(no subject)

[alexseanchai]

Can someone define "chemicals" for me? In the sense of the word that's contrasted to "natural" and "organic", the sense referenced when saying "don't eat anything containing something you can't pronounce", the sense that's being criticized when observing that apples contain unpronounceables such as tyrosine and dihydrogen monoxide.

Comments

[melannen]

"Chemicals" as generally used in that sense has no meaning whatsoever except "this is bad because we say so" - it gets used for a huge variety of things, many of which are the exact same molecules that are found in fresh fruits and vegetables.

I think they're going for something more like what I would call "synthetic" or "processed" - "this is a thing the production of which involved large amounts of complex human intervention, usually involving non-biologically-mediated chemical reactions, after it was extracted from an animal, vegetable, or mineral source."

But in actual practice it mean "whatever we feel like scaring people about today."