driven, again. Nutrition, 100 years ago.

[darkoshi]

I have this problem where I often spend too much time on certain activities, or researching certain subjects. More time than I had wanted, intended or planned for. Often, I hadn't planned to do the activity at all.

When this happens, I feel driven to continue the activity until completion, or until some point at which I am satisfied enough to stop. Usually, a part of me remembers that I had other plans, and am using up too much of my spare time for no good reason, and wants me to stop. But that's usually a small voice in the background of my mind, and not enough to actually make me stop.

.

Like this evening... I have a few boxes of old stale peanut butter crackers which I should either eat up or discard. They don't taste that great, so I haven't been eating them much. But I hate to waste "good" food. So I wonder, is it bad from a health standpoint, to eat stale peanut butter? If it is, that would be enough to convince me to throw them away.

I did a web search, and came across an old book from 1918 that says:
"When stale, peanut butter develops a decomposition substance known as acrolein, which is dangerous to children as well as adults".

I found no other sources which mention the same thing, so I don't suggest you take that statement as truth. I'm still not sure whether stale peanut butter is bad for you.

However, I was looking through the rest of the first book, and it is fascinating in a historical sense. I've spent way too much time reading through it.

The Science of Eating: How to Insure Stamina, Endurance, Vigor, Strength and Health in Infancy, Youth and Age - by Alfred W. McCann

100 years ago, there was the same concern as nowadays, about lack of nutrition in processed foods due to vitamins, minerals, and fiber having being stripped out. There was concern over high levels of glucose, sugar, and chemical additives. There was concern about cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and arthritis being caused by the substandard nutrition provided by those foods.

100 years ago was before processed foods started being fortified with vitamins and minerals.

It's interesting how the drafts for World War I and II played into this. Apparently, people in high places were concerned when large percentages of draftees were rejected due to being unfit. It's not necessarily that they were concerned about the health of people, but that they wanted to have an adequate supply of healthy men for the military.

..

The rye bread I've been eating lately lists "wheat flour" and "rye flour" as ingredients. I wondered if "wheat flour" means whole wheat flour or white flour. It means the latter; I should have realized that, since the label actually says "enriched wheat flour". But the rye flour is just listed as "rye flour".

The Hoax of "Enriched Wheat Flour"

A “wheat flour” or “enriched wheat flour” ingredient is technically no different than white flour. Manufacturers take whole-grain wheat, strip out 11 vitamins and minerals, then add synthetic chemicals that represent only four vitamins and one mineral.

Here’s the nutritional math: Whole-grain wheat – 11 nutrients + 5 nutrients = “Enriched”

..

4 hours later. Heck, I'm just going to throw those crackers away and be done with it.

Comments

Rabbit holes our favorite

[marahmarie]

Because I get like this, too *dives in*

I found no other sources which mention the same thing, so I don't suggest you take that statement as truth.

Yeah, I dunno, what I saw on a cursory search just now is that acrolein is mostly found in cooking oils like peanut oil, while Acrylamide is found in nuts, including peanuts. The two are related, perhaps? And both are carcinogenic (found in cigarette smoke, though non-smoking Asians are also getting toxic exposure from their increasing use of cooking oils, from what I'm reading).

http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jestft/papers/vol11-issue%204/Version-1/F1104013843.pdf
https://www.healwithfood.org/list/foods-high-in-acrylamide.php
https://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/chemicalcontaminants/ucm053549.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16438301

All this talk of peanut butter makes me want some so bad now. But if I have it I might get so sick I won't be able to move for another few days.

Re: Rabbit holes our favorite

[darkoshi]

Darn, I like nuts best when they are roasted. And I eat a lot of potato chips, both of which are high in acrylamide based on those links.

A few other pages I found indicated that acrolein is bad for you when it is inhaled; apparently it is a gas that is given off when oils are heated. So I'm still not sure how that could be related to eating stale peanut butter. Maybe the author of that book did mix up acrolein with acrylamide.

Re: Rabbit holes our favorite

[marahmarie]

Based on the last link I'd tend to agree. Or maybe Acrylamide hadn't been discovered yet...*googles* And so it's just that: https://www.foodinsight.org/NewsBite_A_Decade_of_Discovery_Acrylamide_in_Food

Not discovered until 2002.

These compounds are also caused by straight-up (should've said) non-heat oxidation, if I recall at least one of the articles right. Edit: it was an article I read but didn't link you to, a paper, but instead of something so jargony, I thought this might also work:

https://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/nut-butter-the-bad-the-good-and-how-to-make-it-better

"During processing, the polyunsaturated fats in the nuts are exposed to heat, air, and light. The omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids in the nuts will then begin to oxidize into compounds that are as toxic to the body as partially and fully hydrogenated oils."

