New information on avoiding GMO foods….

Today's Post:  Friday, 12-20-2013 

Dr Al Sears is not perfect but does occasionally send good quality and well researched emails about important health issues.

This week he sent one about a new kind of GMO apple that will look better after it’s sliced because the inside surfaces of the chunks you cut it into won’t turn brown.

(I still eat applesauce but no longer eat apples straight including the peel since I found out that even organic apples have some kind of pesticide sprayed on the skins.  Hopefully one day it will be possible to eat truly organic apples that you can buy at the store that don’t use this.

Of course, I still prefer to buy only apples marked as organic for other people because there are some things those don’t have sprayed on them.)

GMO foods have pesticides and other nonfood things in them that you can't wash off because they are literally part of the food.  They are also virtually all sprayed with pesticides and herbicides.  Animals and insects often won' t eat them and there is some evidence they are not safe for long term consumption. 

Allergies and autoimmune diseases and severe decreases in fertility and genetically sound children are some of the things research has found or which seem likely from eating GMO foods.

And, a large percentage of the packaged foods and fast foods that GMO foods go into are best avoided even with non-GMO ingredients.  

So avoiding things like soft drinks and fast food and packaged foods is one of the best ways to avoid GMO foods.

So is avoiding protein foods and fats from animals fed grains because they are fed GMO grains!

The rest of his email though is so valuable, I’m including it here!

It has two labels that some foods now have that show foods that are at least 99 % non GMO and maybe GMO free for one of them and probably completely GMO free for the second one.

(Since I haven’t his graphics I’ll describe each of the two so you’ll recognize them.)

It lists the many countries that DO ban GMO foods or require foods containing them to be labeled. (Most of the modern, developed world’s countries except Canada and the United States are on that list!)

It also has links to resources to help you avoid GMO foods.:

“Right now, the European Union, Japan, China, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand require GMO foods to be labeled. But Connecticut and Maine are the only two states that require GMO labels on food.

Big Agra is still lobbying to make it illegal to differentiate between their GMO foods and the real thing. Monsanto and Kraft spent $46 million dollars to defeat the California GMO label law. But almost everyone else in the U.S. wants the labels. 4

A New York Times poll from this year found that 93 percent of people want GMO ingredients labeled.

An earlier Washington Post poll found 94 percent of people want the labels.

Consumers Union says 80 to 95% of people want GMO ingredients labeled.

Right now, for the most part, labeling is voluntary.

But there are a few things you can look for to help you avoid GMO ….

First, “GMO free” claims are not legal or even scientifically possible right now because the testing isn’t good enough to be 100% sure.

Second, there are two labels you should know about.

One is the label at right:”

(Non-GMO Project is decent as it means 99.1 % GMO free which is NOT quite good enough yet but FAR better than products that ARE at least 95% GMO instead of less than 1%!!)

Their Label has a butterfly on the left in the first section and 

NON
GMO

Project    in Blue on the right in the first section

The second section has VERIFIED in green)

“That means a product has gone thorough testing by the Non-GMO Project. It’s the same standard as the European Union, where any product containing more than 0.9% GMO must be labeled.

In fact, the USDA has even endorsed the non-GMO project’s label. Sellers that want to can use the label on meat and some egg products so you know if the animal was fed genetically engineered crops like soy, corn and alfalfa.

Another label to watch for is the “100% organic” label.

That’s NOT the “USDA Organic” label… that doesn’t mean what you think it does.

Did you know organic is a federally certified term? It can mean different things, though.

A label of “organic” can mean up to five percent non-organic ingredients. These could be GMOs. And you might see the “USDA Organic” logo on the package even though the food is not non-GMO.

But “100% Certified Organic” is supposed to mean that those products have met strict requirements, one of which is that anything 100 percent organic can contain no genetically modified ingredients.5

However, you might see the USDA organic label on both of these packages because it’s allowed.

Look for a “100% organic” label instead. They come in many forms but here’s one example to the right:”

The green logo says 

organic

100%

CERTIFIED

organic

“To find non-GMO products, you can use the Non-GMO Sourcebook at nongmosourcebook.com. It even tells you how and where to get non-GMO seeds.

I like The Institute for Responsible Technology’s site nongmoshoppingguide.com.

You can also visit non-gmoreport.com. Just click on “resources” on the left-hand menu. You’ll see links to companies, and even test kits.

There’s also the European Union’s GM Watch at gmwatch.eu.”