What You Need to Know About GMOs
What’s a GMO and what’s it doing in my food? Two good questions. If you’ve never heard of GMOs, then today is a great time to start getting informed. October 2010 is the first ever Non-GMO Month, and yesterday, October 10, 2010, was Non-GMO Day, celebrating our right to choose food and products that do not contain GMOs (you’ll find out in a bit why that’s a good thing).
So, first things first – a definition. GMO stands for “genetically modified organism”. A genetically modified organism is a food (or other products, but we’ll focus on food here) that has been genetically manipulated in a lab, where scientists take the plant or animal’s DNA and inject it with DNA from another plant, animal, bacteria or fungus – something that would never happen in nature. The second question – what’s it doing in your food – has everything to do with business, and nothing to do with what biotech companies would want us to believe, which is their intention of producing a new species of food that can withstand drought and pests and yield larger amounts, maybe even produce a better product.
To date, none of these claims have proven true. In fact, quite the opposite. Read More…
