Food: our extinction?

I think that, as usual, they are trying to turn some truth into a "Great Conspiracy" for their own profit.  If you ever get some of the studies about 'natural food', not the 'marketing version' but actual food in the wild, you will see that it can be just as dangerous for you.  One of the worst things you can do for your health is drink the water in mountain streams that look perfectly clear but too often contain 'Giardia' which can make you very sick.  Mother Nature doesn't care if you survive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardia_lamblia

What if we replace the "Great Conspiracy" with "Profit"?
Some years ago I have seen next documentary "We feed the world":

http://www.we-feed-the-world.at/en/film.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daxZBAOviCg

Your first link was by someone profiting by declaring a Great Conspiracy and hiding the facts.  You will not feed the poor by destroying the businesses that feeds the non-poor.  I don't consider Profit to be a bad word.  Without profit, those businesses cease to exist and no one would get fed.  You may feel some kind of 'moral obligation' to feed the poor but I don't know of anyway to create profit by feeding them.  And profit is what keeps the food machine going.

You are right from economical point of view.
What if "Profit" becomes a bad word because is profit with no matter what price for others?

What if "Profit" becomes a bad word because is profit with no matter what price for others?

That is an emotional argument, nothing more.  Objecting to profit is like complaining about air.  They are both necessary to survive.  

Of course, I don't know what "others" you might be talking about.

Well, if you watch "We feed the world" then you understand what I mean by "others".
There are big players which are taking out small and medium players in the economy game (having as engine the profit) going towards an inevitable globalization in which the big players have the entire hand of good (winning) cards.
The way how that is achieved and the consequences might by a problem for consumers.

I'm not going to spend an hour and a half watching that video.  In a market economy, the larger businesses are able to provide goods at lower costs than smaller ones can.  And I imagine it does  inevitably lead to globalization of some parts of the food supply chain.  Profit is the ONLY engine.  There is no other.

In the quest of maximizing the profit and offering the lower costs, the end products which lands on our tables and mouths are no longer safe due to so many modifications.
The problem that I see is this: the increasing demand of food as well as the increasing of population contributed to such globalization.
People start to accept slowly in different countries since many years all the engineered food.
Now there is still the option for "bio" food, twice or more expensive than a "normal" one from supermarket.
What would be in future when the globalization will create monopoles for some giants?
What would do a simple citizen to buy food?
Would we still afford to have the option that we have now? Could we pay for it? Or it will be only for some?

That made me think on long term at extinction.

"Safe" food from today is a tricky word.

I'm not going to spend an hour and a half watching that video.

I generally won't waste time watching any video for the sake of responding to a question. If a question point can't be made in the question itself, then it can't be clear enough to know what point is being made.

Tom

In the quest of maximizing the profit and offering the lower costs, the end products which lands on our tables and mouths are no longer safe due to so many modifications.

I don't believe that.  And I know that you can't prove that to my satisfaction.  You may stop eating if you want but I'm certainly not going to.  I'm not afraid of my dinner.

"Safe" food is as much a sales pitch as anything else and it Always has been.  So many things have been passed off as "healthy" that simply aren't true.  "Don't peel your vegetables, that's where the healthy stuff is."   Yeh, that's where the heavy metals like lead and arsenic accumulate.  So if you decide to plant your own garden to have 'safe' food, make sure you have the soil tested for heavy metals and carcinogens before you plant.

Food companies are Not trying to poison us, they need us for customers.  And of course like humans do, they sometimes make mistakes and have to recall products.  Of course, when communications were much poorer in previous centuries, that never happened.

As for 'genetically modified' foods:  Do you think there are any foods that have Not been genetically modified?  Mother Nature thru chemistry and natural radiation has been modifying ALL plants throughout the existence of planet earth.  Thinking about it, you probably couldn't digest the earliest plants on earth anyway.

"Food companies are Not trying to poison us, they need us for customers."

And how? By offering what kind of food?
Let's take one more example, the fast food companies.
There is a known experiment in which the analysis of the blood were measured regularly for 1 month for 1 healthy person when was eating only McDonalds food - is not the only company.
The experiment was recorded and documentary was made named "Supersize Me".
Maybe you heard about it.
The results were disastrous.
When you have time, and not to answer my question, but for your information, you may watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDqqiWhXAFE

The other documentary, a serious one, name "We feed the world" is also good for your information, not to answer my question.

