I'm not usually one to comment on things like this.....
swezeytba
Posts: 624 Member
But I happened to hear something on the news channel that had me wondering about the state of the world we live in today. They are now genetically modifying apples so that they don't turn brown.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/16/health/apples-genetically-modified-usda/
Really....have we gotten to where we won't even eat something (not that many of us eat apples anyway, lol) just because it doesn't look perfect?
I also thought it kind of leads into the discussion about how they've genetically modified so many grains, fruits, vegetables along the way to supposedly make them better, bigger, sweeter, whatever.
What was wrong with them to start with? Ok...rant over...lol....
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/16/health/apples-genetically-modified-usda/
Really....have we gotten to where we won't even eat something (not that many of us eat apples anyway, lol) just because it doesn't look perfect?
I also thought it kind of leads into the discussion about how they've genetically modified so many grains, fruits, vegetables along the way to supposedly make them better, bigger, sweeter, whatever.
What was wrong with them to start with? Ok...rant over...lol....
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They are doing it to animals as well:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/business/genetically-engineered-salmon-approved-for-consumption.html?_r=0
I just don't know where we draw the line in this issue... personally, I would never weat the salmon and I don't eat apples so neither of these affect me, but sooner or later it will.0 -
You know that most grocery stores or grocery store suppliers reject something ridiculous like 70% of produce because it doesn't look perfect, right? Things like bell peppers and berries and all kinds of things. I'd personally rather eat ugly but tasty produce than pay ridiculous prices for some modified or "perfect" stuff that's practically tasteless, etc.6
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Oh, and why do you think nearly all dairy has Carrageenan in it? It is an additive to blend, thicken, and stabilize dairy...because people will toss it out if it separates, since they no longer have any idea that in it's natural state, that is EXACTLY what it does.
And the food industry celebrates when people throw things out automatically according to a date on the package...it's how they keep themselves in business.8 -
Part of it goes back to the issue of what consumers will buy. When I was a teenager working my first job in a grocery store, we were one of the last stores to mark down produce that looked like it was starting to go or had a bruised spot or something that made it less desirable. We knew that the typical customer would not buy that produce at the same price as unblemished items, but we also knew that some thrifty customers were happy to save money even if it meant that the food had to be eaten more quickly or if they had to cut out a chunk that was bruised.
Today, even that same chain of stores doesn't mark stuff down. They just throw it away if it has the slightest defect. It bothers me mostly from a stand point of food insecurity. Trying to send it to starving people in Africa may be an unreasonable distribution challenge, but what about hungry people in local communities?! Is it such a liability concern to donate to homeless shelters? I know I'm a bit more extreme than most in that I throw almost no edible food away... that is how I was raised by parents who couldn't afford to waste money on uneaten food. The food waste in America bothers me, but I'm not sure there is much I can actually do about it.
On another note, I have the same issue with road kill. In my state, if someone hits a deer on the road, they can ask for a "salvage tag" from the police when they report the accident. This allows them to keep the animal and eat it. However, if someone does not ask for a salvage tag (most don't), then the deer is just left on the side of the road to be eaten by scavengers and rot. It would seem like if the animal can be eaten that it should be used to feed hungry people. Why let it waste? It's one of those injustices that bothers me, but I'm powerless to change the system.
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@midwesterner85 In WV I think you can take a deer without law enforcement tagging it but bears and turkey you have to wait? I grew up outside of D.C. with a dad who didn't hunt or fish so I'm going to be honest and say the whole concept of taking road kill blew my mind at first. Now I see the logic of not letting it go to waste. Not to say we don't get made fun of for "eating road kill". We're used to being made fun of though...we even have a yearly road kill cooking festival.
I'd need to see a lot more long term studies before I'd be on board with all these modified foods. I know I eat GMOs at times but I can't say I feel comfortable about it. I'm ok with my apple getting brown. It's just oxidation...nothing scary! People are ridiculous or just so out of touch with nature they don't understand how things work.
