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Health & Fitness

BOO! Said the Corn to the Farmer

DOES YOUR FOOD FRIGHTEN YOU?

Let's dive in on one of the most controversial topics that affect everyone regardless of race, creed or color: FOOD. Well food itself isn't controversial. But the creation of what we eat and its effect on our body, on our health is THE controversy when GMO/GE are concerned. Genetically Modified Organism or Genetic Engineering is at the heart of a very passionate debate. One side claims that it causes so many problems for humans, crops, farmers and the other states that GMO foods have save close to a billion people from starvation. One side has ideology, morality and political fire-power while the other has science that just reports the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment (Direct definition of what science means). So with that being said, let's discuss just what GMO's are and are not.

EXPLAIN YOURSELF, LUCY!

Right off the bat, let me sat that GMO is not a good or a bad thing. GMO is a technology. It is a basic technology for creating new plant varieties. Farmers have for centuries used a technology to create new plant varieties using cross-breeding (hybridization). Basically, genetic food engineers 'copy & paste' a gene from one species to another to make the plant better or worse. In the case of corn, GE's take copy a gene from a naturally occurring bacterium and paste into traditional corn. Pesticides are used to deter caterpillars from destroying corn crops but with the GMO, the corn produces a protein that causes caterpillars from eating. So no more pesticides used and nothing changes in the corn, It still has all its nutrition values.

In the case of places that food is scarce, GMO's are used to provide crops that double the yield thus providing more food for its people without having to parcel out more land resources.

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In medicine, GMO's are used to produce synthetic insulin. Yes, the same insulin Type I diabetics use to survive! Human growth hormones use to be extracted from human cadavers. Not anymore, thanks to the GMO technology. And the vaccine for Hepatitis B was developed through GMO.

Want to learn about the science behind GMO's, take it from a geneticist: Teach me about GMO

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SO WHAT'S THE FUSS ABOUT?

Edmund Burke simply stated:

'No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning than fear'

Yes fear is at the root cause! The whipping boy of this frightened mob mentality is the word-wide leader in GMO, Monsanto. There is too much to report on the attacks on Monsanto so a google search will give you an idea just how much there is. Now, can you make a case against their business practices, maybe. Steve Jobs, the deceased CEO of Apple once said that people do not know what they want until you show it to them. But would you blame APPLE for manipulating your buying decision so bluntly? Or that Apple's a product line, iPhone, may be responsible for creating a social personal divide between people? Social skills are on the decline. (ok, get back on track).

The criticism towards Monsanto is misplaced. The science behind their technology is pretty sound and ask the billions of people who have food on their plate, if they could give a damn, how Monsanto conducts their business. Much of the heat is against their licensing of seeds because it is proprietary. I have no problem with that. If you write a song and the public wants to consume that song, then I'm sure you'd like to be financially compensated via enforcing the copywite laws. Same here.

Now, the book hasn't been completely written about the safety for humans to consume GMO's and with time we'll know more. Not much would change just some 'punctuation', 'words'. That's the beauty of science. GMO's will always be tested, modified, tested again, modified again as needed but the technology is here to stay.

 

THE NATURAL FALLACY

I am just as concerned as to how the food I consume is grown and if the benefits out-weigh the risks. Our food supply has so much crap, sometimes literally, that knowing about every little thing will make us starve. However, the fear monger camp cries that they want to know what is in their food and that they prefer natural or organic. Let me tackle the 'natural' side and leave 'organic' for another post. In its simplest form, people refer to natural as being good and unnatural as being bad. Question: Is it 'natural' for humans to were clothes? If I inhale the 'natural' occurring silicate mineral asbestos, will I increase my chances of cancer? Or maybe drink a shot of arsenic? As you can see 'natural' is too vague to be applied across the board. In the case of food, eating natural foods is better? than eating processed foods. Maybe but there are exceptions to the rule. Just recently, scientist have discovered that atherosclerosis, thought to be a modern disease due to our diet, was evident in the ancient Egyptians and other ancient civilizations. Reason? Well, has to do with a super charged immune system that helped us live longer but as we aged, the hardening of the arteries was to contribute to our demise. More on this on a future post. 

So as you can see, 'natural' doesn't necessarily mean good for you. Even the active ingredients in drugs are natural. But when it is delivered in a pill form, many people feel it is unnatural so therefore not for human consumption.

 

TAKE AWAY

The bottom line is to educate yourself. Educate yourself with the right information. Begin with the science approach first and be skeptical when people clamor the air waves with doom and gloom about anything. Ask if the event or situation is actually real! As I constantly warn my clients, there is so much wrong information, not misinformation, just plain wrong, that it is tough to decipher truth from myth. Now, science can be wrong and that's part of the scientific approach. But for the most part it will inform or steer you to the truth. Sprinkle some observation, personal experience, other people's experiences and you have a bunch of information to come to some conclusion.

Keep yourself open to change but not so open that your brains fall out. As David Patrick Moynihan once said:

'You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts'

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