What is more unhealthy? Marijuana or Ice Cream?
Consider the latest news article states:
Total marijuana demand tops ice cream.
What might this imply? Well to me it implies that people get a greater high from marijuana than they do from ice cream. The deeper and more important question to ask in my opinion is whether ice cream is actually more unhealthy than marijuana?
I will suggest now that ice cream is actually more unhealthy than marijuana. Ice cream if over consumed causes obesity. Ice cream is packed with sugar and some forms of ice cream even have the toxic high fructose corn syrup which is a processed sugar that the body has great difficulty dealing with. I would suggest that ice cream has a definite negative impact on human health as it also contains dairy which for some who are lactose intolerant can cause problems.
Because ice cream is a high calorie food it contributes to the epidemic of obesity. I will define it more precisely as the increasing body fat percentages in the US population over time. Body fat percentages are going up, health tends to decline as body fat to muscle ratio changes in favor of greater fat percentages to muscle. Now I must state the studies do not show that high body fat percentage specifically causes diseases like diabetes, heart disease, etc, but merely that there is a correlation. It has been shown though that body fat distribution in specific does seem to be a causal link for insulin resistance, which is heavily associated with development of type 2 diabetes.
A person can say that dairy has positive health benefits. In fact the analysis of studies suggest that it is the case that overall dairy is either neutral or healthy (it doesn't directly cause disease). At the same time a person can also say that cannabis (THC) has positive health benefits. Cannabis for example has been shown to slow the spread of cancer, to reduce glaucoma risk, to treat eating disorders. At the same time for most people who consume cannabis moderately there are no negative consequences. Excessive consumption of cannabis or consumption by individuals who have underlying susceptibility for mental illness, it can lead to negative health or psychological consequences.
Additionally, cannabis is shown not to be healthy for children because it could disrupt the brain development of the child. This doesn't seem to be the case with adults but more studies have to be conducted. Overall we can say that ice cream contributes to obesity (it has a lot of calories) with some people being more vulnerable to obesity than other people genetically while we can also say that cannabis impacts the brain with some people more vulnerable to the potentially negative impacts.
The reason I suggest ice cream is more unhealthy is for the most part while cannabis may cause some harm it doesn't seem to create diseases which are life threatening. I haven't heard of anyone dying of a heart attack from years of consuming cannabis but this can happen if a person consumes too much ice cream for too long. We do not usually heath of people developing cardiovascular diseases or cancer from smoking cannabis but the two main causes of death are cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Result so far is ice cream is more harmful to human health than cannabis. Of course someone can invent sugar free healthy ice cream or even blend cannabis oil into ice cream so these opinions are not set in stone. The assumptions here are to compare consuming standard ice cream (which contains processed sugar) and standard cannabis which recreational users typically intake. What are your thoughts and which would you say is more unhealthy?
Genetics play a major role in body fat distribution. Some people can also seemingly grow new fat cells while oter people become insulin resistant very quick.
Ice cream (and junk food in general) can be very addictive to some people. People have died from over eating.
Cannabis can be addictive to some people, but I don't see a lot of deaths directly caused by cannabis.
Moderate consumption of cannabis or ice cream seems to have no lasting negative impact on health. Over consumption on the other hand is what matters. This means anyone can eat a bowl of ice cream a few times a year or consume cannabis a few times a year. If someone does it a few times a day, for many years in a row, then it's likely to cause problems.
Genetics play a major role in body fat distribution. Some people can also seemingly grow new fat cells while oter people become insulin resistant very quick.
Ice cream (and junk food in general) can be very addictive to some people. People have died from over eating.
Cannabis can be addictive to some people, but I don't see a lot of deaths directly caused by cannabis.
Moderate consumption of cannabis or ice cream seems to have no lasting negative impact on health. Over consumption on the other hand is what matters. This means anyone can eat a bowl of ice cream a few times a year or consume cannabis a few times a year. If someone does it a few times a day, for many years in a row, then it's likely to cause problems.
References
- Thorning, T. K., Raben, A., Tholstrup, T., Soedamah-Muthu, S. S., Givens, I., & Astrup, A. (2016). Milk and dairy products: good or bad for human health? An assessment of the totality of scientific evidence. Food & nutrition research, 60(1), 32527.
- Hjorthoj, C., Albert, N., & Nordentoft, M. (2018). O9. 1. Cannabis And Other Substance Use Disorders Predict Conversion From Schizotypal Disorder To Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 44(Suppl 1), S99.
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeadams/2018/05/01/marijuana-gives-health-conscious-consumers-something-alcohol-cannot/#59caa17c630b
- https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=125912&page=1
Some good points but to truly analyze the sales costs lets keep in mind the inflated prices for dope even post "reform" the prices are ridiculously high because the central planners have a big bubble they want to inflate across the entire economy. Rand Corp's 2010 estimated costs for legal marijuana production for sensimilla (seedless, and thus better with more THC) could be as high as $80-200 per lb for indoor or $8-10 per lb for outdoor (possibly below $1). Marijuana even where legal seems like it is still like 100,000% the cost of production so perhaps if it was priced more competitively whether ice cream or laughing grass has a hire total cash dollar demand might be different.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2010/RAND_WR764.pdf
For me Ice cream is packed by refined sugar which causes changes in the brain's reward center, leading to addiction and a downward health spiral that can end in heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even cancer.