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Not to burst any bubbles, but everything we eat is genetically modified. It is just a matter of whether it was done the old school way of a farmer taking the plant/animal they deemed most desirable to use to propagate the next generation or if it was done in a lab.
I recently listened to a podcast episode of Nourish Balance Thrive which is done by the same guy who hosted the Keto Summit. He had a researcher on there who specialized in GMO plants. I am not saying I agree with everything she said, but she did make some very good points about the fact that there is no agreed upon definition of GMO, and an advantage to the lab version is you actually know what you are changing and have controls in place.
If you look at the archaeological records of corn for instance, the average corn that was grown just a few hundred years ago had cobs that looked more like the grain heads on wheat than the big cobs we have now. That modification was all done via farmers "breeding" the most desirable plants.
I am 100% with @midwesterner85 on food waste. I grew up lower middle class/borderline poor and spent the first few years on my own very poor. I have a hard time wasting food. That is actually part of the reason my diet was so bad before is I ate things I aught not have eaten just so it wouldn't go to waste. Most would say I am solid middle class now, but I view myself as rich because I consistently have food on the table and haven't missed a mortgage payment. However, it still bothers me to see anything, especially food, go to waste. In some instances, I have just had to change my view that some "food" isn't really fit for consumption and is ok to waste (i.e. donuts, candy, potato chips, etc.). The fact this junk is so cheap and plentiful is the reason the #1 health problem among the poor in America is obesity.5 -
growing a hybrid plant and growing a GMO plant are not the same thing
crossing two kinds of corn is not in any way similar to altering corn so it will survive large applications of pesticides
I think what concerns me most about GMO is that we don't label it and we don't require any kind of real testing
most of it is modified by adding pesticide to the seed DNA and then farmers spray it repeatedly with high doses of more pesticide because now pesticide doesn't kill the plant, then it's harvested and turned into food full of pesticide
deliberately ingesting poison is a bad idea
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As to surviving pesticides / herbicides, it is not the GMO plants to survive those chemicals that bothers me as much as the very liberal application of those chemicals. Did you know that some tests have found Roundup in rain water? This herbicide is so pervasive now that it is somehow evaporating and combining with water as it rains. That begs the question: Is it even possible for a farm to be truly organic if rain falls on it?4
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Yikes....seems I'm not even aware of all the issues surrounding our food out there.
I'm definitely right in there with you guys regarding the food waste.2 -
And this is why I love having my own garden - with heirloom vegetables and no pesticides. Done right, weeds are not a problem, pests can be minimized, and I don't care if it doesn't look "perfect."
I was just about to rant about 100 acre family farms in the 60's (like I grew up on) vs. the large 5000 acre corporate farms of today but erased it all. Nuf said right there.
My daughter attended Purdue and my husband is a chemistry guy. Although they both appreciate my no-GMO stance and organic gardening, they also both insist GMO and Roundup have been given a bad rap - but I'm also not going to get into that here. My bottom line is - if I'm growing it and eating it, I'd just as soon it be real food the way nature intended.5 -
I was pleased to see a store in my small city (150,000) that sell dented cans, crushed boxes and ugly veggies/fruits. Debit and Cash only to hold the overhead down as well. It has been there for a full year and seems to be doing well. Also, one of our local stores of a national chain sells ugly veggies/fruits in a special area. Although it is only a small selection in our own season because no one is going to truck ugly product 1000's of miles. But the discount rack of mark downs, I rarely see anymore. Now and again, a bunch of bananas but that is all. I was able to pick up a lamb roast at 50% off because it was 1 day past best before date. Still expensive but I nabbed it. I got the "are you weird" eye from two other shoppers. Their loss.
The waste is incredible world wide. My "refrigerator soup" helps prevent this problem at home. But large scale? How do we stop it?2 -
I am working very hard at eliminating the amount of food waste in our house, mostly due to my excessive shopping, poor planning. January has been a success so far, but I agree it is horrible the amount of waste. I suppose I've been fortunate to never have really gone without.
