• ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Golden Rice is the most obvious example of how wrong you are on all your points. Golden Rice is GMO to be easier to grow in bad locations and provides a lot more nutrients than non-GMO rice. It is cheap and easy to grow, intended to bring food nutrition to parts of the world that suffer from nutritional deficiency.

    This one GMO food solved blindness, diabetes, and death from lack of vitamin A. Many MANY more foods are modified for our benefit that don’t attract people who are scared of the words Genetically Modified. Do you even know how things are genetically modified? Breeding programs that specifically target for traits. No one is going into the DNA to make 5G tracking chips or Super COVID.

    Did you know corn was genetically modified in the early 1900s to increase yield per acre?

    Did you know the other staple grains like wheat and soy are also GMO? You can eat food without eating GMO and you are absolutely fine.

    Stop spreading baseless fear.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      GMO + Capitalism = Plants modified to be resistant to specific pesticies and herbicides, increasing their use; farmers being sued due to their plants being polinized by GMO plants and so on.

      The problem is not GMO, it’s GMO under low or no regulation Capitalism: it’s guaranteed that it’s going to be used in all the wrong ways even if a handful of examples are actually not (and even Golden Rice is patented, which opens the door to abuse if its use becomes widespread).

      Most distrust of some powerful new tools of Science is due to how the political and economic environment we live in tends to shape the use of such tools, much more than of the tools themselves.

      • Flummoxed@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        You remember a tomato? That is what you are basing your stance on? You got any sauce for that anecdote?

        • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          Come on. A lot of foods were bred for shipping, not flavor or nutrition. Some used GMO, others used selective breeding. Here’s an article talking about it 20 years ago. The short answer is people want to make money, and most foods aren’t priced based on their nutritional value.

          • Flummoxed@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Q. Is today’s food less nutritious than it was in the past because agricultural soil is being depleted of minerals?>

            A. Several studies of fruits, vegetables and grains have suggested a decline in nutritional value over time, but the reasons may not be as simple as soil depletion. There is considerable evidence that such problems may be related to changes in cultivated varieties, with some high-yielding plants being less nutritious than historical varieties. Several other issues are involved, like changes in farming methods, including the extensive use of chemical fertilizers, as well as food processing and preparation. A 2004 study evaluated Department of Agriculture data for 43 garden crops from 1950 to 1999. The researchers found statistically reliable declines for six nutrients — protein, calcium, potassium, iron and vitamins B2 and C — but no change for seven others.

            The researchers suggested that “any real declines are generally most easily explained by changes in cultivated varieties,” like possible trade-offs between yield and nutrient content.

            They also pointed out that modern fruits and vegetables were still nutritionally valuable and suggested the remedy was to eat more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts and beans and less refined sugars, separated fats and oils and white flour and rice, which they said “have all suffered losses much greater and broader than the potential losses suggested here for garden crops.”

            Donald R. Davis, the lead author of the 2004 study, wrote a review of evidence of nutrition loss in fruits and vegetables in 2009. He concluded that the broad evidence of nutritional decline seemed difficult to dismiss, though more study was needed, he said, especially of inverse relationships between yield and nutrient concentration.>

            Paywalled and says nothing about GMO, let alone a tomato. Nice try, tho.

            ETA: Here’s the archive.org link to article.