WMN: t3_2ko5tx_t1_cln5sux--TIO1

[TITLE]

CMV: The sugars in natural fruits and fruit juices cannot possibly be bad for me.

[Nachie]

Everybody is always freaking out about Fructose in some form or another, and I realize that a lot of the crap companies like V8 put out and market as fruit juice is really just fruit drink plus tons of sugar, but if I just eat a zillion raw apples for the rest of my life, will that really give me Type 2 Diabetes? Will it hurt me at all? What about all those health nuts on all-fruit diets or whatever? Shouldn't their blood be running thicker than molasses? It just seems like the most counterintuitive thing to me: fruits, which are high in sugar, are also generally considered one of the healthiest things you can possibly be eating or feed to your children or whatever. So what's the deal? My instinct is that scare stories about natural fructose are total nonsense, but I have zero science to back this view up in terms of how that sugar actually affects my body. So CMV? _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

[CleverFreddie]

It has loads of sugar. Sugar is bad for you. It's just still in the public conscious that fruit is good because previously vitamins and sugars were harder to come by. You can easily find sources for how sugar is by far and away the worst food type. (Do some research before you start a CMV) It's a myth that fruit is healthy.

[hand_of_doom]

Fruit juice is one of the worst things you can drink regarding sugar content and weight control. It is also horrible for diabetics. Shit is like drinking maple syrup. If you are a normal healthy person it won't harm you, but you are drinking pure calories. Over time it will show

[Noumenon72]

[STA-CITE]> if I just eat a zillion raw apples for the rest of my life, will that really give me Type 2 Diabetes? Will it hurt me at all? [END-CITE]Just consider that humans have never eaten this kind of diet before very recently. [Chimps have to carefully plan and remember the very brief times when fruits are in season](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/10/27/the-early-chimp-gets-the-fig/). So by that example you would expect your body to be *more* adapted to eating six apples in a row than to eating them every day.

[shitsfuckedupalot]

Fruits have fiber and anti oxidants. And there really isnt much of a chemical difference between natural and artificial sugars. Either way, you have enough of it, and you can develop diabetes.

[iiBiscuit]

When sugar enters your bloodstream your brain registers this and releases insulin to promote its absorption by your body. Over time your body begins to lose sensitivity to insulin and you need to start producing more for the same effect. In susceptible people this insensitivity can lead to type II diabetes or metabolic syndrome in those who aren't. The striking thing about these disorders is that they often don't present until late 30's or early 40's, even in fast food junkies. Considering this it is still way too early to judge the healthiness of all fruit diets and the like, because they haven't been around long enough to judge the long term consequences. At the end of the day sugar is sugar and the amount of sugar in orange juice is almost exactly the same as in coke.

[BuildingAFortress]

It's the same molecules that are having the effect. Sucrose and fructose are found in fruit and in the sugar you put in tea (that's specifically sucrose). They're the same molecules you're putting in, you'll get the same effect. EDIT- there-they're

[iamwhiteeagle]

"Everything is a poisson depends on how much you eat." ~my chemistry teacher

[Spot_the_Ball]

[STA-CITE]>Everybody is always freaking out about Fructose in some form or another, and I realize that a lot of the crap companies like V8 put out and market as fruit juice is really just fruit drink plus tons of sugar, but if I just eat a zillion raw apples for the rest of my life, will that really give me Type 2 Diabetes? Will it hurt me at all? What about all those health nuts on all-fruit diets or whatever? Shouldn't their blood be running thicker than molasses? [END-CITE]The sugar in fruit is fructose and regular table sugar is sucrose The fructose you hear about is High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) which can be either; 55-90% fructose and and 10-42% glucose Table sugar (sucrose) is 50% glucose and 50% fructose [Here](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649104/) are [two](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3306467/) peer reviewed studies that go into the health effects of HFCS compared to glucose, fructose and sucrose.

[Dog-Plops]

There is a range that is consistently disputed by nutrition researchers. For example, [Alan Aragon](http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about-fructose-alarmism/) and [James Kreiger](http://weightology.net/?p=434) both say you can go up to 100 grams per day of fructose without any ill-effect (in healthy individuals). Dose makes the poison, taking in too much fructose whether that be fruits (at the expense of other foods)/soda, and eating a terrible diet in general/making other poor lifestyle choices may lead to ill health over time. Having siad that, people who love to demonise fruit based solely on fructose (or use fear-mongering language in general and try and sway public policy/media) are missing the forest from the trees, seeing as fruits are low calorie/highly filling and full of vitamins and good things. Everything in moderation. You shouldn't go bananas like the 30 banana diet guy.

