Hellobee Boards

@Mrs. Pen: Are you watching Nightline? Frankenfish!

ETA: I'm afraid of GMOs.

Definitely not a fan & trying to move away from them completely!

Given the track record of things like margarine, artificial sweeteners, olestra, and the like...I'm going to refrain from consuming GMOs as much as possible.

This is going to sound lame, but I am against GMO's and would like to avoid them but I don't know how. I heard that basically all kinds of cereal have them!

I think the thing with GMO is where do you draw the line with what you can't/won't eat? For example, I'm not crazy about hormone-enhanced meats, so I do try to avoid those. But a farmer could plant 2 types of tomatoes right next to each other, and end up with a hybrid type of tomato - technically, that is now considered genetically-modified. Will I eat it? Yes. Should it be labeled GMO? No, I don't think it should. The big push in CA to pass Prop 37 failed, and for now I think that's good. I think you have to consider HOW something's been genetically modified, and right now there's not enough information available for that.

I honestly don't care either way. I find organic food to generally be half rotten and poor tasting, not to mention being more expensive. I would pay more if it were better food, but it is not. HOWEVER: keep in mind that I live in an isolated area in the middle of the country, in the far north, so there is not a great selection of produce even at the best times of the year. I'll buy whatever isn't brown or bruised and sadly, the organic or 'home grown' or 'unmodified' or 'never preserved' food generally is the bad looking stuff. We don't have trader joes, whole foods, etc. We have a Walmart SuperCenter.

Same as @thehistoryofus

@littlebug: as far as i understand, a hybrid that occurs naturally isn't what a GMO is. GMOs are literally modified in the lab to be super resistant to pesticides, and to grow huge. the situation you're talking about would be a normal hybrid and has been happening since farming began.

as for me and DH, we definitely try to avoid them (along with factory-farmed meats), not because i think that GMOs are a different/bad kind of food at the molecular level, but because of the monopoly that corporations like monsanto have and the huge lobby they represent. it puts small farmers out of business and economically is a bad thing. their practices are not in the interest of sustainability and we're going to run into a situation where we have no variety of foods.

@birdofafeather: This is the argument against them that I support as well. Monsanto and others are actively working to bankrupt small farmers, and I don't like that.

The reason listed by BirdsofaFeather (small farmers being bankrupted) is the big reason I don’t buy GMOs as well. My main philosophy is to try to food source as local and as real as possible; and that gets harder to do the more small farms are put out of business. I don’t support huge agriculture or factory-farming, just like I don’t support WalMart. I don’t think cheaper short-term equals either cheaper long-term or better for the country long-term. (I also don’t support factory-farmed meat because I try to buy humanely raised and slaughtered meat but that’s a different conversation).

@Thehistoryofus: if you eat any cereal that is not USDA certified organic or specifically says nogmo, your cereal has gm ingredients.

@caffeinated: Exactly. People hear the word GMO and they get scared - and usually they don't even know why, they've just been told that GMOs are scary and bad for you and giving you cancer. The legitimate issues really get neglected in the conversation.