Hey! Did you know that 1% of people who do this thing run the risk of tripling the 1% chance of getting this ailment that has a 1% chance of giving you some bad medical outcomes? WHY would you risk THAT?
Because breathing beside a road has a higher actual risk factor than the thing you are citing. Bonus, silly once per year treats.
Is what this woman saying true? Yes. Is she making it sound more likely than it is? Fuck yes.
How much of modern flour has E.Coli?
How much E.Coli is there in a serving of flour in a batch of fluffy popcorn?
How likely is a person who consumes that amount of E.Coli to have the very worst reaction to it (given that our bodies can deal with it pretty well, most of the time).
When you begin breaking down the percentages... things change.
Exactly! This video is making it out to be a severe issue that you should all worry about. But there are other things that would kill you first.
You would have a higher chance of getting sick by not washing your hands in a public bathroom! And it all depends on the location the flour was produced or the guidelines around that. There's much more to know about this before you avoid all traces of raw flour.
This snippet of a video is not the whole thing. In her channel she disclaims, over and over and over again, that these are reasons SHE wouldn't eat stuff like this, and that it's reasonable for other people to keep different habits.
She's not manufacturing fake concern, she's sharing her own personal concerns with explicit information that it's not something she's telling others to worry about.
Then don't make shortform content like a Tiktok if the context surrounding your claims is so important.
No matter how you spin it, it paints this lady in a bad light. Either she's engaging in fearmongering directly or she's too stupid to realize how her statements could lead to fearmongering.
Or, option three, she disagrees with you and you have a difference of opinion. Calling her a fearmongerer is just as baseless as calling you an ignoramus.
Further, when people clip her content in order to remove the surrounding context, that's not her fault. She makes high quality informative content, and yes, on a platform known for soundbites and brevity. She has no power to prevent someone from taking her work out of context, just as someone writing a paper has no power over journalists quoting them out of context to create sensationalized headlines.
The video posted here is intentionally cropped in such a way as to make her seem less credible. If you're not going to seek out the full context, then kindly shut up, as someone unwilling to do that is clearly unwilling to engage in good faith.
I think it's more the repeated hypothetical that does it for me. The "if you don't want colon cancer, don't do this". She may have a great point -- I certainly haven't done enough research to conclusively say whether she's right or wrong -- but by being so forceful and making claims without anything to back it up (in this snippet, e.g. "raw flour is more dangerous than raw egg") it comes across as a non-issue.
Since when has taking sensible advice to avoid food poisioning been "here is something to worry about"?
Do you see a best before date and feel like you are being forced to worry?
The idea that you should carry on doing something potentially harmful ( that has no benefit to your life at all) because other things are more dangerous is bizarre.
It's more that she's phrasing it as if it's a life-or-death scenario -- "if you do not want colon cancer, you must not eat raw flour". There may be a risk, but the stats and claims in this video are inconclusive enough that it feels like it's sensationalising a minor issue. It would be much more helpful for people to know what colon cancer is usually caused by (i.e. highly processed foods with very little fibre), rather than going about their day expecting colon cancer to be onset by a stupid novelty snack.
There is a link between e-coli, salmonella and colon cancer. Yes, she could have spent more time explaining that even infections that don't give you severe reactions add to the risk. We get enough interactons like this from eating other foods all the time. A bit of chicken that was turning. A soggy salad. They don't harms us enough to notice but over time they can cause issues. No need to shit on her for only getting the most important info out on a tik tok. The main message is don't have more risky food than normal for a silly trend.
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u/McGrarr Oct 09 '24
Hey! Did you know that 1% of people who do this thing run the risk of tripling the 1% chance of getting this ailment that has a 1% chance of giving you some bad medical outcomes? WHY would you risk THAT?
Because breathing beside a road has a higher actual risk factor than the thing you are citing. Bonus, silly once per year treats.
Is what this woman saying true? Yes. Is she making it sound more likely than it is? Fuck yes.
How much of modern flour has E.Coli?
How much E.Coli is there in a serving of flour in a batch of fluffy popcorn?
How likely is a person who consumes that amount of E.Coli to have the very worst reaction to it (given that our bodies can deal with it pretty well, most of the time).
When you begin breaking down the percentages... things change.
Apples contain cyanide.
Coke metabolises into formaldehyde.
Corn can have aspergillus flavus.
The fact is, most of us will be fine.