The Baby Carrot Mystery

This evening I received the following e-mail with a request to investigate the rather frightening claims made therein;

Subject: baby carrot : Important Information!!

The following is information from a farmer who grows and packages carrots for IGA, METRO, LOBLAWS, etc.

The small cocktail (baby) carrots you buy in small plastic bags are made using the larger crooked or deformed carrots which are put through a machine which cuts and shapes them into cocktail carrots . most people probably know this already.

What you may not know and should know is the following: once the carrots are cut and shaped into cocktail carrots they are dipped in a solution of water and chlorine in order to preserve them (this is the same chlorine used your pool) since they do not have their skin or natural protective covering, they give the m a higher dose of chlorine.

You will notice that once you keep these carrots in your refrigerator for a few days, a white covering will form on the carrots, this is the chlorine which resurfaces. At what cost do we put our health at risk to have esthetically pleasing vegetables which are practically plastic?

We do hope that this information can be passed on to as many people as possible in the hopes of informing them where these carrots come from and how they are processed. Chlorine is a very well known carcinogen.

Please let us make this information available to as many people as possible. If you care about your family and friends, pass it on.

I have done a little research on the internet, oh wonderful source of knowledge, and have unearthed the truth behind the baby carrot mystery.

Baby carrots come in two basic varieties;

1. True Baby Carrots are carrots grown to the “baby” stage. These carrots can be identified by the fact that there is a true “shoulder” on each carrot. Some farmers leave a little bit of green on the top of the carrot to prove that it is a true baby carrot. Some people prefer these baby carrots due to a belief that they are more natural or nutritious. These carrots are usually a lot more expensive then the second kind of baby carrots;

2. Manufactured Baby Carrots, or “baby-cut” carrots are more common and also less expensive then the true baby carrots. In the 1980’s a Californian farmer, Mike Yurosek, was fed up with throwing away up to 400 tonnes of malformed carrots per day and he came up with the idea of cutting these carrots down to 2 inch sections, peeling them and selling them as baby carrots.

Many fruits and vegetables, when cut, peeled or bruised, suffer a discoloration at the site of the tissue damage. This is caused by enzymes in a reaction called melanosis. You may be familiar with the brown discoloration which forms on an apple when you bite into it and then leave it on the table for a short while, that is the melanosis. In carrots this process causes a white discoloration, known as white blush. Therefore, carrots left in your fridge for a few days do not turn white because they are leaching chlorine, that whitening is caused by tissue damage.

According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency vegetables may be washed in chlorinated water in order to reduce microbial contamination. This water would be very much like your tap water. While it is “the same chlorine used in your pool”, it is also the same chlorine used in your municipal drinking water, and in your salt. The assertion that these baby-cut carrots are given a higher dose of chlorine does not seem to be based on fact. There are strict guidelines as to how long vegetables may be submersed in the chlorinated water and they have to be thoroughly rinsed afterward. The Carrot Museum has an interesting description of exactly how baby-cut carrots are made, as well as a thorough outline on the nature of white blush.

To claim that carrots washed in water are “practically plastic” is patently absurd. Plastics are synthetic or semisynthetic compounds, typically polymers of high molecular weight, used to manufacture industrial products. Plastics are malleable during production and can be cast, pressed or moulded into a wide variety of shapes. Carrots washed in chlorinated water are not plastic, they are clean carrots.

Finally this e-mail triggers the best hoax-alarm I can think of, it tries to scare you by telling you that chlorine can cause cancer (I do not dispute this), and urges you to send the same warning to all of your friends and family.

This is a classic hoax e-mail. It contains some truthful information, some blurry facts, and some utter garbage. Whenever these factors are coupled with a plea that you spam your contact book with this  “if you care” about them, don’t send it to anyone! Just press delete.

Interesting Friday news

I’m trying to keep my gray matter fit and have found the following interesting articles on the interwebs this afternoon;

• The Phoenix Mars Lander has found possible evidence of ice on Mars. I think we should wait for evidence before declaring that it is water ice though, as this Associated Press journalist did “they must have been frozen water“.
• The sixth severed foot which washed ashore in Canada this week has been found to be a hoax. All hoaxes are reprehensible, disrespectful wastes of time.

Enjoy

Just a quickie

I have received yet another bogus e-mail, this one warning me that my sinus medication could give me a STROKE!

Wow!

The worst thing is that some idiot in the South African Police Service seems to have printed out this e-mail and ENDORSED it! Why would you ask a SAPS commissioner for verification of such a thing? Surely your doctor would be a better source of information than someone trained by the same people who gave this guy a badge.

I do not want to turn into an e-mail hoax busting website, although I see so many hoax e-mails that I would never run out of inspiration. Instead I will point you to my two favorite sites, snopes.com and breakthechain.org.

I have been writing these posts for a few weeks now and am starting to get the hang of it. I have a few ideas in the pipe-line so please check back regularly. I value all feedback and any suggestions will be carefully considered. Thank you for your support and please send anything which tickles your skepticism my way.

I would highly value input from other skeptics and if you would like to contribute to the skeptic detective, please drop me a motivating e-mail and a sample of your writing.

Cancer Update

The Claims

Cancer Update from John Hopkins

This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well.

Please circulate to all you know; Cancer update

John Hopkins – Cancer News from John Hopkins

No plastic containers in micro.

