How Safe Is The Food We Eat?
Dr. Lisa Weasel’s FOOD FRAY: Inside the Controversy over Genetically Modified Food (AMACOM; December 2008; $23.00 Hardcover) is a controversial and fascinating look at the global food fight that is changing the way we think about what we eat.
Just how safe are genetically modified foods? More than ten years ago, the first genetically modified foods took their place on the shelves of American supermarkets. But while American consumers remained blissfully unconcerned with the new products that suddenly filled their kitchens, Europeans were much more wary of these “Frankenfoods.” Even when famine struck Africa in 2002, several nations refused shipments of genetically modified foods, fueling a controversy that put the issue on the world’s political agenda for good.
Some of the issues Dr. Weasel explores in FOOD FRAY include:
How politics instead of ethics and science have driven the controversy over genetically modified foods.
How the general public is too often being duped and manipulated by propaganda about such foods.
How a huge campaign by big business to stop labeling foods may ensure that consumers can’t see what is really in the foods they are eating.
Lying beneath the surface of the story of genetically modified food is a deeper and more persistent narrative of how science, ethics, and politics intersect, not just in the US and Europe but in the legions of developing nations where some of the strongest debates surrounding GM food are currently taking place.
For a growing segment of the Americans, issues of where their food comes from, who controls the food supply, and what choices they make at the supermarket loom larger than ever. Consumers have recently staged mass protests against genetically modified foods that are not thus labeled, suggesting that there is strong opposition to such foods. Paradoxically, at the same time, genetically modified food is touted as the way to solve the world’s hunger problem and feed the world’s ever expanding populous poor.
FOOD FRAY separates truth from propaganda, science from science fiction. Dr. Weasel lays bare the reality behind genetically modified food.
Just how safe are genetically modified foods? More than ten years ago, the first genetically modified foods took their place on the shelves of American supermarkets. But while American consumers remained blissfully unconcerned with the new products that suddenly filled their kitchens, Europeans were much more wary of these “Frankenfoods.” Even when famine struck Africa in 2002, several nations refused shipments of genetically modified foods, fueling a controversy that put the issue on the world’s political agenda for good.
Some of the issues Dr. Weasel explores in FOOD FRAY include:
How politics instead of ethics and science have driven the controversy over genetically modified foods.
How the general public is too often being duped and manipulated by propaganda about such foods.
How a huge campaign by big business to stop labeling foods may ensure that consumers can’t see what is really in the foods they are eating.
Lying beneath the surface of the story of genetically modified food is a deeper and more persistent narrative of how science, ethics, and politics intersect, not just in the US and Europe but in the legions of developing nations where some of the strongest debates surrounding GM food are currently taking place.
For a growing segment of the Americans, issues of where their food comes from, who controls the food supply, and what choices they make at the supermarket loom larger than ever. Consumers have recently staged mass protests against genetically modified foods that are not thus labeled, suggesting that there is strong opposition to such foods. Paradoxically, at the same time, genetically modified food is touted as the way to solve the world’s hunger problem and feed the world’s ever expanding populous poor.
FOOD FRAY separates truth from propaganda, science from science fiction. Dr. Weasel lays bare the reality behind genetically modified food.
Labels: book publicity, current events
posted by Susan Schwartzman @ 11:46 AM
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