What GMO Means to You

What GMO Means to You Food quality is a hot topic in the news today.  Many are concerned  about current efforts by leading chemical companies to alter our  staple food crops in ways that have no precedent in nature or  science. Especially as parents, we are responsible to see that our children  get the best start we know about, and the quality of their food is a  huge factor. We also owe it to ourselves to stay as healthy as we  can. So what if we are eating Genetically Modified Organisms,  GMOs? Let's take the long view for a moment. For more than a million  years, humans have been eating everything in their local  environment that didn't kill them. If a person tried to eat an  animal or vegetable that was poisonous, that person didn't  live to have children. So over the years, humans found what  species were edible and what weren't. Over time, our human ancestors discovered how to cook food  to eat even more variety and to store food more effectively.  Eventually we even learned to replant the seeds of food and  to choose the seeds which gave us the qualities we liked  most. And we could do the same with animals once we  learned to corral them. A few centuries ago, we became far more scientific about  "breeding" our crops and animals, to produce food quicker,  cheaper, more efficiently, and with more of the  characteristics we wanted at any given time. Once we learned about genetics in the mid-twentieth century,  scientists began to imagine that they could actually tinker  with the genetic code to hone in on the characteristics we  wanted. But then the question becomes, the characteristics who  wanted? Is it the scientists who hire the geneticists to  experiment, is it the chemical companies who want the  crops and animals to use more of their chemicals, or is  it we the eaters? In the book Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, the author Steven  Druker reveals how our image of scientists going in with  tweezers and carefully manipulating the genes to improve  the crop is completely misleading, and unfortunately  deliberately so. At least four or five manipulations, almost unfathomable to  the non-geneticist, are applied to the genes at issue, and  even then there is no assurance until scrupulous testing  that the wanted results are achieved. For example, in many  cases, whether a cell has accepted the new gene is  detectable because a light sensitive gene from a jellyfish  has also been injected. We know that the genetic code of any creature, plant or  animal, is extremely interdependent, and one gene often  affects many activities in a cell. Likewise, groups of genes  often operate together to create other kinds of crucial  cell activities. So if we alter one gene because it will now  change a particular chemical in the plant,  we have no  way of knowing if this change will also affect how some  other important cell chemical is designed. We also now know that genes are activated and  deactivated by other processes in a cell that are  responding to numerous factors in and outside the  cell, including the stress level of the plant or animal.  This is the core of the science of "epigenetics." These complications may explain how many experiments  which we rarely hear about in the media, but are  considered well designed and reported by respected  scientists, have shown that when GMO foods are fed  to animals, unwanted health conditions develop at a  disturbing rate compared to animals fed the equivalent  non-GMO foods. Most developed countries have minimized the growing,  importing, and selling of GMO foods within their borders.  The chemical companies which encourage GMOs say  that if they are forced to label GMOs in the USA, the  same thing will happen here because the public doesn't  realize that these foods are "safe." But do we want to feed them to our children? Do we  want to experimental lab animals? The vast majority of all corn and soy sold in the USA  is genetically altered today. And there is no way to know  whether these crops may be responsible for the increases  in various chronic conditions like obesity, immunological  insufficiency, autoimmune disease, cancer, metabolic  syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, and other  inflammatory diseases. All are on the rise, and it is  logical to look at recent changes in our food supply  which coincide with this rising trend. Don't believe the story that these alterations are necessary  to feed the hungry world. Most of the GMO crops go to feed  large animals which feed only the wealthy populations in  developed countries.  In addition, the GMO crops increase  yield only for the first few years, but unfortunately by then,  the farmer has become dependent on the special seeds  and pesticides the chemical company has sold her or  him, and has no GMO-free seed to start a new crop. I am not one to volunteer my child for a dietary experiment  that comes from a chem lab. I advise sticking with the  foods you grandmother would recognize or that your  great uncle could produce on his farm. The federal government just passed legislation which  was promoted by the chemical companies to prevent  individual states from responding to their citizens by  insisting on the labeling of GMOs. The law is touted as  having required that they be labeled, but it doesn't go  into effect for a couple of years, it has loopholes because  only certain foods or ingredients must be labeled, and the  label is only a QR code. So if you really want to know,  you must hold your mobile phone up to the label to  check the QR code! I will continue to buy only foods that say non-GMO  certified, and "organic," because so far the organic  label is not supposed to have any GMOs, although  there are a few exceptions already. Randy Rolfe's Take Home Tips: Avoid becoming dogmatic  about your food, because the burden of extra stress can be as harmful as an occasional over-processed or chemicalized food. Only if you have developed a reaction to a  certain kind of additive or GMO-related item do you need to be absolute about it, and even then you can build  your digestion and immunity back up in most cases so that an occasional exposure won't hurt. Beware of wheat, which is not usually GNO but which is sprayed with Round-Up just before harvest because it makes  harvesting easier. That herbicide is causing many issues with people's intestines and gut bacteria. So buy organic  wheat products whenever possible. In the family and among friends, avoid giving lectures, judgments,  or admonitions at meal time. Keep that time calm and happy to  promote good digestion and good relationships. Instead, at a  later time, share what you know as a caring aside, such as, "You  know I just saw an interesting article today about ... Do you know about that?"