This sort of thing is why so many have decided to preemptively reject GMO foods. After so many failures, anything artificial in food is guilty until proven innocent.
Engineered food really has a terrible record. With the exception of a few early successes with nutrition enrichment (e.g. iodized salt) and sterilization/pasteurization, most of what we've done with food has been neutral to negative in outcome.
Part of the problem might be the incentives. Food is a brutal margin-crushing business. Food engineering is not being pursued with the goal of making food more nutritious or safer. The primary goal is to find ways to offer cheaper, inferior food at the same price -- to remove value from the product in such a way that the customer does not notice. Making food more addictive (junk food) is also an objective. "Heroin is the ideal product" as the saying goes.
With those objectives it's not surprising that "artificial" food has such a horrible reputation. It's effectively a synonym for food engineered to be superficially addictive but devoid of quality.
It's worthwhile to note that iodized salt and pasteurization were in fact undertaken with the goal of making food safer or curing a nutritional deficiency.
Engineered food really has a terrible record. With the exception of a few early successes with nutrition enrichment (e.g. iodized salt) and sterilization/pasteurization, most of what we've done with food has been neutral to negative in outcome.
Part of the problem might be the incentives. Food is a brutal margin-crushing business. Food engineering is not being pursued with the goal of making food more nutritious or safer. The primary goal is to find ways to offer cheaper, inferior food at the same price -- to remove value from the product in such a way that the customer does not notice. Making food more addictive (junk food) is also an objective. "Heroin is the ideal product" as the saying goes.
With those objectives it's not surprising that "artificial" food has such a horrible reputation. It's effectively a synonym for food engineered to be superficially addictive but devoid of quality.
It's worthwhile to note that iodized salt and pasteurization were in fact undertaken with the goal of making food safer or curing a nutritional deficiency.