Travel, Food, and Slices of Life

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Want Ice Cream on that NEW Apple Pie?

Back in the late 70s, my ex was living with a guy who had purchased some interesting hot dog buns…..they were U-shaped and would not break apart, like most buns can when you put the weiner inside, so they had a certain market appeal. Well, the roommate left them on the counter and there they sat, week…after week…..after week. It became an interesting thing to check to see if any mold was growing…..and the answer was no.

That was the beginning of my awakening of looking at food labels. But at that time, I was still trusting the FDA to be sure the food we were able to purchase was safe. Now I know better.

appleThe news hit that the FDA has now approved genetically modified apples. These GMO “Arctic Apples” will be red delicious and granny smiths, the two varieties most fed to children. Oh great, let’s introduce into our children’s bodies something that is untested.

What will this new process do? Apples will not turn brown when cut.  According to information shared by the Organic Consumer Association: “While most existing genetically engineered plants are designed to make new proteins, the Arctic Apple is engineered to produce a form of genetic information called double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). The new dsRNA alters the way genes are expressed. The result, in the Arctic Apple’s case, is a new double strand of RNA that genetically “silences” the apple’s ability to produce polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme that causes the apple to turn brown when it’s exposed to oxygen.”GMO_DNA_1bna_naba_ribbon

The FDA sees no reason to be sure it is safe.  Other scientific organizations disagree.  I don’t know about you, but knowing the manipulation is inside the genes changing things around and some scientists believe it IS getting into eaters’ bodies is enough for me. I will be asking my apple farmers if they are using this technology….and I will not eat this. Instead, I will continue to use the old fashioned way to keep apples from turning brown. Again, if Granny did not eat it, you should not. 24 Hours Later

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?—MLK Jr. Letter from Birmingham City Jail (1963)

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The Right To Know

Two states have tried to pass public referenda on the issue to label food that contains genetically engineered ingredients.  Both California and Washington State failed to pass their attempts at labeling, but the votes are getting closer and closer as fewer residents get confused by the big money thrown at them by the GMO proponents.  This November voters in both Oregon and Colorado will deciding if they want food available in the grocery store to be labeled if any ingredients have been genetically modified.top_ten_genetically_modified_foods

You may be unaware that much of the food you have been eating since the the late 1990s have genetic modifications. Some of those are to permit herbicides and pesticides to be sprayed on what you will eat without harming the food as it grows. There are health issues that have increased since that time and because testing is blocked, there is only circumstantial evidence that these new chemicals in our food are the cause.     The government has run no tests on these foods, saying the companies who produced the modifications to the original food should do it, but testing is not required.  Many countries around the world do not permit foods with genetic modifications to be sold.  GMO lab results

There is a huge group of companies that are fighting the referendum, saying everything is safe.The big players arguing against it are involved in the production of the seeds or the grocery store trade association.  They do not want the referendum in Oregon and Colorado to pass because it would mean they would need to label food with genetically enhanced ingredients and once they identify this, they are afraid of a loss of income.

They have begun to pour millions and millions of dollars into advertising to convince voters it is a bad idea. The main argument is that any change in labeling will cause the price of the food to increase “by hundreds of dollars a year.”  What they don’t say is how often they already change labels.

This is just one example of how a food company changes packaging with no change in pricing.


The side fighting the labeling is pouring millions of dollars into both Oregon and Colorado to try to block the referendum. They are concerned that the consumers’ right to know what they are eating will affect their profits.

No matter how you personally feel about GMOs in your food, labeling should not be a problem for you. The public’s need to know about chemicals in the food has been approved again and again for other items. The food labels just got revised again to make serving sizes easier to read, in the hopes people will stick to them. For health reasons, many people want to avoid this unproven technology.

What’s in YOUR dinner tonight?GMO LetMeDecide