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rysade comments on Should I be afraid of GMOs? - Less Wrong Discussion
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The risks that GMOs pose to us are more likely to come from the companies that grow them. The corn they grow here in the states is used for everything from plastics to soda and new uses are undoubtedly being uncovered all the time. Personally, I don't like corn THAT much. A corn takeover is not much of a doomsday scenario.
There are some environmental issues that arise from supporting corn crops. Some crops 'give back' to the soil. Corn is not one of them.
[WARNING: UNINFORMED OPINION FOLLOWS]
Another, keener health risk concerns something I heard about The Omnivore's Dilemma. The problem with some GM foods I hear is that they are far lower in nutritional value than other foods.
Your final paragraph isn't really relevant, I mean look at golden rice for instance.
Nutritional Science keeps finding out new effects and necessities, where micronutrients are concerned. Unless you're satisfied at the state of nutritional science, you should feel no safer eating foods genetically modified to remove unknown impurities and replace them with known vitamins than you would eating an isocaloric mixture of ghee, bleached flour, egg white, and a multivitamin supplement.
edit: It seems I was unclear. What I'm saying is that, in addition to the 13 essential vitamins identified by the NIH, normal food contains thousands upon thousands of chemical compounds with as-yet unknown effects and threshhold doses. Moreover, it is unlikely that a gene insertion or deletion intended only to increase round-up resistance has no effect on its physical makeup.
Thus, a belief that the only nutrition which contributes to health is the 13 essential vitamins, plus a good macronutrient ratio, is equivalent to the belief that the only reason to eat more than pure fat, carbohydrate, and protein plus a multivitamin is a taste for variety.
I am sorry but I have yet to hear of a GMO project that involved removing micronutrients! The only ones I've heard of have involved adding things, e.g. adding vitamin A to rice, adding virus compounds to potatos to act as a vaccine, adding resistance to parasites and viruses etc. Never, ever ever ever heard of a project to remove something.
Why is this?
It's been a while since I looked this up, but if memory serves several GM crops have been modified to produce extra nutrients. Except for knock-on effects of modification for e.g pesticide resistance I don't see any reason why someone would engineer nutrients out of a crop. And of course, if you eat a balanced diet with a variety of foods you'll probably be fine nutrition-wise.
Hypothesis here: if you engineer plants to optimize for maximum good-looking yield, there might be some loss on nutrients.
That was how I rationalized it. I'm really not sure about my last paragraph up there, I just felt it needed to be said in case it contributed meaningfully to the discussion.
Rest assured I will be doing more exhaustive fact checking in the future.