[Gullex]

I don't think anyone of reasonable intelligence is saying it's "bad" for you, but you need to have them in moderation, like lots of other things. Salt, for instance, is essential to your life, but too much of it will kill you. Same with sugar, oxygen, water, fat, so on and so forth. Fructose isn't "bad" for you, but there is such thing as "too much".

[Rebuta]

I don't know the way but I think there is a different mechanism by which fructose enters your cells. Like maybe it doesn't interact with insulin at least? [Just read the wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose) I was gonna link you some papers referenced there but there are a lot. Basically eating anything that is high in energy is a bad idea to eat a lot of.

[xiipaoc]

[STA-CITE]> The sugars in natural fruits and fruit juices cannot possibly be bad for me. [END-CITE]Why not? Sure they can. One natural plant is sugarcane. Have too much of that, and you have a problem. Fructose is actually not as bad as sucrose, since it has a lower glycemic index; the problem is its inclusion in high-fructose corn syrup, which causes people to eat way too much of it in various products. So here's how it works, basically. You eat something. It gets digested, and its nutrients are absorbed. Carbohydrates, in particular, are broken down into simpler sugars and they get absorbed into your bloodstream, where they can go to the cells that need them. Problem is, having too much sugar in your bloodstream is bad for the circulatory system -- but, luckily, the body releases insulin to get that sugar into the cells. However, the process is not immediate. Blood sugar has to rise a bit before the beta cells produce insulin to counteract it, and the insulin takes a while to actually have an effect. Worse, over time, the body can start to become resistant to insulin, which can overwork the beta cells that aren't sensing the results they expect and, of course, is harmful due to the higher blood sugar itself. This insulin resistance is Type II diabetes. Now, this resistance usually doesn't happen, but extra fat in the fat cells heavily contributes to insulin resistance. And fat is stored energy that has gone unused -- it's not just dietary fat, but carbohydrates as well. If you eat too much simple sugar, not only does your insulin production spike, but you also get more energy than you need and store that energy as fat, which causes insulin resistance. It doesn't matter if your simple sugars come from berries or beets or sugarcane or high-fructose corn syrup. However, there are some benefits to fruits: fiber. Apples, for example, are full of fiber (especially in the skin), so when you eat an apple, the fiber slows down the digestion of the sugars. Apple *juice*, however, does not have the fiber, so the sugar gets quickly absorbed. Apples also have a high water content. The primary benefit of eating an apple over, say, a potato is that the apple has a lot of filler in the form of water and fiber that the potato doesn't have. (And vitamins and other nutrients too.) The potato is totally full of starch. If you eat the same amount of apple versus potato, the apple will be much healthier because it has *less* sugar and more fiber. But if you eat more apples to compensate, it'll still be too much. Finally, since we're talking about apples, you may want to avoid their cores. Apple seeds have cyanide. You know, these natural apples? They have poison in them. Granted, it's not *much* poison -- you can eat apple cores and the body will just neutralize the small amount of cyanide in the seeds if you don't have too much -- but it's poison. Plenty of other fruits are poisonous as well, even though they're "natural". The tomato, for example, was thought to be poisonous for a while in Europe, but that's because it's similar to the nightshade, which has poisonous fruits. Natural fruits can become poisonous also when populated by natural organisms such as worms and bacteria. This idea that natural things are better for you is just bullshit peddled by technophobes. Our life expectancy now is higher than it's even been -- certainly higher than it was before processed foods were invented! *Some* processed foods really are bad for you -- trans fats especially -- but so are many "natural" foods, especially when eaten in quantity. Oh, and don't forget that the fruits we eat today have been cultivated by humans for hundreds or maybe even thousands of years. They've been genetically engineered (also known as ordinary farming) to have certain characteristics like taste, color, size, resistance to disease, and so on. They can hardly be said to be "natural", and even if so, there's no reason why they should be good for you.

