Large news publications like the esteemed New York Times routinely get science wrong in major, and detrimental ways.

For example they are hosting a symposium to talk about the future of modern agriculture, but didn't bother to invite anyone who is part of the current agricultural system. All of their speakers are people who are famous for taking a political stance on a scientific issue and using their bully pulpit to actively mis-inform the public. If the media were held accountable for promoting BS, then the NYTimes would be facing serious sanctions for this, but they are not.

No need to bring right or left into it. Yes the right is full of morons who don't believe in evolution for religious reasons or Man-made global warming due to motivated self interest, but the Left is full of morons who don't believe that Vaccines or GMO crops are safe for what, in the end, boil down to religious reasons (Naturalistic Logical Fallacy).

Title 21 of the US Code of federal regulations (21 CFR) lists all of the ingredients approved for use in the US food supply, whether for humans or animals. The US is a net exporter of corn and soy, and China is a net importer, so your example is not the best but I get your point.

More importantly, so does the FDA. They are currently working on the second draft of the proposed rules to cover verification that imported food products are produced to US standards as part of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). FSMA is the most extensive revision of US food and feed laws since the original 1938 Federal Food Drug and Cosmetics Act. One of the proposed regulations is to cover Foreign Supplier Verification, by which importers must certify (through inspections) that foreign companies are following the same rules as US based companies when producing their products for export to the US. Furthermore, the FDA plans to begin on-site inspections of foreign sites at a minimum of every 3 years. For those sites that are classified as a higher risk level, they will be inspecting every year, and only the first inspection is free. The FDA will bill the company for the cost of follow up inspections if problems are found and a re-inspection is deemed necessary.

Also, FSMA gives the FDA vast new enforcement powers. Currently, they can recommend a product recall, but the manufacturer ultimately decides. Once the act is in place, they will be able to sieze all product in the supplychain, issue recalls, and close down manufacturing sites on the suspicion of a problem. They don't need to have any hard evidence like testing data or sick people.

^^This is, in my not so humble opinion, one of the main reasons science and scientists are viewed with such skepticism.

How many newspapers and TV news programs gave Wakefield (and even worse, Jenny McCarthy) valuable opportunities to speak publically without challenge, even after it became clear that autism is not caused by vaccines? On the other hand, how many times have they, in the name of "Balance", allowed crackpots to act as foils to certified experts in an area?

How about the cult-worship status of TV stars like Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil who are billed as trustworthy experts despite their lack of qualifications in the area they spend most of their time talking about. Dr. Oz. is not a toxicologist, but that doesn't stop him (or his producers) from putting out BS on the risks of new pesticides about which none of them appear to know anything accurate.

The media needs to be held accountable for spreading bullshit for the sake of increased circulation/clicks. They aren't because of freedom of the press, and I am not opposed to freedoms of the press. As Spider-man would say "with great power comes great responsibility", but the press seems to be allowed to exercise enormous power without being held responsible for the harm they do.

You were the one claiming that we had eliminated natural selection, I was using a little thing called sarcasm to emphasize the inconsistency between the claim and the existence of mortality due to reasons other than old age. If you can't parse sarcasm when it is pointed out to you in advance then you probably shouldn't be wasting your or anyone else's time by posting.

In the US we formulate animal diets based in kcal/lb (industry) or kcal/kg (academia). In Europe they are more likely to use MJ/kg.

I've never understood why the human nutrition folks have created such unnecessary confusion. I've been told the goal was to make things simpler and easier for the layperson to understand, but the success of that is dubious at best.

And you believe that none are? When did the death rate for those under 80 reach zero? I some how managed to miss the announcement! [/sarcasm]

Of course humans work to avoid that. That doesn't make them 100% successful at it. Plenty of people die before or without reproducing, and those people were "selected" against whether as a result of disease, war, bad luck, lack of desire to have children, or their own stupidity. We are not as heavily culled by "natural" events as we might be, or once were, but that only means that we've increased our genetic diversity.

