food health and life expectancy...

11 Replies, 1272 Views

ok, every time i open a newspaper it has a story about some new food or something else that will harm me.

every day they announce some new environmental danger that might hurt me...

and if i listen to the counterculture, virtually everything i eat thats not grown in my garden (which is only carrots beetroot and lettuce right now) will poison me.

people seem to be developing allergies left right and centre...

but yet i am expected to live to 80 years old or more, nearly double my life expectancy of a hundred years ago.

people are living longer and longer.

what gives?
It's not that the dangers are new. It's just that (in most cases) they are now detectable. Medicine and society have improved hugely in the last 100 years and that is the major factor in life expectancy - in the western world at least.

Stacks
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its a dangerous world out there!!! all them gm carrots and packaged food full of E-numbers...

but (to hijack this thread a little) all this fuss about gm crops is stupid imho - gm is nothing new, we've been doing it for years with selective breeding. different method, but the result is identical.

and also, i reckon eating everything healthy and pure all the time just weakens your stomach and your immune system. and i'm sure a similar reason plays a part in all these allergies and things. i knew a family where the mother kept the house so clean it was like a surgery theatre - not a speck of dust, not a single bit of dirt. her kids developed all sorts of allergies - asthma and things. why? because they were used to this sterile morgue-atmosphere and their immune system couldnt handle the various irritants that they were subjected to once they leave the house!

so you know, eat normally, not like a fastfood junkie but not like a healthfreak either. have a strong stomach u know.
i think gm is fine as long as there is thorough testing. like the much publicised test in the uk recently. its only dangerous when it gets out into the eco system and is a damaging crop.

they are doing in one or 2 generations what previous techniques did over hundreds of generations. we are also in a position now to judge the cost to the environment we are doing by changing the genetic makeup of a plant. in times past we didnt care.

and we dont know what will happen years and many generations down thel ine when genetic material filters through the food chain.

will insect resistant plants feed resistant bugs? etc. malaria is now becomming resistant, as are many other diseases. they need to make new fly sprays every 2 or 3 years because they become resistant.

many insects, inj particular moths and catapillars(the primamary crop eating bugs) get their bad taste through developed immunity to the poisons they eat in plants. this makes them bird proof.

its pointless to turn your back on gm its already out there and isnt going to be stopped. but its deadly dangerous to let it out uncontroled.
i dont understand

even if for example a gm insect resistance crop makes a resistant bug (which is what u're saying in "will insect resistant plants feed resistant bugs?" yeah?) doesnt a selectively-bred insect resistance plant pose the same danger? in any case, how can it happen? what connection is there between an insect resistant plant and the malaria bug becoming resistant to sprays? does it pick up the resistance gene or something? is there such a gene? i thought it would have to be more specific.

in any case, the only difference i see between selective breeding and gm is that, as you said, gm takes a much shorter time, hence yeah ok, its dangerous cos it can spin out of control - we can all of a sudden be faced with resistant bugs, caterpillars which are unpalatable to birds and hence all sorts of problems with the foodchain/ecosystem/etc etc

is this what u're saying?
eklmn Wrote:i dont understand

even if for example a gm insect resistance crop makes a resistant bug (which is what u're saying in "will insect resistant plants feed resistant bugs?" yeah?) doesnt a selectively-bred insect resistance plant pose the same danger? in any case, how can it happen? what connection is there between an insect resistant plant and the malaria bug becoming resistant to sprays? does it pick up the resistance gene or something? is there such a gene? i thought it would have to be more specific.

With insects, resistance is developed by random mutation of the genes that encode the proteins the insecticides act on, rather than picking up the gene from somewhere. Eventually a mutation will occur that will render the insecticide harmless, and the insect carrying that mutation will be at a selective advantage, and the gene will thus spread through the population via that insect's progeny.
^^

malaria was just an example of a mutation that has already happened.

its like say the shape of asian peoples eyes. one person had a random mutation that proved to be an advantage over people without the fold of skin that gives asians their eyes. theirfore that person had an advantage when it came to survival.

in nature it happens over thousands of generations. what we are doing is over one or 2 generations. the eco system has no time to adapt. literally... in one persons lifetime, we are going to dramatically alter the worlds food chain.
so selective breeding and gm pose pretty much an equal danger to the ecosystem. both acheive the result much quicker than naturally (ie by evolution) would occur, even if gm acheives it quicker still. selective breeding has been happening for how long? havent we already had enough time to assess its effects and judge it safe? what selective breeding acheives within a couple of generations, gm acheives in one. is there really then such a great difference?
with the rise in gun crime,none of us r gonna live till 50 let alone 80!

Icon_sad

anybody see the 10month old kid getting stabbed in broad daylight in a high street 2day?

what's the world coming to?

or am I exxagerating?
'There's no such thing as selling out just buying in'

Chuck D
^^^ that thing with the kid is fucking shocking!

i tell u the uk is a relatively nice safe place to live, but occasionally you get some real fuckedup individuals!!!
eklmn Wrote:so selective breeding and gm pose pretty much an equal danger to the ecosystem. both acheive the result much quicker than naturally (ie by evolution) would occur, even if gm acheives it quicker still. selective breeding has been happening for how long? havent we already had enough time to assess its effects and judge it safe? what selective breeding acheives within a couple of generations, gm acheives in one. is there really then such a great difference?

the difference is that they are not being monitored in many places. its ok if it is monitored and we sort out what is good and bad. but there are places where wholesale untested 'pirate' ge crop manufacturers are basically copying untrialed products and selling them.

this has happened in india with genetically engineered cotton. it produces a higher yeild and is more insect resistant. but what the original american designers never intended on was that indian farmers also use the oil for a foodstuff. the cotton was designed in america and never for consumption. the pirated version is now so widespread in india that it will never be contained. not only is it consumed widely, but the effects on people have never been tested. concidering it was designed to not be eated by anything let alone people... theres no way of knowing what harm it will cause. it was also designed for the american cotton farms with american insect resistance in mind. who knows what damage it might inadvertantly do to the indian eco system... one of the side effects of many GE crops has been the death of non target insect species further down the food chain... such as animals that eat moths and butterflies. these animals are region specific. when a toxin is released into an alien environment and widely consumed by multiple species that it wasnt intended for... trouble.

on the other hand... selective breeding happens slowly over many generations. it usually happens because there is reason to. there is a need to change or evolve. genetic modification happens because we want it to, not because there is a natural need.
point taken thanks for the info!

although selective breeding still happens cos we want it to - instead of letting evolution do its thing, we separate those crops (for example) that have the gene we want (make them grow bigger and faster lets say) and only breed them. evolution and selective breeding are not the same thing

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