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Genetically modified corn, And other GM foods
The Unholy Diver
post Jul 11 2013, 03:19 PM
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Also known as "Frankenstein foods", genetically modified foods have become increasingly popular in the last few years.
Just recently, there was an uproar about a local restaurant nearby serving GM foods, and a few people vowing never to eat there again just because of it.

This begs the question: are GM foods really that bad?
And if they are, what's really so bad about them? And if they aren't, why not?

In my opinion, i really don't see anything wrong with them. They're put through several tests to make sure they're safe, just like any other food, and they show a lot of promise in both improving our quality of food and the quantity in which it's produced.

So what's your opinion?


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ShrapnelStars
post Jul 11 2013, 04:54 PM
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Monsanto is the main company in charge of GMing corn, and they have a track record of not making sure it's safe. The modification process has caused cancers and allergic reactions in humans, which is why there's such an outcry. We are talking about modified genes entering our bodies, which can have tons of unexpected results since the genes are not tested on human cells to see if they'll cause damage or not. All the modders know is that it makes the food grow faster.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_11361.cfm
http://www.ehow.com/info_8181702_problems-gmo.html
http://www.organicauthority.com/health/wha...288381481237582
http://responsibletechnology.org/health-risks

A lot of the genetically modified and hyper-processed foods we eat cause issues with depression, ADD, ADHD, allergies, obesity, and general poor health because these processes basically kill the nutrients in food and push toxins into our bodies that we can't process. That's why you see reports of children doing better in school when they have healthy lunches. The processed and modded food messes with the brain, decreasing focus and increasing hyperactivity (though the latter is more from the metric tons of sugar in processed foods). I work with a woman from India and she said that she didn't understand why her son was always coming home from school sick. When she would pack his lunch herself, he would come home fine. We narrowed it down to the crazy snacks he was eating to try to fit in with the other school kids. He was doing better on the organics his mom would buy and cook with.

Some of the genes and other mods being used are ones that tell you that your full, tell you that you're still hungry, and tell you that what you're eating tastes good. Bypassing human judgment and going straight to the brain to tell it what it does and does not think is decidedly bad.

To be fair, the quest to increase food production and keep pests away from food is indeed noble, but the deadly methods being used to achieve these results are what people have a problem with.

(I'm not even going to start with the antibiotics and injections in livestock, because that gets really dark. Two words: animal abuse.)

EDIT: For a specific example, let's take a look at how de-icing fluid is used to sweeten drinks.

This post has been edited by Indoor Survival: Jul 11 2013, 05:04 PM


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The Unholy Diver
post Jul 12 2013, 02:26 PM
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Thanks for being the first person ive ever seen to make a logical arguement against GM foods

Now about theese scources...
QUOTE(Indoor Survival @ Jul 11 2013, 02:54 PM) *

they all show valid points and do make sense, but..
1.)they mostly focus on only a few of the several varieties of GM.. like herbicide resistant and pest resistant.. but what about varieties like the drought resistant, or the increased yeild variety? should all GM's be banned just because of a few bad ones?
2.) They claim that GMing causes "unpredictable effects"... well so does natural breeding. theres absolutely no way of knowing weather your crops developed some kind of mutation that caused them to produce some kind of super-toxin thats colorless and tasteless, but deadly. and theres no way to prevent it. sure theres selective breeding, but that doesnt work if you cant see or detect in any way the trait that the crop has developed. so theoretically, if theres a mutation that causes an untastable toxin to develop in crops, but it makes the crop grow better and more plentiful, i think you can guess what would happen next.. and that scenerio is present in both GM and in natural breeding, and at least (in an ideal world where the people "protecting" us had the brain to do their jobs right) we would know to put GM through some kind of clinical or animal testing before marketing it, but for what reason would we clinically test unmodified crops that naturally become toxic without us knowing?...
3.) The biggest problem with theese cancer-causing GM foods is, according to your scources, the FDA, and not the GM process itself. why should a scientific technique with the potential to save millions of lives and potentially cure any disease be shot down because some imbeciles who are so inept at their profession (thats making them rich btw) that they can be sincerely fooled into believing that water is a dangerous chemical
true story (click to show)

