Spot GMO Produce When You're Shopping!
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RunningRichelle
Posts: 346 Member
Just found this awesome tidbit and thought I'd share:
Whole Foods won't be labeling their GMo stuff till 2018. How the heck are we supposed to be able to know what we're buying?
I'm gonna start checking PLU codes on all my produce. Even the stuff I buy at WF. Most likely, especially the stuff I buy at WF. Why else would they be taking so long to label if they didn't already sell a bunch of GMO stuff, right?
The PLU code is the number that's on the sticker on your produce.
Each PLU code has five digits. If the first digit is a 9, the item is organic. If it is an 8, it is GMO. Conventionally grown produce has a 0 for the first digit, but usually the 0 is dropped. So most conventionally grown produce will actually have only 4 digits on the PLU tag if you don't see a 0 at the beginning. The 8 gives you the worst of two worlds, because most often, the plant is modified so it can live while still being sprayed with chemicals.
Happy shopping!
Whole Foods won't be labeling their GMo stuff till 2018. How the heck are we supposed to be able to know what we're buying?
I'm gonna start checking PLU codes on all my produce. Even the stuff I buy at WF. Most likely, especially the stuff I buy at WF. Why else would they be taking so long to label if they didn't already sell a bunch of GMO stuff, right?
The PLU code is the number that's on the sticker on your produce.
Each PLU code has five digits. If the first digit is a 9, the item is organic. If it is an 8, it is GMO. Conventionally grown produce has a 0 for the first digit, but usually the 0 is dropped. So most conventionally grown produce will actually have only 4 digits on the PLU tag if you don't see a 0 at the beginning. The 8 gives you the worst of two worlds, because most often, the plant is modified so it can live while still being sprayed with chemicals.
Happy shopping!
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Hmph. Tricky tricky. Never mind then.... Why on earth should something be that simple, right?
Guess we'll be waiting around until we get the government to force GMO labeling.0 -
Why does anyone care whether produce is GMO or not? From a scientific perspective, I don't get it. I'd love to hear why!0
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Why does anyone care whether produce is GMO or not? From a scientific perspective, I don't get it. I'd love to hear why!
Think Jurassic Park, where they took the frog DNA and inserted into the genome of the dinosaur DNA they found to bring back those dinos.
Definitely an odd comparison, but it’s what’s happening in our food industry.
A company can’t put a patent, and therefore own the rights to and make money from, a plant that’s found in nature, for example corn.
But, if that company takes the corn’s DNA and inserts a gene from another species, like maybe a gene from a different kind of plant like a kiwi, and they find that doing this makes a new kind of corn that is more resistant to insects, they can put a patent on this new, genetically modified corn plant they made.
Big money for that company!
The problem being that there’s no way to tell how this new corn plant may behave and affect its environment. Maybe some birds come along and eat some part of this new corn plant, and it kills the bird. Then you’ve got a whole bird population drastically affected, which really just messes up the ecosystem of the area where that corn has been planted and is growing.
Also, many of the big companies that are making GMO foods are not allowing these foods to be tested, under the guise of protecting their patents. So we have no idea how the human body is reacting to this completely new kind of corn.
Hope this makes sense, did my best to make it nice and simple :-)0
