Even though we don't have long term experience the way we do with cooking, the description of the process on Wikipedia seems to suggest that it doesn't have much in the way of chemical effects on food. I'm definitely not an expert, and this is just an initial take, but I don't really see any mechanisms that could plausibly be dangerous.

In order to illustrate what I mean by a way that something could plausibly be dangerous: My understanding is that the molecules in most plastics contain chemicals that are known to be harmful. So even if we determine that it is not possible for them to break down into harmful chemicals in the body, it was plausible that they might.

Am I maybe missing some what that this process could be harmful?

The pressure may cause the container to release molecules into the food. Plastic that is normally considered food-safe might not be food-safe at these pressures.

They explicitly state that they don't really know how it affects proteins, only that they are changed in "complex" ways.

Here is one example of a protein change which is deadly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion

As far as I can tell it simply kills larger cells like bacteria and deactivates plant/fungus spores. It is not cooking the food.

I would not think it could do much, beyond maybe introducing more micro-plastics (the deck mentioned vacuum packaging food before being pressurized).

> We've been eating heat cooked food for millennia.

"We" have been eating raw food for millions of years, far longer than cooked foods, which are a relatively new phenomenon in our biochemical evolutionary history.

We can measure what it does. We can examine the inputs as well as the outputs.

Why are anti-science arguments from emotion/fear so common around new types of food technology? What is it about food specifically that triggers what appears to be a deep-seated fear of change in people?

Health has become a sort of religion for many. Health, food and religion frequently go together in old mythology and now new.

"Good for you" and "bad for you" spread like old myth, factions fight, people have incredibly strong beliefs sometimes which have at least a little basis in reality sometimes they are worse than harmless.

These days it just isn't because some mystical being said so.

The dimensionality of human health, nutrition, and environment over time is many orders of magnitude beyond a Python script. We know and (accurately) measure far far less than you think.

Except this presentation explicitly states that they don't really know what it does to proteins, only that the changes are "complex".

And you can turn your argument around. Why everytime "science" is involved, the immediate presumption is that it's safe, especially when it's done for profit and when we know you can pay to get whatever "science" you want. Remember the many studies funded by the food industry that showed that sugar is perfectly safe and that fat is the dangerous thing?

This is HN, where we worship textbook abstractions. Who are you question any of them?!

The only proper way to tell us that our abstractions leak is 20 years later, in an article in "The Atlantic", after the casualties are in!