> Magnesium deficiency can be attributed to common dietary practices, medications, and farming techniques, along with estimates that the mineral content of vegetables has declined by as much as 80–90% in the last 100 years.
This is why, when people defend GMOs with the argument that we've been genetically modifying plants and animals for hundreds of years by selective breeding, that I don't think that argument leads to the conclusions they're looking for which is that its all perfectly harmless.
I make that argument, but I would never say "It's all perfectly harmless." The point is that the technique used to produce an organism isn't its self harmful. The question is whether the organism is harmful. Resistance to disease is good. Lower nutrient density is bad. It really doesn't matter whether we got here by selective breeding or modifying genes directly.
The current state of things isn't very stable though, especially when there's already a bunch of other parts of it we're intentionally or unintentionally modifying.
GMO's are not perfectly harmless, but nor are they as different from other forms of human manipulation as we have been lead to believe.
I've long taken the stance that the bigger issues are agricultural monoculture and proprietary genetics. We should require all to have copyleft genomes and use our large agricultural subsidies to promote genetic diversity in our food supply.
This is why, when people defend GMOs with the argument that we've been genetically modifying plants and animals for hundreds of years by selective breeding, that I don't think that argument leads to the conclusions they're looking for which is that its all perfectly harmless.