Some of those genes have demonstrable down sides, but it is common in evolutionary studies to see a widening of the gene pool when selection pressure is reduced. This is a natural part of evolution as the species begins to differentiate to take advantage of different ecological niches. Furthermore, there are most definitely internal selective pressures at play as well.

Western countries have become nuclei of successful people, with hot bed (like silicon valley) acting as concentrators of certain phenotypes (the stereotypical borderline and high functioning autistics that are the engine of computing progress). That those traits may have been an evolutionary disadvantage in pre-computing days does not change their current value today, or their current effect on those individuals chances of reproducing.

1. Diabetes is no longer fatal, and many who have the more mild form could control it without insulin if they just ate a healthier diet.
2. Cancer has always existed for those who live long enough
3. gastric disorders, if not fatal or don't reduce ones chances of reproduction, are not inherently relevant to survival even without modern medicine
4. endometriosis, has also always existed. it can be seen in non-domesticated species
5. fibromyalgia is vague pain. Again, pain by itself is not fatal and does not reduce ones odds of reproducing even in the absence of modern medicine. Especially if it frequently does not occur until one is past their prime reproductive years.
6. poor eyesight has not been a selection pressure in centuries, even before the development of optics or the widespread availability of corrective lenses. Again, especially in those cases where it does not appear until after the person has passed their prime reproductive years. Most people who wear glasses at younger ages do so to correct relatively minor defects in their vision.
7. IVF has risen in prevalence in part due to changes in human culture. Many women who might have been able to conceive naturally in their teens and 20's need IVF in their 30's and 40's because of non-genetic problems, and therefore are irrelevant to the discussion of selective pressures.

Being heterozygous for sickle cell is a BENEFIT if you live in a malaria rich region of the world, so to categorically state that it is "Bad" is myopic. This is exactly the point I've been trying to drive home. The value of a phenotype is situation dependent, and just because it confers no benefit in one situation does not mean it could not under different circumstances. The sickle cell trait spread as widely as it did in African populations in spite of the problems being homozygous for the trait can cause because the heterozygotes were better adapted to frequent exposure to malaria.

In the current environment, no none of these are beneficial. However, that does not mean they could not be under the right conditions or when paired with other genes in a different individual. Also, cleft palate is not always genetic in origin. Far more of those who develop a cleft palate have no genetic predisposition and they could have developed the phenotype due to environmental reasons (maternal nutrition, physical trauma, exposure to a chemical that interferes with midfacial development. Furthermore, evolution is not about the individual, but the species. Using the Sickle Cell example again, homozygotes with the sickle cell allele generally die, but their heterozygote siblings survive much better than those who are homozygous for the non-sickle cell allele.

You have obviously never heard of the neurodiversity movement. I've worked with special needs kids and there are some with down syndrome that are quite capable of surviving on their own. More capable than many non-down-syndrome individuals I know.

It is exceedingly arrogant to believe that humans are somehow exempt to selective pressures. As long as reproduction rates are not evenly distributed across the entire human population (ie 2 children per couple, and all children live to have 2 children themselves infinitely), then there will be evolution as some genes become more or less prominent in the overall population. To believe otherwise is to seriously misunderstand the underlying mechanisms of evolution.

No it is not irrelevant. It is an example of the loss of an ability that on it's face would be a negative (like the ability to digest lactose or gluten), yet turned out to be irrelevant to the survival of the species. You seem to operate under the false assumption that any loss in evolutionary "fitness" for past selective pressures is an unequivocal negative for our evolution as a species. However, the fossil record of all species is littered with examples of lost traits that were essential during one era, but unimportant to survival later on.

Very true. Registered Dietician (RD) is a protected title like MD, or PhD. No such protection exists for "Nutritionist" and as a result anyone can describe themselves as such. In animal nutrition someone calling themselves a nutritionist generally has a PhD in the field of nutrition from an accredited university (as I have), but that is because a nutritionist is hired by the feed industry and a PhD is required to do the job.

For human nutrition, because it is so open to anyone who can write a good book and can look surprisingly healthful for their book jacket photo, the requirements are much lower. Instead of formulating nutrition plans (left to the RD's) human nutritionists are generally the charismatic front (wo)men who the brand is built around, and who's job it is to spout BS on the talk show circuit and in infomercials.

