Did you research GMOS when changing your diet?

My family eats Kosher. I found out that they were using eel DNA in GMO tomatoes. I was like "really, now I can't eat tomatoes because they have eel in them!" I try to make sure we don't eat GMO's as much as I can but it seems they are sneaking it into everything these days. Monsanto is soooooo evil. They want to control the world through controlling the food supply.

I'm a biologist, so I know the pros and cons to this one. I do choose to eat GMOs.

I have read up on GMO and have tried to weed out GMO as much as possible... also been trying to weed out soy products as best as I can... Given new research on that. I am vegetarian so hard to weed soy out entirely, but making effort to do so.

While I do not support the use of GMO's for controlling food supplies for profit, I recognize that they are in my food and I eat them. I do not worry overly about the health effects because, honestly, we've all eaten them for years. Can you point out a negative health effect that directly results from GMO's? No. So, as far as I'm concerned, they're ok to eat. If you can identify which foods they are in (which you can't unless it's disclosed that these foods are genetically modified), then I actively don't buy them. I'm more worried about High Fructose Corn Syrup in our diet and how we raise our cattle to be brought to mass market slaughter than I am about GMOs.

I think it's a little rash to think eating an organism with an eel gene in it makes it like eating eel. We share a lot of out DNA with other organisms. The coding for amino acids that make up our proteins are identical in all organisms.
GMO in and of itself does not bother me in terms of dieting. Splicing a gene into an organism may have environmental consequences, and so you may choose not to support them...but eating it is no worse for you than eating any other organism.
When you think about it...how have we arrived at domestic, say, cows?
We bred cows with good traits until we came up with a cow we can raise and eat.
We did the same thing to turn wolves into dogs.
To turn a barely edible grass into luscious corn.
We selected them for genetic traits. Selective breeding is the original round-about way to genetically modify organisms. Almost nothing you eat is as it was/is in nature.
I do have concerns about in-lab splicing type GMO, but I don't worry about health effects.

Excellent post

Agreed!

While I do not support the use of GMO's for controlling food supplies for profit, I recognize that they are in my food and I eat them. I do not worry overly about the health effects because, honestly, we've all eaten them for years. Can you point out a negative health effect that directly results from GMO's? No. So, as far as I'm concerned, they're ok to eat. If you can identify which foods they are in (which you can't unless it's disclosed that these foods are genetically modified), then I actively don't buy them. I'm more worried about High Fructose Corn Syrup in our diet and how we raise our cattle to be brought to mass market slaughter than I am about GMOs.

Very nice post. Did you know that 90% of US products made from corn are GMOs, and have been for quite some time? Most of the US sugar supply was coming from GMO sugar beets. Health wise, there have been few to no side effects, so I have no problem at all from a health standpoint. As a biotechnologist, my main concern with GMOs are environmental, especially the roundup resistant crops. We are starting to see weeds that are now resistant to round up.

Did you know they are working on a GMO cow that produced milk that doesn't lead to as many allergy reactions in infants? GMOs are not our enemy, if done right.

While they aren't our enemy, I'm not entirely sure that we need the excessive amount of genetic manipulation in our food supply, either. As seen with weeds, genetic drift will always occur, and may reduce bio-diversity in the long-run.

Don't get the impression that I'm pro-GMO's. However, I am con the use of GMO as a buzzword, when the reality is that the situation of the use of GMO's in the food supply is very, very old news. I mean, how else do we constantly have fresh non-seasonal produce always available in huge variety/ abundance in the grocery store. Nature, if left to it's own devices, doesn't exactly work that way, and I think that we've encountered the situation in the US to where we've over-manipulated our food supplies to suit our needs, and that can be to our detriment.

I'm a biologist, so I know the pros and cons to this one. I do choose to eat GMOs.

There are many scientists that choose not to.

While I do not support the use of GMO's for controlling food supplies for profit, I recognize that they are in my food and I eat them. I do not worry overly about the health effects because, honestly, we've all eaten them for years. Can you point out a negative health effect that directly results from GMO's? No. So, as far as I'm concerned, they're ok to eat. If you can identify which foods they are in (which you can't unless it's disclosed that these foods are genetically modified), then I actively don't buy them. I'm more worried about High Fructose Corn Syrup in our diet and how we raise our cattle to be brought to mass market slaughter than I am about GMOs.

Agreed

I have largely removed any beef or dairy from cows treated with bovine growth hormone from my family's diet. My daughter processes bovine growth hormone. It caused her to gain 4 lbs a month as an infant. When we switched her to organic, the weight loss immediately stopped. We now have available to us a lot of products that are hormone free but not fully organic which makes them more affordable. If we had not discovered her sensitivity to bovine growth hormone, she would not be alive today. We still have some leftover weight from the hormones to deal with but she is doing so much better now.

