(...now where did I put my keys???)
Posted on 12/15/2014 6:29:41 AM PST by John David Powell
There’s nothing like freshly popped popcorn, especially when popped in one of those hand-cracked poppers with coconut oil.
A lot of folks like to nuke their popcorn, and that’s where they could be running into some real trouble.
Here’s the deal.
Some researchers at the University of Minnesota discovered that the stuff that gives buttery flavor to microwave popcorn could trigger Alzheimer’s disease.
They say the chemical diacetyl causes certain proteins to clump together in the brain, which, they say is a sure sign of Alzheimer’s.
But wait, there’s more.
Diacetyl also contributes to popcorn lung.
Diacetyl is the stuff that makes the butter smell. It is so bad that a court awarded a Colorado man $7.2 million when he came down with popcorn lung after eating two bags of the stuff every day.
And OSHA put out this warning after workers at plants that make and use diacetyl ended up with popcorn lung.
You may not have a problem with coming down with a lung disease from microwave popcorn fumes, and that’s okay.
But it doesn’t hurt to check the label to see if what’s inside has diacetyl.
The other folks in your house just may thank you for it. Just some food for thought.
Ha! It’s the answer to the question of what part of microwave popcorn is inherently unhealthy.
Do you regularly eat the bag?
(...now where did I put my keys???)
I seem to remember way-back-when, during the US-Japanese ‘discussions’ about the pros and cons of fruits grown in each country there came to be a very serious series of news articles, investigations and ‘concern’ over a chemical that was used to treat apples grown in this country. That chemical was called “Alar” IIRC and it pretty much sealed the deal for Japan not allowing import of US apples (apples which Japanese growers were getting outrageous prices for their bounty grown).
Far too late and far too little the ‘hazards’ of Alar were proven to be false.
My FIRST inclination in ANY of these cases is to ask “who stands to benefit from this?”
Take it as you will.
You mean you’re not supposed to eat the bag? Who knew!
I am with you.
Bingo. nailed it. ... especially with today's "news" stories.
Silly me...I’ve been just throwing that away....
I forgot about that, it will come.
Butter flavored microwave popcorn is about as appetizing as fresh dog poop.
Popcorn with REAL butter on it is a gift from God.
Yes, diacetyl can be unhealthy, but only in LARGE quantity exposures, such at a place where is is manufactured or where its put into the popcorn bags. That can be addressed by proper ventilation systems.
At the consumer level, making a few bags a day in your microwave & eating the popcorn is not a harmful exposure.
wondering if the guy sniffed the steam coming out the 2 bags a day for a head rush.
I’n my view, that is a different health risk. Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils are trans fats, regardless of what the label says.
But remember that this same exact compound is what occurs naturally in butter! It tastes like butter because it IS the taste of butter. And it occurs naturally in cream and some alcoholic beverages and many other things, that gives them a smooth, buttery feel and flavor.
Some of the hysterical negative articles on diacetyl remind me of the "Ban Di-Hydrogen Monoxide" hoax.
Just sayin'.... be aware.
bttt
the popcorn holocaust, only big government can save us
I’ve never been worried about microwaves. It happens that our microwave broke several years ago. We never bothered to replace it because we didn’t use it very often.
That MSDS wasn’t real complete. I found another one that gets into hazardous doses. MSDS’s aren’t designed for normal people to read. A lot of stuff is sort of encoded and needs experience to truly understand.
One thing I like to look for when these fear based claims come out is what is called the LD50. It’s the lethal Dose for 50% of the population (usually rats)
For this stuff, the oral LD50 is 1580Mg/Kg In our units, that works out to about 75 oz of diacetyl ingested orally in a 150 lb person. That’s not 75 oz of popcorn, it’s 75 oz of this butter flavoring. That’s almost half a gallon of pure butter flavoring.
Now I’m getting hungry.
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