June 13, 2005 - 8:05 a.m.
Calling Bullshit
Penn and Teller debunked organic food and concerns for GMOs in their last episodes. While I have to admit that I've never had a huge concern over GMOs I don't know what to think about their debunking of organic foods. They didn't really touch on many issues - granted, it's a half hour show and they can only give any info in sound bytes....
Still with the use of organic foods, their purpose is not to erode topsoil and render soil infertile as it is proven many pesticides do.
I guess the fact is that with organic food you could only feed 4 billion of the worlds population... I'd like to know why that is, which is something they never really explained.
Also what are they basing this on? Our current consumption of meat and dairy? What if we switched to a plant-based diet instead? Or a mostly plant-based diet? What if rather that eating meat on a daily basis, we only ate it for special occasions? How many people would we be able to feed then?
I probably sound like one of those flakes that Penn and Teller are dismissing, but they never really talked about it. How come they didn't talk to David Suzuki about these issues? He's a bio-chemist and he has some interesting ideas about the state of the world and I imagine he could back a lot of that up with scientific evidence that he has collected over the years.
Just a couple thoughts for the day.
