Come to think of it, I guess I've never just picked up a live chicken and proceeded to eat it raw.  I guess it's just not a normal thing to do in the society I was raised in.  I've seen a python do it though.  Well, she didn't bight off small chunks and chew it like I probably would have to.  Maybe, people just don't like being reminded that we and some of what we eat are animals.  That's just my guess though.

It's pretty amazing how many things we can digest that are virtually useless to our bodies.  (Yet another argument against intelligent design.)  There are groups that are trying to reverse the McDonalds trend.  (http://pure-joy.org/wholefoodmovement.aspx).  Personally, I avoid fast food restaurants like the swine flu.  (Which is to say I try really hard to never go in them, but if I am forced into it, it probably won't kill me.)

Unfortunately, many well meaning hippies go too far to the opposite extreme with whole food, insisting that if something didn't come directly from Mother Gaia that it's evil and bad for you, or that organic locally grown kale can cure cancer if eaten by the metric ton.  The position that aggravates me the most is that there's something inherently wrong with genetically engineered food.  We've already gone over this.  ALL food is genetically engineered.  Some of it was engineered by natural selection, and some by man, but if you're buying something from ANY farmer in America today, a scientist has tinkered with it.  Our food is much better for us nutritionally and taste-wise because of genetic engineering.

In the end, the best bet is to buy produce and meat from reputable farmers who avoid unnecessary chemical pesticides and fatten their animals the old fashioned way -- with food their bodies are meant to eat.  Be prepared for wallet shock.  It's much more expensive to eat that way.  Also, don't look for this to be more than an activity practiced by a loyal underground following.  These farming methods can't sustain the population.  If everybody was forced into eating only foods produced in these ways, there'd be mass starvation.

Many fruits and vegetables have been selectively bred, crossbred, and otherwise manipulated to enhance their nutritional content.  That's genetic engineering.

Oh, sure.  I never claim, nor will I, that all genetic modifications to plants are good.  All I'm trying to do is refute the dodo-heads who think that they have to stay away from GE foods because there's something inherently "unnatural" about it.

No disagreement.  Christians mean well, too, when they picket abortion clinics.  That's why I don't consider myself an anti-theist.  I'm an anti-anti-scientist.  That is, I'm against anyone who is opposed to trusting science.

Genetic engineering does go beyond what normally happens in natural or artificial cross-breeding, in that genes from widely disparate species can be introduced, even genes that don't exist at all naturally, so they haven't been 'filtered' through the natural selection process to weed out possible nasty and unexpected effects. So it is at least potentially more risky.

Such 'foreign' genes do get into a species by natural processes thru viruses, which can get chunks of their DNA incorporated into the infected cells DNA. This is one of the techniques used by Genetic Engineering - engineer a virus with the new gene and infect the target cells.

Oh, sure.  I should have been more clear.  (It's just that typing out the same thing so many times in different threads gets tedious.)  Sure, there are potential negative effects from the methods of gene manipulation used by scientists, and no, we would never expect to see such mutations naturally.  However, to take a recent example, the stretch of DNA taken from, what was it... bees, I think... to make a strain of corn more cold-resistant -- the stretch of DNA isn't "Bee DNA."  It's DNA that happens to be part of the Bee Genome.  It's possible that natural selection could stumble upon the same stretch of DNA in corn, given enough time and billions of tries.  It's staggeringly unlikely that the code will magically appear in the next generation through natural selection, though.

While the methods of genetic engineering are not straight up reproduction, but rather manipulation of genes through splicing and such, the end result is still a strand of DNA and nothing else.  Scientists aren't adding a new letter to DNA or anything like that.  DNA is DNA.

While there is a risk of unwanted negative traits inherent in genetic engineering, there is also a significant risk of unwanted negative traits inherent in making an offspring the old-fashioned way.  Natural selection misses much more than it hits.  So, pointing out that messing with genes can have negative side effects is just pointing out the obvious.

My problem with GE opponents is that they all seem to believe that negative side effects are somehow the norm when we splice genes.  They don't seem to get that DNA often works across species precisely because species are all related.  They've seen "The Fly" with Jeff Goldblum too many times, and they think scientists are just haphazardly plopping in sequences of code to see what happens.

