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Are we unfairly bashing foods that contain genetically modified organisms (G.M.O. foods)?
Replies
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Anvil_Head wrote: »Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »I saw a video a while ago, two sweet corn, one organic and one gmo. They put them out in the forest. By the end of the day. The organic corn got eaten. The gmo one was left with few bites only.
I don't need studies. I believe animals know better.
It's a good thing I'm a human, and I'm smarter than other animals.
Some animals eat poop. I'm glad I'm smarter than an animal.
As do some humans...
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jillybeansalad wrote: »Anvil_Head wrote: »Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »I saw a video a while ago, two sweet corn, one organic and one gmo. They put them out in the forest. By the end of the day. The organic corn got eaten. The gmo one was left with few bites only.
I don't need studies. I believe animals know better.
It's a good thing I'm a human, and I'm smarter than other animals.
Some animals eat poop. I'm glad I'm smarter than an animal.
As do some humans...
Glad I'm smarter than some humans too.
As to animals being smarter than humans, proof positive they aren't is that they haven't learned to cook/eat bacon yet. Mmm, bacon.
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jillybeansalad wrote: »Anvil_Head wrote: »Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »I saw a video a while ago, two sweet corn, one organic and one gmo. They put them out in the forest. By the end of the day. The organic corn got eaten. The gmo one was left with few bites only.
I don't need studies. I believe animals know better.
It's a good thing I'm a human, and I'm smarter than other animals.
Some animals eat poop. I'm glad I'm smarter than an animal.
As do some humans...
Those humans are usually institutionalized.1 -
tamms_1965 wrote: »My real problem with some GMOs is the fact that they're engineered to stand up to large amounts of pesticides. I don't want any extra Roundup on my plate.
Rather an uninformed statement, IMHO. You do realize, of course, that foods labeled as organic are also grown with pesticides? In addition, many of these "approved" pesticides are actually more toxic than Round Up and need to be used more often since they are usually not as effective.
Yes, I am aware of it. I'm not an expert but i do have two science degrees and worked in food safety for a large food processor. I will not eat ultraprocessed or anything with soy or corn syrup in it. It has just never set well with me....it's a personal choice. Nor do I go around preaching the evils of GMOs.....some are great (insulin-producing bacteria for one). People in my family live well into their 90s (my grandpa will be 99 at Christmas and is still in great health), so I'm having what he's having! I also live in a farming community. Some farmers admit to using more than needed pesticides because it won't kill the crops. My friend's entire garden was destroyed by her husband's over zealous spraying in a neighboring field. Luckily, the younger farmer next to me uses responsibly and has completely stopped crop dusting as well. Funny thing is growing up, my family nor my grandparents/great grandparents used any 'store bought' gardening helpers and always managed to have loads of food. An older farmer friend (2000 acres) has decided to semiretire this year. After paying for the special seeds, fertilizer, and roundup, there's not much left he says. He's going to continue his hybrid sweet corn and wheat production, but give up the field corn and soybean.
I'm not trying to sell my way of thinking or start a side debate......they're tiring and I really don't give enough of a kitten to do so. I've got hot sauce to can and a turkey to roast. But the older I get, the less I tend to put my faith in interpretations of "science." I still believe in science though! I just don't think it's the end all. It's arrogant to think that we as humans know it all. I try to keep an open mind, but I'd rather go with my own version eating healthy.
I avoid it all and grow my own. Have a great week!
Signed a practical, slim, 50ish, medfree, expat wife who is queen of her kingdom
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I haven't read all posts yet so I don't know if this has been addressed. A lot of products have been altered so that certain weedkillers can be used without killing the plant. (Roundup) This means we can pour more chemicals into the environment. I can't believe this will ultimately prove beneficial.
I was raised on a farm. 50 years ago farmers routinely sprayed crops with DDT and the local agricultural groups saw nothing wrong with it. They even encouraged it. What we are doing now in agriculture may prove to be the 21st century DDT.2 -
I haven't read all posts yet so I don't know if this has been addressed. A lot of products have been altered so that certain weedkillers can be used without killing the plant. (Roundup) This means we can pour more chemicals into the environment. I can't believe this will ultimately prove beneficial.
