Sometimes these concepts can seem difficult to understand, but we have to educate ourselves if we are going to be safe consumers! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us, Seth! I love Living Nutz snacks and I can definitely tell the difference between products like yours and ones that have been genetically modified.

Interesting blog. I live in Europe (Netherlands) and have been wondering for some time whether some of the issues addressed at this blog (GMO, pesticides, cruel cattle farming) may be a bit better in this part of the world. I do not know, and am certainly not kidding myself- we have the same issues here- but they seem even more pressing in the US. Thanks for addressing this topic!(And happy to say I am eating organic veggies, and OK I admit: some organic bacon for dinner).

Anyone out there know about a resource that compares amount of the GMOs produced in different parts of the world (as referred to by Ambidee)? I’ll take a look around…

This is so upsetting to me! I feel pretty helpless too b/c it seems money always wins. More and more reason to grow my own food, but at the same time, I have to work, so I am somewhat dependent on my community, be it locally, or nationally, for food. Oh well, I’ll order some nuts from you–that’s for sure. I’m off to check out your site.

Hi Tara,
Gardening indoors can be a great solution to the time-consuming outdoor vegetable garden. Have you looked into this at all? Joining a CSA is another great money saver. Although you pay more up front, in the long run its much cheaper!

So…would you rather have potentially damaging genes floating around in the wild, or definitely damaging chemicals? GMOs that enable more crops to be grown organically can’t, in my book, be called a bad thing.

And for that matter, there isn’t a single food item in any supermarket (organic or otherwise) that isn’t genetically modified from its wild predecessors. Almonds are, in their natural state, poisonous–they contain cyanide. The fact that we can eat them at all points to thousands of years of domestication–or, genetic modification.

Rebuttal part 1

Rebuttal part 2

I also find it paradoxical that you suggest that letting evolution occur is morally better than tinkering with the code of life. You are essentially advocating death as a way of life. Because that’s what evolution is: survival of the fittest–and hecatomb upon hecatombs of the not-so-fit dying, to paraphrase Stephen Jay Gould. To put it another way: how many predecessors of the modern horse had to die before it evolved? Now, I’m not suggesting that people could do it any better (and I’d take 100:1 odds that, had life been left up to humans, we’d have screwed ourselves long ago). But to my way of thinking, you cannot claim to advocate a philosophy grounded on the inherent goodness of life, while simultaneously encouraging the death of millions of creatures at the same time.

I think about what I eat and what I feed my children more and more these days so thank you Seth, (and Kris!), for this great blog. I spend a lot of money on organic raw almonds. So today after I read this blog I looked at the label on my tub of almonds and emailed the company because I wanted to know what the deal was with pasteurization. The Operations Manager emailed me back this info “the almonds are steam sterilized, first sent through a steam area fully surrounding the almonds with 211 degree temp then they are sent to a heat chamber at 395 degrees then they are placed in a cooling chamber where the temp is 90-95 degrees. They are still considered to be raw by the USDA”. What? That sounds cooked to me! I’ve been buying organic “raw” almonds that have been baked!

I think this is a very very interesting topic. I am against genetic tinkering and belive that survival of the fittest species is what we need to encourage. I am not sure if people realize if the eat an heirloom tomatoe or an almond that is raw and not tampered with the taste and the nutritional value is superb. What I worry about more than I can say is the super weeds and super garbage we are putting into our bodies. It has to stop. Remember when a rose had a smell… now it has been hybridized until it will live for two weeks while trucking it across country but all the beauty that made it what it was is gone. We have to protect life and the circle of life and death are natural. There is nothing unnatural about a plant species losing in the evolutionary process. I am not talking about things like polar bears that we are destroying but plants and animals that time is changing and evolving. Life is life. I am against the GMO’s thanks for the article. callie

I love Seth and agree with him 100% I remember when the almond pasteurization talk first started. Seth jumped right on it and started joining different raw forums, encouraging everyone to step forward to try halting the rule.

I love his passion and dedication to health and spreading the knowledge about what is/isn’t healthy for our bodies.

Another wonderful Guest Blogger, Kris!