I agree that so many people truly don't understand the concept of "fresh" anymore... My grandma still sells her fresh bread & baking at a local Farmers Market (oh and farm fresh eggs... they don't milk cows anymore though). I was giving her a hard time for being what I presumed was derogatory to a customer about the buns being fresh, aka limited shelf life, store in the refrigerator etc. Here she is receiving calls/complaints because the fresh buns mold after a week+ on the counter compared to what people buy in the stores full of preservatives !!???!!! I have also heard customers give vendors a run for their money because garden produce may be mis-shapen, or gasp, a bug! Yet they want "organic" but don't realize the true concept of that.4 -
I was even a bit guilty a few years ago.... I ordered heirloom/organic/non-gmo seeds for my vegetable garden a few years ago... and was mad at first at what a "poor crop" I got. Only half came up and then yielded poorly. Then I remembered, that is likely how it used to be. Genetic modifications are not always bad... if you get a more prolific crop with slightly worse growing conditions (lack of watering lol), hey that could be seen as a positive. It is kind of creepy though when some of those vegetables are sterile and you cannot save seeds to grow the following year.1
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kimberwolf71 wrote: »I was even a bit guilty a few years ago.... I ordered heirloom/organic/non-gmo seeds for my vegetable garden a few years ago... and was mad at first at what a "poor crop" I got. Only half came up and then yielded poorly. Then I remembered, that is likely how it used to be. Genetic modifications are not always bad... if you get a more prolific crop with slightly worse growing conditions (lack of watering lol), hey that could be seen as a positive. It is kind of creepy though when some of those vegetables are sterile and you cannot save seeds to grow the following year.
I get your point for sure.....You want results from all your hard work when growing things....As for me I'm a black thumb.....I'm pretty sure nothing I planted would grow no matter the quality of the seeds...lol1 -
One of the advantages of GMO is that many third-world countries have a food supply because seeds have been modified to withstand drought, or to be resistant to certain bugs. When I first started delving into this issue a few years ago it seemed so black/white, cut & dry, but it's really much more complicated.
I don't have much of a green thumb, but I have found that if I take the time to enrich my soil with compost, then my heirloom plants do (almost) as well as regular. I pile it with leaves in the fall, layer grass clippings during the summer, compost all the veggie stuff. It's not technically organic because not all the compost I make is from organic materials, but it's pretty darn close. There's some sort of emotional satisfaction from the work.2 -
I don't have any issues with experimenting by cross breeding using seeds, saplings, and actual physical plants... What I have a problem with is genetic manipulation. If you're just breeding one type of potato with another existing type that is more resistant to amplify the drought or bug resistance? That's not a big deal. Going into the DNA and changing things? That's where it gets messy, I think. Too many chances to mess up something you didn't know was there...2
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I can not buy apples without thinking
"I don't care about spots on my apples
Leave me the birds and the bees
Please!"
Yellow Taxi is still one of my favorite songs by Joni Mitchell.
My real gripe with GMOs is the companies that hold patents on the seeds. Farmers can't just save the seeds for the next crop any longer. And the companies charge more for those seeds. In the past the farmers would cross bred etc. and save the seeds from the plants that produced successfully. Natural selection is a good thing, making something just because you can do it in a lab, not so much. Besides, golden rice still does not exist and that is what started all this back in the last century.
I do look for the no GMO sign on stuff.
OH and ditto on everything that tcunbeliever said.2 -
Oh yeah. Most foods are almost unrecognizable.
Chicken. Chicken is what gets me. It's been bred into frankenbird that grows at a crazy rate and has no flavour. If you ever get a chance to eat an heirloom variety of chicken, you'll know what I mean.
... On second thought, don't. There's no going back after that.
I've had people comment that my husband's hunting meat must be healthier, or organic. No. Not really. They are eating the GMO and sprayed crops in the fields too, unless you get game from deep in the mountains.