I am not going to watch any of your fear-mongering propaganda videos.  Have you actually succeeded in frightening anyone but your own kids with this mis-information?  I don't believe "they" are trying to kill you but I'm starting to think that you will scare yourself to death.

I have to assume by your comments that you are unable to fix your own meals with decent food from the grocery store.  I fix 90% of my own meals and I'm a fairly good cook.  If you can't cook for yourself and prepare decent meals, I would consider you handicapped.

And anyone who eats nothing but fast food from McDonalds or anywhere else deserves what they get.  If you eat nothing but fat, no matter how good it tastes, you will have a problem.  If you eat nothing but green vegetables, you will probably get sick also.

"I have to assume by your comments that you are unable to fix your own meals with decent food from the grocery store."
You assume wrong.
The question posed here is not about how good cookers are we, but when we cook, the raw food that we will use in future will be not what we expect to be.

And is a problem of education too for the children.
TED is something that I like.
Watch this about the need of food education in schools:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html

What do you think about Codex Alimentarius?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Alimentarius
http://www.codexalimentarius.org/

Or "What's wrong with what we eat" by Mark Bittman:
http://www.ted.com/speakers/mark_bittman.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html

People have been telling me all my life about all the things that are "wrong".  Most of them do that to make themselves important and they make up much of it and exaggerate a lot of it too.  Being alive results in death.  Postpone it as long as you can.

But I don't buy into Any of that crap.  But feel free to scare yourself to death if you want.  Then you won't have to worry about it.  You can not get me to live in fear.

I just watched the opening few minutes of the 1st video you posted in this thread.

The opening is so cliche I had to watch a bit more to see if it was a skit by The Firesign Theatre or someone similar.
Apparently it's not.
It doesn't take a genius to know that, when someone is proposing to give you "the ultimate secret" about anything, he's about to pitch a new batch of snake oil for your consumption.

If they [THEM!] are so good at manipulating the population with food why haven't they managed to weed out the hyper-paranoid conspiracy buffs [ no offense ] that manage to, somehow, bring these "secrets" to light when others have failed so completely?
This "food manipulation" stuff is not even good fiction.
There are far too many logical inconsistencies and fallacious arguments.  

I find more amusement in imagining that we are being grown as a part of the food chain that is harvested by the pandimensional beings who manifest themselves in our 4.2 dimensional world as lichens.
It's true!!
If you lay totally still long enough next to a lichen covered rock in the wilderness they will become careless and you will see what they do and say when they believe we are not paying attention.
Now  those  secrets are some secrets truly worthy of the adjective "ultimate"!
Tell your friends!
Watch the rocks! Keep watching the rocks!!!

It is not about living in fear. It is about making the right choices as we still have the opportunities and  the options.
The way how the 1st video is presented may create a reluctance for an educated person, but was the short one. The other videos are better, but longer.
In fact it is not about a "ultimate" secret, conspiracy. Everything is in plain sight, most of the things. We just got used with them as natural and worse will be for future generations when they will not have not even the options that we have.
We developed our society in scientific ways in different domains so much in the last 100 years and that is good.
Science is neutral until is used by someone to make his business in such way that increase the profit in detriment of the majority.
 That development had impact also to the food with all kind of compounds and in top regulations.
The common consumer have no idea of impact of the the additives included in the supermarket food. Somebody else "smarter" decides for the consumer.
And here is a problem too, because the inters is not always fair from those who can provide the food at low price.
Take another example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number

How many of these are acceptable world wide? How many only in Europe? How many only in America?

The worse that I know are E600–E699 (flavour enhancers).
Chinese like to put in their food a lot of MSG.

By all means, present an alternative cultivation, distribution and preparation technology and methodology that will feed 7B people.

A quick look at a couple books on food chemistry (e.g., Chemical and Biological Properties of Food Allergens By Lucjan Jedrychowski) didn't show much to worry about for E600-E699 flavor enhancers. Most definitely, there was nothing even approaching risk from something as common as, say, peanut oil allergies. Worst expected adverse effect was... utricaria! (I.e., hives if allergic to them.)

Even water is deadly in excessive amounts.

