Be Aggressive.

Once credibility is established, and in the absence of a subject matter expert to correct the record, people will believe what they're told.

Think about that for a minute.

In the 80's and 90's, you saw this with the tobacco industry.  Tobacco lobbyist would come out against whatever scientific study came out and you really didn't hear anything from the scientists until papers started getting read in Congress that showed executive's efforts to cover up health risks.

Similarly, Activists and activist profiteers - those who latch on to activist causes for profit like Michael Pollan - have the audience's ear; an audience that serves as a blank slate and recruitment tool for the activists. Of course, the activist profiteers need those fresh faces to sell books and book speaking engagements.  So these people build the perception of credibility through the lack of other adults in the room questioning them and setting these activists and profiteers straight.

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with being an activist or being a profiteer.  The problem is when the profit comes from misinformation, like in the case of the tobacco lobby or Michael Pollan.  The problem is when activists use misinformation to recruit more people.

"[Nutritional Science] is kind of where surgery was in the 1650s. Really promising, really interesting ... but, would you let them operate on you?" - Michael Pollan, Speech at Sydney's Opera House.

For science to progress, for reason to move forward alongside our debates about food, there must be an answer to that above statement.  How many times do you think that got repeated as people got into buses and cars and headed home or to dinner that evening?  How tragically ironic is it that one of the people advocating for and romanticizing subsistence level farming put down modern nutritional science as being too simple... not advanced enough?

We need to be more aggressive in promoting science.  We can't just set the facts out on the back porch like milk in a saucer in hopes that science starved kittens will lap it up.  Those kittens are on someone else's porch getting an earful about how bad your milk is, and when they do come around, it will be to make some snarky, matter-of-fact statement about how wrong you are before sauntering off with their tails wafting through the breeze.

"There's a wisdom beyond what people tell us, we have just stopped listening to our bodies."                      - Michael Pollan, Speech at Sydney's Opera House.

This is actually a variation of the God of the Gaps argument made in Creationism.  If they don't have all the answers we need right now, then we must not accept any of the answers they have and be skeptical of everything they say.

You don't see this in other areas of science. In astronomy, you had Carl Sagan, who had facts on his side and credibility.  After him, came people like Michio Koku and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who I would consider to be our generation's Carl Sagan.

For those on #agchat and #foodchat on twitter who would advocate being more diplomatic, I would like to add that Mr. Pollan's speaking engagement in Sydney was most likely a paid gig.  The people he sent out into the world with that message - either directly or indirectly - paid to hear it.  So if people will pay to hear that message, how far do you really think being diplomatic gets you on the free internet?

And it's not just Pollan, either.  We have activist organizations, who through their activism, have become profiteers.  You have Michael Jacobson and his Center for Science in the Public Interest.  You have Jeffrey Smith and his Institute for Responsible Technology.  You also have the somewhat misleading named, Union of Concerned Scientists.  I could go on and on.

We need to share resources, use our best professional groups and get out there and fight the misinformation.  We have groups like the International Food Information Council and the Institute of Food Technologists that we can network in and find people to do media appearances through.  We can appear with one of these groups when they end up on Real Time with Bill Maher, The Daily Show, Hardball, et cetera.  We can invest a little more time to social media by posting tweets about what we do as farmers, or plant geneticists, or food scientists, or food science professionals.  We can put out blogs, youtube videos, and podcasts to broadcast the truth about science.  Hell, one or two of us may actually get booked for paid speaking engagements.

But that would be offense, and the conventional wisdom among too many is to not be argumentative, to sink to their level.  What we get with that strategy is what we currently have now, a landscape dominated by activists and their profiteering hangers on, who say whatever they feel is right, regardless of whether it's true.  Their numbers grow, and science shrinks.  Hysteria soon becomes fact.  Get off the bench. Be aggressive.

Story about Pollan's speech in Sydney.

Recap of Jon Entine's speech at IFT 2012.

Mecca Flakes

 So we have several companies that make corn flakes.  Hundreds of workers are responsible for this breakfast classic that has been a part of the American breakfast for many decades.

What if I propose a rule saying that any company that employs a Muslim man or woman must put a symbol on their boxes when they worked on the line that produced that box of cereal?

Presumably, we've already done the same background checks as we have for every other employee.  The employee has received many hours of food safety, GMP, bio security, and other basic company/HR training.  The employee has also received the same on the job training that any other line worker gets and is monitored closely for a period of time after he/she is trained.