I have a mental hiccup wherein I tie air exposure to oxidation and heat to the altered chemical structures; I can't seem to make it click heat and air can do the same thing, though maybe I'll retain that info better now (but wasn't even thinking of light as a third factor).

And *this* is what I'd call a good jump down the rabbit hole - just googled "does light cause oxidation" and everything that came up said UV light does, which leaves non-UV in doubt for me until it's checked into more, but as it's been quite the jump already I'll stop for now.

Re: Rabbit holes our favorite

[darkoshi]

I'm sorry for dragging you into my rabbit hole with me! LOL

Re: Rabbit holes our favorite

[marahmarie]

Oh please, not at all. Loved it :)

Re: Rabbit holes our favorite

[randomdreams]

UV light has a short enough wavelength that its energy matches the bond energy of organic molecules, so when they absorb a UV photon, they break. The bond strength is variable, depending on the other atoms nearby in the molecule and how much they take or give electron density to the bond in question, so the wavelength required to break a bond varies. However, it's usually well into the UV.
An interesting exception (there are many, but this one is just particularly relevant) is retinol. It's the stuff that makes carrots orange, but also, as you might think from the name, what's in your retina. It has a double bond, where two adjacent atoms share two electrons, which prevents them from rotating with respect to each other, so it's shaped like a paperclip. When a photon hits it, the double bond absorbs it, and one of the two bonds briefly dissociates and then reassociates, allowing the molecule to straighten out. This is how we see: that conversion from folded to straight on absorption of a photon is the mechanism for vision. (The enzyme with which it is associated comes in several different flavors, that slightly distort the molecule, and that changes the energy required to make this rearrangement happen. One bunch of enzymes make it red-green sensitive, another blue-yellow sensitive, one simply provides a highly sensitive measure of whether there are photons at all and results in low-light black-and-white vision. This is happening billions of times per second, and the process of replacing all those popped molecules is the most energetically demanding thing in our bodies, so our retinas suck up a lot of oxygen from blood.)

Re: Rabbit holes our favorite

[randomdreams]

Ancillary. There are (at least) two ways to break a molecular bond: you can apply enough heat energy to exceed its bond strength, just by blasting it with any energy you have around, which is a process of continually adding more energy and the atoms whanging about until they finally break, or you can use UV tuned to the bond strength, and the bond absorbs a single photon and just pops apart. The latter is interesting because it's cold. All (or most) of the energy of the photon is absorbed by the electrons as the bond breaks. So it doesn't damage surrounding molecules.
This is why UV light damage to cells is interesting. Rather than just nuking the whole cell, like a burn would, a UV photon can just cut a single DNA linkage, leaving the cell alive but broken, and subsequent attempts to replicate can either kill it or make it start misbehaving.

Re: Rabbit holes our favorite

[marahmarie]

This is why UV light damage to cells is interesting. Rather than just nuking the whole cell, like a burn would, a UV photon can just cut a single DNA linkage, leaving the cell alive but broken, and subsequent attempts to replicate can either kill it or make it start misbehaving.

Well, that would explain why our skin can look so bad as we age, as most of the sagging and wrinkles are caused by sun exposure. Also I guess why chemo cancer treatments involving radiation (which chemo probably doesn't) can be so damaging.

Thanks for expounding!

Re: Rabbit holes our favorite

[randomdreams]

Yeah, radiation treatments do exactly this. So to some extent does chemo: they kill dividing cells by damaging their dna, relying on killing tens of thousands of cancer cells for every non-cancerous cell. But there are a lot more non-cancerous cells, sooo....
Fairly famous picture of a truck driver who spent 40 years with UV only hitting one side of his face:

Stuff that causes oxidative damage, or ionizing radiation, both do this. Smoke has lots of activated molecules that cause oxidative damage. To a lesser extent, the taste we like in BBQ does, too: we used to smoke meats in part because it filled them with chemicals that killed bacteria much faster than they damaged us.

Re: Rabbit holes our favorite

[marahmarie]

To a lesser extent, the taste we like in BBQ does, too: we used to smoke meats in part because it filled them with chemicals that killed bacteria much faster than they damaged us.

That makes sense. And yeah, I've seen that picture before! The only aging quite as disconcerting (if not more so) and the only aging that happens even faster is mostly done by those who use meth.