(and why conservatives hate public schools, ofc)
When the Scandinavian countries were struggling in 18/19th century, they used to put tree bark in their bread due to not having access to enough proper ingredients. Feels similar to putting sawdust in food.
Adulterating consumable foods has been a thing for a really long time. From tea having poisonous weeds mixed in the 1600s to milk having chalk or other toxic stuff in it. Commercial interests put profit first and “cut” the product to extend profitability.
Good thing they’re cutting oversight like the FDA in the US. That’ll work out great.
This reminds me of a story my dad told me. His school went on a field trip to an ice cream factory and he was, of course, expecting this to be the best day of his life. What he discovered, though, left him mortified. They were taking poor-selling flavours and running them back through the machine to change them to something better. If you buy some store brand chocolate and it has undertones of mocha, now you know why. I think of this now whenever I see a product that “may contain peanuts”. Like they’re not sure.
I don’t know how that’s possible with shelf life considerations, but I guess it could happen? Usually the rules are it has to be thrown out.
They aren’t taking them back from the retail stores.
They are taking them out from a production run, from storage facilities.
ah, no idea what workarounds are available to that situation. Guess if it’s only been packaged and never shipped it might be ok? Not desirable, but not unsafe.
Rules are only for when you’re caught and have to pay for ‘operating’ costs.
Corporations would sell you a bag of dirt and gravel from the lot outside and call it granola if they could get away with it.
We literally had to outlaw slavery. That should tell you everything you need to know about supposed self-regulation.
Well, we didn’t really outlaw it. We made it only legal under certain conditions.
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” - emphasis mine
Your point still stands though
Elon Musk’s original pitch for the underground hyperloop system / boring company included the claim that the dug out dirt would be repurposed as super building bricks, and that this would keep the projects at or under budget.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/almost-7-years-ago-elon-145526694.html?guccounter=1
He literally did this, sold reformed, shitty dirt and called it a miraculous building material.
They kind of already do that. Not sawdust but just take a look at the list of ingredients in most of the food you buy. A lot of those ingredients are banned in most countries and pose health hazards for consumers, yet we still use them. We need not only tougher regulations, but to also properly fund the FDA so they can inspect properly. Of course companies lobby heavily against that, and with our current administration, there is a bigger chance they kill of the FDA than that happening.
William Osman did this experiment a few years ago. (YouTube link)
Most entertaining 12 minutes of my life i will never get back.
You’re welcome!
He shows this exact picture in the video as his inspiration
This video will forever be a certified classic in my mind.
Talking to a Libertarian is like talking to a child.
Every self-proclaimed libertarian I ever met gave me a different reason why they’re a “libertarian”, bashed fake libertarians, say they’re the only TRUE libertarian, then voted Republican.
Yeah, they’re Republicans with even more brain damage and not a single one understands how societies work.
I remember thinking I was a libertarian for a few years after I realized the conservative world I was raised in was nuts.
What I had essentially done, though, was shed the bigotry first because I cared about people, while keeping the conservative/capitalist economic mindset because accumulation of assets and efficient use of capital are just what good human beings strive for in that world. I’m a Libertarian! I am pure and very intelligent!
But then that pesky thing about respecting the lives of other people never left my head. And my eyes and ears kept working while the last couple decades happened. And I unfortunately value annoyances like high quality evidence, demonstrated expertise, and the scientific method.
It didn’t take long to connect the dots that the policies that are best for short-term capital and those that are best for sentient human beings (never mind all other life) may not always align, and that choosing the former over the latter is kinda… what’s the word… evil.
Libertarian: I can’t hear you with so much money I have!
Libertarians are only in tiny minority of US population, and most of them are earning roughly $100,000 a year. Of course they will support absolute laissez faire society.
Is that why they’re all into children?
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Schools still assign Upton Sinclair? I can tell you for certain that mine did not, likely because they were busy suppressing any mentions of socialism.