They don't use more chemicals, they actually use fewer (but different) chemicals, and the new chemicals they use are safer to humans.
Chemical weed control has been the norm for almost sixty years now for large-scale farming operations. What Roundup-ready crops do is allow farmers to use a safer, easier chemical control (glyphosate) instead of the cocktails of chemicals needed to achieve broad-spectrum weed control without GMO crops. Glyphosate is also very safe for animals, including humans, as all animals entirely lack the metabolic pathway targeted by glyphosate.7 -
We've been looking at the wrong culprit all along!
http://welovegv.com/how-organic-food-makes-us-fatter/8 -
thehadster wrote: »I think it depends on what type of GMO you are talking about. We have been eating GMO foods since the beginning of the human race. Bees fly from flower to flower and cross pollinate. That is their job. The flowers and trees depend on it. Once we began farming, we chose which seeds we liked and planted them. People figured out if you mixed this apple with that apple you got an apple different from both parents and that sometimes it was a really great apple! And bees have been doing that for us for millions of years.
@thehadster, I think you're referring to cross-pollination and/or hybridization, not GMO
Let's all use the same definition of GMO foods, before we start debating...
According to the World Health Organization, "Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can be defined as organisms (i.e. plants, animals or microorganisms) in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.0 -
I have never encountered an actual scientist that is afraid to eat GMO food.
2 TRUE FACTs:
1) I have never encountered an actual scientist that is afraid to eat GMO food.
AND
2 ) I have never encountered an actual scientist that eats GMO food.
How could both of my facts be true ??
well, you see, I have never encountered an actual scientist ! lol2 -
1
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...slighty ripe zombie thread has arisen?Debbie_Ferr wrote: »thehadster wrote: »I think it depends on what type of GMO you are talking about. We have been eating GMO foods since the beginning of the human race. Bees fly from flower to flower and cross pollinate. That is their job. The flowers and trees depend on it. Once we began farming, we chose which seeds we liked and planted them. People figured out if you mixed this apple with that apple you got an apple different from both parents and that sometimes it was a really great apple! And bees have been doing that for us for millions of years.
@thehadster, I think you're referring to cross-pollination and/or hybridization, not GMO
Let's all use the same definition of GMO foods, before we start debating...
According to the World Health Organization, "Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can be defined as organisms (i.e. plants, animals or microorganisms) in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.
I just wished governments used this definition. There's an issue at the moment with scientists who have genetically engineered some hornless hereford bulls to create hornless dairy cattle, so the cows are less likely to injure each other when they're coming in at milking times, and it means as calves they don't have to go through having their horns seared off, which is a painful process with the potential for infection.
The alteration they made is identical to naturally occuring mutation in black angus beef cattle causing them to be hornless. Technically it can occur naturally (since it already has) and could also be done via mating , yet it's being classified as a GMO and may need to go through a registration process similar to any drug. It's an alteration that doesn't effect any part of the cattle that we eat (or drink), and it's wasn't created by an artificial recombinant process (no foreign DNA at all), yet certain advocacy groups are freaking out about the little bulls.
and don't worry @Alatariel75, I can step up even if it isn't needed anymore; I may not work in a lab these days (plant biotechnologist by trade), but this scientist certainly eats GMO foods and is proud of it.4 -
Debbie_Ferr wrote: »I have never encountered an actual scientist that is afraid to eat GMO food.
2 TRUE FACTs:
1) I have never encountered an actual scientist that is afraid to eat GMO food.
AND
2 ) I have never encountered an actual scientist that eats GMO food.
How could both of my facts be true ??
well, you see, I have never encountered an actual scientist ! lol
I am an actual scientist. I have no problem eating food from plants or animals that have undergone genetic recombination.6 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »chocolate_owl wrote: »Yes, I think GMOs are unfairly bashed, and I think it's rooted in a lack of scientific literacy and understanding about genetic engineering. Here's the previous debate thread, I love all of @Aaron_K123 's points. http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10407825/non-gmo-foods-arent-any-safer-or-healthier/p1
To me, the labeling is asinine. Why force labeling for GMOs and not force it for products from selective breeding (something that has ACTUALLY GOTTEN PEOPLE SICK BEFORE), mutation breeding (OMG RADIATION), or hybridization? Also, if labeling is forced, it should only be allowed for products that have potential to contain GMOs - slapping "GMO Free!!" on a bag of quinoa is capitalizing on fearmongering around GMOs, not actually educating the consumer.
