[GUEST ACCESS MODE: Data is scrambled or limited to provide examples. Make requests using your API key to unlock full data. Check https://lunarcrush.ai/auth for authentication information.]  Andrej Karpathy [@karpathy](/creator/twitter/karpathy) on x 1.3M followers Created: 2025-07-01 22:52:52 UTC Test-based certification is the only way forward in food, eager to see more over time. Food is not simple anymore - it is a complex, industrial product with global supply and processing chains. Contamination can be introduced in many stages along the way from farming to harvest, processing, packaging, transport and preparation. Examples include pesticides, nitrates, heavy metals, plastics, bacteria, etc etc. So it's not just about what food to eat, it's about which specific food item SKU, from which specific supplier, and the only way to know is to test. E.g. these two cat foods look the same, the ingredients might look the same, but the one on the left is 1000X higher in glyphosate and 100X in lead. Or e.g. this baby food formula or turmeric is loaded with heavy metals, this canned seafood, your local boba or this milk brand is seeped in plastics, or this breakfast cereal way way too high in glyphosate (real examples). I used to think that the FDA exercises oversight but the reality is that it doesn't have anywhere near enough resources to do it thoroughly and their focus is a lot more on e.g. acute microbial threats (like Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, ...) that immediately hospitalize people, less on the rapidly growing diversity of compounds that may or may not deteriorate health over decades and that are basically treated as innocent until proven guilty under GRAS and so on. Meanwhile, the public health macro picture looks not so great - obesity up, type-2 diabetes up, fertility down (sperm count/motility), weird endocrine trends (e.g. testosterone down in men), depression and anxiety up... It wouldn't shock me if modern industrial food turns out to be a major contributor. XXXXXXX engagements  **Related Topics** [money](/topic/money) [pets](/topic/pets) [Post Link](https://x.com/karpathy/status/1940181840201228384)
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Andrej Karpathy @karpathy on x 1.3M followers
Created: 2025-07-01 22:52:52 UTC
Test-based certification is the only way forward in food, eager to see more over time.
Food is not simple anymore - it is a complex, industrial product with global supply and processing chains. Contamination can be introduced in many stages along the way from farming to harvest, processing, packaging, transport and preparation. Examples include pesticides, nitrates, heavy metals, plastics, bacteria, etc etc. So it's not just about what food to eat, it's about which specific food item SKU, from which specific supplier, and the only way to know is to test. E.g. these two cat foods look the same, the ingredients might look the same, but the one on the left is 1000X higher in glyphosate and 100X in lead. Or e.g. this baby food formula or turmeric is loaded with heavy metals, this canned seafood, your local boba or this milk brand is seeped in plastics, or this breakfast cereal way way too high in glyphosate (real examples).
I used to think that the FDA exercises oversight but the reality is that it doesn't have anywhere near enough resources to do it thoroughly and their focus is a lot more on e.g. acute microbial threats (like Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, ...) that immediately hospitalize people, less on the rapidly growing diversity of compounds that may or may not deteriorate health over decades and that are basically treated as innocent until proven guilty under GRAS and so on. Meanwhile, the public health macro picture looks not so great - obesity up, type-2 diabetes up, fertility down (sperm count/motility), weird endocrine trends (e.g. testosterone down in men), depression and anxiety up... It wouldn't shock me if modern industrial food turns out to be a major contributor.
XXXXXXX engagements
