As a person who pays thorough attention to everything on food labels, what caught my attention about the 7 Deadlies' poster presentation was when they talked about how much Golden Rice a person must eat in order to gain the benefits from the vitamin A within the rice. Therefore we must look at food labels, serving size and vitamins as inscriptions devices and circulating reference.
Why are these inscription devices? Because it is how we are taught to make sense of food around us. It is the way we are given information about food products in order to ensure that people know, or at least are given the ability to find out, what is in their food.
Ingo Potrykus makes the case that by developing Golden Rice, millions of people's lives will be saved from vitamin A deficiency. What he fails to recognize with his claim is the serving size. Probably the most important piece of the puzzle. I cannot deny that this man is trying to do good by people, however he is also trying to sell a product, and not only that but he is keeping important details out of his claim.
This is extremely bothersome for me because he knows that people will believe him because although the inscription device, serving size, is always available to the public, it is very rarely used as a gauge of how much a person eats. Someone may eat or drink more or less of any given product without a glance at how much a healthy amount is or how many nutrients (vitamins, minerals, calories, fats, sugar, sodium, etc.) are in any given product. For example, most bottles of juice are served in a 15-16oz bottle when only 8 oz is a serving size. The food label only gives the amount per serving, meaning that it is double what the label says for an entire bottle. Yet most people will drink the entire bottle without realizing only half should have been consumed. Though we are focusing on Golden Rice not having enough nutrients in one serving as opposed to getting too many nutrients from another product, Potrykus makes his claim without needing to point out anything that has to do with the amount of vitamin A in just one serving size.
Yes, Golden Rice may contain more vitamin A than white rice, but as Emily stated in class, a person must eat five whole servings to get the same amount of vitamin A that is in 5 or 6 carrots. The ratio of food is completely unbalanced. Not only that, but it is also uncertain that the vitamin A will be absorbed from such a substance because human bodies do not simply absorb any vitamin that you take in (as dietary supplements often want you to think). Instead a person must consume other nutrients, in this case certain fats and proteins, in order to take in such vitamins. Disturbingly, many people with the vitamin A deficiency in India do not have access to such nutrients and are not being helped to the extent they need.
Ingo Patrykus is not the only person making claims like these, but food companies do this all the time. Like cookies that say they have added calcium, well a person probably shouldn't be getting calcium from cookies and even if there is added amounts, that doesn't mean it's going to be absorbed.
Back tracking just slightly, the names given to vitamins and minerals are inscriptions that are used for people to understand in order to make sense of food and nutrients they need in order to maintain a healthy and balanced diet. These inscriptions hold a lot of power because they are what we rely on to survive and so claims reference these inscriptions and so they get circulated and they hold meaning. The products are bought and consumed with the notion that they will get the nutrients that these products claim.
I would say that Ingo Patrkus' claims are dangerous to the public because it doesn't tell the whole story and it doesn't necessarily fix what is wrong in the first place. He is making people believe that it is as simple as changing the type of rice they eat. However there is Vandana Shiva's side that if the people of India had access to their old traditional diet, vitamin A deficiency amongst the population would not be a problem. She understands that it is not as simple as providing one type of rice that has a little more vitamin A than the type they already have. There needs to be a distinction between potential advantages of providing a product such as Golden Rice, and making it clear that it is not going to solve the entire problem. Rather that is will aid in the process of potentially getting more vitamin A within the diet.
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