Figure 4 A & B from McFadden & Lusk 2016. Views about mandatory labeling.
A recent paper in The FASEB Journal by Brandon R. McFadden and Jayson L. Lusk examines views on mandatory labeling of genetically modified (GM) foods (that’s the best link I could find; it’s not the final, formatted version, and it may differ in content as well). What a shitshow:
Thirty-three percent of respondents thought non-GM tomatoes did not contain genes, and 32% thought vegetables did not have DNA.
While 84% of respondents supported mandatory labeling for food containing GM ingredients (Fig. 4A), there was also overwhelming support for mandatory labeling of food containing DNA (Fig. 4B). Eighty percent of consumers supported a label for food indicating the presence or absence of DNA—an absurd policy that would apply to the majority of foods in a grocery store.
Paraphrasing the Food Babe, there is just no acceptable level of DNA to ingest, ever.
Stable links:
McFadden BR, Lusk JL (2016) What consumers don’t know about genetically modified food, and how that affects beliefs. The FASEB Journal, 1–6.
Mandatory labeling of food containing DNA isn’t absurd if it gives 80% of the population a clue.
*facepalm left, facepalm right* All living things, including viri, contain DNA/RNA. Don’t bother to eat. Just drink water and eat salt. Your Darwin award will be attached to your gravestone within a month.
Usually when mandatory labelling comes up as a topic around me, I start handing out printed copies of Bruce Ames’ article on food toxins. ( http://www.pnas.org/content/87/19/7777.full.pdf ) Just the title does the trick, though.
Candy, gum, and artificial cheese. Those are the only foods I can think of without DNA. My four year old nephew would love it.
#sarcasm While we are labeling foods for irrational reasons, maybe we can cater to the Donald Trump crowd and label food “harvested by migrant workers”. Those nasty immigrants carry lots of diseases like the Zika virus that makes weird babies. There should be a study to show that our food supply is safe, and right wing nut jobs should have the right to make their own choices in the mean time.
Made me ROLF ?
If mandatory labeling of GM foods ever comes to fruition, I have vowed to only buy foods containing the GMO label as my own personal protest of all this organic vs gmo nonsense.
@#1:
Huh?
Is this really what you meant to say? As post #4 points out, only a few very highly processed food items don’t contain DNA (although I’d bet that even pure white sugar has some traces of DNA in it). And what kind of clue would the general population get when they go into the produce department and find that every bunch of bananas, every head of lettuce, and every mushroom has a label that says, “Notice: Contains DNA”? That there’s a whole lot of DNA in the world? Seems like a very expensive way to teach people one tiny fact about biology.