Also, if you ever pay close enough attention to ads for any kind of over-the-counter drug, they spend about 10 or 20 seconds advertising the benifits of it and about 40 seconds warning about the side effects... the FDA appearantly has no problem with a sleeping pill thats more likely to kill you in your sleep then to help you sleep in the first place...
and then the "it is though to work by.." commercials... so we're OK with a drug when we dont even know how it works yet?!? If you dont know how it works, how could you possably understand all of the possable side effects?
Last but not least, all theese "bad drug" commercials.. theese were (appearantly) all drugs and procedures and products approved by the FDA... so why did the FDA approve them if they were really put through sufficent testing? Im sure SOME of it could be that we didnt have the tools or technology to properly screen for stuff like that in the past.. but.. isnt it the FDA's job to think about all possable side effects BEFORE approving a product?...

QUOTE(Indoor Survival @ Jul 11 2013, 02:54 PM) *
A lot of the genetically modified and hyper-processed foods we eat cause issues with depression, ADD, ADHD, allergies, obesity, and general poor health because these processes basically kill the nutrients in food and push toxins into our bodies that we can't process.

which varieties? and how would they do this? and are you 100% sure its GM doing this and not just hyper-processing?
QUOTE(Indoor Survival @ Jul 11 2013, 02:54 PM) *
That's why you see reports of children doing better in school when they have healthy lunches. The processed and modded food messes with the brain, decreasing focus and increasing hyperactivity (though the latter is more from the metric tons of sugar in processed foods). I work with a woman from India and she said that she didn't understand why her son was always coming home from school sick. When she would pack his lunch herself, he would come home fine. We narrowed it down to the crazy snacks he was eating to try to fit in with the other school kids. He was doing better on the organics his mom would buy and cook with.

are you SURE its the GMing doing this and not the other crap(for lack of a better word) that we do to our foods? They say that if you run a super-magnet over your morning bowl of cereal, you will see metal particals (shavings off the machines they use to make it) flying off your cerial being attracted to the magnet..
not only that, also our over-dependant use of HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), which, as you said, can contribute to the hyperactivity of students, and is also more likely the culprit when it comes to obesity and unhealthiness in general of kids



QUOTE(Indoor Survival @ Jul 11 2013, 02:54 PM) *
Some of the genes and other mods being used are ones that tell you that your full, tell you that you're still hungry, and tell you that what you're eating tastes good.

First off, we do that anyway without GM foods.. thats what all theese weight loss suplements and diet food and what-not (that i never really believed in at all) are doing, and they aren't (always) using GM foods.
and also, how would GM foods even be doing this? which genes in particular are we modding to have that kind of effect? i know for a fact that plants dont have a gene that tells them if food tasts good or if they're full..
And even if we do modify the gene that makes plants bitter.. how much effect would that have on the health value? originally, the first plants weren't as bitter (according to the logic of evolution), they evolved to taste bitter so that herbivores would stop eating them.

I think that most of the fault that we're having with GM foods is due to the fault of the FDA, who are not properly testing GM foods. If we had some kind of clinical test or test on animals for GM foods BEFORE we just randomly threw whatever we made onto market, we wouldnt be having problems like this.
Why should such potential be thrown to waste because of the ineptitude of one government organization?..

This post has been edited by Zer0hundred: Jul 12 2013, 02:29 PM


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ShrapnelStars
post Jul 12 2013, 03:05 PM
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True. I agree with everything you said. I did broaden the topic to cover things more related to processing since my mind went straight to "people screw with food, bad things happen as a result". That's my fault. The allergic reactions in people and tumors and immune deficiency in animals were the specific results for GMO's alone.

http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications...20questions/en/

Yes, the FDA has serious issues when it comes to regulation. That is a big part of the problem, too. They can be paid off to keep from asking questions or something of the sort/they just don't care. There are lawsuits flying around everywhere because of this.

This wikipedia page shows rGBH's effect on cows, though milk from such cows doesn't hurt humans.

The modification of wheat is being tested to make sure it doesn't nullify any human genes when ingested.

No, the GMO's don't do anywhere near as much damage as the hyper-processing does. I merged two topics together by mistake, and I apologize. *facepalms self* The effects of genetic modification and antibiotics are most evident in livestock. They end up getting intestinal tumors and physical weakness.