Thanks for the tag. Yes I think that genetic engineering is getting an unfair bad reputation over this spreading and unfounded public fear of so-called "GMOs". I've discussed this topic enough I decided to write an article about it which later got picked up by Forbes. I'll link to that:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2015/12/22/you-cant-judge-a-product-by-a-gmo-label/#2698f2432fbc
Excellent article!!1 -
sunnybeaches105 wrote: »xmichaelyx wrote: »eugenia94102 wrote: »The problem I see with GMOs is not human health, but environmental risk. Even a small probability of catastrophic consequences is not one I'm willing to contribute to.
And yet pretty much everything you eat - every plant, every animal - has been genetically modified via selective breeding by humans.
Monsanto is evil because of their IP practices and because having our food supply controlled by a handful of multinationals is a terrible idea, not because of GMOs.
Feeding a large portion of the world's population is some evil business. All those chemical fertilizer companies too. People need to leave the cities and grow organic so billions can starve. That will help the environment.
^ The realistic result of removing modern corporate agricultural practices.
On the flip side, stop artificially inseminating to create more births.
Something to think about: Who owns the seeds of the GMO foods? What happens to the small farmer who gets those seeds mixed into his crop?
And, I want to leave with this, ecosystem.
@sunnybeaches105 FTFY
I realize that this post is several months old but please tell me that you did not just propose that banning fertility treatments is the proper solution to the food shortage that would result from a reversion to pre-modern farming techniques.2 -
Debbie_Ferr wrote: »thehadster wrote: »I think it depends on what type of GMO you are talking about. We have been eating GMO foods since the beginning of the human race. Bees fly from flower to flower and cross pollinate. That is their job. The flowers and trees depend on it. Once we began farming, we chose which seeds we liked and planted them. People figured out if you mixed this apple with that apple you got an apple different from both parents and that sometimes it was a really great apple! And bees have been doing that for us for millions of years.
@thehadster, I think you're referring to cross-pollination and/or hybridization, not GMO
Let's all use the same definition of GMO foods, before we start debating...
According to the World Health Organization, "Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can be defined as organisms (i.e. plants, animals or microorganisms) in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.
Okay.
The question is if this is a meaningful difference IF (and I think this is clearly true) the particular "natural" changes would not have happened but for human intervention. There is no way corn or bananas would look like it does or most breeds of dogs exist, for that matter, if not for human involvement.2 -
Debbie_Ferr wrote: »I have never encountered an actual scientist that is afraid to eat GMO food.
2 TRUE FACTs:
1) I have never encountered an actual scientist that is afraid to eat GMO food.
AND
2 ) I have never encountered an actual scientist that eats GMO food.
How could both of my facts be true ??
well, you see, I have never encountered an actual scientist ! lol
Then I'm guessing you have never encountered an actual scientist.
There is no evidence suggesting GMO food is harmful in any way.1 -
we have been genetically fiddling with food long before our ability to pluck and add specific genes. Back then it was a real crap shoot and took much much longer to do.
Some results:
- Longhorn cattle
- Current beef stock is much taller and leaner than 60 years ago
- Nectarines
- tangelos
- Seedless Grapes
- Brahmin Cattle. These animals are much more tolerant of heat and disease. So often ranchers will bread them with the often coveted Herford or Angus in effort to get the meat quality while retaining the natural disease resistance. I don't know about you but I like my meat disease free. ( They are decedents of Chianina who are decendents of Watusi angoli)
Think about the fact that some of the food is more disease resistant. That means more abundance.
Did you know that much of the Rice eaten in Asia was cultivated by an American. Since rice was the main source of nutrition for many very poor people, he developed rice that provided far more "bang" per bite for calories and micros.