Hey why do they call it an “ecomomics” class anyway, shouldn’t they just call it capitalism if that’s the only thing they teach?
at my high school they made us read fucking ayn rand
Jesus
We were required to read Ayn Rand.
yeah it’s wild how many schools skip over Sinclair! The Jungle literally led to the creation of the FDA because people were horrified by the meat industry. Schools that only teach “economics” without covering labor history are missing half the story. My high school tried that too - all Adam Smith, no context about why regulations exist in the frist place.
I heard his wife was Meta.
I’ve seen a youtube video about that, and from what I remember it’s was detectable as soon as it went over 10% or so. Although a corporation could easily get it over 10% without issue if they used the right particle size, mixing technique and treatement of the sawdust.
It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if some cheap seasoning is partially sawdust or similar.
e.g., cellulose, added to kraft parmesan as an “anti-caking agent.”
It’s crazy to me that they try to sell that shit as anti-caking because any time I’ve ever tried to use that garbage it’s always caked anyway.
I love how they insist it’s not sawdust - since they don’t literally use the byproduct of lumber milling, like the shit they sweep up from the floor. But it’s still wood turned into a powder, which the term “sawdust” is perfectly valid for.
There’s a bag of “bacon flavored bits” at Walmart that’s just sawdust seasoned to taste like bacon.
Now to be fair, freeze dried bacon bits in general tastes worse than animal feed. So if you ground it up and covered it in the anti-clumping agents, it is basically sawdust without containing any wood.
Check out what cheap pepper is made of some time.
Is it vegan?
10% is massive too
It’s fine, just list it as “cellulose” on the ingredients list.
(It’s not technically sawdust anymore after processing, but it’s still gross even though it’s food-safe.)
It’s free fiber!
I mean, it’s not free, but yes, edible sawdust would be good for the health of most people in the western world. Though they tend to get cellulose from cheaper sources like straw or chaff.
Well they sure aren’t eating vegetables so might as well shove some sawdust replacement down their throats.
I think I remember someone on reddit actually doing this and the result was waaaaaaaay more than you think.
Libertarian sub reddits don’t self regulate
I thought it was pretty obvious after like 10%?
10% sawdust before people notice sounds pretty fucking high to me :/
The video someone posted earlier shows that 15% is still not entirely noticeable. 33% people could tell something was off but they weren’t bad enough to stop eating.
So it’s somewhere between 15-33% and it seemed to be leaning closer to 33
Not waaaaay more than you’d think though, is my point
Way more than I’D think.
But not “way more than you would think” where “you” includes readers such as /u/agmemnonymous and myself.
IMO you should be able to guess >5% just from the OP image. The OP implies that corporations actually used sawdust as a substitute, which implies it was a profitable substitution, which implies it was worth it to set up an entire supply chain for bagging sawdust in sawmills, outbidding other parties interested in industrial quantities of sawdust (such as paper mills), shipping it to cereal factories, mixing sawdust into the mix, and trying out ways to make it homogeneous, not to mention the risk of customers noticing and switching to alternatives with less sawdust.
That said, nobody uses sawdust anymore because it’s too expensive. Hay, straw, and chaff are much more common sources of cellulose, also known as dietary fiber. Most people in the western world would be healthier if they ate more sawdust (assuming it has been produced in a way that didn’t introduce toxic pollutants).
I sort of picture this when I see bread or tortillas marketed as high fibre even when they contain no whole grains.
Tortillas made from 100% recyclable, free-range, gluten-free, non-GMO, hand-raised sawdust that complies with the Geneva Conventions.
Apparently a lot of artificial flavors are used to mask the taste of industrial metals and chemicals. So, yeah…
Back in my day, we just discussed what wrote in The Jungle. They didn’t have us read it.
Probably because of all the socialism.
I didn’t learn until well into adulthood that food safety wasn’t actually the message Upton Sinclair was trying to get across.
Nor I. I learned about it in school but I didn’t read it until my honeymoon. I loved it, of course.
I’m losing my mind picturing someone bringing the worst beach read I can imagine to couple’s massages and reading it before bed.
This was early 2000s.
so the Cold War was over, is what you’re saying
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