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If you've ever creeped your way through a corn maze at Halloween, you know how it can grab ahold of your imagination, turning benign stalks into monsters and discarded cobs into severed limbs. It's just a trick of the light–but take a look at the ways that the U.S. uses corn, and you'll see that a holiday thrill isn't the scariest thing about this product. It was first subsidized in the late '70s as a fossil fuel alternative, but it's turned out to be inefficient source of fuel. Not only that, ethanol from corn actually increases the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a higher rate than gasoline.
Yet, the U.S. pays $10 to $30 billion dollars each years in farm subsidies to raise even more of it, with no clear benefit to consumers. So every time you eat a pound of corn products–which statistics say you will do 37 times over this year alone–remember this graphic, which was created so you can learn stuff about the effects of corn, America's biggest agricultural product.
For years, we've been told that milk does a body good. But does it really? Though touted as the healthier option at home and in restaurants, milk has roughly the same calorie count as soda and 2% milk contains the same amount of saturated fat as french fries. Given these two facts, the correlation between high milk consumption and high rates of Type 1 diabetes and heart disease makes sense. Even though one-third of Americans are lactose intolerant, the U.S. still consumes nearly 9 times the amount of milk that China does. So why do we drink so much milk? Because cows are making more of it. With the introduction of growth hormones like rBST, milk cows are producing nearly twice as much as they did in 1970. Milk – bad for us, bad for cows.
There are plenty of reasons to avoid eating genetically modified (GM) foods. In fact, after reading just 10 pages or listening to an hour-long lecture about their health dangers, most people are ready to change their diet on the spot.
If genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are not yet on your radar screen, go to www. GeneticRoulette.com for a full presentation. Here is a teaser of what you'll find:
The only human feeding study on GMOs ever conducted showed that genes "jumped" from GM soy into the DNA of human intestinal bacteria and continued to function. That means that long after you stop eating GM soy, you may still have GM proteins produced continuously inside of you. (What if the pesticide-producing "Bt" gene found in GM corn chips were also to jump? It might transform our intestinal flora into living pesticide factories—possibly for the long term.)
Most offspring of mother rats fed GM soy died within three weeks (compared to a 10 percent death rate in the non-GM soy group). Similarly, when a lab switched to rat feed with GM soy, most of the offspring at the facility died within two weeks.
Studies with mice also show reproductive problems. Mice fed GM soy had altered sperm cells and the DNA of their embryos acted differently.
Hundreds of farm workers complain of allergic reactions when touching GM cotton.
After sheep grazed on GM cotton plants after harvest, about one in four died; about 10,000 deaths in one region in India.
Farmers on three continents say their livestock became sterile, sick or died, after eating GM corn varieties.
Could such unsafe food get past our Food and Drug Administration? It probably wouldn't have, if the decision were in the hands of the scientists. Memos made public from a lawsuit reveal that the consensus among FDA scientists in the early 1990s was that GMOs were inherently unsafe and could lead to toxins, allergens, new diseases and nutritional problems. They urged their superiors to require long-term safety studies before any GM foods were allowed on the market. But the political appointee in charge of FDA policy was the former attorney of the biotech giant Monsanto and later the company's vice president. The scientists' warnings were ignored and today the FDA does not require a single safety study on GM foods.
The FDA is also the agency that decides whether or not GM foods need to be labeled. But the White House told the FDA to promote the biotech industry, so they nixed labels. Thus, our government ignores the desire of nine out of ten Americans who want the labels, to support the financial interests of five biotech seed companies. We're on our own.
There are four major GM crops: soy, corn, cotton, and canola. The majority of acreage for each of these crops is genetically engineered. Herbicide-tolerant varieties of each have their DNA inserted with bacterial genes that allow the crops to survive otherwise deadly doses of herbicides. This gives farmers more fl exibility in controlling weeds and gives the GM seed company lots more profit. When farmers buy GM seeds, they sign a contract to buy only that seed producer's brand of herbicide. Herbicide tolerant crops comprise about 80 percent of all GM plants.
The other popular trait is found in corn and cotton varieties that are engineered to produce a pesticide in every cell. Their DNA contains a gene from a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt, which produces a natural insect-killing poison called Bt-toxin.
In addition to these two major types of GM crops, there are also disease-resistant GM zucchini, crook neck squash and Hawaiian papaya, but these comprise well under 1 percent of GMO acreage. But if sugar beet growers have their way, they will add GM sugar to our diets starting in late 2008.
Read More at Weston A. Price Foundation