"But still.... how do we know that he/she won't.... you know???  I'm concerned for my family... I should have a choice between corn flakes made by friendly white people and ... you know...  Look, I know they're not ALL bad, but... you know... I've heard things.  A few of them have been known to be bad in the past... and well... I don't want to take any chances."

Would this bother you?  Would you be outraged?  Would you think it was a load of crap that the person proposing such a rule would hide behind 'choice' when we all know they're motivation is either fear or misinformation?

Suppose this rule went into effect and several groups boycotted the companies that manufactured these 'Mecca Flakes' as they will call them.  Pretty soon, those companies will get rid of any Muslim employees and a general panic may be stirred up about the role of Muslims in our society, despite all assurances of safety and all calls for sanity and for reason.

Now, replace the word Muslim with GMO.

"Oh Sam, that's different!"

Bullshit.  The traits of one worker on one line in one factory that hammers out thousands of boxes of cornflakes a day is NO different than one gene in a plant that produces corn in a field that produces many thousand of bushels.

Do you think it's wrong to require a company to disclose it's Muslim employees?  Good.

"But what about choice?"

'What's the difference?', I say.  In both cases their safety has been verified and their performance thoroughly analyzed.  In both cases, a non Subject Matter Expert stirs up fear and misinformation, recruiting others that are ignorant about the issues to call for labeling so they have a 'choice'.

Labeling of GMO comes from two agendas: 1. I don't know enough about science to know this is safe, I'm afraid and fear drives my choices or 2. I want more people to be afraid and stirred up about this and with GMO labeling, we will have something specific to boycott so we can drive the technology out of the market altogether.

Remember when Rush Limbaugh was trying to get people to vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Presidential Primaries?  He wasn't doing so for any genuine reasons(sorry Ditto Heads), he knew that the GOP had a strong campaign ready to go against her,  The Anti-GMO activists know that they can drive mass hysteria IF there is something to point at and be hysterical about. 

I don't support labeling because:

1. Safety has already been verified.

2. It IS the same commodity -  Corn is corn & soy is soy

3. USDA Organic already has guarantees for being GMO free

4. I want to take a stand against runaway activism that preys on the ignorance and fear of others to get what they want.

The Illusion of Facts.

Hello. It's been a while since I last posted on here. The things I write about aren't current events as much as it's science. Apples fall from trees just as they did in Newton's time. The same sort of thing is true of food science. So these musings can also serve as a reference. That also means that I don't really need to do one of these every day (unless web traffic increases 100x).

This isn't easy subject matter to be prolific about. I know what I know because I learned it. I sold my textbooks because I'm poor and it becomes difficult to cite things. Many studies are done every year, but then again, you have to pay to get these studies. I had access to these things at Ohio State in a huge database through OSU's great online library system, but I don't now. That hurts the food industry if you ask me. All studies should be put out for easy access. The other thing that hurts the food industry is that you train for it only after you've decided on it as a profession. It's kind of like pro wrestling in that respect. You only go to wrestling school if you want to be a wrestler.

Anyway... There is a lack of background knowledge in the area of food science. The only people that learn food science are academics who will go on to teach and people that go on to work in the food industry. So most industry people just chuckle when a Michael Pollan comes along with his theories about food. To the general public that doesn't have this general knowledge base, however, Pollan looks like the expert.

This is a situation I call the Illusion of Fact. This phenomena happens in many sciences where the general public has been starved of education about an industry. Any voice they hear will resonate and ring true, especially if you need a functional background in some other discipline to understand it. Jenny McCarthy goes on Oprah and talks about how vaccinations cause autism. It doesn't, but when this first came up, doctors ignored the low level rumblings because they seemed silly. Now we have parents refusing to vaccinate in the midst of a major flu outbreak.

I was listening to the Adam Carolla Podcast when he had on people affiliated with the Raw Food movement. At no point did anyone call in or did Adam question what they said, so I'm sure it was understood to be fact by many. They referred to cheese as being horrible for you and attributed what bordered on special powers for eating raw nuts and veggies. At one point one of the people, in talking about the time before he went raw, said that the lettuce was probably the only thing that was keeping him alive. Does anyone else realize how insane that is? He's making it up as he goes along!

Liz Vaccariello, editor in chief for Prevention magazine put out what is truly one of the most jaw-droppingly ignorant articles I think I have ever read. @LizVacc as she's known on twitter, put out an article called, 'The 7 foods experts won't eat'. She listed the bad food, then the 'expert' that knew better than eating that food. See if you can detect a pattern here...

