| You're lumping them all together again, but each issue deserves to be discussed by itself. Regarding GMOs, what is interesting is not the fact that an organism was geneticially modified in a lab. What one wants to know is why it was modified. You can bet that your Roundup Ready crop is going to be slathered in ...Roundup. It's up to you to decide whether or not that's a big deal. The point is that this isn't superstition, it's basic fact-finding about the food we eat. I never claimed that organic produce is more nutritous than non-organic produce. I did suggest that it's a reasonable working hypothesis that it is safer because of lower pesticide levels. If anything on your list deserves your derisive attitude, it's the gluten-free craze. I have very little interest in that one; it strikes me as another diet fad and the testimonials are reiminiscent of other bogus complaints, e.g. re MSG. Which is too bad, since celiac disease is real and these patients are now being taken less seriously. "the amount of money"
Spending 10 cents more per pound for the organic fair-trade bananas so I can practice the precautionary principle and possibly help improve the lot of the serfs that pick them seems OK to me. "You would think it cured cancer"
Well, it is one of the things people are hoping to prevent... Of course, none of this touches on the other reasons one might be picky about how their food is sourced, namely environmental and labor concerns. What frustrates me so much about your post is that you see people doing things for stupid reasons and conclude from this that there aren't good reasons for doing these things. There are plenty of smart, dare I say skeptical (seems to be one of the fetishes on HN), people thinking about these issues who don't share your perspective. |