ExRx.net

See two full length video documentaries 1) Food Inc. 2) The Future of Food.
http://exrx.net/Notes/FoodVideos.html

Viewing them in their entirety could change the way you eat.
Share them with your friends and let us know your thoughts.

I'll check those out when I get a little time. I can tell you that the organic/not organic thing is baloney. However I don't know yet what else is in there. I do know there are benefits to grass feed livestock. So we'll see.

For one thing, it tastes freaking fantastic.

I watched enough of the video to get a handle on it. None of these options work for me so I really can't vote.

While there is nothing wrong with grain fed meat, grass fed does have advantages. So it's not that you need to eat grass fed, but it is better in some ways.

Most of this looks like the genetically engineered food conspiracy theory. Including a big long history of something with no apparent relevance is the first clue. It also goes on to demonize in order to use the guilt by association fallacy. It also chocked full of red herrings. They never actually give you any proof for anything they are trying to prove. The only evidence they give are for things that have absolutely nothing to do with it. Things they mention mainly to avoid scrutiny. They also pile on lots of information in an attempt to look like they know what they are talking about and to further avoid scrutiny. This tactic called "proof by verbosity" is another logical fallacy.

That's the problem with almost all conspiracy theories, lots of nonsense and no evidence. The sugar industry, the tobacco industry and government corn subsidies are examples of legitimate conspiracies with hard evidence. When you hear a conspiracy theory, there is a better than 90% chance it is not true. So be even more skeptical then usual when you examine one. Then if you find things like I mentioned in the previous paragraph, you can be certain it's all hogwash.

But on the other hand, you can't say it's all wrong without evaluating each part separately on it's own merit. To do so would be the guilt by association fallacy. The grass feeding, in this particular instance. But don't waste your time either. When presented with red herrings and an unrelated history lesson that leads into demonizing some unrelated entity, move on to the next item. Ask for clear concise evidence that does not involve watching hours of propaganda, just to give every chance for them to prove their case. Be open to their legitimate evidence, but be skeptical.

So those are my thoughts on it. You haven't been talking to Peter Rouse have you? No offense if you have, but to be completely honest, I think the guy is a total loon.

Well, I havent seen the video but I must say I really would like to go out into the wilderness to survive.

I've listened to the first ~40 minutes. Their main thesis seems to be that factory farming causes cost-cutting measures that can be dangerous - ie, that it increases calories, reduces nutrition, and allows for more/worse pathogens. Low-nutrition food is cheap, and high-nutrition food is expensive.

I don't think any of those points are really debatable in the abstract.

I agree with Ironman that GMO in the abstract sense is neither good or bad. But the food industry's goal when using GMO isn't to increase nutrition - it's to increase calories per dollar. So on that point they seem to be on fairly solid ground again as well.

About time 40:30, it's pretty sad when they're talking to that poor family that's looking at food costs, and buying garbage high-carb food because it's cheap.

Edit - oh yea, none of the Vote options above apply to me. I already avoid carbohydrates and buy organic whenever I can, so this film has little impact on me.

Around 1:00:00 they digress a bit into the evil legal battles that go on in big food business. While I don't doubt that goes on, it goes on in every industry, not just food. Software patents are just as evil and stupid as food patents. That part's a bit of a boring sidetrack and lasts around 25 minutes. They also briefly sidetrack on the fact that food price is tied to fossil fuels, which again is not in any way specific to food.

Overall I liked it - aside from their little jabs about fossil fuels (they're apparently global warming advocates), the whole thing seemed really well done.

That's a red herring and guilt by association though. Ok so the food industry did that. It still doesn't follow that EVERYTHING they do is bad. It also does NOT prove anything about genetically engineered food.

That's the problem with these things. They try to fool people with that crap, instead of providing evidence. The sidetracking you noticed are further red herrings, as you recognized. You're on the right track. That's the stuff to look out for.

Here is a video I made a while back where I go over conspiracy theories, for those who are interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxEtebpWAjI

I'm not sure they were trying to "fool people" into thinking that only the food industry leverages political power and litigation. I think it was more that they were trying to make a feature-length film without getting too deep into a boring science lecture, so they wanted to have some other filler and mix it up.

Also, GMO in the abstract may not be bad, but again, their mentioning it is reasonable. GMO foods tend to be low-nutrition, high carbohydrate stuff that you would not want to eat in general.

PETA isn't good for people OR animals. PETA members are generally more interested in feeling morally superior than actually improving conditions for animals. Meanwhile, their policies are often at odds with actual conservation groups.

Did you intend to post that in the "Low-Carbohydrate Diets and All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mort" thread? :)

A Canadian company in BC, (I think) has genetically modified salmon.

It apparently is pretty much the same as regular salmon. I think its funny how right now the price of salmon in BC is so cheap because of the huge supply and now they want to bring in more. I say w/e as long as there are no strange side effects and the price stays low (:

I find it rather interesting that directly modifying genes is the ultimate evil, but artificial selection (as in selectively breading for certain traits) is ok. Not to mention natural selection where it happens on it's on.

Everything alive can be considered a genetically modified single cell RNA based life form. For that matter natural replication of RNA and DNA is not perfect and cannot be perfect. There are always imperfections/mutations. So you get some modification in all reproduction both sexual and asexual.

It all depends on what the modification is, not that it has been modified. I think it's an offshoot of the natural vs not natural fallacy.

I think this conjurs images of "mutant life forms", and most people have seen too many bad science fiction movies!