I agree this seems pretty good to do, but I think it’ll be tough to rule out all possible contaminant theories with this approach:
Some kinds of contaminants will be really tough to handle, eg if the issue is trace amounts of radioactive isotopes that were at much lower levels before atmospheric nuclear testing.
It’s possible that there are contaminant-adjacent effects arising from preparation or growing methods that aren’t related to the purity of the inputs, eg “tomato plants in contact with metal stakes react by expressing obesogenic compounds in their fruits, and 100 years ago everyone used wooden stakes so this didn’t happen”
If 50% of people will develop a propensity for obesity by consuming more than trace amounts of contaminant X, and everyone living life in modern society has some X on their hands and in their kitchen cabinets and so on, the food alone being ultra-pure might not be enough.
Still seems like it’d provide a 5:1 update against contaminant theories if this experiment didn’t affect obesity rates though.
I agree this seems pretty good to do, but I think it’ll be tough to rule out all possible contaminant theories with this approach:
Some kinds of contaminants will be really tough to handle, eg if the issue is trace amounts of radioactive isotopes that were at much lower levels before atmospheric nuclear testing.
It’s possible that there are contaminant-adjacent effects arising from preparation or growing methods that aren’t related to the purity of the inputs, eg “tomato plants in contact with metal stakes react by expressing obesogenic compounds in their fruits, and 100 years ago everyone used wooden stakes so this didn’t happen”
If 50% of people will develop a propensity for obesity by consuming more than trace amounts of contaminant X, and everyone living life in modern society has some X on their hands and in their kitchen cabinets and so on, the food alone being ultra-pure might not be enough.
Still seems like it’d provide a 5:1 update against contaminant theories if this experiment didn’t affect obesity rates though.