[funchy]

Fruit require you to slowly chew the food, slowing ingestion of the sugars. Fruit also have great nutrition: antioxiants, vitamins, minerals, fiber. Because fruit have fiber it's harder to overeat on apples as compared to apple candy or Apple juice. The thing about fructose is that your body doesn't respond to it the same way as other sugars. Your pancreas [doesn't release insulin]( http://m.ajcn.nutrition.org/content/76/5/911.full) in response to fructose, which means your blood sugar goes higher. Adipose (fat) cells soak it up, which is why high fructose corn syrup is blamed more for weight gain. Adipose normally releases leptin after eating to help signal satiety, but it doesn't do it as much with fructose. The result is that high fructose foods such as soda are easily store as fat and you still feel hungry. Because high fructose corn syrup is added to such a huge number of foods and it has no nutritional value. Manufacturers think people will like the sweet taste better. The result for consumers is that you're getting a huge amount of fructose each day with no nutritional value and no sense of satiety. No it doesn't directly cause diabetes. But it makes it easy for you to gain weight and it stresses the body's insulin/blood sugar system.

[pikk]

Water is 100% natural. Drinking 2 gallons of it at one time WILL kill you. Products being natural doesn't mean they're inherently healthy. Therefore, eating excessive amounts of fructose will negatively impact you in much the same way eating excessive amounts of sucrose, dextrose, glucose, or any other sugar.

[longlivedp]

It's all about the dose. You have to get the quantities and proportions right. Too little or too much of any nutrient is bad. Fruit CAN be bad for you if you eat too much of it. It's just a lot harder to eat 30 apples than to drink a bottle of coke.

[bthrowaway22]

There is not much "natural" about many fruits. For example, [this used to be an apple](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus). They are not sweet at all, and are rather tart. It wasn't until humans started domesticating them that they developed sweetness as an adaptation. For most of human history, apples have been unpalatable.

[petgreg]

I can do the long answer about the effects of sugar on the glycemic system, but let's keep this simple. There is no such thing as healthy or not healthy. Everything is healthy at some level (even poisons, although a very minimal level), and not healthy in excess. The most healthy approach is to have a balanced diet, with the right range of calories for you, based on metabolism and daily activity. You need sugar, and natural sugars have a better ratio of the sugars you need vs. garbage that comes with them, but there is still a thing as too much sugar. If you had the right amount of sugars, balanced against proteins and fats, and balance the simple carb of sugar against more complex carbs, all in the right calorie amounts, it would be fine. Tl;Dr: Too many of anything are going to throw you off your balance...

[pocketpotato]

Just because something is 100% natural and unaltered it doesn't mean it cant be bad.

[fitzmodj]

example: cocaine, heroin, etc

[pocketpotato]

[STA-CITE]> 100% natural and unaltered [END-CITE]

[SuB2007]

They are purified from natural products. Same as sugar.

[Cannibalsnail]

Heroin is a modified form of morphine hence not natural.

[KrustyFrank27]

> unaltered

[pocketpotato]

Op isn't talking about eating spoonfuls of sugar, they are talking about sugar present in fruits and the juices. In any case the comparison is silly IMO lol.

[fobfromgermany]

So chewing coca leaves or eating poppy pods

[pocketpotato]

Not really going to fly your kite to the same extent and I still maintain thats its a silly comparison. I mean people eat fruit to be healthy or just as a part of a normal diet. People take drugs to alter their mindset or to feel differently etc.

[ryan_m]

Source: Arsenic, hemlock, nightshade

[pocketpotato]

You'd have to be a massive idiot to go eating poisons.

[AgentMullWork]

Poisons like onions, alcohol, caffeine, chocolate and coffee?

[pocketpotato]

No, like [STA-CITE]> Arsenic, hemlock, nightshade [END-CITE]

[ryan_m]

Hey, someone had to be the first to eat it to figure out that it'd kill you.

[pocketpotato]

True, but sticking with the actual edible theme and excluding the painfully obvious ....lol

[SuB2007]

And yet...people continue to eat refined sugar to the point where they get Type 2 diabetes. Is that not a type of poisoning?

[pocketpotato]

Refined being the key word I guess, but in a sense yes I still think the comparison is tantamount to clutching at straws in this case.

