8 ms·

DNA-Free Dining Made Easy

63 points by nikbackm 10y ago

4bpp 10y ago
> Zika virus – this microcephalitic plague demon is almost 100% DNA. I believe Zika is an RNA virus...
- oniony 10y ago
  Tell it to the proteins.
  - eggy 10y ago
    I get it RNA is the messenger, right? One-line deadpan!
- brucedawson 10y ago
  Hey, it's all genetic material to me. Fixed.
kusmi 10y ago
I didn't detect the sarcasm at first, as a molecular geneticist this was difficult to read because it's so full of wrong and no.
- syrrim 10y ago
  Besides the commentary on health, is there anything wrong in the article?
  - larrik 10y ago
    "And if you want more proof of DNA’s dark dangers then look no further than the Zika virus – this microcephalitic plague demon is almost 100% DNA" Viruses are RNA, not DNA.
    - collyw 10y ago
      Some are DNA, some are RNA.
sndean 10y ago
While I can understand that it might be fun to point out the ignorance of most people, these kind of "gotcha" surveys/polls performed by supposedly reputable groups can be pretty annoying. I'm sure most people think "Contains dihydrogen monoxide" should be put on the label too. That said, DNA can probably make certain foods slimy, which is a texture I'm generally opposed to.
- mediumdeviation 10y ago
  It's useful for highlighting how useless these poll results actually are for policy making, because people have a propensity to hold opinions on things they have absolutely no knowledge of.
colordrops 10y ago
I'm guessing this is a not-so-subtle critique of GMO labeling. I'm not against GMOs, but anyone who is against labeling is caught up by propaganda. Everything else that goes into food is labeled - there is nothing wrong with mentioning that a food contains GMO as well.
- sdoering 10y ago
  I am with you. But sadly (at least in Germany and the EU) not everything is labeled. For example if a juice is filtered using gelatin there is no need to label this, even if the possibility exists, that residuals still remain in the juice. Just to name one example. We also have no "need"/regulation for labeling of some ingredients, that were contained in the initial ingredients (and were useful there) but are not needed for the end-product and have no influence on the end product. As an example take stuff needed to make curd. Has to be in the label for curd, but if you use curd in a product and the stuff needed to make curb has no influence on the end-product there is no need for labeling. So a lot of stuff get omitted without a full declaration. And food lobby does everything to prevent full declaration from happening. Nobody really wants informed customers.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    The problem is, when you make all sorts of labeling mandatory, any meaning is lost. Gelatin residuals have no health impacts. DNA or GM residuals have no health impact. You fill the packaging with unnecessary labels, and then the actually relevant things - like how much sugar something contains - are obscured. This is similar to the over-cautious safety warnings that nowadays clutter all user instructions of devices and tools. It should be left to user discretion whether to wear safety goggles when you use a hammer to hit a nail, for instance. Even if there is a one-in-a-million chance that a spark flies off and hits your eye.
    - barrkel 10y ago
      The reason for labelling isn't just for health impact, though. It's also about being a responsible consumer. If you don't see what went into making a product, you can't use your purchase decision to vote on how you'd like the supply chain to be aligned. Personally I'm against the over-industrialization of the food supply. Industry wants consistent predictable products it can mass-produce; that's explicitly what I don't want. I don't want every tomato to taste exactly the same, year in year out, everywhere around the world. I want more diversity.
lolc 10y ago
I suppose that was a stab at the current GMO labeling debate. What I find most depressing about the whole debate, not just this attempt to be funny, is the focus on individual health as opposed to the health of the ecosystem. When I buy organic meat that's not because I fear that meat grown using antibiotics will poison me. I know that using antibiotics to grow meat is irresponsible because it fosters antimicrobial resistance. Yet my choice to not support this process is derided as irrational, as a lifestyle choice. When I oppose GMO that's not because I fear the tomato will be modified into a predator that jumps out of the salad to eat me. I oppose the process of drowning the fields in herbicide. (I know that in the bright GMOed future less herbicides will be necessary for some dreamy reasons but let's stay in reality please.) It's most telling that the debate is being reduced to individual health, because that is the easiest part of it. When it comes to whole ecosystems, our predictive powers are basically zero. Here we see the people who literally cannot know what processes they are starting, we see them attacking other people for not knowing the difference between GMO and DNA. Worse, they're actually making fun of them for _wanting to know_.
