I'm not so sure. People are still sure that MSG will slowly kill them, when it's actually been proven to be 100% harmless as far as we know. You still see "No MSG" labels on tons of food.
Mandatory labeling gives the impression that it's relevant information. Whether your food is GMO is totally without consequence. I don't see why the government should burden and mislead the rest of us so you can more easily wage your political campaign from the comfort of your local Whole Foods.
I'd actually be fine with mandatory labeling if it said something like "GMO. Totally harmless but the food hipsters wouldn't shut up until we forced everyone to read this stupid label."
The scientific literature doesn't show MSG to be completely harmless. Some people definitely have negative reactions it and other sources of free glutamates.
>"Excitotoxicity is the pathological process by which nerve cells are damaged or killed by excessive stimulation by neurotransmitters such as glutamate and similar substances." //
Is excitotoxicity of glutamates a myth, it must be if the claim that 'MSG is completely harmless' is true.
> Some people definitely have negative reactions it and other sources of free glutamates.
And some people have an allergy to water. I think GP meant "harmless" as referring to general population. There are always people who are allergic or otherwise harmed by things that are harmless to the 99.99% of humanity. Additional labeling might be justified if their number grows beyond a rounding error. And that still doesn't change the fact that unless you're the confirmed rare case for which X is harmful, you have no reason to fear it or to believe (and spread) misconceptions about it.
Funny that you quote from the excitotoxicity article but not the MSG article, which lists study after study proving that MSG in food is harmless. All reports of negative effects are anecdotal and unsubstantiated. This is for one of the most widely consumed chemicals in the world.
>study after study proving that MSG in food is harmless //
The side issue is objective truth here. So, you're telling me that no one has ever been harmed by consuming normal quantities of MSG? That's what "proven harmless" means.
It only requires one study to show some link between MSG and negative health effects to make it rational to seek that information, something like this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27312658 maybe, suggesting neuronal destruction (using mice as a model). It's not proof.
For example, from the Wikipedia article on "Glutamate flavoring":
>"At a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in 1990, the delegates had a split opinion on the issues related to neurotoxic effects from excitotoxic amino acids found in some additives such as monosodium glutamate."
If neuroscience experts don't have consensus, that would be a reason to avoid "additives such as MSG", no?
I still think that if we're going to do this democracy thing that people who want "no MSG" labels ['no free glutamate' would probably be more useful] should get them regardless of my view of their scientific basis.
Personally MSG doesn't really bother me, I don't like the "enhanced" taste with foods that are rich in it but a little seems fine. I do get headache and bloatedness after having the UK version of Chinese Restaurant food, seemingly more so than with other food types, but I'm pretty sure that's just over-eating [perhaps the enhanced flavour encourages it?].
This might not be obvious but the primary problem with GMO is that as a farmer you have to buy (in FSF terms) proprietary seeds and fertilizers. After the first harvest the the soil has been "contaminated" with GMO seeds. Even if you stop using the GMO seeds immediately you can still be sued by the seed manufacturer.
> People are still sure that MSG will slowly kill them, when it's actually been proven to be 100% harmless as far as we know. You still see "No MSG" labels on tons of food.
"People" is sure of that... and so what? Food with additives sell. Have a walk in the street and observe what's the volume of organic (I'm using "additive-free-as-possible" for comparison purposes) food sold against "regular" one.
Talking at home about good intentions, irrational fears and so on translates little to purchasing habits. I actually heard only two people in my life talking about MSG, and only one is the "food hipster" who doesn't buy.
Of course, cases like associating skulls and crossbones with microwave ovens are an entirely different story.
> so you can more easily wage your political campaign from the comfort of your local Whole Foods.
I'm not sure if you're intentionally disingenuous here; the supermarket (generalizing, purchasing of goods) is actually the least comfortable place where to wage political campaigns, because it's the place where one puts the money where the mouth is if he really believes in his ideas, and doing so is expen$ive.
> Totally harmless but the food hipsters wouldn't shut up until we forced everyone to read this stupid label.
Let me make sure I understand you correctly.
In the jar of yogurt I have in front of me, whose main readable are is ~250 cm², an OGM writing would take an estimated 0.8 cm² (it would necessarily follow the typical guidelines of mandatory warnings), and it would also be in a part which has no immediate visibility. I therefore exclude that as "forcing everyone to read".
I also extremely rarely see advertisements in the supermarkets with warnings - this would cannibalize a part of their own offer.
Can you explain who and how would exactly "force" the public to read such warnings?
Note that of course some food would, for marketing purposes, shovel "GMO free" in shiny colours. That's advertisement, it's not government-regulated mandatory warning.
BTW there seems to be a development for some more sensible marking of GM foods beyond the GMO/non-GMO labeling which really tells you nothing of value.
The idea with this is that you put much more information available:
A vast majority of what you eat has been developed, not thousands of years ago, but some years or decades ago, using processes such as induced mutagenesis and selection. The variance in genome produced by GMO technology is very small compared to the changes in developed plants, which is not researched at all prior to feeding to humans.
Mandatory labeling gives the impression that it's relevant information. Whether your food is GMO is totally without consequence. I don't see why the government should burden and mislead the rest of us so you can more easily wage your political campaign from the comfort of your local Whole Foods.
I'd actually be fine with mandatory labeling if it said something like "GMO. Totally harmless but the food hipsters wouldn't shut up until we forced everyone to read this stupid label."