While that's not so hot NOW, when you are talking about starving people it's a pretty awesome thing. With the growing population we need to find a way to feed everyone in expensively but nutritiously.1 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
It really has.
When I was looking for a long term job I was fortunate enough to find a group that was really making strides with microarray and ready to believe that someone could bring that kind of data together with graph theory for their benefit.
I hear you on the changing work. I used to be so busy analyzing data I hardly had time to really think. Now I'm stuck with a bunch of IT and data management and the junior personnel run already developed analysis pipelines and packages.
ETA: forgot to add. Your thesis sounds much more interesting than mine was. Sometimes I wish I'd stuck to the 1st project I chose - studying transcription in H. salinarum. But there were a couple of labs that turned out to be way ahead of me so I chose a safer and much more boring project. Oh well.
I'm proud of my graduate work, but I also realize I got lucky. Science seems to be 5% skill and 95% choosing the right project in the right place at the right time.
Thermostabilizing an enzyme https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15879217 goes to suggesting it might be used in gene therapy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18291415 goes to development of it into a gene therapy for cancer
http://tocagen.com/our-science/
I'm not part of that company at all nor do I recieve any acknowledgement or royalty because we published our work openly without patents but "Toca 511" uses the protein I produced in my graduate work. They took it and developed it into a product though which is no small feat so I'm not trying to undermine or downplay their involvement. Kind of crazy to see that happen, that company is basically based on something I made. (Not there there is an "I" in science, its always a "we" I'm not trying to claim it was all me, it was my project and I drove it forward but couldn't have done it without support of my advisors and lab).
Reason I'm bringing this up at all in this thread is to point out that I have personal experience using genetic engineering in a way to help develop a therapeutic that got picked up and developed by a company that is now in clinical trials for glioblastoma and is currently being used to treat people that previously had no hope for survival. Yet somehow I don't work for Monsanto, imagine that. That is why this anti-GE stance pisses me off.
The glioblastoma really grabbed my interest as my Mother's best friend of over 50 years was diagnosed just this past year. Is there any way to find out more information on that trial?0 -
hornless hereford bulls
The correct and genetic term is "Polled"
I'm a little curious about which dairy cattle. Because Holsteins (the main ones used for most dairy production) are generally polled as being polled is a dominant genetic feature. So I'm not sure why this is necessary.
A problem seen in the past is that when a breed has been created to combine meat cattle and dairy cattle the off spring yield both crappy meat and crappy milk. Dairy cattle in years past needed to be dairy cattle.
My guess is that it's a Jersey cattle who have higher levels of milk fat. These girls are so chill and so sweet though...
Makes me think I want a Jersey! Awesome cows! Hate to see anyone f* with them. They really are the perfect breed in my book.0 -
tmoneyag99 wrote: »hornless hereford bulls
The correct and genetic term is "Polled"
I'm a little curious about which dairy cattle. Because Holsteins (the main ones used for most dairy production) are generally polled as being polled is a dominant genetic feature. So I'm not sure why this is necessary.
A problem seen in the past is that when a breed has been created to combine meat cattle and dairy cattle the off spring yield both crappy meat and crappy milk. Dairy cattle in years past needed to be dairy cattle.
My guess is that it's a Jersey cattle who have higher levels of milk fat. These girls are so chill and so sweet though...
Makes me think I want a Jersey! Awesome cows! Hate to see anyone f* with them. They really are the perfect breed in my book.
Thanks - I knew there was a proper term, but brain wasn't co-operating. I also wrote Hereford instead of Holstein in my haste to type a response on my break.
As far as I was aware, no dairy cattle are naturally polled, and the polled versions we do have of Holsteins are through cross breeding with beef cattle, and some dairy farmers aren't happy with their milk production of the successive generations compared to their horned counterparts yet (dairy farmers or ag scientists, please feel free to correct me there!).
I can't find the original article I read (different computer), but here's a related one, and here is a link for the original letter in Nature (it's only viewable with a subscription or institutional access though
)
Either way, I don't see a GMO dairy cow like this to be any type of Frankenfood. It's all marketing scare tactics so someone else is able to sell a competing product.0
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