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Study: Bacteria in Kimchi Could Eliminate Nanoplastics from Body (world.kbs.co.kr)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by to c/science@lemmy.world
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New research finds that the lactic acid bacteria in kimchi could eliminate nanoplastics from the body.

The World Institute of Kimchi announced on Wednesday that it had injected lab mice with Leuconostoc mesenteroides CBA3656, a type of lactic acid bacteria isolated from kimchi, and found that their detected nanoplastic levels were more than twice as high as those of mice not injected with CBA3656.

Edit: Link to the paper

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[–] 80 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Wait. Lab mice injected with the lactic acid bacteria isolated from kimchi had nanoplastic levels twice as high than those not injected... That's the opposite of the claim in the title.

I had to read this a couple of times.

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  • [–] 86 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    The next paragraph in the article is:

    The institute said those figures support the possibility that CBA3656 reacted with nanoplastics in the intestine and promoted their excretion from the body, thus exhibiting high nanoplastic biosorption efficiency.

    Essentially "we see a lot more nanoplastics freely moving around instead of embedded where they're hard to measure."

    Normal scientific asterisks are in play: this was bacteria isolated from kimchi, not kimchi itself. For all I know, kimchi could introduce more nanoplastics than the bacteria remove. The bacteria could also not have the same behavior when they're on kimchi and have other things to eat. There isn't much information on the process used, so it could be that the samples they used were contaminated with nanoplastic and that's why they saw more. This was also published by "The World Institute of Kimchi". Not that they couldn't find a real effect, just that this isn't remotely unbiased.

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  • [–] 27 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Does Korea still have a somewhat tainted rep of trustworthiness in research?

    Having lived in Korea many moons ago, I recall the nationalism being absolutely bonkers in romanticising anything Korean being superior. I remember hearing many times that Korean scientists are better than anywhere else in the world because Korean children eat with metal chopsticks. Yep, this was considered a fact.

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  • [–] 26 points 6 months ago

    They're also safe from electric fans. Metal chopsticks + no fans stealing their souls while they sleep... Actually, I can't even finish my thought on this one. I'm a US citizen. South Korea is doing pretty well by my current standards.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Korean scientists are better than anywhere else in the world because Korean children eat with metal chopsticks.

    Wait, does the superiority come from the shape or the material? Is there a hierarchy, with wood and fiberglass chopsticks also having different effects? How does it compare to eating with metal forks?

    I'm morbidly curious about the exact contours of the nonsense.

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  • [–] 20 points 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    The next paragraph says:

    The institute said those figures support the possibility that CBA3656 reacted with nanoplastics in the intestine and promoted their excretion from the body, thus exhibiting high nanoplastic biosorption efficiency.

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