Posted on 05/28/2014 4:08:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
It's easy to scare people about what's in their food, but the danger is almost never real. And the fear itself kills.
Take the panic over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Ninety percent of all corn grown in America is genetically modified now. That means it grew from a seed that scientists altered by playing with its genes. The new genes may make corn grow faster, or they may make it less appetizing to bugs so farmers can use fewer pesticides.
This upsets some people. GMOs are "unnatural," they say. A scene from the movie "Seeds of Death" warns that eating GMOs "causes holes in the GI tract" and "causes multiple organ system failure."
The restaurant chain Chipotle, which prides itself on using organic ingredients, produces videos suggesting that industrial agriculture is evil, including a comedic Web series called "Farmed and Dangerous" about an evil agricultural feed company that threatens to kill its opponents and whose products cause cows to explode.
Michael Hansen of Consumer Reports sounds almost as frightening when he talks about GMOs. On my show, he says, "It's called insertional mutagenesis ... you can't control where you're inserting that genetic information; it can have different effects depending on the location."
Jon Entine of the Genetic Literacy Project responds: "We've eaten about 7 trillion meals in the 18 years since GMOs first came on the market. There's not one documented instance of someone getting so much as a sniffle."
Given all the fear from media and activists, you might be surprised to learn that most serious scientists agree with him. "There have been about 2,000 studies," says Entine, and "there is no evidence of human harm in a major peer-reviewed journal."
That might be enough to reassure people if they knew how widespread and familiar GMOs really are -- but as long as they think of GMOs as something strange and new, they think more tests are needed, more warnings, more precaution.
Yet people don't panic over ruby red grapefruits, which were first created in laboratories by bombarding strains of grapefruit with radiation. People don't worry about corn and other crops bred in random varieties for centuries without farmers having any idea exactly what genetic changes occurred.
We didn't even know what genes were when we first created new strains of plants and animals. There's no reason to believe modern methods of altering genes are any more dangerous.
In fact, because they're far more precise, they're safer.
And since genetic modification can make crops more abundant and easier to grow, it makes food cheaper. That's especially good for the poor. Another life-changer is a new strain of vitamin A-enriched rice that has the potential to decrease the frequency of blindness that now afflicts about a half-million people a year, mostly children.
But activists -- who tend to be rich and well-fed -- are pressuring countries in Asia and Africa into rejecting GMO rice.
Crusades against food are endless. First Lady Michelle Obama urges students to eat organic, even though that term has no real meaning in science besides "partly composed of carbon."
My nonprofit for schoolteachers, Stossel in the Classroom, offers free videos that introduce students to economics. This year, we ran an essay contest inviting students to write on the topic "Food Nannies: Who Decides What You Eat?"
I was happy to see that many students understood that this debate is about more than safety. It's really about freedom. Sixteen-year-old Caroline Clausen won $1,000 for her essay, which contained this sarcastic passage: "Congress shall have the power to regulate the mixing, baking, serving, labeling, selling and consumption of food. Did James Madison's secretary forget to copy this provision into the Constitution?"
Rising generations will have more food options than ever before. They face less risk of starvation or disease than any humans who have ever lived. Let's give them science instead of scare stories
Well, my English failes me on the idiom but from what I have googled, this is about muscles and height-to-width proportions. This looks better to me, it's not about fat. As well as one can change clothes way easier than build a better body. Surely there're plenty obese Russians, but they're not of that degree of obesity which us common in the USA.
I guess the camera crew had good enough headlights. I can swear that show was stunning for an unfamiliar eye.
At some time in the future there will be basically two kinds of people. Those that eat GM foods and those that starve. — Captain Compassion
1) Never trust the Government!
2) The Government keeps telling me that GMO’s are perfectly safe to eat and will not harm me.
3) see #1
My understanding is there is GMO and there is GE... (Genetically Engineered) ...The 2nd one is the problem...altho I prefer my food “normal”
That already exists.
Chose Organic.
I hope you are not claiming a causal relationship between the two. If you are, you should provide some evidence.
Our obesity problem has much more to do with us having a higher standard of living (more and higher calorie food available, even for the poor) and much less physically strenuous lifestyles than in past generations. More calories and less exercise inevitably leads to obesity.
Another major factor has been the obsession with reducing dietary fats. Because reducing the fat content of food also reduces the flavor, food suppliers make up the difference with sugars. But while consuming dietary fats help trigger a sense of satiety and fullness, consuming sugars trigger cravings for more sugar.
No one is forced to buy seed from the hundred companies who have patented their product.
They can still plant that good old standby my father sold, XL45 by DeKalb seeds. It was a huge success, and millions of bushels of seed were sold to satisfied farmers.
Today, no one wants it, even though they still can get it, and for good reason. Profits.
The best improvement to our food supply with genetics has been the bug resistance that produces crops that need less pesticides and results in more food per acre. People against genetics are also the very type of pinheads that are the flat-Earth types. A little bit of information is dangerous around them.
No, I'm not claiming this, but these two facts make me suspect this relationship is possible. And I don't understand the U.S. government's attempts to sink labelling GMO containing food laws in other countries. The people's right for information harms noone.
The upper part of people will never eat GM food. They can afford organic one and will be able to in future. The thing that matters is the size of that upper part.
Well, consider the French. Their living standard is high enough to rid themselves of food shortage, but still thir population is less obese.
No, it’s more about your peasant stock - really unpleasant-looking, squat men. Sorry but true. Your good-looking White Russians escaped to Paris 100 years ago. The only good-looking guys left are your ballet dancers.
I’d think better of his case if he at least acknowledged the other side. E.g., Europe’s ban, the only very short-term tests that have been conducted, and the worrisome results from some of those tests.
This is so laughably one-sided as to discredit his argument, IMO.
There is only one GM incident I’m aware of that could have been catastrophic. In this case it was a modified bacteria that typically enriches soil. However, they made it too good, and it took over the test bed, killing all the other bacteria.
Had it gotten loose, it could have destroyed arable farmland around the world for perhaps several years, until other microorganisms adapted to it.
Um ... to save money?
But, Balding Eagle.... my point is, what if I don’t want for some reason to have to buy seeds from anyone. What if I want to do as my greatgrandfather did and save seeds from my previoous crop? I can’t do that if my crop was cross pollinated with GMO’s.
There are cases are there now where Monsanto has come in and tested a farmer’s saved seeds and sued him for using them because the test shows his seed has Monsanto’s GMO in it.
Russians are drunk
Americans are fat.
No offense here, just facts of the real life.
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