Corn – Yet Another Reason to Be Wary About What You Buy

Corn is so cheap and delicious at this time of the year, right? At 5 for a dollar, I really cannot get enough of it. I may or may not have incorporated it into three different meals in one day. When you see it in the produce section or local market and find literal mountains of it, I think you automatically see it as just having come out of the grown at a farm 15 miles away. That might not always be the case, explains the always wonderful Raising Natural Kids in this contributor piece:

Much of the corn being produced in the United States isn’t the same corn we grew up with. It used to come natural, straight from the earth to our mouths. Now there is more involved than that. Corn, along with soybeans, are two of the biggest crops that are being genetically modified (between 70% and 80% of corn and 93% of soybeans in the U.S. are genetically modified. See the links at the end of this post for charts and stats).

What does this mean? It means we are messing with the genetics of these vegetables; “genes from other plants, viruses, bacteria, animals, etc. are inserted into the genes of certain products such as corn to make them more stable and resistant to drought, disease and pesticides. However, because of this cross-breeding, the safety of such foods has not been able to have been proven and other countries (and some counties in the U.S.) have banned the modified foods from being imported and/or grown. (The Good Human)”

Unless what you are buying is 100% organic, if soy or corn are in the ingredients chances are you are eating genetically modified food (this includes soybean and corn oils). Foods that contain GMOs do not have to be labeled as such. What’s scary is that you may not even know corn is involved. For example, the chickens and cows whose meat, eggs and milk are labeled as all natural and vegetarian fed are fed genetically modified corn, which means you too are eating the GMOs that they ate. As far as produce, you can’t be sure that you aren’t getting genetically modified food unless you look for the codes that are provided on the stickers on the vegetables and fruits you are buying. Here is a key to understanding the numbers:

Produce labeling: (provided by innvista)

Organic produce has a five-digit number beginning with a 9. Organic bananas, for example, would be given the designation of 94011.

Conventional produce (grown with pesticides) has a four-digit number beginning with a 3 or 4. Therefore, the number on conventionally grown bananas would be 4011. (I would still be weary about GMOs if there is no 9 in front of it as they do not need to be labeled as such)

Genetically engineered produce also has a five-digit number on the label and begins with an 8. Again, the number on genetically altered bananas would be 84011.

Why should you think twice before consuming these GMOs?

1. Introducing one gene into another has a very likely potential to create harmful, toxic compounds and since this process is relativly new in regards to being used in the food we are now consuming, we have no idea what effects this could have on our bodies.

2. Genetically modified crops are NOT being regulated by the FDA or any government run agency (not that this totally matters being that even things that are regulated by them have caused injury and death).

3. Things like tobacco, asbestos, DDT and many drugs approved by the FDA were once declared safe for many years before it was realized just how life threatening they all are!

4. “The truth is that many natural health experts claim that there is a growing amount of evidence that genetically modified foods have a link to food allergies, intestinal damage, autoimmune disorders, anemia, diabetes, infertility and even cancer. Independent scientific studies done on the effects of genetically modified have produced some incredibly troubling results.(Emergency Food Supply).”

Sources:

Department of Agriculture’s CHART: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/BiotechCrops/

Emergency Food Supply Stats: http://theemergencyfoodsupply.com/archives/93-percent-of-soybeans-and-80-percent-of-corn-in-the-u-s-grow-from-seeds-genetically-altered-by-monsanto

The Good Human: http://www.thegoodhuman.com/2007/09/18/what-are-gmos-and-why-you-should-avoid-them/

Say No to GMOs: http://www.saynotogmos.org/