The only thing worse than the shit that food companies claim is the "OMG CONSPIRACY TOXIC FOOD" shit that people come up with to create a fake scandal around those food companies. Got a gem this morning claiming that aspartame used to be a pesticide made by the evil Monsato until they figured out it tasted sweet and started sweetening food with it...
And makeup/skin care commercials are the most evil of all of them as far as bullshit claims, but people swallow that shit up.
There are a lot of fallacies about food safety out there. Aspartame is a pretty nasty substance though, iirc it was initially banned by the FDA and was only allowed into food because of heavy lobbying and pressure from congress. This is all well documented so it's a good example of OMG CONSPIRACY because it kinda was.
I avoid it because I dislike the taste and because it makes me feel off. I can drink a liter of coffee/soda and be fine, but a half can of diet soda makes me twitchy. Even chewing gum with aspartame gets me. Sucks as I love chewing gum and it's hard to find gum that still has sugar in it.
I agree about the food ones.... every "chemical" that has ever touched food gives you cancer. When I tell patients that freak out that food is made of chemicals.. " no, it's natural" "natural and chemical are not opposites"
Everything gives you cancer now. Sounds like you're playing the semantics game with them. IMHO, most people think "made in a lab" when you say "food is made of chemicals" instead of "chemicals come from nature." Do you want to eat a lab created, factory farmed, color added Salmon? I sure as hell fucking don't. I don't want to eat vegetables with bt toxin in them and glyphosphate all over them either.
Take a tub of margarine and leave it opened up on the counter for a week. It won't melt and no animal/insect will touch it. It's only yellow and tastes ok (debatable) because they have to add color/flavor to make it palatable since the hydrogenation process outputs grey colored rancid smelling goo. I'll stick to butter, thanks.
There's a huge difference in quality of foods between something in its natural form vs something created in a lab. Almost every other nation has severely limited genetically modified foods, and Monsanto spent millions to prevent GMO labelling in California.
If GMO and other lab created foods were truly GRAS, why would this be necessary?
And let's face it, agriculture today is pretty fucked up. You're forced to buy seeds every year because of your contract, if you are "caught" growing patented crops (even by accident, if the crop was volunteer) your farm is seized. What they don't tell you is that there's no way to not grow these patented crops; they're prolific pollinators and insert their DNA into whatever they can. Raw dairy is illegal, and whole foods are being phased out in favor of lab created varieties....
It's not all conspiracy theory, there's a lot of truth there as well. Corporations today will do whatever it takes....