In January, a group of food science graduate students wrote an open letter to Vani Hari, aka Food Babe, on the Institute of Food Technologists Student Association (IFTSA) website. They criticized her pseudoscientific claims about GMO-foods and the lack of evidence to support her argument. They pointed out her poor reasoning, including claims about food additives that are banned in Europe but not in the U.S.
“To this same end, you point out that the U.S. permits certain additives which other, mainly European, countries have banned. We can just as easily list additives banned in the U.S. that are not banned in other countries,” the letter says.
Hari actually responded to the grad students in the typical Food Babe way: a barrage of personal opinions with no evidence to back up her claims. In fact, she conjectured that the graduate students were wrong. She wrote, “I respectfully disagree with your statement that GMO crops are ‘proven to be substantially equivalent to native crops.’” Hari claims that GMO crops have been “proven” to create “novel proteins” that have never existed before.
“She does not understand the very fundamental basis of transgenic (GMO) crop science,” said Dr. Kevin Folta in an online interview with Tellus Digest News, who is the Chairman of the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida.
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“The genes installed encode proteins that are extremely well understood. They are not novel; they have been studied for decades. That is the rationale for why they are used! This empirical understanding is the basis for intense safety evaluation. The genes added to transgenic crops are some of the best understood in biology.”
Read full, original article: Food Professor Debunks Food Babe Letter to Science Students