[TURBO_FAPPER]

I never like this comparison. Might as well just say "rocks, wood, chicken bones." All natural. Why the fuck would you eat it?

[ReticulateLemur]

How about cassava root? Raw it contains cyanide, so it has to be properly prepared to eliminate or neutralize the toxic components before it's safe for consumption. If you've ever had tapioca, you've had cassava.

[cystorm]

That's because the comparison is accurate and the underlying rationale for OP's point is flawed. All-natural sugars can't *possibly* be unhealthy. All-natural sources of iron can't either, right? Time to chow down on some ore.

[Chrisbr117]

Sugar is sugar, it does not matter upon which vessel it journeys into your body on, sugar by any other mode of transportation would smell (and taste) as sweet. In a single medium-large apple, there are 20g of sugar (this is about 1.5 tbs). Now, the assumption with diet is that people are going to eat something sweet every day. So when people say "fruit is healthy" they are really saying "if you plan on eating something sweet, go with fruit." A healthy diet is not one that deprives you of all the joy in the world, it is one that makes use of every calorie you put in your body and fills it with as many nutrients and vitamins as possible. So, what accompanies the sugars/ calories in an apple? A shit ton of vitamins, fiber, and various other nutrients that make the sugar content worth your while. Also, they are relatively low in calories because of their near 0 fat/ protein content. The fiber and nutrients allow an apple to satiate you on less than 100 calories. Now, go drink 100 calories of fruit drinks and see if you feel satisfied. Chances are, you won't. Fruit drinks are devoid of some of the nutrients, and most importantly, fiber, that allows a 100 calorie apple to satiate you. So, if you need to feel full off of a sweet, go with fruit over fruit drinks because the fruit will take you further. If you were to control for caloric intake and supplement fruit drink with fiber, then it becomes comparable, but this is just not how the average human drinks. Furthermore, I believe a social aspect to this is apparent when we consider the reactionary nature of the media. For years, fruit juice/drinks were considered healthy and parents were shoving this stuff down their kids' throats because of this perception. However, this turned out to be less than accurate, and now their is a social backlash against the very thing once thought to be the perfect supplement to your little kids' diet. And lastly, the term "healthy" is relative. What is healthy for someone trying to lose weight is to be extremely conscious about every calorie they put in their body and eliminate as many unnecessary ones, whereas a body builder's "healthy" is taking in as much protein and fat. The term is used in a blanket fashion which is why we get people that are 10 pounds underweight thinking they need to go on low carb diets because it is "healthy." So, fruit is "healthy" if you want something sweet and are moderating your eating, since it is far easier to eat a moderate amount of sugar in fruit vs. the other alternatives which provide less nutritional value.

[Nachie]

∆ This is perfect, you've laid out some of the same stuff as the top comment, but I saw yours first.

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[BlueApple4]

I think the issue is the amount of sugars you are consuming. Most fruit juices are very high in sugar, and it is a lot easier to get the sugar in many fruits at once. Compared to eating a fruit, where the fiber content will eventually make you full and you won't want to eat anymore. You can drink a whole lot more apples than you can eat at once.

[Inelukie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose_malabsorption Essentially, your body has a certain threshold in which it is ok with fructose, but if you happen to have a low threshold, you'll get in trouble. Same as for milk and lactose. It's digested through the liver. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose#Fructose_digestion_and_absorption_in_humans Essentially, your body doesn't really like fructose compared to glucose or other ready-to-be consumed sugars and has to process it first to become usuable. The liver is a organ which cleanses the body of potential poisons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose#Potential_health_effects Because the liver is strained by this activity, too much fructose might result in fatty liver and other problems. People generally lack vitamins and other micro-nutritions. Fruits have a small amount of fructose compared to the good things in them. So, eating them is fine. Eating only fruits? Might be bad, depending on how good your body deals with fructose. The reason why fruits are considered healthy are the vitamins, not the fruit sugar. Fruit sugar is ok to bad, depending on your body. If you want to have awesome food, eat vegetables. Almost no (useless) sugar, still tons of micro-nutritions and they are cheap. All the good sides of fruits without the potential downsides.

[Nachie]

∆ Appreciate the comments about the liver.