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  My biggest problem with GMO is the monocultures that it incentivizes.
- gruez 10y ago
  >I know that using antibiotics to grow meat is irresponsible because it fosters antimicrobial resistance Would you be okay with antibiotic use if they used antibiotics that aren't used in humans?
  - lolc 10y ago
    I know you're not going to swim in it, so are you ok with me pissing in the baby pool? Piss is harmless when it comes to bodily fluids btw.
- pdpi 10y ago
  I don't think it's so much about GMO as it is about all the dairy-free, gluten-free, whatever else-free diets, where people are eschewing whole food classes because it's trendy, rather than because there's a well-documented health advantage to it. Some people _do_ have good medical reasons to engage in such diets. Lactose intolerance and celiac disease are a thing. They're just not nearly as widespread as some health food fans would have you believe, and I'm yet to see clinical evidence for the hazier "intolerances" some people use to justify those choices.
dekhn 10y ago
Numerous factual errors in this (obvious) parody. In fact most things that they claim are DNA free have small traces of DNA! Anybody who really cares will homogenize their food, run it through a purification column/DNA trapping column, and then eat the resulting eluent. Yum.
jdavis703 10y ago
While DNA free dining is clearly a hoax, I beleive this is targeted at GMO labeling. I'd argue that DNA labelling is also fine. That ways I can know my olive oil (among other food and drink) is actually olive oil: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/01/24/opinion/food-chains-extra-virgin-suicide.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/01/24/opinion/food-c...
- Navarr 10y ago
  I'm really unsure of the cry out against GMO labelling. Like, I would happily eat GMO food. Some people wouldn't. Why force them to? They should be perfectly free to pump money into the organic industry and make ill/informed choices of what types of food to buy. Just expand it as part of the nutrition label. Maybe some people would prefer to stay away from it for religious reasons? I don't think it'd place any sort of unhealthy burden on the industries to write "This food may contain genetically modified organisms"
  - mediumdeviation 10y ago
    > Just expand it as part of the nutrition label. The size of the nutritional label is not infinite. The number of potential labels is. More importantly, by labeling GMO, you're simultaneously implying that there may be something unsafe about them, and distracting from far more important information, like allergens and sugar content. > I don't think it'd place any sort of unhealthy burden on the industries to write "This food may contain genetically modified organisms" Fruits and vegetables can be contaminated, for instance if they are grown or stored next to each others. For labeling purposes guidelines are set with some leeway within safe boundaries. Trying to do the same for GMO highlights the silliness of the exercise, since there are no such boundaries, because they are as safe to eat as their non-GMO counterparts. Then there's processed foods - tracing which of the dozens of ingredients are non-GMO would be non-trivial. It is possible, of course, but why force companies to waste money for something that is of no health consequence? And finally, there's the issue of GMO entering the food chain. It is at least possible to trace this for livestock, if you have a complete history of everything that they've ever been fed, but what about animals caught in the wild like fishes? I'd love to have more transparency and information about the food on my plate - I want my fruits grown in areas that are not under water stress, and my vegetables grown sustainably, but let's not waste time and money trying to label things that don't need labeling in the first place.
arantius 10y ago
How are there so many "Must be about GMO labeling? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" top comments without any references to e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/27/new-study-confirms-that-80-percent-of-americans-support-mandatory-labeling-of-foods-containing-dna/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... "Last year, I wrote about an Oklahoma State University survey indicating that over 80 percent of Americans support “mandatory labels on foods containing DNA.” ... Obviously, such DNA labels would be absurd. Nearly all food contains DNA..."
- brucedawson 10y ago
  Well, the articles links to that survey or a very similar one, so it's not like that point was missed. In fact, those survey results are pretty much the point of the article.

