Natural Flavoring Made fromBeavers Secretions?

[Duper]

Read HERE.

This is just nasty. The article is a bit sensationalized but what isn't in todays world?
I'm swearing off packaged foods. And yes, it's real. Do a quick search on the key elements of the article.

[Tunnelcat]

That leads to the question, how do they GET those "secretions" from probably very unwilling beaver donors in the first place, and would you even want that job? Ewwwww!

Here's another gross food additive, red food coloring made from crushed bugs. Mmmmm, red velvet cake made with bug body dye.

http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/bugjuice.asp

[Top Gun]

I don't really see the big deal. Chemicals are chemicals, no matter where they're derived from. It kind of hearkens back to the time in scientific history when everyone was convinced that "organic" compounds were somehow magically distinct from the sorts of compounds one could create in a lab (something called vitalism)...until a chemist managed to synthesize urea artificially, which showed that they were all one and the same. In this case, just because the chemical comes from a squicky source doesn't somehow invalidate its usefulness.

[Duper]

...uh-huh...

look up Brominated vegetable oil

[Top Gun]

I did, and I'm not really seeing the relevance.

[fliptw]

Man, you should all look up DHMO, or the crap they use in fertilizer.

[Grendel]

[..] or the crap they use in fertilizer.

Oh ?

[Tunnelcat]

If you eat Jelly Beans, they're coated with shellac, which is derived from excretions of the Kerria lacca bug. Then there's Bird's Nest soup that the Chinese like, which consists of bird spit and other nest detritus. And don't forget Glyphosate, or as it's known, Roundup. There's traces of that stuff in everything now, and it's not even a food additive, just an extra adulterant.

[Spidey]

Now I remember why I gave up Jell-O.

[flip]

Yeah, I'm kinda with TG on this one. I'd much rather ingest things naturally derived, than synthetics, which sometimes lack certain components that facilitate digestion or natural assimilation.

[Top Gun]

That's not really what I said, but whatever.

[flip]

Eh, it still applies

[Top Gun]

Not really. My whole point was that there's no functional difference between "natural" and "artificial" ingredients, other than the connotations attached to each. Hell, arsenic is a "natural ingredient," but I don't see too many people eager to add that to their foods.

[flip]

Well, it's also why I said kinda .

EDIT:Well, for instance take pain medications. Since you cannot patent and sell natural resources, and to exactly synthesize heroin would still be heroin, a lot of times they are very similar, yet not exactly the same. That's when you start running into problems I think.

[Alter-Fox]

I'm with flip, I'd much rather be eating unaltered beaver secretions than pesticide residue.
But then, you know where I come from.

[Top Gun]

Nah, pesticide puts hair on your chest. Possibly tumors too, but think of the hair!

[flip]

Hehe, yeah, I imagine one breaks down with much less concern than the other does. On a side note, it seems Europe has banned most of these synthetic and genetically altered foods as unfit for human consumption, but here the greater percentage of the food eaten has been altered.

[Alter-Fox]

I doubt genetic alteration in itself is inherently bad for us.
For the surrounding ecosystem, maybe (because it could make non-native plants tough enough to out-compete native plants, for example) but I doubt it would be unhealthy for us unless someone decided to make it so, or the people responsible were careless. Because we do understand genetics well enough that we should be able to know what we're doing.
In fact I could imagine genetic alterations being used to reduce or even outright remove naturally-occurring toxins from plants that we eat anyway, or plants we could eat if not for the toxins. Which could theoretically increase the world's supply of food and help to alleviate starvation where it's a problem. And those plants might have other advantages with them (depending on the plant), like being able to thrive in poorer or thinner soil.

@Topgun I'm already far too furry.

[flip]

I tend to be less optimistic, of course this may be because I believe all things are by design and therefore done with careful consideration

It is claimed that GM in agriculture is a natural extension of traditional breeding methods, only more precise and safer. However, technically speaking, GM bears no resemblance to natural reproduction. The Government's Genetic Modification Regulations define GM as "the altering of the genetic material in that organism in a way that does not occur naturally by mating or natural recombination or both".

GM allows the isolation and transfer of only one or a few genes (eg, herbicide or pest resistance) between totally unrelated organisms. This is contrary to the understanding that genes work in groups within a given form of life and not in isolation.

GM plants and animals start life in a laboratory where artificial units of foreign genetic material are randomly inserted into the host in a way which, to a lesser or greater degree, always disrupts natural genetic order and function. Furthermore, GM brings about combinations of genes that would never occur naturally. A gene from a common soil bacterium has been transferred to soya beans to make them resistant to a herbicide; anti-freeze protein genes from an arctic fish have been introduced into tomatoes and potatoes in an effort to confer resistance to frost.

The artificial nature of GM does not automatically make it dangerous. It is the imprecise way in which genes are combined and the unpredictability in how the foreign gene will behave in its new host that results in uncertainty.

Here's an article that was published in the UK:

link

One from Russia

[Alter-Fox]

Well that surprises me very much, because I have a friend who's well on the way to becoming a theoretical geneticist (if he doesn't become a doctor) and most of the lab work he's done at the university is far more precise and done with far more thought to intergenetic interaction than what that talks about.

Yeah, there's always the matter of cutting corners for greater profit. But that's why we have laws regulating companies!