Are GMO foods safe to eat?

What’s GMO? Is it a food? a bacteria?

GMO stands for genetically modified organism, which means a particular plant has NOT been hybridized or developed through natural cross-pollination of the plant.

For example in gardening, people cross a yellow tomato with red tomato and will be able to harvest orange tomatoes. That’s natural cross-fertilization in order to allow a natural variant of a plant to develop.

What happens in GMO is that there is a gene inserted into a plant in order to give it particular characteristics, but unfortunately the plant that is inserted is not a plant gene, it’s a bacterial gene.

So what your immune system sees is a protein for a plant that has bacterial protein chains in it. This causes a lot of people’s immune systems to activate because we have a rather extensive ‘most wanted’ book that is designed to react negatively to a lot of different bacteria. So there is nothing natural about cross-fertilizing a plant with a bacteria. That would never happen in nature and so obviously our immune system is designed to string it out.

There’s been a pretty good study to show that people in particular that have reactive immune systems (those who already have allergies or asthma) absolutely have immune system activation in response to GMO foods. So this is relevant for the common GMO foods in our society.

I’m sure you’re aware of most of them, but if you’re not, by far one of the most common ones is soy.

Unfortunately if you’re not buying organic soy, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be genetically modified. The easiest way to make sure you’re not consuming genetically  modified foods is to buy organic because the organic standard doesn’t allow it.

Another highly GMO tainted crop is corn. If you’re not getting organic corn, you’re pretty much getting GMO corn.

What are some ways you can use to stay away from GMOs?

1. Buy organic foods as much as you can so the cost of organic foods go down with time. The more organic foods we buy, the less expensive it becomes. 
2. Prioritize your grocery list. I understand that organic produce is more expensive than conventional but it all comes down to priorities. Which one is more important for you health? Soda or organic strawberries? Frozen foods or organic grass fed chicken that you can turn into a healthy meal for you and your family?
3. Go to the farmers market and shop there.  Always ask the farmers if their produce is organic and if it’s sprayed. 

Grocery stores are carrying more organic selections now because people are getting more educated regarding conventional grown food and animal products. 

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