Take your job back from illegals! Details inside!

[Zakharra]

Depends on your point of reference.  If you Google life expectancy by country, there are a few lists where the US comes in between 45th-50th.  It's also possible to argue that the difference with other countries is due to the nature of the food industry itself.  The desire for high sugars and cholesterol may originate with the suppliers and packaging/advertising.  It's also more difficult to get consistent nutrition on a working class income.

Part of the lower life expectancy is because the US is the only first world nation that is growing. From a native population that is breeding and from immigration. New immigrants, legal ones, lower the life expectance since they come from nations that have a laower one.

[kylie]

Yeah, but isn't the young generation the first in history to have a projected shorter life span than their parents?  That would suggest that the high fat diet is catching up to us.

Might as well say the hollowing of the middle class, and increased cost of living relative to wages is catching up to us.  It ends up in roughly the same place -- weaker finances, typically weaker diets.  Including but not limited to a certain percentage from over-reliance on low-income and as it happens, imported labor... 

Part of the lower life expectancy is because the US is the only first world nation that is growing. From a native population that is breeding and from immigration. New immigrants, legal ones, lower the life expectance since they come from nations that have a laower one.

It would probably take some math to establish whether that has enough impact in the US, and so much less in all the leading life expectancy countries, to fully convince me.  Be that as it may, I'm not sure how much this is relevant to the nexus of food quality and immigration law.  I believe Jude was trying to say, the US food supply is stable and even relatively superior.  I took some issue at the superior part -- at least as manifested through our distribution and use of what we have (say, life expectancy stats).  You respond that life expectancy is mitigated by country of origin among legal immigrants.  I don't know whether the comparative data on life expectancy is adjusted for ethnic background or country of origin and amount of time in the US.  Perhaps they adjust for income.  In that case, if 1) genetically modified foods don't require many laborers to cultivate and distribute them (that is, lower income labor wherever it comes from and thus not opened to ideal life choices) and 2) if you wouldn't involve many GMO staff when you ask us to stop counting legal immigrants in life expectancy...  Then I guess it might work out.

         It seems like a lot of "ifs" to me, but I'm not versed in GMO crop distribution.  I am suspicious about the next step, too:  Even if less pickers were required, companies may try to recoup their savings on pay somewhere else.  Perhaps to drivers, or store keeping, or lower quality production process.  These niches might or might not also accept unauthorized immigrants, depending on how things were restructured.  Next, regardless of immigration, companies might simply do what has happened with organic:  They could raise market prices primarily for that "GMO" and "All-American labor" on the labels.  Again, no expert, but my understanding is those organic prices are not widely justified by environmental or health research (although there may be some higher production costs).

[Noelle]

the sementry lifestyle

Sedentary.
I can't help but read that as 'semen-try' and it's making me think of a lifestyle suited for closet gay men.