Lots of love to you,

Wendi
XOXOXO

I am ambivalent on the subject of GMO’s. I did some field work back in the day on a project that entailed modifying some crops native to African soil (which cannot grow there any longer due to colonization era’s land rape) to be able to flourish and produce with less water/mineral rich soil while retaining its nutrient integrity. I really cannot say that is a bad thing. Additionally, I feel that not enough research has been done on GMO’s, or ANY consideration given for nations that experience food shortages on a consistent basis and cannot import as much as they need due to shitty IMF/WTO standards (example: some South America countries, Middle Eastern countries, Africa, and some Eastern European countries).

I truly do not believe in retarding science capabilities and boil it down to corporate interests. That is not fair at all.

Yeah, I read about almonds. Almonds are unique among the edible foods because they were basically undomesticable: wild almonds are highly toxic and, if eaten, are deadly.
They also taste horrible. So the question becomes how and why did prehistoric farmers, who knew nothing but trial and error, take a nut like
that and over thousands of years turn it into something edible. It is all the more amazing because each new tree has to be planted and takes years before it bears nuts. Can you imagine planting a tree, tending it and waiting years for it to bear nuts, then feeding the nuts to testers who die and then somehow selecting the nuts that are least toxic, planting them and starting over again.

Anyway, I am not quite clear how that is the same thing as splicing genes from one species and forcing it into another. That seems to be a very different process. Personally, to me, at this time, it seems like selective breeding is still differeent from fiddling with genes in a lab.

Also, there are other problems with genetically modified foods, such as patenting your genetically modified corn. The seeds often (alwyas?) must be purchased each year, which gives the owner of the patent more money, because you can’t take the seeds from the old corn. This process forces poorer farmers to buy seeds every year.

I am certainly no expert on this topic though. It sounds like some of your know more than I do. There is just so much to learn. Yikes.

Only in a country where we’ve forgotten what it means to die of tuberculosis and ergot poisoning, would pasteurization be an issue…

@ Tara: We assume that tomatoes wouldn’t have eventually evolved fish anti-freeze on their own, when, who knows, maybe there’s a wild tomato out there with this exact same protein. It’s not entirely absurd–wings evolved at least twice, and there’s some speculation that eyes did, too. I’d be money that, if you could ask a tomato plant whether it would want the protein, it would say, “Hell yeah!”–after all, the advantage of being able to start earlier would undoubtedly come in handy.

And yes, patent law would enable Monsanto and the like to hold a monopoly over the seeds–a much more compelling reason, if you ask me, to at least tightly regulate GMOs. Really, there are so many better reasons out there, not one of which was addressed.

Ok! Let’s take a deep breath and open our minds for a moment… I’m gonna get spiritual with this. This will probably seem way off topic.

This article was written under a specific premise to shed some light on an issue of concern for many people. Ultimately, my opinion resides in the fact that with proper conscious awareness we can override any life negating effects that will otherwise result from an off balanced, usually predominantly left brained approach to thinking. Seemingly, as of now the masses of humans ruled by societal influence have become very limited with self-restrictive views about who they think they are and how they are affected by the world around them. While this particular article only points to my observations on this topic at the particular time it was written, it is in no way indicative to my overall philosophy of life which is to experience perception from a reality based perspective. What do I think is a reality-based perspective you may be asking? Well, simply put it is the reality that occurs from mental equilibrium derived out of discovering the truth of life. What’s the truth of life? Archaeus, chi, ki, prana, all also known as life -force. The electrifying truth that only lives in the present moment not the dead past or imagined future. With a life affirming intention present we can rise above any temporary or human based reality and come to the realization that GMO’s and hybridization are minor issues in the scope of what the current world situation is at this time.

I advocate life-affirming practices like loving and enjoying our lives to the extent that we allow ourselves, eating wild edibles that are rich in valuable nutrients and natural life force. But most important, I feel, is to spend more time improving our health and state of mind by focusing our focus towards our own self improvement.

It is interesting to observe people who are so passionate about criticizing others especially when it is based entirely on the limited scope of what their mental excrement detoxification process is! If they could direct that energy inward to work on their own issues, then the world would heal itself on its own. This behavior shows where humanity is currently at in its personal transformation. We all owe ourselves a lot more self contemplation and silence that is free from the confines of the languages we have been taught. Language that, for the most part, dominates our thought processes. We are so much more than what our limited thoughts and opinions allow us to be. That’s my opinion anyway.

