80% saturated fat, is that less risky than starting to take a baby aspirin per day just because the first is “food” and the second one is a “drug”?
If I decide to take doses of naringin that’s dangerous because naringin is a drug, right? But if I eat a lot of grapefruits to get an equivalent dose, that’s OK because grapefruits are food?
I wouldn’t argue against taking an asprin a a day any more than I would argue against converting your diet to 80% saturated fats; both asprin and saturated fats are commonly ingested substances.
If you decide to take a supplement which is found in natural foods, I would not assign that any more risk than eating the equivalent amount of food. Either way, the issue would seem to be in the dosage, provided that the food has been proven safe. If it takes 100 grapefruits to equal a single dose of naringin, however, I would be worried—because you are consuming it in excess of what would ordinarily be expected.
The reason I am less worried about things such as dietary changes is that individuals experience dietary variation fairly frequently, and even from personal experience we know that we have mechanisms which alert us when our diet is lacking (sometimes). However, I do not believe that they are without risk, or that one should simply try out an extreme dietary change without prior research.
It is substances which have been relatively untested, but are in fact designed to subvert our body’s mechanisms, which I have reason to worry about. Not to disavow, but to worry about, and to examine more intensely than substances which are probably, as a class, less harmful.
I wouldn’t argue against taking an asprin a a day any more than I would argue against converting your diet to 80% saturated fats; both asprin and saturated fats are commonly ingested substances.
I think you should worry about a diet consisting of 80% fat, however, you should worry about it on different grounds to worrying about untested substances.
That is why I included these qualifiers. Things such as alcohol and relatively sedentary lifestyles are either common enough to be well-studied, or pervasive enough to be unavoidable.
There are some risks that come with our environment that we do not evaluate in the same way as we evaluate the choice to start a new medication, because the costs of disentangling ourselves from these incredibly common things are higher (in what I estimate to be a typical human utility function with normal time-discounting; your results may vary) than the opportunity costs of declining to try a new supplement.
Further, there is a sort of natural experimentation occurring with these substances which a large number of people consume; if there are substantial negative side effects to them, odds are good that they will become obvious in others before they become a problem for some given person. We reassure ourselves that, since this has not happened, we have some fairly decent evidence that these popular substances are not terrible. New, rare, and unpopular drugs do not have this “natural experiment” advantage.
You’re basically making an argument against anything “new, rare, and unpopular”, but that argument applies equally well to drugs, food, and lifestyle.
Remember the original issue? “Drugs are risky”, but what is a drug? If I decide that ketosis is great and convert my diet to 80% saturated fat, is that less risky than starting to take a baby aspirin per day just because the first is “food” and the second one is a “drug”?
If I decide to take doses of naringin that’s dangerous because naringin is a drug, right? But if I eat a lot of grapefruits to get an equivalent dose, that’s OK because grapefruits are food?
I wouldn’t argue against taking an asprin a a day any more than I would argue against converting your diet to 80% saturated fats; both asprin and saturated fats are commonly ingested substances.
If you decide to take a supplement which is found in natural foods, I would not assign that any more risk than eating the equivalent amount of food. Either way, the issue would seem to be in the dosage, provided that the food has been proven safe. If it takes 100 grapefruits to equal a single dose of naringin, however, I would be worried—because you are consuming it in excess of what would ordinarily be expected.
The reason I am less worried about things such as dietary changes is that individuals experience dietary variation fairly frequently, and even from personal experience we know that we have mechanisms which alert us when our diet is lacking (sometimes). However, I do not believe that they are without risk, or that one should simply try out an extreme dietary change without prior research.
It is substances which have been relatively untested, but are in fact designed to subvert our body’s mechanisms, which I have reason to worry about. Not to disavow, but to worry about, and to examine more intensely than substances which are probably, as a class, less harmful.
I think you should worry about a diet consisting of 80% fat, however, you should worry about it on different grounds to worrying about untested substances.
Why?
Fair. I neglected to include 80% fat as having a standing similar to 100 grapefruits’ worth of naringin.