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passive_fist comments on Yet More "Stupid" Questions - Less Wrong
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But what if you could obtain the nutrients available in vegetables through other means?
Doesn't have the same effect. There was a study where they gave one group Vitamin C & one group ate oranges. The group that got the Vitamin C had no change in Antioxidant activity; only the orange-eating group saw the benefit. Probably there are some other factors involved that we just haven't figured out yet. Eventually maybe reductionism will solve this one, but it hasn't yet.
Here's an article about the study in case I remembered incorrectly: http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070416/full/news070416-15.html
That's an interesting study, but they also mention that if you could obtain the other chemicals from the oranges (perhaps the flavanones and carotenoids) separately you could get the same effect as eating the fruit. Obviously, oranges are not just vitamin C.
It's true that we don't yet know all the biochemical pathways of nutrition. My question isn't about current knowledge.
Wait, what exactly are we discussing here?
Isn't it tautological that if you fully understood the health-related properties of an orange, and engineered a food that had all the nutritional properties of an orange and yet was not an orange, then eating the engineered food would be functionally identical to eating an orange from a health related perspective?
Doesn't the fact that the definition of "orange" isn't ontologically fundamental imply that this feat is possible?
If we could do everything fruits and vegetables do through other means, then it goes without saying that we wouldn't need to eat fruits or vegetables.
The question is can we engineer such a food. I know many people who would say that we simply can't do it with current or near-term technology (like, say, in twenty years).
I don't think technology is the limiting factor so much as knowing what it is about apples (or other foods) that makes them healthful.
If we actually knew how our bodies worked and what they needed, we could probably make optimally healthy foods right now.
Whole fruit/vegetables act as a sustained release delivery system for their micronutrients, so even supplementing all the relevant micronutrients may not perfectly replicate fruit/vegetables if they're delivered as bare molecules.
Perhaps we could engineer 'sustained release delivery systems' with properties far better than any fruit.
It would not change the fact that you can get those nutrients from vegetables.
It would depend on what other means are. I'm guessing you're thinking along the lines of supplements and artificial meals?
There's still stuff like ratio, absorption, bio-availability, and physical stuff (fiber, etc) to think about. It's not all about getting the nutrients.
We don't really know all the nutrients. The line between "nutrient" and "medication" gets a bit blurred, right? Plant based anti-inflammatory compounds aren't nutrients in that they aren't part of your metabolic chemical reactions, nor will you die without them, but they are still good for you and can stave of disease. "Medication' isn't necessarily the right word, but i don't know if we have a word for that.
I'm sure that something could be equal or superior, I'm just not sure whether or not anything we currently have is equal or superior.