Bovine growth hormone has nothing to do with this discussion. GMO's are not the same as growth hormones.

for some of us the questionis not a health one but a religious one!

While I don't believe that taking a gene from organism and placing them in another should automatically make that organism non-kosher (eel and salmon have more similarities than differences, genetically), I'm not religious, so I guess I can't fully understand. The rules about what one can and can't eat seem arbitrary to me anyway, and not scientific in any sense.

Selective breeding is a completely different thing from splicing genes and crossing entirely different species with each other. Eel genes in tomatoes for example, would NEVER happen in selective breeding! It's silly and downright childish and ignorant to assume there's no difference, no consequence, and no problem with it. Health consequences, we do not know. I've heard of some issues with the allergens being put into corn (one of the biggest GMO crops) created an inflation with human allergies. But we do not track test or label GMO. They label in Britain but not here in the US. you have to know what to look for as well as realize you can't always avoid it.

Let alone the environmental consequences! It's an uncontrolable "product". An organic or non GMO farmer five miles from an GMO crop cannot have any way of keeping GMO cross pollination from happening. So what happens? Monsanto sues that farmer for using their "technology" without compensation. WTF!? Essentially though, because these GMOs are in existence, there's nothing we can do to stop them from inhabiting nature. They are already here, no going back and it will be a mess in the future, more so than it is now. Nature provides us everything we need, from the ability to selectively breed to the types of plants and animals to do that with that will bring us optimal health. We start to **** around with that, it will bring consequences to our miserable species. I he the Mayans are right and there will be a major shift in the world, be it the end or a new begining who knows. But at this rate, we are bringing it upon ourselves. We do not own this planet though we try to pretend to. We cannot galavant around shoving the genes of ne animal from the ocean into some plant from the earth and expect nothing strange and unnexpected to occur. We cannot use up and abuse the resources we've come to manipulate and expect that to last forever.

Could this be life? Well then, once again.

While I do not support the use of GMO's for controlling food supplies for profit, I recognize that they are in my food and I eat them. I do not worry overly about the health effects because, honestly, we've all eaten them for years. Can you point out a negative health effect that directly results from GMO's? No. So, as far as I'm concerned, they're ok to eat. If you can identify which foods they are in (which you can't unless it's disclosed that these foods are genetically modified), then I actively don't buy them. I'm more worried about High Fructose Corn Syrup in our diet and how we raise our cattle to be brought to mass market slaughter than I am about GMOs.

Agreed

Just to be clear, HFCS is GMO. The corn raised for the processing into HFCS is GMO crop. Also, the beef and livestock we raise is fed on GMO and as we are what we eat, so are they. So in a sense, GMO is still part of the concern here. Without it, we couldnt raise enough corn to feed and fatten the animals on CAFO farms. It's an interconnected thing. You can try and divide it as two separate issues, but then the whole I true is ignored.

As for health consequences, who the **** knows? We don't label, there are very few research articles in it, and the few that exist are not accessible. Even if there is no direct health consequence to us, the environment we live in and thrive off of is where the problem lay for sure. If our environment is unhealthy, or has unbalance or sickness, it will follow unto us. It's how nature works and while humans are very skilled at forgetting that and living in our own little created, often dillusional world, reality does matter. We are here as a part of nature.

Ps, I do not mean to sound offensive or agressive if I do, and if I do, I did not intend to direct it at anyone personally, I just feel strongly about this issue and like most people, my passion can tend to light some fire! Peace with all and health to all. Open mindedness as well.

I oppose hunger and population control so I support GMOs. Billions of people owe their life to the green revolution. It is likely that in the future billions will owe their life to GMOs. Looking at the past ways of food production are incompatible with the needs of future societies that number 15-20 billion people.

Many GMOs are designed to add pesticides to the plants especially corn and now they are selling GMO sweet corn. Not something I want to ingest. Therefore, we try to eat all nonGMO. However, we currently feed GMO feed to our chickens and beef as there is not a nonGMO option here. I think at the very least they should require labeling so that consumers can make a choice.

Some GMO's are "lets breed a plum and a grape and see what happens" usually, I'm curious enough to try.

Other GMO's are "lets genetically choose for strains that are disease/fungus/mold resistant" which can lead to less chemicals on my food trees, I'm all for that too.

It makes me sad that a lot of my GMO food seeds aren't viable. I think it would be fun to see what would happen a generation later... Tomatoes with three eyes and oranges with three arms trying to eat me would be awesome. FEED ME SEYMOUR.

I also enjoy organic too. And I LOVE growing heirlooms.