Please Calm Down About Mac And Cheese

And stop playing yourself with scary-sounding pseudoscience.

Silvia Killingsworth
The Awl
1 min readJul 17, 2017

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The actual activist-spawned report says nothing of the sort. First, it is not peer-reviewed, but if you dig through the report it does show replicates and statistics, and describes the methods used to measure the target compounds. They used appropriate negative controls. The numbers are likely reliable.

But this is not how we publish data, as the tiny amounts found are biologically inconsequential. The approach here mirrors that used by food fear mongers everywhere, as they try to push a political agenda by scaring you away from your safe food. They do it by detecting trace amounts, parts per billion (that’s seconds in 32 years) amounts of a scary-sounding chemical in a common food item.

Yes, you are going to die, but not from your Kraft intake, much as the New York Times might have frightened you last week. Please don’t get me started on tampons.

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Silvia Killingsworth
The Awl

Editor of The @Awl and @thehairpin. Patron Saint of early bedtimes.