How to get genetically-modified food out of your diet

An Activist’s Toolkit

How would you react if you discovered that most of the foods you ate every day contained hidden ingredients that could be slowly poisoning you?

Disbelief? Sadness? Fear? Anger? Retribution? All of the above? Well, surely the first thing you should do is: STOP EATING THEM! Genetically modified crops such as corn, canola and soy are being used in over 70% of the processed foods available in your local grocery store. So you might be forgiven for thinking that if genetically modified ingredients are so widespread, they must be safe to eat, right? Wrong. It’s just a shame the FDA and the corporate-controlled North American mainstream media persist in turning a blind eye. (See The Big GMO Cover-Up by Jeffrey M. Smith.)

Of course, the last thing that the pro-GM food companies want is for consumers to get informed and use their immense power to force change in the marketplace. This has already happened in Europe where genetically modified ingredients have to be labeled by law. As a result, food companies don’t use genetically modified ingredients! However, in the absence of equivalent labeling requirements in the US or Canada, North American consumers have been left in the dark for over 13 years and are unwittingly taking place in a huge human feeding experiment.

We asked Jeffrey M. Smith, international bestselling author of Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, to give us some practical steps on how to get GMOs out of our diet and off the face of the Earth, forever.

Would you choose genetically modified food if given a choice? Some animals won’t.

There’s a bowl of corn chips in front of you made from natural corn. Next to it are genetically modified (GM) corn chips. Which do you choose?

If you were a pig or cow, we know the answer—the natural corn. In 1998 and 1999, several farmers in Northwest Iowa repeatedly let pigs or cows into pens with troughs of GM corn and non-GM corn. The animals would head straight to the closer trough, filled with the genetically modified organisms (GMOs). They’d sniff, maybe take a nibble, then go over to the trough with the natural corn. After finishing off the last kernel, they’d stop by the GM corn one more time just to check it out, but quickly walk away.

An Iowa farmer who read about the finicky livestock decided to see if squirrels had similar dispositions. He nailed ears of GM corn and non-GM corn onto trees by his house. Sure enough, the squirrels ate only the natural stuff, over and over again. When the farmer stopped replacing the natural corn, the squirrels still refused to touch the GMO. After 10 cold winter days, they got up the courage to nibble a few kernels, but that was all they could handle.

Another curious farmer wanted to repeat this with the squirrels in his area. He bought a bag full of GM corn ears, and another of non-GM, and left it in his garage to wait for winter. He waited too long. Mice did the experiment for him. They broke into the natural corn bag and finished it. The GM cobs were untouched.

Farmers, gardeners, reporters, and scientists have noticed similar behavior on at least four continents. Chickens, elk, deer, and raccoons avoided GM corn, while geese, rats, and buffalo refused GM soy, tomatoes, and cottonseed, respectively. Why are animals put off by genetically engineered food? No one knows for sure, but let’s get back to the GM corn chips still sitting in front of you.

Dangerous side-effects

Genetic material from bacteria and viruses are forced into the corn’s DNA, which is then cloned into a plant. This process leads to substantial collateral damage, including changes in hundreds or thousands of natural corn genes, plus widespread mutations. Most of the side-effects are never tested for. We do know, for example, that an allergy-producing gene, normally silent, gets switched on in a Monsanto corn variety. Proteins change shape, which might be a serious health hazard. And a compound called lignin is significantly overproduced. Lignin on its own may not be so bad, but in the process of producing it, the plant also produces rotenone, a natural pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease. No one has tested your chips to see they contain more rotenone.

Bayer’s Liberty Link corn have added genes that allow the corn to withstand high doses of Roundup or Liberty herbicide. These varieties, therefore, have more weedkiller residues. Other GM varieties have inserted genes from bacteria that produce an insect killing toxin in every cell (and in every bite).

In addition, genes inserted into GM crops don’t necessarily stay put. In the only human GM feeding experiment— done with Roundup Ready soy— functioning genes transferred into the DNA of bacteria living inside our intestines. This means that millions of Americans probably have Roundup Ready gut bacteria—unkillable with Roundup herbicide. No one has yet looked to see if GM corn genes also transfer. If they do, their insecticide-producing genes could turn your gut flora into living pesticide factories, continuously producing toxins inside you—long after you finish your bowl of chips.

Have you made your decision yet? If you still need encouragement, check out “The Big GMO Cover-Up” in UGM007 to find out why the American Academy of Environmental Medicine wants doctors across the country to prescribe non-GMO diets to everyone.

But aren’t GMOs supposed to feed the world?

If you’re feeling some moral imperative to support GMOs, that’s understandable. The biotech industry spent more than $250 million convincing you that its gene-spliced foods are the answer to the sick and starving. So don’t be embarrassed if you fell for it. Many leading US politicians have likewise been mesmerized by this long-running PR ploy. Clinton’s Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman spoke candidly to a St. Louis Post Dispatch reporter about the pro-GMO attitude embedded in the US government:

“It was almost immoral to say that it wasn’t good, because it was going to solve the problems of the human race and feed the hungry and clothe the naked. … And if you’re against it, you’re Luddites, you’re stupid. … You felt like you were almost an alien, disloyal, by trying to present an open-minded view.”

Glickman acknowledged that he too “spouted the rhetoric,” admitting, “it was written into my speeches.” The current Ag Secretary, Tom Vilsack, is the latest GMO cheerleader. As Iowa’s governor, he gave Monsanto an award in 2000, and the next year was anointed Biotech Governor of the Year by the biotech industry trade organization.

In October 2009, Vilsack tried to play the “feed the world” card at a conference sponsored by the Community Food Security Coalition. Bad move Tom. The people in the room were actually experts at feeding the world. Attendees included numerous PhDs and eminent scholars, such as the co-chairman and several leading authors of the authoritative IAASTD report, the world’s most comprehensive evaluation of agriculture.

This crowd knew that GMOs had no answers for world hunger. The IAASTD report, for example, concluded that the current generation of GMOs does not reduce hunger and poverty, does not improve nutrition, and does not facilitate social and environmental sustainability. A comprehensive analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists concluded that GMOs do not increase yield; in fact, on average they reduce yield. A USDA study showed that farmers’ income doesn’t increase, and in some cases, it decreases. And it doesn’t help the overall economy either. The federal government has been spending $3-5 billion per year to prop up the prices of the GM crops no one else wants.

Thus, when Secretary Vilsack invoked “the ever-increasing population of the globe and the capacity to be able to feed all of those people” as the excuse to promote GMOs, he was greeted by moans, groans, hisses, and even boos. That didn’t stop Vilsack from playing the same card two days later, but this time he was at the World Food Prize conference. That’s sponsored by the biotech industry, so they were overjoyed that the Ag Secretary was still supporting their myth.

CLICK HERE to find out how to CHOOSE NON-GMO Foods