In article <152...@felix.UUCP> asylv...@felix.UUCP (Alvin E. Sylvain) writes:

I believe that I can explain the nature of the claimed difference.
Please don't attribute to me the opinion that I believe this is
true; I am non-committal on the matter, except where I specifically
note otherwise.

The nature of the "health-food fanatic" argument is that naturally
occurring chemicals are available in a context in which they are
mixed with some number of adulterants that may have nutritional or
buffering effects that we may or may not know about.

Here is the problem: something is never the "same identical thing"
as something else. The health food argument is basically made
by analogy to the situation with mother's milk. Artificially composed
infant formula has been advertised as equal or superior to breast
milk, in spite of the fact that it contains only a few dozen
nutritionally significant substances at most, whereas mother's
milk contains hundreds, including substances that are important
in the proper development of immune response. "Health food fanatics"
will argue that naturally occurring chemicals may contain adulterants
that are similarly beneficial.

In some cases this can be refuted; in fact, in the case of sea salt,
there are some adulterants that are likely to be detrimental, such
as heavy metals (though they may occur only in insignificant
quantities). In other cases, we may simply not know whether the
naturally occurring substances contain some trace component that
is nutritionally significant. A "health food fanatic" may really
be fanatic, or may be arguing, more moderately, that we should
eat the naturally occurring version just in case there is something
important in it that we don't know about. Sometimes the processes
we use to make food-production more convenient or economical have
undesirable side-effects, such as introducing adulterants whose
effects we do not know, or whose effects are known to be harmful.
As an example, antibiotic-treated cattle are reported to bear bacteria
that have developed resistance to antibiotics. If any
of these bacteria happen to be human-disease agents, treating an infection
caused by them may be complicated by this resistance.

True enough. On the other hand, a little prudence in selecting one's
foods doesn't hurt, either.