What is your opinion on GMO foods and irradiation food treatment?

[FancyDarcy]

I am curious to hear what you guys think of these subjects, as both have a following of hatreds. I have never tried irradiated foods before, but I've heard that they taste different because they're "dead", especially with stronger treatments.

[aerius]

Hell if I know, it all tastes like chicken...

[JI_Joe84]

Hell if I know, it all tastes like chicken...

Except the chicken of course.

[Broomstick]

I once had an opportunity to taste irradiated meat. It tasted just like the same thing but not irradiated. Generally, unless you're talking about still-twitching muscle tissue, it's dead when you eat it. It's certainly dead after it's cooked. People who asserted irradiated food tastes different because it's "dead" are on par with those using crystals to adjust their chakras. Extremely high levels of radiation can change the taste of the food, but those levels are not necessary to destroy pests and extend shelf life.

Americans have been eating GMO's for years. Maybe eating GMO's leads to a love of guns and a hatred of nationalized health care, but I think that's correlation and not causation.

Funny, I'm not aware of any insulin-using diabetics rejecting GMO insulin in favor of grinding up sheep pancreases. Granted that's not food, but you'd think if there were inherent problems with GMO's they would show up sooner with something you inject several times a day vs. eating,

[bilateralrope]

On irradiated vs non-irradiated: I'm not convinced that there is a taste difference. If you want to convince me that there is, show me the results of a simple double blind taste test on the food in question.

[Raw Shark]

Every food that we produce is a GMO. We've been M'ing the G's since before recorded history. You think sheep started off short, slow, covered in a useful textile, and docile? Not before the talking monkeys got to them.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Every food that we produce is a GMO. We've been M'ing the G's since before recorded history. You think sheep started off short, slow, covered in a useful textile, and docile? Not before the talking monkeys got to them.

This.

There is a pretty good chance you've NEVER had food that wasn't genetically modified. Basically, unless you're into some wilderness survival training and ate a dandelion or a squirrel, everything you've ever eaten has been engineered specifically for human consumption. Hell, that's what agriculture DOES, almost by definition.

The only difference is these days we are a lot faster and more efficient with the tools we use to perform the modification.

[Broomstick]

Yes, it's hilarious when I run into some anti-GMO woo-woo type who wants their organic chicken but claims to detest "game meat". Honey (it's usually a woman), that "organic chicken" you praise is one of the most modified organisms on Earth! If you want "natural" fowl you need to go out the woods and fields and shoot a duck or pheasant which will NOT have undergone countless generations of controlled breeding for the characteristics humans want in a bird.

[Napoleon the Clown]

I am curious to hear what you guys think of these subjects, as both have a following of hatreds. I have never tried irradiated foods before, but I've heard that they taste different because they're "dead", especially with stronger treatments.

GMO is delicious, nutritious, more efficient, and more predictable.

Irradiated food is, when packaged right, likely to have a pretty much indefinite shelf-life.

I say "Yes please" to both.

[Esquire]

Given that the options at this point are, given predicted population and arable-land trends, pretty much a) massive use of GMO crops; b) vast improvements in international food infrastructure and huge calorie reductions in developed countries; or c) billions of people starve to death over the next century or so, I'd say yes, both of these are not just good, but necessary.

[Zixinus]

Today's food, processed a lot or little, is all artificial unless you're a sustenance hunter-gatherer in the wilderness or work a farm whose produts you entirely subsist on (ie, the exception). The most important thing today is that it is safe to eat and whether we have enough of it. Not to mention nutritional concerns that is a growing problem, although partly tied into consumerist society. That is why modern governments have food regulation agencies and why they are important.

Talking about whether a product is GMO or not, as well as being finicky about method of sterilization, is a weak, ineffectual method that places more value on the mental asthetics of the food's origin than its actual health or facts. Assuming foods made by GMO crops is somehow unhealthy is just... lazy and takes comfort more in ignorance and pretensions to being ascetic or more in line with nature or whatever bullshit is being fantasized. GMOs are the future of food because the past of food has been pretty much the same except done with more clumsy, indirect ways that rely on the luck of mutations to archive the same end. GMOs actually would (or at least could) be better for the environment because it would decrease environmental pollution. That is not to say that the corporations that make them don't do bad shit or that the technology cannot be abused for business practices, but that is a separate problem of how people use the technology rather than an inherent problem with the technology itself.

have never tried irradiated foods before, but I've heard that they taste different because they're "dead", especially with stronger treatments.

The point isn't to be culinary masterpieces, the point is sterilization to increase shell-life. To be frank, that's what regular cooking does as well except irradiation is more throughout. The problem likely lies more in that no culinary chef has gone out of their way to figure out how to use irradiation to the best effect for taste.