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jayrachi
post Jul 22 2013, 12:01 PM
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I'm sure we're probably poisoning ourselves with whatever we are currently eating in America and other first world places, but as long as we remain dependent on that (AKA forever), I don't think throwing untested chemicals into our foods will change.


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Anarchy
post Aug 3 2013, 06:50 PM
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I recently went to the March Against Monsanto protests in Montreal (Canada), actually. As a person who isn't necessarily pro-civilization and technology, I do not think that using these methods to make food grow faster or taste better is healthy or good for the people. But I think most would agree on that, what concerns me the most is that we are not told this, at least not in the US and Canada. I think in our point of time, stopping the use of genetically modified foods is not a high possibility, if it is at all. But we should certainly know when we are consuming them. If you buy corn at your local supermarket, you expect it to be fresh and healthy, if however it is not then they should label it or find other ways of informing the people. I think genetically modified foods should be banned, and if they are not they should at least be labelled.


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kumoku
post Apr 27 2016, 09:25 PM
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Majority, if not all of current studies (that aren't biased) say that there's nothing to worry about with GMOs. They don't pose a threat to our environment. I mean, your pets are GMOs, cause GMOs stand for genetically modified organisms (whether through natural selection or artificial means).


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Calyhex
post Jun 9 2018, 11:58 PM
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I'm going to approach this purely as someone who has worked with human GMOs and non altered GMOs.

Yes, that is an important distinction. All food is genetically modified. It's been bred and hybridized over generations. Stick around farmers long enough and you'll find people eventually cooing over various strains of tomatoes, corn, beans, potatoes, etc that whatever family has been breeding for years, even generations. They've hybridized them for what they want. These are those "heirloom" plants you pay top dollar for in big box stores, or the really expensive seeds for your organic garden.

However, when most people talk about GMOs they're talking about scientists playing with lasers and making dinosaurs. Oh...wait.

So, GMOs. They're becoming an issue for farmers for multiple reasons.

1. Seed price. With popularity spikes a decade ago and since, GMO crops have cornered a lot of the market and the seed price has raised on farmers to make them actually more expensive, because those companies don't see anyone moving away from them in the long run. Also? Farmers can't save seeds year to year, because of patents. GMO seeds cost 40% more than conventional seeds.

2. Genetic drift and GMO contamination, which can kill farms because farmers are blamed, even though they can't control pollination. StarLink Corn contaminating food supplies depressed corn prices and put farms out of business. They sued and won. This happened with rice in 2006, wheat in 2013, and corn again in 2014. Why were all these an issue? Because they weren't approved for human consumption yet, or weren't approved in other countries. So, it killed our exports and farms went under, and organic farmers who don't even use GMOs can lose their certification if cross-pollination happens with GMO plants from another farm.

3. Weeds: Heard about issues with Roundup? It was created to deal with weeds around GMOs. However, since it was created there are glyphosate-resistant weeds, that are very hard to kill. At least 14 documented. Glyphosate increases diseases in crops and blights by altering plants’ ability to absorb nutrients, not to mention destroying soil microbes and ecology. Why was it used? Because it was required to tend GMO corn from Monsanto.

4. Lack of biodiversity. Some people claim we should move to 100% GMOs. If that were to happen, say everyone was using GMO 60 corn, and a blight were to occur that would wipe out GMO corn, all corn would be lost.I don't know if anyone knows history, but does anyone know why Irish came to America in droves? This. Right here. There was little to know biodiversity between potato species, a blight came, and hey, presto change-o, Irish Potato Famine.

5. Issues with GMO plants. Feeding animals BT corn is just not goin to happen unless you give them nothing else. Conception rates also drop for them on BT corn if that's all they get. Dr. Judy Carman from Flinders University did a long term study and found a thickening of the uterus in livestock fed with genetically modified corn and soy, while others had severe stomach inflammation not found in the control groups.

6. Financial issues: Many countries won't accept GMO grown foods. This means that GMO farmers often can't sell off the stock they grow. The government has to save them, but the farm stays afloat because it gets money for "tech fees." This hurts our exports, creates more waste, and strains the Dept of Ag.

And now I will shut up.
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