I suspect that there are videos out there that would make infrequent meals with MSG sound as dangerous as ingesting a few grams of powdered plutonium. Personally, I'm not worried about it.

Tom

In primitive societies without money, you could substitute the word BENEFIT for PROFIT.  When it gets to the point where there is no benefit to working or trading with someone, it stops.  TANSTAAFL.

In primitive societies without money there were many situations when the benefit was only the food to sustain their life.

In fact the planet could easily support 9 to 10 billion people.

Yes, it almost certainly could. So, please propose an alternative cultivation, distribution and preparation technology and methodology that can get it done. When such an alternative is proposed, the followup questions will be about the likelihood of it ever happening and the reasons it will or won't happen.

We often say 'we can do this if we make the choice'. We rarely know how to cause appropriate choices to be made. If we're smart enough to know what should be done but we don't do it, we might as well be stupid. Humans en masse are tricky.

Tom

And that does not apply only to Africa and birds for meals.
I have seen it with my own eyes in other industrial sectors in Eastern Europe when the European Union was extended in the last years.
For similar reasons new initiatives were taken by people that have nothing to do with governments. They are welcome even if they are at small scale.
For example I was informed about:
http://www.brot-fuer-die-welt.de/home.html (=  bread for the world)

I am sorry it is only in german language

A nice presentation is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehHsxAcXyIU

I believe the original proposition was that our food is becoming dangerous to us.  My response is still that even without any genetic engineering and advanced farming techniques, you can't make food 'perfectly safe'.  If you don't watch out for the things Mother Nature sticks in your 'natural' food at times, you are still in danger.  And to think that any food plant is still in it's 'natural state' is pure nonsense.  Everything that lives has been genetically altered by natural means including natural radiation and chemicals.

No matter what you do, you still have to take steps to make sure your food isn't going to harm you.  There isn't any magic 'safe' bullet.

>> But nobody is willing to propose feasible ways to fix those problems.

That's just not true. Greenpeace as one organisation has pushed many initiatives against various dubious practices :-

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/agriculture/problem/genetic-engineering/food/

There is a host of initatives, like Torbin tax, against excessive speculation, buying up of all resources by the very rich and so on.

The biggest problem these people have is the ineptitude of the general public together with the denyers, those that believe there is no problem, that there is a quick technological fix, that market forces will make everything all right, or that covering the planet with genetically modified plants and animals will have no long term effect. That is not to say that genetic engineering is a bad thing, but experience shows that "in moderation" is the key. The problem is that global profit orientated companies are only interested in maximizing the bottom line (it wasn't always like that - many companies in the old days, family run, though always long term) and that lets moderation fly out the window.

>>Okay, so... propose feasible alternatives

YOU have to join pressure groups to ensure that OUR elected representatives do things for OUR benefit and not the benefit of vested interests.

A good example is the banks. After first going bankrupt and requiring massive amounts of public credit to remain afloat, the speculation has now moved into commodities and the public purse, now overloaded, gets downgraded because of the debt incurred bailing out them in the first place.

Any correctional issues from the governments? NOT a chance! The Canadians and the British were the two 100% against the introduction of any changes to avoid a repeat performance. The British government (62 billion pounds to the Royal bank of Scotland alone) said that they depended on their banking industry (which might go abroad if such things were introduced).

However if you look at the speculation taxes in place
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#United_States
you'll see that there is a great deal to do. The UAS for example has a 0.0034% tax called the Section 31 fee which brings in 1.8 BILLION dollars per year, which is FIVE times to costs of running the regulator SEC!

Yes, but in a time span that allowed Nature to accommodate the changes.

Yes, by killing off whatever couldn't tolerate the changes.  Natural selection at work.

The original question implied that I should be living in fear of my food.  No, not going to happen.  Should some things be done differently?  Of course that is almost always true, no matter what the subject.

Am I going to join your cause?  Nope, that's not going to happen either.  I think I'll just go heat up some leftover stew for lunch.  Have a nice day!

“Yes, by killing off whatever couldn't tolerate the changes.  Natural selection at work.”