So of course ice cream more dangerous than getting high on weed.
The overall caloric value of ice cream contributes to the lowering of the beneficial hDL, high density lipoprotein. Im not a fan of marijuana but i know its more beneficial.
I do agreed with with you. it's a case of choosing between two evils. Even though marijuana is damn dangerous, I'd use it any day against ice cream. Been long i tasted ice cream
Assuming this post is not entirely tongue-in-cheek, I'm going to cast some shade.
Ice cream won't developmentally stunt kids so profoundly. Obesity, diabetes, & cardiovascular disease are often reversible for people who take their diet seriously and cut out sugar, among other things. One would think it would be obvious that marijuana isn't good for growing kids, but I'm not so sure that's what other people think.
Instead, people believe the media reports on health (like Forbes and ABC). If you follow mainstream media health coverage, you'll get whiplash from an article that says the exact opposite next week.
So put the "marijuana's healthy" articles in the same trash bin as "alcohol's healthy" or, from years gone by, "smoking cigarettes is healthy." The trouble is most of us will engage in confirmation bias and choose what we want to be healthy over what works best for us individually.
Nothing is perfectly good for everyone all the time. Marijuana will be problematic for some people, possibly many people. We don't know enough.
Is ice cream creating issues for people with PTSD?
The strains cultivated today are radically more potent than what hippies smoked in the '60s. Are we far along enough for studies to account for this change?
Soon enough, though, we'll have many more people consuming marijuana regularly and for extended periods of time. That will provide us with a dataset big enough to truthfully answer this question.
But if getting marijuana is a gateway drug for ice cream consumption, you might have to change your answer for logical consistency. 😉
I think healthy for whom? I would say for example marijuana is no worse than some prescription medicines kids are given. I will not name these for political reasons but some of these medications have been shown to alter the brain with possible unknown long term effects. We also know marijuana isn't exactly a vitamin but it's not what I would consider unhealthy either.
I would say compared to caffeine, THC is healthier. As you can have health problems from excessive caffeine including insulin resistance, higher blood pressure (increased risks). At the same time I would not say marijuana is as beneficial as kale. Kale is one of the most nutrient dense foods there is.
So I would say no we cannot compare marijuana to alcohol. Alcohol has no medical use cases that I know of and doesn't benefit human health at all from what I can see. Marijuana has some marginal benefit to human health but the long term impact remains unknown. What we do know is it's not good for children but a lot of stuff which is good for the aging population is bad for the growing population.
I agree we need a larger data set to analyze.
Hi sir it's an useful article with so many interesting and amazing facts about the benefits of marijuana, I am from India and here crop of marijuana or trade is not legal yet except some little regions but very specific rules and restrictions, when I am enquiring the benefits of marijuana I found one of the prominent benefits is it can cure cancer, as in my reason so many poor people lives and they used to chew tobacco or directly Smoke tobacco and cigarettes which is the leading cause of cancer in my country, I want your help if you suggest the use of cannabis in better way as I want to suggest those poor people who mostly belongs from the labour class to switch to cannabis from tobacco consumption, but the more important thing is how can we approach to the government for the legalisation of cannabis crop, trade and consumption.
Although I refer to the source of this study and find some useful key benefits of using marijuana in moderate way, I want to file a petition in the Supreme court of India for the legalisation of Marijuana, if you suggest something it will be very useful to me sir.
Thank you.
Dear sir Good Morning,
Thank you for your valuable advice I am personally not favours the Smoking and I value your advice.
It's great and interesting to know that we can consume cannabis without smoking it. So it's a big big opportunity for the enthusiasts.
Yes it's the only thing for consideration is that it's crop is not legal somewhere in my country and my area also comes under this, but we can buy it from the Government authorised shops so the use of cannabis is not illegal only cropping and trading is illegal we can purchase and use it from government authorised shops.
So I am gonna an enthusiastic user of this amazing gift of Mother Nature.
Thank you sir for your time to kind reply.
99% of the ice cream sold today is packed with sugar. Like a lot lot lot of it.
That's one of the reasons I've stopped eating it entirely.
Great post. If it's not smoked, weed is most likely healthier than ice-cream...especially with all the artificial ingredients they put in now days. The problem is, weed gives you the munchies...and ice-cream always sounds good. ;-)
I think it depends on what the 'standard' of cannabis is. A lot of it is probably packed with chemicals made from the lowest of standards with no control in place (the black market). So to be fair you can't compare standard supermarket icecream to pharma-grade dispensary bud. Where the pharma grade stuff I think probably has tremendous benefits as opposed to shitty supermarket icecream.
On an entirely simplistic level it seems that cannabis may be the healthier choice.
It is most definitely ethically the better option as no animal cruelty is involved, unlike is the case with dairy.
That said, while nowadays I don’t consume cannabis anymore, I always enjoyed eating ice cream after a nice bong. So in that sense would it all have been back to zero?
Ice cream is definitely more unhealthy. Most people don't know that marijuana is actually medicinal and is used as a herbal prescription.
However due to its intoxicating effects it is very much subject to abuse.. It is the abuse of marijuana that becomes bad in my opinion @dana-edwards