Canned tomatoes
"The expert: Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri who studies bisphenol-A

The problem: The resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Unfortunately, acidity (a prominent characteristic of tomatoes) causes BPA to leach into your food. Studies show that the BPA in most people's body exceeds the amount that suppresses sperm production or causes chromosomal damage to the eggs of animals. "You can get 50 mcg of BPA per liter out of a tomato can, and that's a level that is going to impact people, particularly the young," says vom Saal. "I won't go near canned tomatoes.""

This seems somewhat legit until you start to wonder:

Is 50mcg the upper limit (theoretically possible)? If so, how much leaching actually occurs? Is it 50 mcg or is it 50mcg/kg bodyweight? Big difference.

This is from [ http://www.bisphenol-a.org/about/faq.html#i ]

'Government and industry researchers have reported that bisphenol A (BPA) is generally not detected in canned beverages and only extremely low levels (generally less than 37 parts per billion) of BPA have been reported to migrate into some canned foods. At these levels, a consumer would have to ingest more than 500 pounds of canned food and beverages every day for an entire lifetime to exceed the safe level of BPA set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Consequently, human exposure to BPA from can coatings is minimal and poses no known health risk.'

Since that site is pro BPA, I'll site another source:
[ http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Quality-Safety/Industry-backs-bisphenol-A-safety-in-can-linings ]

'The Consumer Union published its report after tests on 19 canned foods - including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans – found almost all contained “measurable levels of BPA”. The levels of chemical detected ranged from 0.3 parts per billion (ppb) to 191ppb. This highest level was detected in canned Del Monte Fresh Cut Green Beans Blue Lake with the lowest finding for this product less than a fifth of that at 35.9 ppb. Progresso Vegetable Soup, made by General Mills, showed a BPA level ranging from 67 to 134 ppb, while Campbell’s Condensed Chicken Noodle Soup had BPA levels between 54.5- 102 ppb, said the study.

A spokesman from General Mills said the BPA levels of up to 134ppb reportedly found in its Progresso Soup were not consistent with the company’s own findings.

“However, even if that level was present, it would still be substantially below the advisory level of 600 parts per billion established by the European Union as a level of safe consumption for all ages – and below current U.S. guidelines that establish the daily upper limit of safe exposure as 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight,” he added. “A level of 60 or 90 parts per billion, if present in a product, is and would be safe.”'

I know this is true from how they phrased it. You see, all @LizVacc reported on was an out of context number - 50mcg, but that isn't how toxicity is displayed. Tox levels for any food additive is always listed as units per kilogram of bodyweight. The reason for this is because of lab testing on rats and they need to convert the number into a human equivalent. So when the biased bisphenol-a site said that you would need to ingest 500 lbs of it every day for a lifetime, I knew they weren't lying.

I did find something amusing when looking that up...

Check out this section of a story done by the Virginian-Pilot and reposted by [ http://www.ewg.org/node/27610 ]

'the best option is to look for tomato products in glass jars, such as those made by Bionaturae, or in aseptic packaging, such as Pomi brand.'

Now compare that with what Liz Vaccariello wrote:

'Choose tomatoes in glass bottles (which do not need resin linings), such as the brands Bionaturae and Coluccio. You can also get several types in Tetra Pak boxes, like Trader Joe's and Pomi.'

Plagiarize much, Editor in Chief?

More examples:

Nonorganic potatoes (her wording, not mine)

'The expert: Jeffrey Moyer, chair of the National Organic Standards Board'

Really? You mean to tell me that the Chairman of the National Organics Standards Board is advocating for organic potatoes? You just blew my mind. Hey, I wonder if salt is good for me, maybe I'll ask the head of Morton Salt.

The Illusion of Fact.

Question what you are being told and why they are telling you. Use reason and logic. Autism is caused by vaccines and food dye? Wouldn't there by way more people with autism? I mean, everyone has had either an M&M or a shot?

I blame the food industry, and IFT, and our educational system. The industry should have seen this coming and should have reached out to educate. The Institute of Food Technologists could do more to educate our public so they don't turn to food hysterics and junk science. We eat every day, several times a day. Why isn't basic food science taught as real world examples of physics, agriculture, chemistry, and biology?

I have promised and I will do a thorough fact checking of Food Inc. I put it off because I know it's going to be a ton of work (not debunking, but a ton of writing because there is so much to debunk). I might break it down to a couple of fact checks per post. I dread doing it like I used to dread track conditioning in high school. I got so much anxiety that I would feel physically ill. I hated running and no amount of running gave me more stamina. I was a shot put and discus thrower, too, so running was extra pointless for me. Oh well, another story for a different blog all together.

Look for me on Twitter - @samvance

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