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[pikk]

vegetables don't inherently taste delicious though. Except for carrots, but they're technically tubers anyway.

[cdb03b]

Vegetable is a culinary term, not a botanical term. It is defined as any plant matter eaten as part of a dinner or lunch as part of the primary dish or appetizer. Thus tubers are vegetables.

[redditorexplorer]

Under that definition pasta would be a vegetable which I don't think anyone would agree with.

[monkeyjay]

Also fruit is a vegetable, if you have fruit for lunch..

[SuB2007]

Not all components of natural products are healthy, and their traits (both positive and negative) are magnified when they are removed from the whole natural food and purified into a single ingredient. Almonds are good for you...but if you took 10 lbs of almonds and distilled out all of the cyanide in them, it would kill you. Same ingredient, different context. Sugar is no different. The fact that it is found in nature does not make it healthy, especially when purified down into a juice. Lets say it takes ~6 apples to make one 6 oz. glass of (unsweetened) apple juice, which, according to google, has 24 g of sugar in it. How long would it take you to drink that glass? Most adults could gulp it down in less than 30 seconds. Now, how long would it take you to eat those 6 apples? Lets say you're hungry, have a big mouth, and REALLY like apples. Perhaps 5 minutes apiece, for a total of 30 minutes? Your body is going to respond differently (and much more gently) to the intake of 24 g of sugar over 30 minutes than the intake of 24 g of sugar over 30 seconds. There will be a major insulin spike to neutralize the effects of the sugar consumed quickly, while sugar consumed slowly may be utilized to produce energy. Also, eating a whole apple (or six!) will give you a huge dose of fiber, which means that you are likely to feel full afterwards and not inclined to continue your intake of sugar/calories. Juice will not make you feel full, so essentially you're just "adding on" the calories from the juice to whatever else you are eating.

[mumi1994]

So would 10 lbs of almonds kill me? Or is it only harmful/lethal if I distilled out all of the cyanide in them?

[DoodleVnTaintschtain]

It is, again, about dosage over time. Obviously, if you ate ten pounds of almonds of the course of a year, you'd be fine. If you ate the same ten pounds over the course of ten minutes, I'd be thoroughly impressed. That's a lot of almonds. You'd also be very uncomfortable for reasons unrelated to cyanide. According to the New York Department of Health, the first authority that popped up on Google, and, therefore, the arbiter of truth: [STA-CITE]> After exposure, cyanide quickly enters the bloodstream. The body handles small amounts of cyanide differently than large amounts. In small doses, cyanide in the body can be changed into thiocyanate, which is less harmful and is excreted in urine. In the body, cyanide in small amounts can also combine with another chemical to form vitamin B12, which helps maintain healthy nerve and red blood cells. In large doses, the body’s ability to change cyanide into thiocyanate is overwhelmed. Large doses of cyanide prevent cells from using oxygen and eventually these cells die. The heart, respiratory system and central nervous system are most susceptible to cyanide poisoning. [END-CITE]Essentially, we can handle cyanide in small doses, and can even benefit from it (much like arsenic, which is notoriously toxic, but paradoxically* necessary for life). It's the large doses that kill you. To be clear, I haven't a clue whether there is enough cyanide in ten pounds of almonds to kill you, and I'd imagine that it'd be dependent on the individual anyway... What would kill a toddler may not phase Duane The Rock The Tooth Fairy Johnson. Everything in moderation. Cyanide included. *Not the proper use of the word, but it sounds good, and you get the point.

[dancingmanatee]

Add to this that eating all those apples will net you other nutrients like fiber and vitamins. There is also research talking about the importance of the bacteria in your gut. Think about the food you leave in the fridge. Different food will grow different molds. If you eat lots of processed sugary foods, the bacteria that do a really good job of digesting simple sugar will overrun the bacteria that do better at digesting the complex foods. (This is super simplified explanation.) This is also an argument for eating a wide variety of food and food that is more "natural" and complex. When you eat crap, you're making it harder to eat healthy because you are selecting for bacteria in your gut that efficiently digest crap.

[meikyoushisui]

So what you're saying is that my Root Beer IV is totally, okay, right? But really, if I did consume the apple juice over the same period of time as the apples, would that be healthier?

