8 beers you should stop drinking immediately

[troy2000]

I burned out reading through this thread, and started skimming it. But it seems to me that getting upset about 'zero percent' vs 'contains no detectable amount' reeks of religious fervor, rather than rationality.

It's basically impossible to prove a negative, and I doubt any test out there can guarantee there isn't a single molecule of a given substance in whatever is being tested.... If a reasonably sensitive test detects no trace of something, I'm perfectly comfortable with being told it isn't there.

 

[unionrdr]

Gotta agree with ya there. Some of us think close,but no cigar. Others of us merely think close enough. Testing in some instances can only go so far. Period.

 

[boydster]

This is the last I'll say on it, then I'll leave it alone. It's not the testing, or the testing limits that I'm saying I have an issue with. It's using the testing limit as a way to get around the truth. If the fictitious corn dog company I mentioned earlier had a box that didn't include a giant red sticker declaring "Zero Trans Fat!" that would be a lot less shady than including the big unnecessary sticker. They know they use an ingredient that is, by definition, a trans fat, yet they are willfully drawing attention to the trans fat issue by affixing a sticker that is in disagreement with the ingredients. This has nothing to do with the Nutrition Facts label, which arrives at the printed figures by testing, and everything to do with someone willfully misleading people who have put their trust in him/her. My offer to send out bottles of pee water labeled "Pee Free!!!!" stands. They may be 3 serving bottles, as most Americans enjoy more than a single serving of everything (you read your labels, right?), but each serving will have 0.49999999 grams of pee or less so that should fly. I'll be sure to include "Urine" on the Nutrition Facts label, it will be in the ingredients section, but the big sticker will still declare the bottle to be pee free based on a technicality.

 

[beernbourbon]

I burned out reading through this thread, and started skimming it.

amen

I was taught by an incredibly intelligent man in my profession that there are 3 types of lies.....

Lies,
Damned lies, and
Statistics.

I deal in statistics on a daily basis, and I can say without any hesitation; I can make my reported data show whatever I want it to show based on how I slant my statistics.
However, what it boils down to for me is my ethics. I report what is, simply because it is. It's not my right to skew things to my personal beliefs when people depend on the data I report to create/build something that is necessary for the safety, health and welfare of the general population.
If companies would simply report the truth, regardless of what it is, people like foodb!tch would not have an audience, and conversations such as this would become moot, and we could make our own decisions about what we eat and drink, and those that aren't intelligent enough to grasp the concept of knowing what it is you are putting in your body.....well, can't fix stupid.
ok, steppin' down off my soapbox.......

 

[Leithoa]

but each serving will have 0.49999999 grams of pee or less so that should fly.

Depending on what FDA approved total urine content test you use you might be able to get more than 0.499g/serving. Could be less. I don't know what the detection limit of urine is.

It's not my right to skew things to my personal beliefs when people depend on the data I report to create/build something that is necessary for the safety, health and welfare of the general population.

If the regulatory body demands you use a certain test for your product . It's not your personal slant.

Whether you lobby for a more precise and more expensive test is up to you.

 

[GrogNerd]

we brew beer using barley and hops as ingredients, but do those ingredients exist in detectable amounts in the finished product?

we convert starches from grains of malted barley to sugar and ferment those sugars, but is there anything in the beer that you can point to or measure and say, "THAT'S BARLEY" ?

we isomerize acids from hops for their bitterness, aroma and flavor, but the vegetative part settles out after active fermentation, so is there anything in the beer that you can point to or measure and say, "THAT'S HOPS" ?

if not, or if there is none at detectable levels, can you point to your beer and say it is BARLEY-FREE or has ZERO BARLEY or is HOP-FREE or has ZERO HOPS, even if those are the ingredients?

 

[kombat]

[insert animated GIF of man beating dead horse]

This is silly. Nobody gives a sh*t about 0.5g of fat. That's nothing. It's a zero. It doesn't change anything for anyone. It doesn't move the needle. It doesn't matter. Who cares.

If it's less than the detectable threshold, that's close enough to "0" for me.

I brew my beer using water from my municipal water supply. It comes from the river running adjacent to my city. There are several other towns upstream that flush their treated sewage into the same river. Our water utility takes that water and treats it, making it safe for us to drink. But can I be certain that they got every last atom of urine out of that water? Of course not. But all the tests they run come back saying "0 levels of urine detected." But they have a testing threshold. There could actually still be 0.0005 mL of urine in 1L of city water. And we know urine was definitely one of the "ingredients" of the water (to use boydster's logic). So am I lying to my friends when they ask me, "does this beer contain any urine whatsoever" and I reply, "No, none at all."

Should I instead reply, "It almost certainly does, but it's a really, really tiny amount. An undetectable amount. Drink up."

Hey, gotta be honest, right?

 

[kombat]

if not, or if there is none at detectable levels, can you point to your beer and say it is BARLEY-FREE or has ZERO BARLEY or is HOP-FREE or has ZERO HOPS, even if those are the ingredients?

