Hime-Chan wrote:Jd: the food you have is also concerning for most Europeans, we sometimes hear stories in France about Americans not wanting our cheese because it has mouldy bits, but it's controlled mould (yeah we...care about cheese), while your society lets genetically modified vegetables for consumption, dangerous colourants, adding sugar to EVERYTHING...
The world will need genetically-modified food as the population grows if we want any chance at feeding most of us. That is a fact. There is not enough farm land for the world's population without increasing yields. Genetically-modified food sounds scary to the uninitiated, but as with the anti-vaccination movement, this is something you should leave to scientists if you are not willing to do the reading. You already eat almost exclusively "unnatural" food. Humans have shaped and refined their food sources for hundreds of thousands of years and will continue to do so as we make it better, more efficient, and more substantial than before.
Again, let me state outright:
There is nothing inherently wrong with genetically-modified food. Nothing. Literally, nothing. People are scared of introducing "dangerous colorants" and "sugars" and things along those lines without realizing that there is something "added" to virtually every food item you've eaten in your life. Whether it's the seeds used to plant your garden, the fertilizer used for said seeds, the produce at the supermarket, or just about any food that lasts more than a few days or comes in a bag, there are too many items.
The truth is that "organic" food preys upon people who have no clue whatsoever about anything other than basic semantics. This game of semantics has left people scared, when the food they are fearful of should more accurately be referred to as simply "genetically-engineered". This is a subject too complex to cover in passing, but the hysteria around GMOs is entirely, completely, and undeniably overblown.
Please do some basic reading into it before you begin fearing food.
Also, just to be honest and address your molding concern: I'm sure someone has said something about not wanting to eat mold on their cheese or on anything else in the U.S. However, this is not a recurring theme of national discourse. Combating false cheeses is not a priority of Obama's foreign policy and it certainly isn't on the minds of citizens. In fact, the thing I hear about French cheese is that there is a lot of variety. Surely you can concede that maybe--
just maybe--some of that variety maybe isn't for everyone.
What all of this sounds like is something I've mentioned before, which is a relevancy mindset in which everyone feels compelled to say, "Well, we've got this and it's better than [well-known/powerful/important country here] , therefore we are better than them (in at least this one way but obviously if there's one thing there must be a lot of things, so...
we're better!)". It's really defeatist and entirely unnecessary. If you want your country to stick out and be noticed and be relevant, it should not be in the form of comparison. That is a game in which no one wins. Focus on the positive aspects and more importantly the unique aspects. Everyone has something to offer--even if it's just molded cheese.
(Plot twist!)
[/spoiler]