Wow, so much aggravation and passion. @sethleaf, I agree with most of what you say and certainly who you are feels synchronized and whole–except that this kind of passionate argument we are seeing here is a necessary part of the healing/changing that is occurring in human and all life. Also,I hardly think that GMO, which can only survive with tons of pesticide being dumped on it destroying the soil and has over 200 million acres devoted to it and is wreaking havoc on indigenous farmer’s lives is a ‘minor issue’. I find Jules incredibly forceful and narrow, and it is hard to deal with that since this is the very kind of mind-set that is perpetrating all kinds of atrocity to the soil to the animals to the insects and to the people. The level of destruction this GMO stuff is causing, not to mention loss of diversity and nutrtional content and illness (google organ failure and gmo) and disempowerment is very high. We can’t let our macro- new age understanding distance us from our passion. So those of you that had an allergic reaction to Jules, good for you, and to Sethleaf for reminding us of the larger perspective, good for you too. Just don’t go climb some mountaintop somewhere and leave us to effectively combat alone the people who are inadvertantly adding to the problem. Thanks

One has to start with the soil, because without it – there are no plants. We read about soils getting poorer, well, what does it mean?

It means that the living microorganisms within the soil – bacteria and others – have depleted in numbers greately, and therefore, you are left with just pieces of inorganic materials – pieces of rocks, or sand. If you grind a stone into powder and then plant a seed into that powder – nothing much will happen, the seed will germinate with water, but it won’t grow for very long. This situation will be even worse is you sterilise the rock or the rock powder after you ground it – which means you will kill off most bacteria on it. Without bacteria converting inorganic minerals into organic humus – there is no soil!

What happens when we have a big field and grow one species on it year after year? Well, even in middle ages, and before then – take Egypt, Messopotamia, for instance – thousands of years ago, people knew of crop rotation and field resting. What does it mean? It means that they would (1) rotated various species (say beans one year, corn the next on the same field), in order for harmful diseases that are bad for one plant type to die off during the year that another plant type is grown (2) different plants produce or take nutrients differently within the soil, for instance beans (peas/runner beans, etc.) enrich the soil with nitrogen through their unique roots, so plants that need nitrogen, can be planted and will thrive the next year in the same field; pumpkins need a lot of organic nutrients from the soil – or humus, the soils become quite poor if pumpkins are grown in the same field over several years. So it was known wehther a plant would “give” or “take” from the soil. Also letting a field “rest” for a year allowed for other things to happen: organic matter (various leaves, roots, stems: anything formerly alive) would have time to accumulate and disintegrate on such a resting field, and the lvels of bacteria multiply. On a resting year, there would be no main crops, that would only “take” and not give anything back, many wild plants would produce various beneficial compounds through photosynthesis, i.e. through the energy of sunlight and water within the soil AND their leaves, stems, etc. would then disintegrate into the soil – enriching it. Now after a year or two of leaving the field to “rest”, the soil humus (top soil) level would have been enriched enough by the fact that wild plants (Weeds) would have created various minerals in it and more importanly soil bactgeria would have converted a lot of these into rich humus. Now let’s look at how we have been growing things over the last century or so: we sow, we spray (or don’t), we take away, we put nothing back. We do this for a couple of years, the soil seems to get poorer and poorer, well, what do we do? Go back to crop rotation? Field resting? Well, there are better ways: permaculture studies relationship between soil, plant species and how they affect each other. And of course, just as in nature, where plants die back “into the soil” to bring the nutrients back, creating richer and richer top level of soil year after year, we have to do that too – if we are growing something, then the parts of the plants that are not used, should be composted and returned back into the fiels, or simply left there to compost at least. Because what we have been doing is just coming to a beautifully-balanced meadows, ripping it apart and planting one culture doggedly decade after decade, not even bothering not only to bring something organic back to keep the top level thick, but not even having the decency to change the type of crop. And then we wonder why the plants have such poor immunity (bugs and diseases come aplenty!), we also sprayed these fields with one type of chemical to feed the plants quickly – which results in accelerated growth and makes plants contain a lot of liquid, hence they are bigger, more watery, but hey – they don’t hve agreat immunity, as form nature’s point of view, nutrient-deficient plants won’t stand a chance come tougher times such as too muich rain (and it rots quickly) or too little water (and it runs out of nutrients as it hasn’t accumulated much in its poor watery leaves. So, such plants are succeptible to diseases much more so, than slower growing plants, that are not “injected” with nitrogen through concentrated feeding, but take what they need and when they need it from the soil – resulting in much more nutritionally dense cells, that not only make the plant stronger, with higher immunity to withstand pests, but such plants also have many more phytonutrients that we, humans, apparently need too! We become deficient in these unique nutrients that can only be formed when the soils are rich and the plant is not stimulated by one type of chemical to grow – we get a better immunity and health too! Now if we take healthy bacterial levels into the account, as without them – there is no good soil, as there is nothing to convert organic and inorganic matter into rich humus. There is a complex thousands of bacterial strands residing in the soil – and they do not respond very well when, say, pure nitrogen is dropped in huge quantities into the soil, the plants would benefit too fast, and the soil bacteria of many species would not at all. Couple this with toxic chemicals that are sprayed to kill of pests and diseases and guess what you have? soil with many beneficial bacteria dead, gone…It is strikingly similar to what’s happenning to human health also: we give antibiotics and give and give them (yes, sometimes there is no other choice and I don’t mean those cases), and these toxins (antibiotics) kill off not only the pathogenic bacteria, that was, say responsible for the infection in the lung, but they kill many of the beneficial bacteria without which we cannot absorb certain nutrients and we do not produce enough anti-bodies. Now, in many cases antibiotics are given too frequently and not every doctor tells you to go “get probiotics” after your ocurse of antibiotics to restore some of the healthy flora that you lost. What do we get? A human with not enough of the good bacteria on mucosal lining starting from the mouth and nose all the way to the anus. what happens when there are not enough good species living there? We get bad guys spreading, and also some fungi and yeasts. We have an individual with poor immunity, who tends to pick up diseases as easily as plants without good bacteria in the soil. On a final note: if you feed a child a nutritionally-poor diet, toxins (sa in the form of synthetic colourants or additives in his diet) and his gut bacterial levels are not right, you are going to get poor immunity, sickness, poor growth, bad appetite or a desire to eat easily absorbable acidic ingredients, such as glucose and sugar. The same happens to plants: they have very little resistance to pests, they grow poorely, theyir toxin levels in the soil prevent proper bacterial growths, but spur on yeasts and fungi growth, as such life forms are very good at disintegrating toxins, such plants are as unprepared for the “real world” of the wild, as our nutritionally starved and antibiotically-overfed child.

