What Is A GMO?

Here's an article published by a Functional Medicine MD. Don't let the first three paragraphs scare you away from readig the rest as it gets very understandable and makes good sense to me. Go for Real Food, whether its GMO or not.

Gordon

What is a GMO?
October 19, 2012

By GARY FORESMAN, MD

The GMO controversy can only be understood from a systems approach, and a few definitions are needed so we can all understand what we are talking about. Genomics is simply the study of all chromosomal contents of an organism. The Human Genome Project (HGP) found that humans only have approximately 23,000 genes (at one point nearly 2 million were predicted), similar to that of a roundworm. Merely 7 percent of protein families coded by all DNA in all organisms appear specific to vertebrates.

This takes us to the real key which is Proteomics: the study of all the structure and function of an organism’s proteins, and Metabolomics: the study of the collection of all metabolic processes in the organism, which gets us much closer to understanding our “biochemical individuality”. Now everyone can breathe for a second, I promise to stop defining things, but please understand these terms are not going away any more than the term “computer”. Why these terms are so important is because the HGP documented so vividly that the understanding of all organisms is vastly more complicated than the understanding merely of that organism’s genes.

This really is one of the most important subjects of our time, mainly for reasons people don’t understand. I’m hoping to cultivate understanding, thereby fostering compassion for those who hope to understand your personal role in food, economics, and health, both individually and globally. Every day, what you think, believe, eat, and do changes your genetic expression and can be accurately studied by the much more extensive and complicated fields of proteomics and metabolomics. Truly, our food supply can be understood as “biological response modifiers”, which simply means that you eat “information” that sends signals to your DNA about the health of your environment telling your DNA how to best respond for the health of your organism. This means every bite of your food alters your genetic expression, as does every thought, but that is another discussion.

What I am trying to lead you to is much larger and dramatically more important subject than just GMO foods, organisms such as corn and soybeans that have been genetically altered to resist herbicides. When you drink a diet soft drink, you alter the way your genes respond to sweetness. When you eat vegetable oils at levels impossible to obtain throughout the entire history of your species, you alter your genetic expression leading to hunger. Every time you eat anything but an organic, natural organism, you are “playing” with your genes. When you feed a cow corn instead of grass, the metabolomics effect is to create a “new” cow who has become a “metabolomically modified organism” (MMO, my term).The fat found in that cow has an omega6 : omega3 ratio not of 3:1 (grass fed), but 20:1 (corn fed). What was a healthy food becomes a pro-inflammatory signal to your genes that something very, very wrong is going on in the world.

Every food that has an ingredient list, which is not organic and unprocessed, is an MMO which has a more profound effect on your metabolism than any one genetic alteration could ever hope to obtain. That is truly my concern, while people war over the discussion of whether GMOs are safe (and we don’t know), we have the most “unsafe” food supply in human history, and it is only getting worse. The GMO controversy is an enormous distraction from the real issue of our day, a food supply so tainted by artificial everything, the non-organic practices in the raising of both agriculture and meat supply, that today’s human being has become a metabolomically adulterated fraction of human potential. Eating Real Food is the only sensible option.

Do we have the right to know whether a food is a GMO food? How truly sad that I even have to ask that question. The only people who don’t want you to know what’s in your food have a very legitimate complaint that Americans, like Europeans, will be intelligent enough to insist on a non-GMO alternative. Financially, the Agribusiness Conglomerates worry that knowledge of a GMO food present will alter what you buy, costing them billions of dollars. I don’t believe for a second that it will make much of a difference in America, as we are the only culture that fights the facts of evolution and climate change, why would we care if our food is GMO? Facts and science don’t change public perception.

You can only hope that if you truly understand the importance of the information you put in your body, you will chose Real Food! The questions is now do you actually want to understand what food really is? Do you want to make the decisions necessary to ensure your health and the health of future generations? The GMO controversy represents a very small symptom in a much larger MMO controversy of a tainted food supply based on the creation of quick money for the financially elite and chronic degenerative illnesses for the misinformed masses.

Thanks Gordon, That has a ring of truth to it. It seems the majority of us are destined to experiment with our Gene expression as there really isn't much truly natural food around.

