[g001dfinger]

These conspiracy theories always seem to have paranoia associated with them. They end all in "some higher secret power wants total control over us."

Take "knowing your blood type" as part of your metadata along with location tracking via mobile phone and 5G. It's less glamorous and exciting as "global control", but that data could be used by local hospitals to know what type of blood to have in-stock based on the surrounding population. Or make correlations between blood types and susceptibility to food pathogens or flu outbreaks or any other research type activities. Or how effective are certain vaccines or prescription drugs based on daily activity and blood type.

Yes, marketing to consumers is a big part of companies wanting all this metadata, but in addition to customized shopping (which I actually like, it's great when I have a virtual private shopper for me), it also determines needs and potential future inventions based on what's missing from the market. It leads to companies directing their R&D towards potentially great products based on our needs from all this metadata.

As for natural vs. synthetic flavoring, it's the same molecule. And often synthetic is a cleaner and more efficient chemical process than having to extract something from the environment. Take Menthol, or Vanilla, or Vitamin C. You could grow tons of crops and spend all the resources on farming those products and all the waste associated with the unwanted parts of those plants, to usually end up with a less pure substance, OR you could synthetically produce them using specialized catalysts with higher selectivity and less chemical waste and energy waste to fulfill the product demands. Either way you're ending up with the exact same chemical molecule.