They're too stupid to be weaponized.

A sword that harms the wielder is not a weapon.

It's also possible they're no relation but that both have ancestors that were owned by the same Fishburne family.

You're right, but it's not a fair trade when it's a massive corporation making obscene profits while providing unhealthy foods, and foods grown specifically for profit and not nutrition. We're not talking about going down to a farmers market and swapping some of your craft for fresh decent food.

We're talking about paying through the nose for low quality products and poor regulations from governments that care only about catering to the wealthiest.

There you go, the second half of your sentence hit the nail on the head.

Stores would only do it if it would increase their profits, companies fought hard to prevent nutritional labelling in the first place. It's nothing to do with demand, we see that with what happened with organic produce, they made it a "speciality" food and charged far above the value because it was a middle-class trend.

I like how the EU is approaching things with future proposals to make food a right, would mean that quality would have to trump profitability.

It's crazy that things like water and food, which are essential for life can be treated like a commodity instead of a necessity. Agriculture is a business and like any business they'll cut all the corners they can including safety and quality as long as people buy them. But so few people are properly educated about food that few will demand better quality products beyond flavour and aesthetics. Waxed apples are a great example. One of the lowest quality types of apple, bred for aesthetics and size, rather than nutritional value.

The worst part of this is that eating four modern carrots doesn't even have the same nutritional value as one grown a hundred years ago so it leads to a need to eat more, which raises demand. It's an insidious and purposefuly done. To create greater demand by forcing people to eat worse food meaning they need to buy more to sustain themselves.

Higher yield + lower quality means people need to eat more calories just to cover their nutritional needs.

The real issue of food security is in the nutritional quality, not how many we can grow. It's pretty sickening that we've allowed this to be the case. And its very telling that there are no discussions of quality in the agriculture industry, just yield and profits. Grow more, sell more, fuck the quality and fuck the effect it has on aging global population that will already struggle health-wise due to increasing costs will start to die off younger due to deficiencies.

Sorry, but the "capitalism delivers" argument doesn't work here.

No one goes into the supermarket or grocers and asks for high yield vegetables or fruit and unlike processed foods that require nutritional labelling the same doesn't apply to things like carrots or apples. We're not given comparative nutritional information when we purchase those, so we're not given the option of choosing the most nutritious because we don't know which ones are.

The EU has become a lot better at regulating them, especially pesticide use and nutritional quality, not sure about the US. But here in Asia there's almost no regulation on loose fruit and veg, except how they look.

If we're given the choice then we could say it's what people are choosing, but we're not. We don't have control over what food appears on the shelves, no one is going to burn the supermarket down for not having strawberries available out of season. Again, there is nothing you will find about perennial strain's nutritional quality, it's all focused on greater yields, lower costs and larger profits for producers. Nothing at all about quality. It's completely ignored as a discussion which tells me it must be lower or it'd part of the sales pitch for them.

It's actually hilarious, because we have GMO strains that are insanely nutritious and safe, but they won't legalise them because it ruins the large food corporations like monstanto from patenting their strains and charging farmers for their use. Then suing the crap out of farmers who used their seeds without permission or had strains naturally blow onto and propagate on their land.

We have a solution but it hurts profits so they'll pay millions on advertising and campaigns to shit on GMOs and make people fear them.

Unfortunately doing so has in the past lowered the nutritional quality of the crops we grow. And honestly with perennial crops it's pretty much impossible to get nutritional facts to make a comparison.

It's all about profitability and yield, with the argument that we'll be able to feed a growing population. I wonder if the nutritional quality suffering would outweigh the benefits of easier cultivation.

I've read good arguments for it (choosing high yield over high quality crops) being the main factor in uncontrollable obesity rates in many countries. Nutrient deficiencies are skyrocketing in Western nations especially the largest consumer nations like the US and UK.

Honestly, I don't understand why they're pushing the economic angle so hard while almost completely avoiding a nutrition discussion, if the quality is lower like most fruit and vegetables we're going to have an unhealthier population in the future with much lower life expectancy.