63 points by nikbackm 10y ago

4bpp 10y ago

> Zika virus – this microcephalitic plague demon is almost 100% DNA. I believe Zika is an RNA virus...

oniony 10y ago
Tell it to the proteins.
- eggy 10y ago
  I get it RNA is the messenger, right? One-line deadpan!
brucedawson 10y ago
Hey, it's all genetic material to me. Fixed.

kusmi 10y ago

I didn't detect the sarcasm at first, as a molecular geneticist this was difficult to read because it's so full of wrong and no.

syrrim 10y ago
Besides the commentary on health, is there anything wrong in the article?
- larrik 10y ago
  "And if you want more proof of DNA’s dark dangers then look no further than the Zika virus – this microcephalitic plague demon is almost 100% DNA" Viruses are RNA, not DNA.
  - collyw 10y ago
    Some are DNA, some are RNA.

sndean 10y ago

While I can understand that it might be fun to point out the ignorance of most people, these kind of "gotcha" surveys/polls performed by supposedly reputable groups can be pretty annoying. I'm sure most people think "Contains dihydrogen monoxide" should be put on the label too. That said, DNA can probably make certain foods slimy, which is a texture I'm generally opposed to.

mediumdeviation 10y ago
It's useful for highlighting how useless these poll results actually are for policy making, because people have a propensity to hold opinions on things they have absolutely no knowledge of.

colordrops 10y ago

I'm guessing this is a not-so-subtle critique of GMO labeling. I'm not against GMOs, but anyone who is against labeling is caught up by propaganda. Everything else that goes into food is labeled - there is nothing wrong with mentioning that a food contains GMO as well.

sdoering 10y ago
I am with you. But sadly (at least in Germany and the EU) not everything is labeled. For example if a juice is filtered using gelatin there is no need to label this, even if the possibility exists, that residuals still remain in the juice. Just to name one example. We also have no "need"/regulation for labeling of some ingredients, that were contained in the initial ingredients (and were useful there) but are not needed for the end-product and have no influence on the end product. As an example take stuff needed to make curd. Has to be in the label for curd, but if you use curd in a product and the stuff needed to make curb has no influence on the end-product there is no need for labeling. So a lot of stuff get omitted without a full declaration. And food lobby does everything to prevent full declaration from happening. Nobody really wants informed customers.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  The problem is, when you make all sorts of labeling mandatory, any meaning is lost. Gelatin residuals have no health impacts. DNA or GM residuals have no health impact. You fill the packaging with unnecessary labels, and then the actually relevant things - like how much sugar something contains - are obscured. This is similar to the over-cautious safety warnings that nowadays clutter all user instructions of devices and tools. It should be left to user discretion whether to wear safety goggles when you use a hammer to hit a nail, for instance. Even if there is a one-in-a-million chance that a spark flies off and hits your eye.
  - barrkel 10y ago
    The reason for labelling isn't just for health impact, though. It's also about being a responsible consumer. If you don't see what went into making a product, you can't use your purchase decision to vote on how you'd like the supply chain to be aligned. Personally I'm against the over-industrialization of the food supply. Industry wants consistent predictable products it can mass-produce; that's explicitly what I don't want. I don't want every tomato to taste exactly the same, year in year out, everywhere around the world. I want more diversity.

lolc 10y ago

I suppose that was a stab at the current GMO labeling debate. What I find most depressing about the whole debate, not just this attempt to be funny, is the focus on individual health as opposed to the health of the ecosystem. When I buy organic meat that's not because I fear that meat grown using antibiotics will poison me. I know that using antibiotics to grow meat is irresponsible because it fosters antimicrobial resistance. Yet my choice to not support this process is derided as irrational, as a lifestyle choice. When I oppose GMO that's not because I fear the tomato will be modified into a predator that jumps out of the salad to eat me. I oppose the process of drowning the fields in herbicide. (I know that in the bright GMOed future less herbicides will be necessary for some dreamy reasons but let's stay in reality please.) It's most telling that the debate is being reduced to individual health, because that is the easiest part of it. When it comes to whole ecosystems, our predictive powers are basically zero. Here we see the people who literally cannot know what processes they are starting, we see them attacking other people for not knowing the difference between GMO and DNA. Worse, they're actually making fun of them for _wanting to know_.

