But seriously people, how many lives does genetically engineered rice have to save before you admit that "all natural" sometimes means "inferior", and "artificial" is sometimes "good". You know what's 100% organic? Malaria. And there's little more artificial than the chemical-soaked neon bednets saving millions of lives across Africa.
You could distribute Big Macs to the starving masses and credit McDonalds with saving millions of lives, but that wouldn't make it recommended eating for those of us with access to alternatives.
For a more concrete argument, let me point you to The China Study [1], which gives more evidence for vegetarianism being related to good health than the "organic" lobby could ever dream of for "organic food". If people really cared about their health, they'd be vegetarian.
Organic food has a lot more to do with identity marketing (like BMW and A&F) than it does real nutrition.
> the burden of proof that a BigMac would be healthier if it were made from "all natural" ingredients.
Why should the burden of proof fall one way or the other on this proposition? This is the classic technique of those who see themselves as guardians of scientific orthodoxy.
> which gives more evidence for vegetarianism being related to good health than the "organic" lobby could ever dream of for "organic food"
That doesn't mean that knowing the value of organic food also wouldn't be useful.
As for hybrid rice, yes, it saved lots of lives. But many argue that there were negative side effects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
Here's a story that predates the Green Revolution. I think it might be illuminating.
A long time ago in China, there was a public official named Confucius. (Yes, that Confucius.) For the betterment of his nation, he engaged in a huge campaign to popularize the eating of polished (white) rice. He did this because white rice is much easier to store for longer periods, and more conducive to warehousing and other logistical activities. Thus did Confucius greatly reduce the incidence of famine in his country. However, in the following years, there was an epidemic of beri-beri in China.
Human beings didn't discover vitamin B1 until the late 1800s.
> Why not claim that USDA approved organic food is the "white rice" of our times?
Why not indeed. It could be true. How does one work out the a priori likelihood of this being true to know whether it is worth looking into further? Metaphors might be one valid method. I can see an argument that some pesticides actually enhance human health. An analogue here would be the decline in iodine levels in milk when farmers stopped using iodophors.
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/184_06_200306/letters_20...
I'm not saying I think the proposition is likely to be true but I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand and I wouldn't assume you are being unscientific for proposing it without proof.
Because that would be a gross oversimplification of "food" and "bodies". Many drugs have a narrow therapeutic index, meaning the difference between "save your life" and "kill you" is a small matter of dosage. How do you explain that using "what going into your body must be [good|evil]".