Many of the Canada geese don't even bother flying south anymore. They just park them selves in a field all winter and eat leftover grain./1 -
They are doing it to animals as well:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/business/genetically-engineered-salmon-approved-for-consumption.html?_r=0
I just don't know where we draw the line in this issue... personally, I would never weat the salmon and I don't eat apples so neither of these affect me, but sooner or later it will.
it is so much more than apples and salmon. many of the fruits and vegetables are gentically modified. did you see in the news they are feeding rejected candy to cattle and it is common practice yikes!!1 -
biketheworld wrote: »One of the advantages of GMO is that many third-world countries have a food supply because seeds have been modified to withstand drought, or to be resistant to certain bugs. When I first started delving into this issue a few years ago it seemed so black/white, cut & dry, but it's really much more complicated.
I don't have much of a green thumb, but I have found that if I take the time to enrich my soil with compost, then my heirloom plants do (almost) as well as regular. I pile it with leaves in the fall, layer grass clippings during the summer, compost all the veggie stuff. It's not technically organic because not all the compost I make is from organic materials, but it's pretty darn close. There's some sort of emotional satisfaction from the work.
I jave found the same. I started worm composting for the casins for the garden and it is a gardeners dream!!1 -
My new project is aquaponics anyone tried it? apparently you can grow lettuces and swiss chard easily....seeds currently germinating0
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You can regrow your lettuce after you harvest it too...usually you can get an additional 2-3 smaller harvests just keeping the base in water and providing light.
I'm currently trying to grow some avocado from seed since I eat them just about every day...so far out of six only one is doing really well and the rest are just rooting soooo slowly...I'll give them another few weeks and if they don't shoot I'll then pitch them and start again with new seeds.2 -
tcunbeliever wrote: »You can regrow your lettuce after you harvest it too...usually you can get an additional 2-3 smaller harvests just keeping the base in water and providing light.
Isn't this great! I just learned about this last week and am currently growing Romaine lettuce. I started 2 1/2 days ago and it's grown about 1 1/2 inches. I did a bit of online research and found that there are quite a few veggies you can easily grow in the house with a little water and light.
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Pretty much every single meat and plant we eat is "genetically modified" in that it would not even exist if we did not eat it. I don't have a problem with plants being improved to feed more people or use less water or resist pests. It's not like they're injecting them with chemicals, they're just making them better. I grew up on a farm, I know how things work, and I still wont eat brown or bruised produce.2
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We have markdown areas in our stores. I always take advantage when I can. I got huge hams after the holidays for like $15 each. That's a lot of meat- delicious, delicious meat! Lol.
I insisted on a large standing freezer in the garage when we moved into our new house. It's more than paid for itself in the year we have had it.2 -
I can only eat tomatoes from my summer garden. Those hot house tomatoes in the grocery store taste like water. And they're expensive...
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As a farmer who sells produce, I find that customers want spotless vegetables. I run an organic farm and even though people understand that organic means more bug holes and imperfect fruits they still buy the prettiest and leave the rest. I can tell how much bug damage customers will tolerate and I preserve and use for myself the ones customers wont buy. They are use to buying only produce that looks good. A lot of time the best tasting stuff is number 1 on the menue for damaging insects.
NO, HYBRIDS DO NOT EQUAL GMOs. In nature, viruses do not bombard a cell until one gets through and that cell is reproduced. In nature fish genes are not transferred to tomatoes. And why are 99% of the GMOs merely current vegtables designed to take round up or other chemicals that could kill it in nature? It's so corporations can sell more chemicals not so we can raise more food with less water or to withstand more insect pressure.
If you find that heirloom varieties and your garden patch in general are not producing as you expected, it's because bug, disease and weed pressure are worst today than 10 or 20 years ago. I have been gardening or farming for most of my 60+ years and I can tell you for a fact destructive insects and disease are much worse today than ever before. And weeds have become so much more invasive. If you decide to grow organically stand by for some tough work. When I was younger, I would plant squash seed, then weed for a couple months. I would then forget about it until fall. Come fall I would harvest so much squash, I would be giving it away or at least selling it for pennies per pound.
