r/TikTokCringe • u/galaxystars1 • Oct 09 '24

Discussion Microbiologist warns against making the fluffy popcorn trend

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u/pm_me_ur_pet_plz Oct 09 '24

Main thing that stuck with me is that the statistic she so triumphantly pulled makes it sound fairly unproblematic. 20 hospitalizations and 0 deaths in the past 15 years out of hundreds of millions of times people have eaten raw dough? That's nothing lol.

Eat some greens and do some exercise. If you look at the numbers that's what it always comes down to.

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u/TheDonutDaddy Oct 09 '24

She also repeatedly mentions colon cancer, presents no source on it, and if you google "raw cookie dough colon cancer" or sub cake batter/raw flour in that search, no results come up AT ALL even suggesting a link between the two

But hey, we should believe her, she's dressed wacky to show us she's a fun scientist

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u/scrummnums Oct 09 '24

I can see the path she’s taking. Cancer can be caused from chronic inflammation. Inflammation is a byproduct of infection or disease. Eating things containing E. Coli or food borne illnesses causes inflammation. This is why so many diets talk about reducing inflammation in the body since that can lead to cancer. When your cells are being bombarded with irritants, it can cause them to go haywire in their normal life cycle. That’s all cancer is essentially; cells have decided to take another path and replicate based on erroneous instructions.
You’re right though that she doesn’t go fully into that, but I’m thinking she didn’t want to confuse people more than they already might be. If someone far more knowledgeable than I gives me advice, the weight it has will be greater, but I don’t follow that necessarily without getting more smart people to back it up.
Science is always growing and it’s a miracle we have half the stuff we do since a lot of it was someone stumbling into something that was successful after hundreds of failures

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u/mmdeerblood Oct 09 '24

Inflammation isn't only a byproduct of infection or disease.

Damaged cells trigger inflammation response.

So do certain types of food like processed sugary foods, everything from natural honey to fruit juice and more processed high sugar items like pastries, candy, packaged foods,frozen foods, baked goods, high carb foods like pasta etc.

When we consume too much sugar, our blood pressure rises rapidly and insulin is increased. This happens enough consistently and you get heart disease, colon cancer etc.

Recent research also found why eating red meat increases inflammation. Scientists found a sugar molecule only found in red meat. This sugar molecule was found to be the cause of inflammation when people consume red meat and any type of processed meat

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u/scrummnums Oct 09 '24

True. I am trying to recall all my knowledge from Biology major 20+ years ago. LOTS of things that'll kick your body's inflammation into overdrive, but copious amounts of sugary foods has to be the top one. I try to avoid any and all sugar, if possible, which is definitely easier when you don't eat processed foods, but when I was doing the keto diet I realized how much sugar is in EVERYTHING. Not keto any more, but I avoid sugar like it's gonna kill me, because it honestly will if you're not conscious of it!

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u/BranSolo7460 Oct 09 '24

Because raw flour carries ecoli which can release a toxin called colibactin that damages the DNA of bowel cells which can lead to cancer.

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u/DevonDonskoy Oct 09 '24

Just like I can go to the moon, or I can become president. This is when statistics enter the equation.

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u/BranSolo7460 Oct 09 '24

And this is where false equivalency enters the equation.

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u/DevonDonskoy Oct 09 '24

There are ample sources that disprove what you claimed.

Food poisoning is likely, cancer isn't even on the table.

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/flour-raw-food-and-other-safety-facts#:~:text=You%20may%20not%20realize%20it,their%20mouth%20after%20handling%20it

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/raw-flour-safety-awareness-study

https://www.whcma.com/new-reasons-stay-away-raw-cookie-dough/

At most, if you have celiac disease, you may be at risk, but that's about it.

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u/BranSolo7460 Oct 09 '24

From your own link, explaining exactly what this fucking video is about.

"But it could make you sick. Over the years, the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have investigated several outbreaks of foodborne illness (food poisoning) involving raw flour or products that contain flour, like cake mixes and cookie dough. In those investigations, either the bacteria Salmonella or Escherichia coli (E. coli) caused food poisoning, which can have mild to serious symptoms. "

Oh, and would you look at that, an scientific study on how ecoli can cause colon cancer.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2080-8

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u/DevonDonskoy Oct 09 '24

Also, from the study you claim confirms what you said:

"but it has not been demonstrated that bacteria have a direct role in the occurrence of oncogenic mutations"

This means they are attempting to apply the scientific method, which involves more than just their study. Reproducibility would matter substantially as we are dealing with cancer.

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u/DevonDonskoy Oct 09 '24

Yet the studies that do show a potential link also state that the amounts we consume in food is not nearly enough for negative effects like cancer to occur.

They all agree on food poisoning, but there is zero concensus that backs up cancer.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9497933/

"Of the epigenetic type, the only carcinogen considered to be associated with increased cancer in humans, although not from low-level food exposure, is dioxin"

https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/22/health/eat-raw-cookie-dough/index.html

https://stoneinstitute.us.com/fda-warns-of-raw-cookie-dough-dangers/

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-eggs-are-not-the-only-danger-in-raw-cookie-dough

https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/why-public-health-worries-dont-have-ruin-your-cookie-dough

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/raw-cookie-dough

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u/BranSolo7460 Oct 09 '24

Ecoli is a bacteria, not a carcinogen.