No water bottles in freezer.

No plastic wrap in microwave.

A dioxin chemical causes cancer, especially breast cancer. Dioxins are highly poisonous to the cells of our bodies. Don’t freeze your plastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic.

Recently, Edward Fujimoto, Wellness Program Manager at Castle Hospital, was on a TV program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad they are for us. He said that we should not be heating our food in the microwave using plastic containers. This especially applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body. Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the same results, only without the dioxin. So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something else.

Paper isn’t bad but you don’t know what is in the paper. It’s just safer to use tempered glass, Corning Ware, etc. He reminded us that a while ago some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper. The dioxin problem is one of the reasons. Also, he pointed out that plastic wrap, such as Saran, is just as dangerous when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave. As the food is nuked, the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food. Cover food with a paper towel instead.

This is an article that should be sent to anyone important in your life!

The Rational Response

I would like to start off with the villain in this story, the dioxins. Dioxins are one of the most toxic chemicals know to science and in 2001 the most toxic compound, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin or PCDD, was classified by the US National Toxicology Program as a compound “known to be a human carcinogen”. A study published in Environmental Health Perspectives volume 110, number 7, July 2002 entitled Serum Dioxin Concentrations and Breast Cancer Risk in the Seveso Women’s Health Study examined the incidence of breast cancer in the region of Seveso, Italy, the site of an industrial explosion in 1976 which resulted in the highest know population exposure to PCDD. The researchers who conducted this study showed strong evidence for the carcinogenic effect of PCDD.

According to the most recent US EPA data, the major sources of dioxins are:

· Coal fired utilities

· Municipal waste incinerators

· Metal smelting

· Diesel trucks

· Land application of sewage sludge

· Burning treated wood

· Trash burn barrels

These sources together account for nearly 80% of dioxin emissions. Dioxins are also generated in reactions that do not involve burning — such as bleaching fibers for paper or textiles, and in the manufacture of chlorinated phenols, particularly when reaction temperature is not well controlled.

Exposure to dioxins can have numerous side effects including birth and developmental defects and damage to the immune and hormone systems. For a detailed discussion of dioxins please see the entries on Wikipedia.

Alright, now that we have a basic grasp of what a dioxin is, how it is produced and the potential effects dioxins may have on your health, we are ready to take a second look at the “John Hopkins Cancer Update”.

Can freezing plastic bottles with water in them release dioxins into the water? NO! We have established how dioxins are released into our environment and freezing is not going to release dioxin into your water, or any other product contained in the bottle.

The argument from authority is the logical fallacy whereby a claim is accepted as true because a person of authority says it is true. We more easily accept a claim made by a person with the correct education and background, when the claim should be able to stand on the strength of its logic and evidence.

The “doctor” in this piece is Edward Fujimoto. I can find no evidence of anyone with that name working at Castle Hospital.

The “doctor’s” first warning is that we should not be heating food in the microwave in plastic containers, more especially “foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics releases dioxin into the food”.

Why are foods that contain fat supposedly more dangerous? Dioxin is lipophilic, that is, it accumulates in the fat cells in the body. That is the only fact in the whole sentence. Microwaves do not cook food by burning at high temperatures. Microwaves actually cause the water molecules in our food to boil. Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level. This is not nearly hot enough to release PCDD from a compound. Furthermore, there is no substantial evidence that plastic food containers even contain dioxin at all!

A major contradiction follows as the author points out that paper products are not entirely safe, because we don’t know what is in them. This may be a tenuous reference to the bleaching of paper which does release PCDD into the environment. Although it may at first appear that the author has hit on the only link between dioxin and your dinner, he contradicts himself superbly by telling us in the final paragraph that fast food chains have moved away from using foam packaging and are using paper instead. He then finishes off by advising that we cover our food with a paper towel when microwaving.

The next time you see something like this in your inbox, just delete it before sending it on to your friends and family. You will be doing the international community a huge favor by removing one more piece of junk from the internet.

Sun and Moon

This landed up in my in box this morning;

A scene you will probably never get to see, so take a moment and enjoy God at work at the North Pole.
This is the sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its closest point. And you also see the sun below the moon.
An amazing photo and not one easily duplicated.

Wow! This is a really lovely picture. But it is not real! Here are a few reasons why this is not possibly a real photograph;

Firstly, is that a land mass I see? The North Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, amidst waters that are almost permanently covered with constantly shifting sea ice. The sea ice of the north pole is approximately two to three meters thick. It is only in recent years that the rise in ocean temperatures has led to stretches of water being exposed by moving ice floes.

The second reason for this image not being possible on Earth is purely mathematical;

The sun’s diameter is 1,392,000 km. The sun will appear 3,7% smaller at perihelion (point closest to earth) then at aphelion (point farthest from the earth).

The moon’s diameter is 1,737.10km. The moon will appear 14% larger at perigee (point closest to the earth) then at apogee (point farthest from earth).

Therefore, using the simple comparison of the ratios of apparent size, the moon appears 14% larger, the sun 3.7% smaller.
That yields relative apparent difference of 17.7% when viewed from earth…
No where even close to the 12 times (or 1200%) increase that would be needed to create such a spectacular view.

The truth behind this image;

The image is in fact a work by artist Inga Nielsen. The image, called “Hideaway” can be viewed on the artist’s website.

The image was created using a scenery generator program called Terragen™