Natanael_L 10y ago
My biggest problem with GMO is the monocultures that it incentivizes.
gruez 10y ago
>I know that using antibiotics to grow meat is irresponsible because it fosters antimicrobial resistance Would you be okay with antibiotic use if they used antibiotics that aren't used in humans?
- lolc 10y ago
  I know you're not going to swim in it, so are you ok with me pissing in the baby pool? Piss is harmless when it comes to bodily fluids btw.
pdpi 10y ago
I don't think it's so much about GMO as it is about all the dairy-free, gluten-free, whatever else-free diets, where people are eschewing whole food classes because it's trendy, rather than because there's a well-documented health advantage to it. Some people _do_ have good medical reasons to engage in such diets. Lactose intolerance and celiac disease are a thing. They're just not nearly as widespread as some health food fans would have you believe, and I'm yet to see clinical evidence for the hazier "intolerances" some people use to justify those choices.

dekhn 10y ago

Numerous factual errors in this (obvious) parody. In fact most things that they claim are DNA free have small traces of DNA! Anybody who really cares will homogenize their food, run it through a purification column/DNA trapping column, and then eat the resulting eluent. Yum.

jdavis703 10y ago

While DNA free dining is clearly a hoax, I beleive this is targeted at GMO labeling. I'd argue that DNA labelling is also fine. That ways I can know my olive oil (among other food and drink) is actually olive oil: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/01/24/opinion/food-chains-extra-virgin-suicide.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/01/24/opinion/food-c...

Navarr 10y ago
I'm really unsure of the cry out against GMO labelling. Like, I would happily eat GMO food. Some people wouldn't. Why force them to? They should be perfectly free to pump money into the organic industry and make ill/informed choices of what types of food to buy. Just expand it as part of the nutrition label. Maybe some people would prefer to stay away from it for religious reasons? I don't think it'd place any sort of unhealthy burden on the industries to write "This food may contain genetically modified organisms"
- mediumdeviation 10y ago
  > Just expand it as part of the nutrition label. The size of the nutritional label is not infinite. The number of potential labels is. More importantly, by labeling GMO, you're simultaneously implying that there may be something unsafe about them, and distracting from far more important information, like allergens and sugar content. > I don't think it'd place any sort of unhealthy burden on the industries to write "This food may contain genetically modified organisms" Fruits and vegetables can be contaminated, for instance if they are grown or stored next to each others. For labeling purposes guidelines are set with some leeway within safe boundaries. Trying to do the same for GMO highlights the silliness of the exercise, since there are no such boundaries, because they are as safe to eat as their non-GMO counterparts. Then there's processed foods - tracing which of the dozens of ingredients are non-GMO would be non-trivial. It is possible, of course, but why force companies to waste money for something that is of no health consequence? And finally, there's the issue of GMO entering the food chain. It is at least possible to trace this for livestock, if you have a complete history of everything that they've ever been fed, but what about animals caught in the wild like fishes? I'd love to have more transparency and information about the food on my plate - I want my fruits grown in areas that are not under water stress, and my vegetables grown sustainably, but let's not waste time and money trying to label things that don't need labeling in the first place.

arantius 10y ago

How are there so many "Must be about GMO labeling? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" top comments without any references to e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/27/new-study-confirms-that-80-percent-of-americans-support-mandatory-labeling-of-foods-containing-dna/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... "Last year, I wrote about an Oklahoma State University survey indicating that over 80 percent of Americans support “mandatory labels on foods containing DNA.” ... Obviously, such DNA labels would be absurd. Nearly all food contains DNA..."

brucedawson 10y ago
Well, the articles links to that survey or a very similar one, so it's not like that point was missed. In fact, those survey results are pretty much the point of the article.