True, and that is why we've made so much progress in such a short period of time with pigs. However, to assume that natural selection cannot accomplish in 4000 years, what we've done through selective breeding in ~40 years is odd to me. In humans there isn't some intelligence applying the selection, but that does not mean that selection is not taking place. The difference is that the environment, consisting in part of the food that can be cultivated in that environment, is applying the selection pressure. Most humans can utilize lactose well into adulthood because we evolved the ability to do so because the offspring of humans who could were more likely to survive and breed. The ability to digest lactose as an adult is not as advantageous as it once was, and in the absence of that selective pressure the trait is becoming less universal. Both the historical spread of lactose tolerance and the current rise of lactose intolerance are examples of evolution in action.

No, humans are not less robust, at least in an evolutionary sense, because evolution is all about survival in the environment as it is at the moment. It is not about some theoretical ideal or past conditions that no longer apply. It is inconvenient that one my sons is lactose intolerant, sure, but he lives in a time and place where the ability to digest lactose does not affect his long term prospects of reproduction appreciably. Similarly, it would have been nice for early sailors to be able to synthesize vitamin C on their own, but they couldn't and that led to a lot of brave men suffering and sometimes dying of scurvy before they realized that eating citrus fruits or extracts can prevent it (even before medicine realized what it was about citrus that prevented scurvy). Humans have always used our intelligence to think our way out of apparent maladaptions to our environment. The net effect has been to show that our greater intelligence is a more valuable adaptation that big teeth, claws, and a vitamin C synthetic pathway in the liver.

There are no "bad" genes. There are traits which are not well adapted to a particular environment or situation, but that does not make them bad per se. Sickle cell being the poster child for an apparent disorder this actually advantageous under certain conditions. Same goes for white skin, and advantage that evolved and spread in colder northern europe, but is a hindrance to whites living in regions with plenty of UV exposure throughout the year because it increases your risk of developing cancer. All traits are trade offs and to assume any trait is inherently "Bad" is to fall into the same faulty reasoning that led to eugenics in the first place.

Evolution is not directional. There is not De-Evolution as a counter to Evolution. There may be a future environmental condition where the current maladaptation are favorable. Evolution is the accumulation of genetic changes over time, its not the accumulation of abilities like in an RPG. Shortly after humans evolved tricolor vision we started loosing the ability to detect most pheromones. It is believed that this loss of a previously essential ability occurred because the evolutionary role for which pheromones had evolved (to signal sexual receptiveness among other things) could also be met by increased color sensitivity (consider the baboons with the red asses everyone likes to laugh at, or the ones with the blue, red and white skin on their faces), thus making the loss of one specific ability unimportant in the large flow of genetic changes.

My original subject line still holds be careful with those assumptions

Researchers have been studying human evolution by tracking changes in our DNA and using advanced modeling techniques to gauge the rate of our evolution, including projecting various changes backward in time. That's how we know that Neanderthals and modern humans bred with each other. We've found the Neanderthal genes in the modern human population. Most genes contribute to more than one trait, so even small changes in our DNA can lead to large changes in our phenotype. To assume that somehow those changes have magically skipped over affecting any of the numerous genes involved in ingestion, digestion, and metabolizing our food is asinine.

Our ability to support the energy sink that is the human brains is dependent upon our ability to get enough nutrients, and more importantly energy, to support its development and high maintenance requirements as an adult. That it self is evidence of our diet and bodies evolving together. Also, the reduction in the size of our jaws, leading to chronic problems with impacted 3rd molars, is another instance where we have evolved as a result of our diet. The larger jaws of earlier hominids are not necessary because we cook our food. That cooking makes the nutrients more available, meaning we need to eat less. It also makes the food softer, meaning we don't need massive jaws to constantly grind seeds and roots and raw meat.

There is plenty of other evidence that our bodies have evolved in large part BECAUSE of changes in what we eat and how we prepare it. The problem is that fad dieters have never been very big on reading peer-reviewed literature. They prefer to read the book-of-the-month endorsed by some celebrity or health guru.

