The End of Health

[Thief Silver]

Denver has very solid mexican food. If you don't mind waiting 15 minutes, there's an amazing burrito food cart down the street from me. They make the tortilla's right in front of you and throw in the pretty decent quality meat. Love it. It's like $4 a burrito.

[Yoshi]

Confirmed. Even my company's cafeteria and the airport have good breakfast burritos with chile verde out there.

[Tones]

Yeah, I'm aware. I was referring to more how the use of the word "organic" for foods grown without pesticides and other "artificial" means is tenuous at best; the best explanation I've heard was that it's food coming from a farm that's a living breathing thing. You can see how fucked up the bastardisation of this term is when you can actually buy "organic salt".

I'm really for sustainable agriculture, but I think that's a very different thing to the organic movement; which to me seems completely based on arbitrary "artificial bad, natural good" dogma (like other useless shit like alternative medicine); rather than the individual merits of techniques and technology. How the fuck can you draw an imaginary line in the sand and say all genetic modification is bad? When practically EVERYTHING we eat has been genetically modified through selective breeding by humans. Bananas are so fucked up (completely through "natural" selective breeding) they can't even reproduce without us; yet you'll still find Bananas on the shelves with happy little "certified organic" stickers.

There is a lot of wrong up in these two paragraphs.

USDA Organic is a national set of standards that growers must conform to in order to label their product as Organic. It is a program that is organized by the USDA. The National Organic Program was spearheaded by farmers, so that the term "Organic" would have a degree of accountability to it, and so that not just anyone could label their product as Organic. A product cannot be labeled as Organic unless the grower is certified by an inspecting agency (QCS is one of the large certifiers, although there are many others). "All natural" and "sustainable" are unregulated terms; there is no control over what they mean. Any company can slap "All natural!" on the product without any direct repercussions.

National Organic Program Organic is a labeling term that indicates that the food or other agricultural product has been produced through approved methods that integrate cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering may not be used.

Second, the difference between genetic engineering and selective breeding is that genetic engineering introduces genes from outside of the plant. Selective breeding only changes the expression of genes that are already present within the plants. When humans selectively breed for certain traits, the plant reacts quite slowly over a course of many generations. It is a progressive change within the crop. Genetic engineering is worrisome because we have no idea how the genes will react with every situation in nature. Perhaps when introduced to specific environmental conditions in nature, the plants will be susceptible to some sort of virus, nematode, etc., etc.. Once a gene is in the plant genome, it is very hard to get it out: Bees pollinating one field of GM crops will just as well travel to the next field of non-GM crops. Suddenly, the whole valley has GM corn. Maybe this gene makes bees more prone to bee pathogens (or maybe colony collapse disorder).

When humans try to alter nature, we usually screw it up. Look at every invasive species that we have brought into any area. Nature is a complicated machine; when we remove or change one critical link, a lot of coevolution can be completely undone.

[Gohron]

I've gotta be honest, I love Taco Bell. I generally only get the regular tacos and burritos but they're pretty tasty for costing under $1. There's some Mexican places around here and I go out to eat usually once a week but if my wife isn't cooking and I'm busy, I don't mind going the fast food route once in awhile (I'm not even eating this stuff every week). If I really want a good burrito, I'll make it myself (I make some great fucking burritos) but I generally don't like to get into in-depth cooking at home.

I have to disagree with you Icarus on the effect of fast food. It is what it is but I don't think it really hurts other restaurants with original food preparations. Running a decent spot can be pretty hard, but if you get everything right (location, menu, advertisement, etc.) then you're going to do ok. To me, fast food is like smoking a cigarette. It's a guilty pleasure that may not be that good for you but still leaves you satisfied. I'm not trying to say that it's quality food but I'm not going to say that I don't enjoy a Taco Bell Taco Supreme or a McDonalds Double Cheeseburger from time to time. I've worked in the business for long enough to understand what good food is and how it's made, but at the end of the day I'm usually just interested in eating for cheap.

[Fe 26]

fast food hurts real restaurants like used Ford Pintos hurt Mercedes Benz.

[kedawa]

I can't handle taco bell food. Bean burritos are okay, and I like their caramel apple empenadas, but anything containing their 'meat' will make me double over in pain within half an hour.
Same goes for McDonald's food if I eat it on an empty stomach.
It's not a good substitute for actual food.

[YellerDog]

I like their salted cheese substance a lot!

[Space Pirate Roberts]

Skeptoid on organic food

Part 2

Basically, Tones is full of shit =p

[kedawa]

You can grow crops downwind of a pesticide laden GM crop and still be certified organic.
I think the real definition of organic food is costing twice as much and having a bug in it.

[YellerDog]

Hoigh youre listening to SKEPTOID