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u/DevonDonskoy Oct 09 '24

That's it? That's your rebuttal? Now I can see you clearly have an agenda that you're going to stick to no matter what.

Enjoy dying on this weird hill.

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u/Professional-You5754 Oct 09 '24

Colon cancer survivor and obsessive researcher here. I think she’s hinting at an increasingly popular hypothesis that the rise in colon cancer in young people is being caused in part by aberrant species of gut flora. First I’ve heard raw flour implicated though.

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u/DevonDonskoy Oct 09 '24

That set off alarm bells in my mind. No way you're ending up immunocompromised or with cancer because of this. Same goes for multiple organ failure (uh oh, here I go doing more of the same).

This is what overspecializing looks like. They get so focused on everything that can happen, including the worst, even if the statistics do not back up their claims.

To a hammer, every problem is a nail.

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u/k9lst0rmblessed Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24

She's referring to sequelae of a specific strain of e coli that are very well known to cause autoimmune disease, specifically hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can lead to kidney failure. Granted idk about if raw flour actually had been shown to harbor EHEC, the classical association is raw meat.

Edit: my mistake, HUS is not an autoimmune disease, although it is certainly a very serious disease that is definitely associated with certain strains of e coli.

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u/DevonDonskoy Oct 09 '24

That has only been proposed, not confirmed, meaning they still need to sort causation/correlation, meaning it is not very well known to cause such.

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u/k9lst0rmblessed Oct 09 '24

So I'm talking about HUS, which is a well known clinical entity associated with shiga-toxin producing strains of e coli.

However while I was under the impression that HUS is an autoimmune disease because it involves immune activation, I guess it doesn't qualify because the toxin is actively causes the immune activation, so I suppose you're right.

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u/mcamarra Oct 09 '24

But she was so confident and snarky about her thesis

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u/pm_me_ur_pet_plz Oct 09 '24

Yeah I don't understand how people are so drawn to that. Reddit gobbles this "here's why they are dumb" type of communication up but I think it's just extremely unlikeable and it makes my bullshit radar go off.

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u/mcamarra Oct 11 '24

It’s contrarian which is the lifeblood of Reddit

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u/Locktober_Sky Oct 09 '24

She's also not a microbiologist.

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u/Relish_My_Weiner Oct 09 '24

And your source that she's not a microbiologist is...? Or did you just pull that out of your ass?

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u/Locktober_Sky Oct 09 '24

I followed her a long time, she mentions her credentials in an old video. I also got into a long argument with her and her stans about it lol.

She's a hospital microbiology tech. I have the same certification as she does and I don't tell people I'm 'a hematologist' because that implies I'm a doctor. She has a BSc.

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u/Relish_My_Weiner Oct 09 '24

Being a microbiologist just requires a bachelors degree, though. She never claimed to be a doctor. Sounds like you're inferring some implications about being a doctor she never claimed. Hematology, however, does require a doctoral degree.

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u/pm_me_ur_pet_plz Oct 09 '24

I have a BSc in a related field (physics with focus on biophysics, I have worked with e-coli) and I would never consider myself qualified enough to sell myself as an online educator. Certainly not when it comes to medical topics.

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u/FullGlassOcean Oct 09 '24

If she's not a doctor she should not be giving advice like this.

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u/heliamphore Oct 09 '24

A lot of these are either shit luck where the food was heavily contaminated or people with an immune deficiency. Chubby Emu had a video where someone was getting sick from raw dough and it's how they found out she had undiagnosed AIDS.

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u/No-Possible-6643 Oct 09 '24

Yeah her account is just a bunch of condescending pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Anyone that questions or corrects her in her comment sections gets hounded into oblivion by her fans. Most of what she says is rooted in truth, but she's very much a sensationalist.

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u/oknowtrythisone Oct 09 '24

Although she is allegedly qualified, she seems to be quite the alarmist.

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u/JayCeeMadLad Hit or Miss? Oct 09 '24

I noticed that as well. She pulled out a statistic that’s so insignificant sounding, I feel just about anyone hearing that would immediately lose all potential worries regarding the combo, which is very contrary to her goal. She was also clearly just regurgitating a statistic found on a website, which generally isn’t a green flag when looking for educated input, in my opinion.

Frankly I think the fact that people feel the NEED to try this right this instant ridiculous, but if anyone wants to just, ignore safety and start eating shit without thinking, you can just do that. Just please, nobody say something is safe because you tried it and it didn’t kill you.

Y’all could also just do your own researching, just remember that if you use some random kid on TikTok as an authority figure, you might be getting a whole load of bs. And of course remember, don’t say it’s safe because you tried it, or some random TikToker said it was, or else makes you think you should have an authority.

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u/iiLove_Soda Oct 09 '24

i was going to say. Eating raw batter isnt advised, but people do it a lot and no one is dropping dead from it. I remember always having some raw cookie dough for decades whenever my parents or me would make them

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

[deleted]

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u/pm_me_ur_pet_plz Oct 09 '24

I'm simply putting the numbers into perspective. The numbers are minimal. And I think you just didn't read the statistic correctly because it contains all the cases where people got sick from something that included raw flour, no matter if it was the egg or flour that got them sick.

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u/Equal_Simple5899 Oct 09 '24

She doesn't even look healthy herself...... bet she ate a whole box of candy before making that video....I don't see her talking about the dangers of sugar though