GMO’s: Threat or Benefit? What You Need to Know.

GMO’s May Hide in Your Veggies. What Do You Think?

Genetically modified foods (GMO’s) pose a threat to some and offer a benefit to others. More professionally called genetically engineered foods, are they good or bad? If you want to choose up sides, there are the purists who believe that we should leave plants pretty much like God made them. You can go along with the granola crowd and push for healthy, all-natural, organic agriculture. On the other hand, you can side with the scientific experimenters that prefer to develop and add bug resistant genes into seed crops to keep the pests away. And, while they’re at it, they want to make the plants more productive with GMO’s in order to feed a starving world.

In some circles, GMO’s can be a heated debate. A few countries, mostly European, will not even allow the sale of genetically engineered seed. In this country, the open debate centers on the subject of labelling. Reach for a pre-packaged food on the grocery shelf and look to see if it has a flag that says the product meets the standards of the Non-GMO Project. Sources say approximately 70% of our manufactured food items contain some genetically modified content. This is about your health. Like it or not, you place a vote for your side with each purchase at your local grocery. The most pronounced culprits with GMO’s, corn and soy, wind up in a lot of food. For instance, anything with high fructose corn syrup could be suspect. And certainly, if your soy sauce is not imported and comes from an organic source, you’re likely to entertain modified substances as well.

Testing GMO’s or Not?

The Food and Drug Administration has oversight for much of what we eat. In the case of genetically engineered food, manufacturers simply need to affirm to the regulators that they have tested only to see that there is no appreciable difference in the resulting fruit. Only their affirmation matters at this point. No comprehensive testing, clinical trials, or experiential surveying is required. You can read more on the topics in easily found articles on the Internet or in the many books lining the shelves of your favorite book store. If you haven’t considered what GMO’s mean to you and your family’s food, maybe you should. Let us know what you think. Leave a comment on this post.

: With GMO’s No Specific Test Required

As we bounce around the issues, let’s stay focused on what counts. Our cells need fuel, which comes from substances we refer to as nutritional. When a cell sees a substance it recognizes, it responds receptively. When it sees a substance it does not recognize, it rejects it or will be modified by it. This may seem like an oversimplification, but this is how we can understand these complexities. Change a little DNA here and spawn a few strange proteins there and changes will occur. Some of these changes prove to be what we call cancer.

I don’t know much, but I do read that cancer was almost non-existent as a defined disease until the middle of the last century. Now, if projections are correct, cancer will be the number one cause of death in the west no later than 2050. Call it irrelevant, if you like. The coincidental increase in packaged foods, empty calories, and modified foods, including GMO’s, should not be ignored. Other sources like the China Study, and even more recent research, indicate that our modernized agriculture has much to do with our increasing need for health care.