Great example. Continuing the analogy, BMC filters the yeast entirely out of their beer. If they tested the resulting beer, and the test found no detectable levels of yeast, and they advertised their beer was "Yeast Free!", are they lying? After all, they deliberately added yeast during the process, so they KNOW yeast was involved in making the beer. And the yeast-detection test (like all tests) has a detection threshold below which it'll register a zero, even though there could still be a few cells of yeast present.

Dirty rotten liars!

 

[boydster]

So am I lying to my friends when they ask me, "does this beer contain any urine whatsoever" and I reply, "No, none at all."

If you intentionally and strategically add in just enough urine to be ever-so-slightly under the FDA threshold for detection, and then without solicitation tell your friends to try your urine-free beer, you are lying to them.

Knowingly saying something that isn't true = lying.

 

[GrogNerd]

I would think there's a difference between using an ingredient with some later process removing it and straight up dumping a low threshold of that ingredient into the finished product

say you take straight-up urine and process it into potable water with undetectable traces of urine (I'm thinking STILLSUITS, from Dune). is it urine free? that's quite different from dumping an undetectable amount of urine into the water.

legally and ethically different

 

[Leithoa]

we convert starches from grains of malted barley to sugar and ferment those sugars, but is there anything in the beer that you can point to or measure and say, "THAT'S BARLEY" ?

This is what many gluten free beers are doing. They use wheat, barley, and other gluten containing grains. Then using some enzyme the gluten is broken down to below detectable levels.
Some celiac sufferers however still report issues and reactions though.

...add in just enough urine to be ever-so-slightly under the FDA threshold for detection...

It's not that companies are adding it in, they are taking it out until it's no longer detected. Back to the corn dog example. Most frying oil used to be high in trans fats. After the big push blends were changed so that they passed the test.

Sure it's scientifically accurate to say 'below the detection limit' or ' not detected'. Remember, while many cases are fried food we know at some point in their creation came into contact with trans fat there are foods with naturally occurring trans fats that may be below the per serving threshold.
For these foods with naturally occurring levels of trans fat, if you don't know it's there and the test says its not there, it might as well not be there.

As with salt and other unhealthy ingredients there is a threshold below which it has no impact on the consumer. If it turns out 0.5g is above that threshold, it should be changed.

Adding your own exaggerated labeling on top of FDA (purposefully lax) requirements does seem shady. I'm just playing devils advocate, though it seems they have enough advocates in their lobby.

 

[troy2000]

Getting back to the Food Babe: she also believes that microwaving water or thinking negative thoughts at it changes its physical properties, and has interesting beliefs about flu vaccines:

Last by not least, Dr. Masaru Emoto, who is famous for taking pictures of various types of waters and the crystals that they formed in the book called “Hidden Messages in Water,” found water that was microwaved did not form beautiful crystals – but instead formed crystals similar to those formed when exposed to negative thoughts or beliefs. If this is happening to just water – I can only imagine what a microwave is doing to the nutrients, energy of our food and to our bodies when we consume microwaved food. For the experiment pictured above, microwaved water produced a similar physical structure to when the words “satan” and “hitler” were repeatedly exposed to the water.



What’s exactly in the Flu Shot? To sum it up – A bunch of toxic chemicals and additives that lead to several types of Cancers and Alzheimer disease over time.

the CDC even admits it doesn’t protect you because the virus mutates every year.

Why do I have to get a Flu Shot every year? Aren’t vaccines suppose to immunize you for life?

This is why the vaccine isn’t effective in the first place, because administering a drug that weakens the immune systems makes people even more susceptible to the flu!

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/scam-stud/

 

[JonM]

I'm speechless.

 

[fearwig]

Pseudoscientists are OBSESSED with water. Ionized water, deionized water, magicked water, upside down water.

Big surprise she's an antivaxxer, too.

 

[GrogNerd]

I bet she doesn't shave her pits either

because PATRIARCHY!

 

[JonM]

Well, that settles it. Palmer's book is in need of revision and ought to include a chapter on thinking only positive thoughts around your brewing water, and never saying "Hitler" around it. Judges will certainly ding your score if your water doesn't form the right kind of crystals.

 

[JonM]

Pseudoscientists are OBSESSED with water. Ionized water, deionized water, magicked water, upside down water.

Big surprise she's an antivaxxer, too.

 

[fearwig]

I bet she doesn't shave her pits either

because PATRIARCHY!

Great input, definitely relevant

 

[GrogNerd]

Great input, definitely relevant

lighten up, Francis

 

[hunter_le five]

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!! I'll even invite a few friends over and do a blind triangle test with a couple bottles of Dasani to see if we can determine which bottle has a statistically insignificant amount of Vitamin B.... And urine, but we can save that revelation for the big-reveal.

It's the least I could do after the whole dolphin rash fiasco....

The results are in!

 

[Minbari]

disclaimer:havent even read 10% of the comment here, so this may have been covered


I have read that article and few others by that wackjob. Just because you have a website, a keyboard and the will to spew written garbage doesnt mean you are right, lol. Most of that article is completely un-informed and un-educated stuff she made up.