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Food vs Drug

What is the difference between a food and a drug?

Food vs Drug
Food vs Drug

Food Drug

Can safely be eaten in large quantities. Must be eaten in small precisely specified dosages.

Not formally tested, but uses ingredients believed to be safe from thousands of years of use. Very carefully tested.

Eaten by everyone, young and old, healthy and sick. Only eaten by people with very specific diseases or conditions.

A food should have no negative side effects, other than making you fat if you eat too much of it. There is no pressing need to eat any particular food. If a cancer drug makes your hair fall out and makes you nauseous, even this can be tolerated so long as it cures the cancer.

Consider Proctor & Gamble introducing transfat (brand name Crisco). Consider Monsanto introducing genetically modified foods where genes from various species and artificial genes are mixed to form new foods. Consider DuPont’s fluoride. Consider food irradiation. These foods should be treated more like drugs because:

They have not yet been tested by time the way ordinary foods are.

The consequences are much larger than for drugs since the entire population may ingest large quantities.

Besides testing, we need labeling both so that people can opt out of the experimental foods and so that people can track the negative side effects. If people are denied the knowledge they are eating these experimental foods, they will not consider those foods as a possible cause of some symptom. Their doctor cannot consider them either.

The creators of these foods strenuously and successfully resist even allowing competitors to label their foods as being free of these new ingredients. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, willing slave of the food manufacturers, and willing acceptor of contributions, enacted laws to keep consumers in the dark about what they are eating. There is no advantage to the consumer of doing that.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Food vs Drug
Food	Drug
Can safely be eaten in large quantities.	Must be eaten in small precisely specified dosages.
Not formally tested, but uses ingredients believed to be safe from thousands of years of use.	Very carefully tested.
Eaten by everyone, young and old, healthy and sick.	Only eaten by people with very specific diseases or conditions.
A food should have no negative side effects, other than making you fat if you eat too much of it. There is no pressing need to eat any particular food.	If a cancer drug makes your hair fall out and makes you nauseous, even this can be tolerated so long as it cures the cancer.