The idea that we have not had time to evolve to farmed food is just stupid. We've managed to completely revamp the modern pig phenotype from a slow growing lard producing machine, with back fat measuring as much as 9-12 inches to a pig where the standard backfat thickness is measured in millimeters in less than half a century. Humans have been farming for roughly 100 times longer than that.

We've seen human populations with distinct difference in their ability to handle different components of foodstuffs (lactose, gluten, fat, etc). Explain to me how that ISN'T evidence of evolution! The whole "paleo" fad is based on two false assumptions. 1) that we are no longer evolving, and 2) that evolution is directed at some idealized collection phenotypes.

Wow, you have a very carrying soul [/sarcasm]

Unlike you, the FDA has a statutory obligation to make sure that foods and drugs sold in the US are safe for their intended use. The "intended use" part allows for a surprising amount of wiggle room. How is the FDA to know if you bought vitamins to treat some disease (a drug use) or to make sure you meet the normal RDA (not a drug use)? They can't and don't try. The intended use limit is not on the end user, but the seller. VitaminsRUs cannot advertise that their vitamin pills prevent cancer, but if you believe they will there is nothing the FDA can do to stop you, and they won't even try.

The FDA is not a moral authority, but a scientific one. They are staffed with experts in various fields necessary to decide which products are safe and effective, and which are not. You appear to feel yourself up to the task of sorting the wheat from the chaff, but most Americans are not. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you consider yourself to be of above average intelligence and education (ironically, the vast majority of people do as well). But think about most of the people you see in a day (neighbors, friends, family, strangers). How many of them would you suspect are similarly equipped to handle sophisticated marketing made to give the appearance of scientific validity despite a demonstrable lack there of? That is why the agency was created (see patent medicines, most of which were simply different forms of cocaine). To protect the largely ignorant populace from unsafe and unproven products.

All such regulations require oversight. Verification that companies are obeying the laws that are supposed to govern their actions. The dietary supplement market is exempt from much of this oversight because they lied to the US population and convinced them that the FDA was out to take away their vitamins and make they by prescription only. That would never have happened. I know this because I do regulatory work with the division of the FDA involved in regulating the animal equivalent to dietary supplements, namely Feed Additives. No prescription is needed for an approved feed additive, no consultation with a veterinarian is required, but feed additive manufacturers are required to prove that a new additive is safe and effective. Once approved, anyone can sell that feed additive for the approved use without further involvement of the FDA. A feed additive petition takes about 2 years (on average, with a HUGE SD due to a non-normal distribution) from submission to approval, but once the approval is made no more work is required. In most other countries the requirements are similar, except that approvals are vendor specific (Company A and B both have to register their Vitamin C), and have to be renewed periodically (US system only requires approval once).

Probably because herbal tea is food and therefore falls under the more comprehensive oversight and rules that cover all foods. She is correct that dietary supplements can contain pretty much anything.

FDA regulations are use based. If you are taking vitamin C as a way to meet your daily requirement for vitamin c, then there is no health claim and your purchasing experience wouldn't change. However, the vitamin c seller would need to convince the FDA as to their supplements efficacy of disease prevention, which is BS anyway. The FDA oversight wouldn't do much to vitamin availability (the strawman the afore mentioned misinformation campaign used to drum up support for thei dietary supplement exclusions), but it would keep the "Magic" (read bullshit) pills Dr Oz keeps pushing off of the market in the first place. It would also cause other known BS like herbal supplements that lack any of the advertised herb, or the homeopathic sugar pills to be pulled due to a demonstrable lack of efficacy.

The really frustrating part is when people who will rant against drug companies and a supposed lack of testing (which could not be further from the truth) will in the same breath rave about the latest dietary supplement (for which no testing is actually required, and over which the FDA has little legal oversight).

The food supplements industry is largely unregulated in the US due to an impressive mis-information campaign back in the 1980's which resulted in a special section of the regulations for dietary supplements. Animal feed is more tightly regulated than feed supplements. Feed additives have to prove, to the satisfaction of the FDA, that they are effective for a specific purpose. No similar requirement exists for dietary supplements.