That said, humans are very suggestible creatures that are very biased. I would not be surprised that if tested, people could not actually tell whether meat tasted more "dead" than non-irradiated meat.

[TimothyC]

I have never tried irradiated foods before, but I've heard that they taste different because they're "dead", especially with stronger treatments.

In the US, nearly 80% of the spice supply has been treated with radiation. Irradiated foods are in the food supply, and acting as though they are not is silly.

[J]

Hell if I know, it all tastes like chicken...

Except the chicken of course.

Serious question: what does the chicken taste like?

[Shroom Man 777]

Does microwaving food count as irradiation?

[Khaat]

A microwave is non-ionizing radiation. A quick search shows food irradiation is ionizing radiation. So no, microwaving doesn't count.

[Lord Revan]

A microwave is non-ionizing radiation. A quick search shows food irradiation is ionizing radiation. So no, microwaving doesn't count.

yeah, visible light is also technically speaking radiation (electro-magnetic radiation to be exact) but no-one would probably argue that leaving food under a lamp is a good way to preserve it

[Sea Skimmer]

Irradiated foods are much safer then breathing the air in any city in the world, or probably anywhere on the planet at this point.

Lab produced GMOs have been on the market for over 25 years and nobody has ever shown any actual harm to human health Also if anyone thinks GMOs are a problem, go lookup what the native form of CORN looks like. Cause its like grass and we still don't really know how the American natives managed such a radical transformation, but it exceeds any lab produced GMO in scope and scale. Air pollution contaminating crops should be a far greater concern. People have whined about every new technology for yada yada, very little has ever proven to be bad in the long term. Even nuclear weapons development was key to our understanding of physics and thus long term ability to build all kinds of things and eventually get off the damn planet so we aren't so vulnerable.

[Sea Skimmer]

Serious question: what does the chicken taste like?

Dinosaur, duh!

[mr friendly guy]

Serious question: what does the chicken taste like?

Crocodile. Well they are both white meat.

Edit - meat is red or white depending on myoglobin content, so meat that looks the same has similar composition.

[Broomstick]

So... even though ostrich is fowl it's classed with red meat? Because I've had ostrich, and it is definitely red both before and after cooking. (and tasty!)

[Isolder74]

Most, if not all, anti-GMO preaching is just basic fear mongering. It gets down to that. It becomes so degrading sometimes the stairght up scare tactics that are employed just to push their political narrative. It causes autism seems their favorite go to thing to screech as of course it is the one thing they can use without having to prove a thing. They have no legitimate connections to any of the things they vilify connected to GMO's but they push them out anyway the more scary sounding the better.

They are no different then anti-vaxers though not as dangerous.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Most, if not all, anti-GMO preaching is just basic fear mongering. It gets down to that. It becomes so degrading sometimes the stairght up scare tactics that are employed just to push their political narrative. It causes autism seems their favorite go to thing to screech as of course it is the one thing they can use without having to prove a thing. They have no legitimate connections to any of the things they vilify connected to GMO's but they push them out anyway the more scary sounding the better.

They are no different then anti-vaxers though not as dangerous.

I dunno that I'd say they're less dangerous than anti-vaxxers. Perhaps in developed nations, but developing nations are in dire need of what GMO crops can provide.

[Flagg]

I am curious to hear what you guys think of these subjects, as both have a following of hatreds. I have never tried irradiated foods before, but I've heard that they taste different because they're "dead", especially with stronger treatments.

Humans have been genetically altering foods since we started practicing agriculture/civilization. It's just recently that we can do it much better due to labs and genetic engineering. If you're against it, you're for children dying of famine in third world countries, period.

Irradiated food = less necessity for mass usage of antibiotics for factory farms which is a net benefit as there's far less opportunity for super resistant bacteria, despite factory farms being a net harm. So I'm for it as I don't want millions of people to die. Factory farming of animals like cattle and swine needs to stop, but likely won't. That said, I can guarantee that almost every westerner has eaten irradiated food without even knowing it.

[Flagg]

Hell if I know, it all tastes like chicken...

Except the chicken of course.

Serious question: what does the chicken taste like?

PEEEEEOPLE!!! IRRADIATED CHICKEN TASTES LIKE PEEEEEOPLE!!! You know, delicious.

[Jaepheth]

I'm fine with both.

Irradiated food - if your food is cooked it's been irradiated, just with a different wavelength than what they use for sterilizing. The only reason anyone's scared of this is that "radiation" is so misrepresented in pop-culture that you might as well call it wild magic and tell people you're killing microorganisms by casting Nahal's Reckless Dweomer (D&D spell which creates random effects) on the food.

GMOs - your body doesn't care what the DNA of your food is; digestion doesn't work that way. The only thing that matters is if the GMO produces something poisonous while it's alive (e.g. ricin). Which is what testing is for.