Comments by "SkyRiver" (@SkyRiver1) on "Top U.S. & World Headlines — September 30, 2021" video.

Concerning the contamination of baby foods: All rice that is grown on land that was previously used to grow cotton have arsenic contamination. If you eat rice, use rice that is grown on land that was never used to produce cotton, because as a non-food crop, dangerous pesticides are legally used on cotton and the arsenic is left in the soil and then taken up and sequestered in rice that is grown on that land. To my knowledge California rice is safe.
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@MrDXRamirez No. Not unless I saw some evidence that it was true for a particular product. I know it sound cool to roundly condemn everything about America here on DN, however the truth is more important to me than some inane political narrative. In fact I have come to detest the radicals on both the left and the right for their willingness to sacrifice truth in order to spin a narrative for political ends.
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@digitalbookworm5678 True, but the amount of arsenic that is present in the soil and water varies greatly. Fields that had been used for non-food crops that use pesticides not allowed for food crops are among the most contaminated with arsenic, such as fields that were used to grow cotton.
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@vallee7966 I only eat organic but all I could find regarding the soil is the following: "Produce can be called organic if it’s certified to have grown on soil that had no prohibited substances applied for three years prior to harvest. . . ." Unfortunately this would have little effect on the natural arsenic content of soil and water.
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@MrDXRamirez Also, I never claimed that there should not be legal/political solutions to this wholesale sickening of the population. It's not as if food additives are not regulated, however the regulations are grossly inadequate. It would be nice if industries had to prove the safety of their ingredients before they began to use them, and this is clearly not the case with ingredients such as trans fats and high fructose corn sweeteners etc. People are so fat and sick now that it is disgraceful, but it is not entirely due to the greed of industry, the people themselves had a hand in it. It's just not important to them, and they really cannot control their appetites for fat, sugar, and flesh -- all of which are killing them.
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@MrDXRamirez Yes I personally consider the food additives you mention as more of a public health problem than arsenic in rice. The fact that no definitive testing is done prior to them being used in food products is abyssal. I personally only eat organic produce and no fast or processed foods at all. But even this does not entirely protect me from the chemical onslaught. And strangely enough some of the most undeveloped countries have some of the most toxic foods. But the lines at McDonalds are still around the block, when you can feed your family poison for less money than it would cost to cook at home, there is little hope in changing the behavior of the average person, when it is so convenient to remain ignorant
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@MrDXRamirez I can understand why you have that view. Personally I would like to see a RetroConfucian TechnoMeritocracy that was based on unbiased science in which all representatives were selected by an ever evolving compendium of tests and virtual scenarios the highest scoring of which would be appointed to the respective office until someone bested their performance during the next scheduled government upgrade. However I am not holding my breath. I would not want to return to an era of family owned farms, basically because I do not want to work that hard. I guess it would be cool in a way for everyone to live in their own little spaceship earth kind of self sufficient homestead, like they build out of old tires and what not, but as I recall, my grandfather could not wait to get off the farm and start a business, because then he only had to work six days a week instead of seven.
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@digitalbookworm5678 Certainly true, as do many plants. That's not the issue. The issue is at what level to these plants constitute a probable risk to a person who includes them regularly in their diet. That is why the individual level of heavy metal contamination, of the land is such an important factor. Of course there are areas that have such high natural concentrations in their soil that they do almost equal that of a former cotton field, Pakistan has such areas.
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@MrDXRamirez Sounds good for some, but in general I don't think it will fly. Look at how terrible tomatoes are. I really haven't had even a decent tomato since I left Santa Cruz five years ago. Despite this, I have not grown my own tomatoes, even though no matter how much you pay, the tomatoes suck. Or look at the price of government sanctioned marijuana, just outrageous, still most people do not grow their own, even if it's legal to do so where they live. If I had some land and maybe a few mutipurpose robots (Tesla evidently is working on this) then I would do something like that. But most people won't, so maybe safe food in supermarkets is what we really need.
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@MrDXRamirez Are you not aware that no one is allowed to own land in China? What do you mean there are no mortgages in China? Are you totally unaware of the Real Estate crash that is now going on? Rampant speculation in over valued and unused real estate. Millions have lost their life savings due to real estate speculation. You may be able to have a small farm and be impoverished in China, but you can't own the land, and if the CCP wants to use it you have no say. Not to mention that China has murdered over 50 million of it's own people in recent times. No I think we are much better off. And China certainly does not have a small land mass, especially is you count Tibet. Without Tibet it is as large as the USA.
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