[SuB2007]

Healthier than consuming the apple juice quickly? Yes, because your body would get smaller "doses" of sugar to process at one time.

[atomicllama1]

Cocaine is a very similar situation. The plants leaves can be chewed for a mild stimulant effect. OR we can distill it down to a white powder. Snort it and effectively snort 60 leaves(made up number) in 1 second. Edit I am still pro cocaine. Just in extreme moderation. Sure I will drink Apple juice once in a while. But 99% of what I drink is water. Not to mention fruits are ripe one part of the year. If you where a "natural" human walking around foraging for food, you wouldn't have a year round diet of fruits. Not to mention the fruits we have not commercially are nothing like what they where in nature due to farmers cross breeding and creating giants.

[OakenBones]

Honest question: what do you mean by "pro-cocaine?" Also, are you aware of the essentially unavoidable fact that buying cocaine directly funds some of the worst violence on earth? I don't mean to sound all high and mighty, because in and of itself, I'm pro-cocaine too, in moderation, but I try to point out the fact that by buying cocaine in America, you are complicit in extreme and widespread violence and oppression. Most other drugs don't have that dire of an implication. Like, I wonder how many children have been killed with coke money from frat parties alone.

[atomicllama1]

Same with smart phones. Coltan(sp) I wish I could buy coke from a free trade guy. But it is what it is. I'm responding to you on a phone with conflict minerals in it. That's slave children mining materials for this thing. MDMA is deforesting southeast Asia. And palm oil is destroying the amazon. The sooner we legalize all drugs the sooner this is not a problem. Edit: I was drunk while replying and you response made me very very sad.

[DoodleVnTaintschtain]

Cannabis is way worse on that count. It's America's largest cash crop, but by a study I read years ago for a senior thesis and can't be bothered to look up, makes up some 70% of cartel revenue.

[OakenBones]

I am fairly confident that most of the weed in my area is not sourced from the cartels, but then I'm sure there are areas of the country where most of it is cartel-sourced. Also, how many years old was this study? And is that American marijuana sales making up 70% of cartel revenue, or marijuana sales in general? I can imagine that this might be true in the border region of the US, but I would think it is not the case for most of the rest of the country. I am not inclined to think that any given buyer of marijuana in the US is necessarily supporting cartels or other significant violent groups (street gangs notwithstanding).

[VortexMagus]

Even weed that is purely 100% grown in the US can be sponsored by cartels or simply sold by Cartel distributors - just because some farmer grew it in california doesn't mean that black market you found online doesn't tithe a substantial percentage to a cartel that runs it up a few states/protects it from rival dealers/processes it/etc.

[DoodleVnTaintschtain]

I'm not going to lie, it's late, and I don't feel like looking up the backup, but I can point you in the right direction. I will also state at the outset that I've no problem with pot. There's no earthly reason why it shouldn't just be legal, and most of the problems I'll outline below are 100% related to its illicit status. The study I'm talking about is at least four years old at this point. Some quick googling does turn up plenty of people using the figure (though it varies from 60% to 70%). My guess is that it ultimately came from the paragon of truth the US Office of National Drug Control Policy (or wherever they got it from), given that this [Change.org petition](http://www.change.org/p/legalize-marijuana-stop-violent-mexican-drug-cartels) cites them for that figure, and specifically attributes that to the US market. What you have to realize about US cannabis sales is that it's not just about what's imported into the US, a lot of the pot sold in the US by cartels is grown in the US by cartels. Many illegal immigrants / undocumented workers / non-resident non-authorized non-papered residents (pick you term) are brought across the border by cartels as indentured servants... [they set up grow operations in national / state parks](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/drug-cartels-are-growing-tons-of-weed-inside-the-us) to pay off the debt incurred for moving them across the border. Bottom line is that in most cases, the supply line is unclear at best, and unless you *know* who your ultimate supplier is, you never know... and the cartels are doing a huge cannabis business, so that's always a concern. Moreover, remember that unless you *know* who your grower is, you don't know what you're actually smoking / vaping / eating. Note: the few sources I supplied are what I found through moments of googling, and did not involve any search through actual scholarly works. They're only meant as a jumping-off point, in case you want to do more research.

[CPTherptyderp]

I was considering posting a CMV about whole foods vs supplements. You've preemptively changed my view. ∆

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