" The GMO controversy represents a very small symptom in a much larger MMO controversy of a tainted food supply based on the creation of quick money for the financially elite and chronic degenerative illnesses for the misinformed masses."

Adrian

Thank you Gordon for that most informative posting.

I think we need to keep in mind that most genetic modifications made to our food supply is not for the benefit of us, the consumer, but rather for the benefit of agricultural companies and farmers. For example, modifications to corn (maize) and soy beans are made to enable the plants to survive a vastly increased use of herbicides (necessary to kill constantly evolving weeds), notably Monsanto's Roundup, thus the term "Roundup ready". I doubt that the corn, soy beans and grains are thoroughly washed to remove the remnants of herbicide before it enters the food supply, in some cases as ground-up flour.

The old excuse that plant breeders have been "cross-breeding" for years and thus changing the genes of plants is also wearing a bit thin. I doubt that the cross-breeders of yesteryear would have thought of or had the technology to breed a fish with a tomato. The fish-tomato [en.wikipedia.org] is a reality and shows just how far our modern-day "breeders" are willing to go without the slightest idea of the consequences. Fortunately, the fish-tomato was never approved, but who knows what other Frankenfoods are in the pipeline or already on the market?

Hans

CSIRO GM Wheat Could Potentially change Human Genome
By Luis Miranda. September 14, 2012

Text and video: [real-agenda.com]

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[www.youtube.com] Cell biologist / professor of medicine Bruce Lipton says this:

"When we eat food, the micro-RNA from the food is picked up by the digestive system and not broken down. The micro-RNA is taken into our own body intact, and now what they’ve found is that the micro-RNA from food ends up in our own cells -- like in our liver and other cells in our body -- and these micro-RNAs still have the same function: they change our genetics and they change the readout of our genome. And the significance is profound: it says when we eat genetically modified food we’re eating a new class of micro-RNAs that have never been in the world before, and yet these micro-RNAs are picked up by our biology and adjust our own genetics, so in a sense the old story “we are what we eat” actually now has a biochemical foundation. And now all of a sudden you can say if that’s true, why would you risk your life eating a genetically modified food containing micro-RNAs that can totally destroy our own biology and cause great problems in our lives?"

And in addition to what Erling posted the latest Dr. Mercola newsletter has this [articles.mercola.com] The continued use of GE crops has made for the spread of roundup resistant weeds and more and more herbicides are being required to try and control them resulting in more toxins in our food.

Adrian

Thanks Gordon...

Adrian, remember too, that these herbicide residues get into the ground water which causes even more problems.

Hans, do you remember a couple years ago when I shared with you the photo of my Frankenfood tomato experiment?

This was in March of 2010 and I had purchased what I thought were two organic tomatoes growing on the vine, but upon closer inspection of the sticker, turned out to be Bionatur grown in Mexico . Since I wasn’t going to eat them after that discovery, I let it sit on my counter by the kitchen sink and watched to see how quickly it would spoil.

In about a month, I noticed some bumps under the skin surface. The tomatoes had not spoiled but looked as if sprouts were growing on the inside. (My previous experiment a couple years ago also had sprouts growing from the seeds inside). So, I waited to see what would happen. In two months, the sprouts began to break through the skin on one and an area near the stem became black and looked rotten.

When I split the tomato apart, sure enough, sprouts were coming from the seeds. I can only think that this tomato was bio-engineered (GMO) or irradiated or both. In the photo, the whole tomato remained on the vine. And the image of ‘sprouts’ or bumps coming up from the inside showed as growing under the skin of the tomato… Very weird. I had done that same experiment a couple years prior with the same outcome.

How long would a typical non GM tomato survive sitting in a warm kitchen counter?… I’d expect the natural deterioration or rotting and not regeneration or sprouting from the seeds.

Frankenfood, indeed.

Jackie

Shocking findings in new GMO study:
Rats fed lifetime of GM corn grow horrifying tumors, 70% of females die early.
Warning graphic photos
[curezone.org]

Todd,

Here is a link to the original article [www.sciencedirect.com] and some comments from the French government [www.france24.com]

Hans