I think we have to differentiate between what was introduced by Darwin as “natural selection” meaning and the increasing impact of the genetically modifications done by us.
The variables “long time”, “many small changes” was always part of the “natural selection” understanding.
Nobody would include in “natural selection” the cataclysms as meteorite impact with Earth. That is not evolution. And “natural selection” is part of evolution process understanding.
A short time change is rather a “shock”, this time made by us.
As expected, will be a feedback from our structure which does not always adapt.


A statement like:“Yes, by killing off whatever couldn't tolerate the changes.  Natural selection at work.”, make you think also “Be whatever will be! Who cannot adapt will die. Who cares, was always like that.”

Why should we add difficulties in top of the existing ones to our lives?
What gives you warranty that changes which may appear will make the proper “natural selection”?  I mean involution instead of evolution, which in the end may lead to extinction.


"The original question implied that I should be living in fear of my food.  No, not going to happen.  Should some things be done differently?  Of course that is almost always true, no matter what the subject."

Was not the intention to promote fear of food. It is only good to know what to choose.

Glad to know we have some points of agreement.  But I have to point out that meteorites are about as natural as it gets... unless some aliens are launching them at us.  It's just on a bigger scale than we normally think of.

I guess I object to the idea that "natural is good" and "man-made is bad".  Man has done a lot of good for himself and Mother Nature doesn't care if you live or die and demonstrates it now and then by putting very natural nasties in your food.  No matter where your food is coming from, you have to be aware of the possible dangers and take steps to avoid or minimize them.

The example with meteorites was given only to have a comparison what does it mean "shock" and us unable to adapt. I did not want to declare meteorites as unnatural.

Indeed, not everything what is in nature is good for us - to be eaten for example - and we made also a lot of good things. But here is a totally different situation:
- there were things in nature that we use to test and declare them good to be eaten.
- there are "things" in supermarket  and some "test" people declare them good to be eaten. Those things are made/changed by us and lately  they are many and the common citizen have no idea of the impact.

So the difference between mother nature and us as producers/changers is this: from all the good things that we make there are categories, specific speaking about food, which are not healthy and we sell/buy them as healthy in the stores.

It is true that you may argue that also before in the nature happened similar, but think at this:
- proportionality, number of people that eat now from supermarket not so healthy vs. people let's say "poisoned" by mother nature before.
- before, the mother nature offered things (good and bad) and it was only a question of selection from our side.
- now, we produce/change them with our own willing and some people declare them healthy only because are making profit on the back of supermarket consumers.

It is a totally different huge difference.

>>I guess I object to the idea that "natural is good" and "man-made is bad".

Nobody is suggesting such a sweeping generalisation.

What we are complaining about is the trend in food production towards an ever decreasing cost at the expense of quality, the environment, the third world, and many other factors, simply in order to increase the profits of a few multinationals who are becoming increasingly out of control and who are only interested in their own profits. An example is the Phillip Morris tobacco concern, resident in switzerland, which is trying to use WTO rules to force off healthe warnings from their cigarettes.

http://en.mercopress.com/2012/03/19/philip-morris-sues-uruguay-cigarette-labeling-claiming-violation-of-investment-treaty

"Philip Morris charges that Uruguay’s measures are ‘extreme’ and ‘unprecedented’, going beyond what is necessary to reduce the harm caused by smoking."

- How about stop making and selling them?

>>I guess I object to the idea that "natural is good" and "man-made is bad".

Nobody is suggesting such a sweeping generalisation.

People have been trying to suggest that for as long as I can remember, over 50 years at least.

What do you think about Codex Alimentarius?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Alimentarius
http://www.codexalimentarius.org/

Do you think this lady is saying the truth or do you have any arguments against what she said about Codex Alimentarius?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z6lZ8q3Z_o

I would like to close the present question after comments to Codex.

There is a lot to say on the present subject and I forgot about it. Now is the moment to close it.
I know for most of you make no sense what I will say below, but maybe worths to not neglect it 100%.

There is a prophecy in the Bible speeking about a famine time when many will die.
Now, when you look at some simple statistics as here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines
or general info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine

Or nowadays:
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
http://www.statisticbrain.com/world-hunger-statistics/

you may say simple that famine was and is, therfore nothing new.
Well, there is a differnce. The Bible speeks about a global starvation, which was never before, even if milions died in different parts of the world.
We have globalization, then is possible to have golbal resources problems, including the food for the next generations.