5 ms·

Meh. Human beings haven't been eating domesticated cattle for all that long, either. I mean, geologically speaking. If you're going to put some faith in evol

by Dove 17y ago

Meh. Human beings haven't been eating domesticated cattle for all that long, either. I mean, geologically speaking. If you're going to put some faith in evolution, put it in our ability to adapt to available food sources. If we were as brittle as needing to consciously micromanage nutrient input, I doubt we'd have made it nearly this far. Anyway, I don't see any particular reason to expect 'natural' food to be more healthy. Most of nature, given its druthers, would like to kill you.

jacquesm 17y ago
That's actually a really good point, our bodies have some fairly advanced defenses, but still I'd play it safe and avoid this stuff like the plague until a solid amount of time has gone by. In the old court days they used to have a person that would taste the food (I don't know the English word for such a person, sorry) and if that person wouldn't keel over within half an hour of tasting the food the food would be considered safe. I fully intend to use that part of humanity that doesn't care about issues like this for exactly that purpose, but I'll set the time quite a bit longer than half an hour. (silly old timers, never heard of slow acting or cumulative poisons...)
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago
  [...] they used to have a person that would taste the food [...] "The surnames of the Maltese Islands: an etymological dictionary" by Mario Cassar (http://bit.ly/assayer http://bit.ly/assayer) confirms what I'd read elsewhere, it's called an "assayer". "food taster" is most commonly used though.
rsheridan6 17y ago
>If you're going to put some faith in evolution, put it in our ability to adapt to available food sources. If we were as brittle as needing to consciously micromanage nutrient input, I doubt we'd have made it nearly this far. It depends on your definition of "need." You can obviously live to be old enough to reproduce on extra value meals from McDonald's - people do - but that doesn't mean its good for you. >Anyway, I don't see any particular reason to expect 'natural' food to be more healthy. Most of nature, given its druthers, would like to kill you. Because we're adapted to it and we're messing with systems that are not well understood. Some of this is obvious and well-known - for example, the link between sugar consumption and diabetes.
- Dove 17y ago
  > Because we're adapted to it and we're messing with systems that are not well understood. Well, at least we try to understand them. Nature doesn't even do that. Bananas--in any form--are new; a 10,000 year old irreproducible hybrid. Corn and cattle have undergone extreme selection and no small amount of random variation in that time. Nature produces viruses and parasites and mutations on proteins and poisons, none of which have us in mind. And it does it much, much faster than human evolution is going to be able to adapt to changing available food sources. Our generations are long, and little things like cancer at the end of life just don't hurt our offspring that much. In a contest between engineered food -- whether cloned or GM -- and food that's just been genetically drifting for a few thousand years, I'll take the engineered food every time. Sure, the engineers are working with systems far beyond their ken. I get that. But nature wouldn't be shy about doing even relatively obviously dangerous things. Engineers might make sweeter apples and we discover many years down the road that some protein interaction upsets some delicate balance if you eat them with too many fish and it causes your teeth to turn blue. But nature might decide to make an apple all cyanide and not just the seeds. Humans are pretty robust and adaptable. We can handle the random, arbitrary garbage nature throws at us. We wouldn't be here if we couldn't. So I'm sure the mistakes of a few engineers who trying very hard not to hurt us won't amount to much of anything.

by Dove 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

That's actually a really good point, our bodies have some fairly advanced defenses, but still I'd play it safe and avoid this stuff like the plague until a solid amount of time has gone by. In the old court days they used to have a person that would taste the food (I don't know the English word for such a person, sorry) and if that person wouldn't keel over within half an hour of tasting the food the food would be considered safe. I fully intend to use that part of humanity that doesn't care about issues like this for exactly that purpose, but I'll set the time quite a bit longer than half an hour. (silly old timers, never heard of slow acting or cumulative poisons...)

pbhjpbhj 17y ago
[...] they used to have a person that would taste the food [...] "The surnames of the Maltese Islands: an etymological dictionary" by Mario Cassar (http://bit.ly/assayer http://bit.ly/assayer) confirms what I'd read elsewhere, it's called an "assayer". "food taster" is most commonly used though.

rsheridan6 17y ago

>If you're going to put some faith in evolution, put it in our ability to adapt to available food sources. If we were as brittle as needing to consciously micromanage nutrient input, I doubt we'd have made it nearly this far. It depends on your definition of "need." You can obviously live to be old enough to reproduce on extra value meals from McDonald's - people do - but that doesn't mean its good for you. >Anyway, I don't see any particular reason to expect 'natural' food to be more healthy. Most of nature, given its druthers, would like to kill you. Because we're adapted to it and we're messing with systems that are not well understood. Some of this is obvious and well-known - for example, the link between sugar consumption and diabetes.

Dove 17y ago
> Because we're adapted to it and we're messing with systems that are not well understood. Well, at least we try to understand them. Nature doesn't even do that. Bananas--in any form--are new; a 10,000 year old irreproducible hybrid. Corn and cattle have undergone extreme selection and no small amount of random variation in that time. Nature produces viruses and parasites and mutations on proteins and poisons, none of which have us in mind. And it does it much, much faster than human evolution is going to be able to adapt to changing available food sources. Our generations are long, and little things like cancer at the end of life just don't hurt our offspring that much. In a contest between engineered food -- whether cloned or GM -- and food that's just been genetically drifting for a few thousand years, I'll take the engineered food every time. Sure, the engineers are working with systems far beyond their ken. I get that. But nature wouldn't be shy about doing even relatively obviously dangerous things. Engineers might make sweeter apples and we discover many years down the road that some protein interaction upsets some delicate balance if you eat them with too many fish and it causes your teeth to turn blue. But nature might decide to make an apple all cyanide and not just the seeds. Humans are pretty robust and adaptable. We can handle the random, arbitrary garbage nature throws at us. We wouldn't be here if we couldn't. So I'm sure the mistakes of a few engineers who trying very hard not to hurt us won't amount to much of anything.