[Mase]

What disturbs me is the endless demonization of the "killer of the week" ingredient or process with skimpy, if any, actual data to support it. I've lived through the attacks on saccharin, aspartame, msg and the more recent GMO nonsense.

You forgot trans-fat, artificial flavors, sucralose and many others I can't recall right now. I've lived through them all as well. It's pretty mind-boggling. In the 1990's CSPI declared that animal fats were the enemy and told us we all needed to convert to hydrogenated vegetable oil or we'd die. Twenty years later, they were suing McDonalds for using hydrogenated vegetable oil.

All of them have a common theme: smarter people telling all of us dopes how to live. The recent propaganda campaigns follow the global warming model; lots of "may", "might", "could", etc. inevitably leading to "more study is needed but can we really afford to wait to act?" Often as not there's a tax proposal in there as well.

Exactly so. Reminds me of a favorite quote by HL Mencken:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Too bad there are no "like" buttons on this forum. I'd give your post a hundred.

[facedown]

Thanks much! It gets kind of lonely out here in Rationalville. Yeah: cyclamates, f,d&c red dye, green dye, and the granddaddy of them all, freon, are all still banned or partially banned. And don’t get me started on DDT.....