Listen to Michael Pollan

He says, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

For a long time, scientists have studied the world around us to provide answers for the common man about things that affect us all. As the generations roll past, the answers always seem to bring up new questions and new avenues of study.
Particularly active fields of study that most people find interesting because they affect our daily lives are medicine, agriculture and human behaviour. A good portion of us are also fascinated by astronomy and geology.
Scientific fields of study are now as diverse as human interests and what is true in one place may not hold true in another. This is certainly true in agriculture where environment, culture and politics play a role in what can and will happen to any given crop.
It is important to remember that agriculture is related to, but not identical to the food industry. "Excuse me," you say? Agriculture is the industry that grows raw food products. The food industry takes what the farmers produce and prepare it for sale and consumption.
It is a huge mistake to think that Canadian agriculture is the same as the US agriculture. Heck, we have different regulations between provinces and states within both those countries. To quote California regulations on a Canadian issue is dangerous because they are not the same. Nor is the culture and political system.
The other thing to remember is that every change that's taken place over the decades in agriculture was an attempt to feed a growing population. Agriculture exists to produce things people can eat. Also, agriculture still seeks to use every part of what it produces whether that means as food, fodder, fertilizer, fuel or medicine.
The food industry is a marketing platform for value added agricultural products. It is driven by consumer demand; which operates on emotion. The emotion that works best on humans is fear; in particular, fear for our loved ones. The food industry exploits this very well and, because food is a basic necessity of life and the building blocks of our health, we scare easily.
The food industry has always dictated much of what the agriculture industry produces for the simple fact that farmers need to make a living. So they grow what the food industry pays top dollar to buy. The food industry delivers to consumers the products they buy most. This is why consumers get a say in what stores sell. (On a personal note, I will say that some basic ingredients no longer make it to grocery store shelves because not enough people buy them.) 

I believe that the organic agriculture industry started as a backlash to what some viewed as an alarming move in food production to the use of chemicals to improve crop yields and quality. This particular piece of agricultural innovation grabbed center stage and all other aspects of agricultural research seem to go unnoticed by the public. We talk about this at Farming Smarter because, in fact, GMOs and chemicals are actually a small part of growing a crop. They are tools. It's like asking to see the screwdriver the carpenter used to build your house and deciding on that one thing that the house is garbage.
This takes us back to the scientists working hard to answer still troubling questions around food security on earth. One of the things I heard Joe Schwarcz say today is that organic farmers can spray a crop with Bacillus thuringiensis; the bacterium that produces crystals protein (cry proteins), which are toxic to many species of insects (http://www.bt.ucsd.edu/what_is_bt.html ) because it is a naturally sourced product. They mine it.
However, when scientists use Bt protein in transgenic crops, people freak out. So if you don't like the idea of the gene that promotes the production of Bt in your corn, why are you okay with someone spraying Bt all over your corn and calling it organic? I think that's a valid question.

 A couple of decades ago, I read On Food And Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. In it I learned that the controversy (that was loud at the time) around nitrates and nitrites in preserved meats was a ridiculous furor over misinformation. It seems that some scientist figured out that the reason saltpetre preserved foods was because it contains nitrates and nitrites. Therefore, they figured out how to isolate nitrates and nitrites from saltpetre and could then use these preservatives much more judiciously and in much smaller quantities than ever before. However, because most people did not know what they were and some elements of the marketing community could use that to their advantage, we had the uproar over nitrates and nitrites.
This is what we see in modern controversy. Scientists find the active ingredient, find a way to isolate it and use it in smaller amounts than ever before and people freak out because they know what saltpetre is, but not nitrates.
Marketing is a very tricky industry. I've noticed “Gluten Free” on product labels now on things that never had gluten in them. Or “natural” on products that clearly are not. Anyone over 40 for sure can think of something to add here. Marketers sell us stuff using fear, pride and envy or by pulling our heart strings. But, marketing in the digital age is very subtle and comes in the form of celebrity endorsements and manufactured experts. Have you heard a about wasp nests in vaginas? I mean you're smarter than that right?
Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you to just trust the scientists because even they will tell you not to stop questioning everything. By gar, it's what drives them to do what they do. I am going to suggest though that you also question the information, the source, the credentials and the motivations behind everything you hear. 
 We live in an increasingly complex world and we are discovering increasingly complex things about it daily. So, as Joe also said, life is full of risks and it will never be completely safe ( I would add or easy to understand). We make decisions every time we eat and the only way to live life without taking some chances is to not live at all.
Remember that the science will keep learning new things too. There will always be new things to consider, new things that spark questions and technological advances that sound scary to us because we don't understand. It is no longer possible to understand everything around us. 

Now more than ever, we're making choices daily and hoping they are not going to harm us. Cell phones, food, air, water, vaccines, and more ad nauseum. Our modern society has much to understand and none of us can be an expert in everything that touches our lives. We have to have trust and faith.
That's not easy in a world where humans have been known to do many things in the name of riches that were decidedly NOT good for their fellow man. But if you find yourself believing that every single person that works in agriculture cares more about money than growing quality crops, you might want to relax a little. 

Regardless of the farming method, if you eat unprocessed food, wash it and prepare it properly, you can eat whatever you want. But if you're buying food you can just microwave and eat, stop blaming the farmers for your health problems!