Like I said, I'm not touting GE as universally good.  I just want to make it clear that regardless of the technique -- splicing or good old fucking -- the end product is the same.  

Well I do think there is a perfect food.... it is called the nartjie. But that has nothing to do with this, i just love them  Yes preservatives are cool, atleast some are. i'm actually for taking some additives out although I agree it would be loonacy to take them all out. It is undeniable that some of the additives in food are harmfull or atleast potentially harmfull. Salt in fast food is really bad imo, yes you need some salt but to much is very harmfull. In some processed foods they are well quite free with it. Expessially in fast food. Go through the KFC and McDonalds ingredent lists I linked to and im sure you will find most (i would guess 80%) have salt in them. I haven't actually checks exactly how many things do but i know alot do.   

Not directed at anyone really but here are some that are recommended you avoid or atleast cut back on and where they are found. Got them from the most neutral source I could find. 

ACESULFAME-K

ARTIFICIAL COLORINGS: BLUE 1

ARTIFICIAL COLORINGS: BLUE  2

ASPARTAME

Artificial sweetener: "Diet" foods, including soft drinks, drink mixes, gelatin desserts, low-calorie frozen desserts, packets.

BUTYLATED HYDROXYANISOLE (BHA)
Antioxidant: Cereals, chewing gum, potato chips, vegetable oil.

OLESTRA (Olean)
Fat substitute: Lay's Light Chips, Pringles Light chips.

PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL, HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (Trans fat) 

Fat, oil, shortening: Stick margarine, crackers, fried restaurant foods, baked goods, icing, microwave popcorn.

POTASSIUM BROMATE
Flour improver: White flour, bread and rolls

PROPYL GALLATE
Antioxidant preservative: Vegetable oil, meat products, potato sticks, chicken soup base, chewing gum.

SACCHARIN
Artificial sweetener: Diet, no-sugar-added products, soft drinks, sweetener packets.

SODIUM NITRITE, SODIUM NITRATE
Preservative, coloring, flavoring: Bacon, ham, frankfurters, luncheon meats, smoked fish, corned beef.

SALT (Sodium Chloride)

Flavoring, preservative: Most processed foods, cured meats, soup, snack chips, crackers, and others.

There's some speculation that hormones in food cause early puberty in girls.

http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/Factsheet/Diet/fs37.hormones.cfm

 I get you, Tapey.  I just happen to own one of those restaurants that uses 0 Trans Fat oil to deep fry.  I get twitchy about losing business because people are afraid of fried food.

 Yeah, there are too many possible causes still untested to jump on board the hormone-puberty bandwagon with both feet.  (Of course, I think it would be very bad to just have one foot on board... that's a good way to pull your groin.)

The thing is, ironically, it could be better nutrition that is leading to earlier puberty.  Despite how bad a lot of food is for us in the long run, the simple fact is that malnutrition is almost unheard of now, and that's kind of a first.  It isn't much of a stretch to suggest that humans who reach puberty earlier will reproduce earlier and more often.  That's an evolutionary strength, so it wouldn't be surprising to find that simple nutrition was the cause.

Question about the oil. What raw material(s) does this oil come from? Soybean, canola, olive etc...?

They are produced artificially by partially hydrogenating vegetable oils, atleast now they are, not sure where they are originaly from though.

P.S. yeah i know Cpt just put the conclusion there so knowone jumped to conclusions

Pineapple:  It's the first franchise of an independent restaurant.  We're basically trying to design a franchise.

RE: Oil:  Different ones are made from different vegetables.  Soy is pretty popular these days, but corn is always around, too.  It's about the process of hydrogenating, not the source of the oil.  Basically, complete hydrogenation makes a solid that's more or less useless for cooking.  It resembles plastic more than anything else.  (Remember, many plastics are oil based.)  The digestive system is fooled by partially hydrogenated oils.  It thinks they're food, but they can't be used, so they just get stored on artery walls.

In the hydrogenation process, many essential fatty acids are destroyed, so in addition to having useless lumps of fat that will accumulate in the body, they also have less nutritional value in what's left over.