When I say that fruits and vegetables are naturally chock full of the nutrients that the body needs to heal and nourish itself, I know that for a fact.
When I say that fruits come naturally paired with both sugar – which energizes the body – as well as fiber – which forcefully tempers your intake of the sugar – in a way that protects the body from its brain, I know that for a fact.
When I say that nature pairs “the poison” with “the antidote” in our naturally occuring and naturally grown foods, I know that for a fact.
…but when it comes to genetically engineered foods, very little is for certain.
The nutritional value? Questionable. The damage to the environment? Questionable. The harm caused to the human body? Again, questionable.
Yet again, this stuff is everywhere. Don’t believe me? Here’s something to think about:
- 93% of all soybeans used in the United States? Genetically modified versions.
- 77% of all of the soybeans grown in the world… genetically modified.
- 86% of all the corn grown in the United States? Genetically modified.
- 93% of all of the cotton – think cottonseed oil, animal food – grown here is genetically modified.
- 93% of all of the US’s rapeseed/canola oil? GMOs.
If 93% of all of the soybeans grown in the US are of genetically modified origin and 60% of all processed foods contain soy, where the hell are they? Look at your processed food labels… it’s in the ingredients list. Soybean oil (partially hydrogenated, or otherwise). Soy lecithin. Soy infant formula. Soy meat replacements. Soy protein. Soy milk. Vegetable oil. For goodness sakes… tofu. It’s there. Soybean oil, in all its inexpensive prevalence, accounts for 10% of one’s caloric intake in the United States if they’re processed food eaters! The stuff is everywhere.
One of the original purposes of modifying the genetic code of our food was to increase the ability of the seeds to produce larger yields as well as minimizing the amount of pesticide use required to protect the yield. Making the food undesirable to pests means less of the crops that would be eaten up before the yield could be harvested.
First and foremost, I’ve written about this – both humans as well as those very bugs and rodents subsist on the very same vitamins and minerals. It doesn’t make sense for humans to be ingesting en masse something that they don’t want.
You know how, if you leave food sitting out, it will attract flies? Why? Because flies and rodents are attracted to the same things that our bodies are attracted to in food – nutrients. Ever notice that with ALL the food in a supermarket, there’s rarely any ants or bugs in the aisles, but you have to swat them away from the tomatoes or kiwi in the produce area? That’s not because every area in the grocery store – except the produce – is sprayed down. I can only offer theory as to why that is. For starters, the processed foods have to be processed to maintain shelf life. They have to be able to handle being transported to the facility. They have to be able to withstand sitting on a shelf until purchased. They have to be able to withstand sitting in your cabinets until you cook them.Can you do that with your home made cooking? I doubt it.
Secondly… even though GMOs set out with very ambitious goals, they’ve done more harm than good. Studies have shown that farmers have actually resorted to using far more pesticides in order to protect GMO crops, and they actually don’t, in fact, increase the size of the crop able to be harvested. So we’ve introduced double the original foreign chemical substance to our soils – the very soils that grow all of our crops – and the only thing it has done is provided us with nutritionally deficient foods that have oversaturated our food market as a whole. Even if you don’t cook processed foods at home, is your favorite restaurant frying or cooking your foods in canola, vegetable or soybean oils?
Thirdly – and this is of the utmost importance to me – can we talk about the cost of the foods that contain these products? Foods that are genetically modified with questionable nutritive value, made inexpensively and easily available, grown in excess thus making it cheap as hell, used for various reasons in processed foods – because, let’s face it… the best way to turn a profit is to take the cheapest items available and manipulate them into much more valuable resources (think of how a kernel of corn is turned into high fructose corn syrup) – and marketed prominently to turn a profit? These items are cheap as hell and are marketed to the working poor as a way of profiting off of those least likely to know better or have access to better…
…and then we wonder why an influx of diseases that are easily cured by regular naturally occurring foods are reappearing. Because the people least likely to have adequate (or any) health care are eating foods that are genetically modified to be less-than-appealing and less-than-nutritive, leaving them far more susceptible to illness… because they can’t afford the foods they need, and the foods they can afford are lacking severely.
All of this uncertainty… and food is always supposed to be a sure thing. Food should always be simple… a sure thing. You care for the Earth, treat the soil well, you get good and healthful food in response. Clean eating is, by definition… a sure thing. There’s very little that’s up for debate when you’re eating as cleanly as possible. Clean eating ensures sustainability – you eat close to the source, you eliminate waste, you cause minimal damage to the environment in which you/your children/their children live and love. It might feel like “too much” to care about the environment, but look at how that cycle starts – you care for the Earth by inadvertently caring for yourself.
I say all of this to say… clean eating is something very qualifiable. It’s quantifiable. Genetically engineered and modified foods are, in fact, not… and until they are? Consider leaving them out of your grocery cart.
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