But Not today. First you better put down mulch or your sqash will rot. Then you better have spray with some kind of antifungal or mildew will wipe out half of it. Don't forget to water and check calcium levels to avoid blossom end rot. And if that's not enough, the stink bugs, beetles and other insects will literally wipe out every plant you have if you don't use some kind of organic insect control. And then plan on weeding continuously or you'll never find where you planted them. Why it's so much tougher today is hard to say but I suspect it's the super weeds, diseases and insects from other countries that have hitched a ride on all that produce sold in grocery stores or the plants Walmart and other big box stores sell. I also think the birds, frogs, snakes and lizzards are so much fewer that the invasive insects get out of control. And then of course there is global warming that has introduced new bugs, drought and diseases to areas that never had them before. The farming environment for real organic vegtable farmers is much more difficult today than what it was 20 years ago.12 -
The produce market where we buy 90% of our fruits and veggies sells items that wouldn't pass the Beauty Queen standards at most grocery stores. (Some of them wouldn't even make Miss Congeniality.) But they've been successful for three generations now while charging a premium over grocery store prices. Apparently we have enough people in this not very large town who value taste and wholesomeness over superficial good looks.
As a bonus, this store puts slightly older produce in its markdown area, where it gets grabbed up as fast as they can put it out. And the items that are about to become unusable get picked up by a local food donation center, one of the few who accept perishable items.
The current owner is slightly younger than I so I'm hopeful this market will last out my time. We'd be very sorry indeed to lose them.3 -
cedarsidefarm wrote: »As a farmer who sells produce, I find that customers want spotless vegetables. I run an organic farm and even though people understand that organic means more bug holes and imperfect fruits they still buy the prettiest and leave the rest. I can tell how much bug damage customers will tolerate and I preserve and use for myself the ones customers wont buy. They are use to buying only produce that looks good. A lot of time the best tasting stuff is number 1 on the menue for damaging insects.
NO, HYBRIDS DO NOT EQUAL GMOs. In nature, viruses do not bombard a cell until one gets through and that cell is reproduced. In nature fish genes are not transferred to tomatoes. And why are 99% of the GMOs merely current vegtables designed to take round up or other chemicals that could kill it in nature? It's so corporations can sell more chemicals not so we can raise more food with less water or to withstand more insect pressure.
If you find that heirloom varieties and your garden patch in general are not producing as you expected, it's because bug, disease and weed pressure are worst today than 10 or 20 years ago. I have been gardening or farming for most of my 60+ years and I can tell you for a fact destructive insects and disease are much worse today than ever before. And weeds have become so much more invasive. If you decide to grow organically stand by for some tough work. When I was younger, I would plant squash seed, then weed for a couple months. I would then forget about it until fall. Come fall I would harvest so much squash, I would be giving it away or at least selling it for pennies per pound.
But Not today. First you better put down mulch or your sqash will rot. Then you better have spray with some kind of antifungal or mildew will wipe out half of it. Don't forget to water and check calcium levels to avoid blossom end rot. And if that's not enough, the stink bugs, beetles and other insects will literally wipe out every plant you have if you don't use some kind of organic insect control. And then plan on weeding continuously or you'll never find where you planted them. Why it's so much tougher today is hard to say but I suspect it's the super weeds, diseases and insects from other countries that have hitched a ride on all that produce sold in grocery stores or the plants Walmart and other big box stores sell. I also think the birds, frogs, snakes and lizzards are so much fewer that the invasive insects get out of control. And then of course there is global warming that has introduced new bugs, drought and diseases to areas that never had them before. The farming environment for real organic vegtable farmers is much more difficult today than what it was 20 years ago.
Where do you find genuine heirloom seeds?
Thoughts on the Dorito Effect? Cornucopia?
Always appreciate your insights, thx.0 -
@cedarsidefarm. One of these days I'm going to make it up to your farm if for no other reason than to enjoy rural NC. I'm in down in the Congested Area of Relocated Yankees.
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