Restore the soil and its “probiotics” – healthy living microorganisms, research permaculture (mixing of plants and planting different plant species side by side for their benefit) – and it becomes obvious that ripping parts of DNA from a spider and inserting it into a soil bacterium and then infecting a plant with it is not a solution, it won’t bring back the good stuff: all the beneficial bacteria, that areresponsible for the creation of good soil, of good nutrients, all the unique phytonutrients within the plants, the healthy abundance of a good crop, genetic manipulation is an anti-solution against “Nature” – well think about what that means, as we are living organisms on this planet too, and therefore it is a primary crime against us, humans, as part of nature! The harsher reality that such manipulations are not even done for the right reasons either: they are not done to “feed the masses”, crops like that are not bigger and, more importantly, they are not nutritionally better, they are worse. The scariest part is the unpredictible genetic mutations that occur within soil bacteria, within the plant itself and animals that consume them – us! Think about the lack of human studies, and the one study that was done on consuing cooked(!!) soya in the 90s – there were changes found in the bacterial levels of humans in the gut after consuming just one meal! Our bodies do not recognise such mutated proteins, we treat them as invader, as evenmies – hence overstimulating immunity and producing many antibodies. There is also a concern that when such plants produce pesticides inside them (from a spider /fungus gene), the bacterial DNA may still affect bacterial DNA in our guts, which can possibly make our always present bacteria in the gut produce pesticides in our intestines for life! What do we do then? what happens when pollen/soil/debries of GM plants are carried into the wild – when many wild plants start to make toxins within their stems and leaves, preventing wild insects from being able to live on them? What happens to birds, which rely on eating fruit, seeds of such plants? What happens to birds if insects start to dissapear, that normally lived on those plants and cnanot anymore as these are toxic???? What happens to animals that fed on those plants/birds/etc. What happens to our planet? There are very obvious and hidden agendas with GM. It looks very much like not just a bull, but a mammoth in a china shop – breaking delicate structures within the global equilibrium without concern for what happens next.