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Food Conspiracies

This past weekend, I was a guest on a radio show that is broadcast through a network to about 100 stations across the US.  I was talking about my book, The Food Police.  Having done dozens of these kinds of shows over the past six or seven months since the book release, I figured that I've heard just about every question there was to ask.  I was wrong.  

After some standard back-and-forth questions with the host, the line was opened to callers.  Here are a few of the claims I heard - each from a different caller: 

  • Adding fluoride to water doesn't prevent cavities and causes joint pain, teeth browning, cancer, and Alzheimers   
  • Canola oil is an "unnatural" newly created synthetic product that causes cardiac problems and high blood pressure
  • Organic farmers are small farmers; small farmers treat their soil better than large farmers
  • With GMOs the genes they inject into DNA.  They are unnatural and become free floating in the soil; 70% of babies have the Bt toxin in their blood as a result of GMOs; the implication is that GMOs are very dangerous
  • A new wave of cancer patients are successful fighting cancer by moving to a diet of organic produce 

Some of these are more grounded in reality than others but overall I think I lost a little bit of faith in my fellow man.  I don't mean that in a belittling way.  But it makes me wonder what it is in human nature or what incentives exist in media/internet that would take a little grain of truth and turn it into some of these beliefs that are so at odds with the evidence.