World Food Day – Genetically Engineered?

Mark your calendars – Sunday, October 16^th is World Food Day – and during the month of October, many groups are coming together to urge our Federal Government to require labeling of genetically engineered crops, so that we as consumers have a better idea what we are eating. We may choose to support the genetic engineering of crops, or not to support it – that is our own decision. But the Federal Government does not have the right to take that choice away from us

How can we know that a crop is genetically engineered? There are a couple of ways. 

First – look at the food. If the oil is from corn, soy, cottonseed or canola, the likelihood is that the food is genetically modified. If the meat is not grass fed or wild caught, changes are excellent that it is genetically modified. Most non-organic dairy products come from cows treated with genetically modified rbGH (growth hormone).

Second – read the label. If a food is organic, the chances of its being genetically engineered are very small – unless, of course, there has been cross-pollination of crops. If a food is genetically modified, it should say so on the label. But oops! In the United States there is no requirement that genetically modified foods be listed on the label. So if the label does not say organic, assume genetic modification.

Some foods that frequently contain genetically modified ingredients: Infant formula, salad dressing, bread, cereal, hamburgers and hotdogs, margarine, mayonnaise, cereals, crackers, cookies, chocolate, candy, fried food, chips, veggie burgers, meat substitutes, ice cream, frozen yogurt, tofu, tamari, soy sauce, soy cheese, tomato sauce, protein powder, baking powder, alcohol, vanilla, powdered sugar, peanut butter, enriched flour and pasta. This list is taken from Jeffrey Smith’s website.  

This does make grocery shopping a challenge, unless you stick to the produce section of the supermarket, and buy only grass fed beef or wild caught fish (and even so, the GM salmon have been known to escape from their pens and breed in the wild).

What else can we do? You can call ahead to any restaurant at which you plan to eat, and ask a few simple questions
- What oil do you use for cooking?
-  Is your olive oil pure or a blend?

·         -  What is the source of your meat and fish?

·         -   Do you know which of your food products is genetically modified?

·         -  Do you use packaged sauces or dressings?

You can download the Institute for Responsible Technology’s shopping guide here: http://www.nongmoshoppingguide.com/

You can even download it to your iPhone:  
iPhone non GMO shopping guide 

You can send a message to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. You do have to disclose your name and e-mail address.

This is the message that I have sent (slightly edited from the original):

I am writing to urge the FDA to require the mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods. I have a right to know about the food I eat and what I feed my family.

In America, we pride ourselves on having choices and making informed decisions. Under current FDA regulations, we don't have that choice when it comes to GE ingredients in the foods we purchase and feed our families. Labeling is essential for me to choose whether or not I want to consume or feed my family genetically engineered foods.

Genetically engineered foods are required to be labeled in the European Union nations, Russia, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, and many other countries around the world. As an American, I firmly believe I should also have the right to know if my foods have been genetically engineered.

Sincerely,

Please feel free to share this information and the e-mail with your state legislators, as well as with the FDA Commissioner.

We can only vote with our pocketbooks on this issue. Remember how hard it used to be to shop gluten free? And look at how easy it is now – even WalMart has organic and gluten free products. They still do not label the GM foods, however. But remember, the power of the pocketbook is not to be underestimated.

New test for Lyme disease now available

The Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine will be offering a Borrelia culture test by late October 2011, for under $1000 including the office visit to discuss test results. The test is provided by Advanced Laboratory Services, a CLIA certified laboratory in Pennsylvania, and should be reimbursable through most insurance carriers - although the laboratory itself will not submit any invoices.

 The test can pick up both Borrelia burgdorferi and also other Borrelia species – in fact it can identify all varieties of spirochetes. Results should be available within 7-10 days of the specimen’s arrival in the laboratory.If the test is positive, additional PCR and DNA sequencing testing may be done at an additional charge, to further identify the organism involved.

Image from the NY State Dept of Health

The advantage of this form of testing is that it is a direct culture test, not an indirect immunochemistry test. The disadvantage is that Borrelia is a parasite, grows very slowly, and is very difficult to culture – requires a living organism in which to grow. So if the test is positive, it’s definitely gives a positive diagnosis of spirochete infection – which can be confirmed with immunohistochemistry in order to diagnose the exact spirochete which was cultured. If the test is negative, then we’re back to square one again, attempting to prove a diagnosis.

The advice of the lab is to do several blood cultures – the way we generally do for standard blood cultures. If you elect to do two or three cultures, there is a price break for the second and subsequent, as long as they are done on the same day.

Breast Cancer – Cause and Consequences

The “fight” against cancer is not going so well. The National Institute of Health (NIH) is predicting that cancer will be diagnosed in one of every two men and one of every three women in the United States within the next 20 years. Cancer is the leading cause of death in children under the age of 14.

Are we picking the wrong battleground? We fight the cancers with ever more research dollars and ever more screening for early detection, and still the incidence grows. Maybe we need to look further at the multiple things that we know can cause cells to mutate into cancer cells, and figure out whether we have any control over those things.

Read more...

Genetically modified food crops are safe??!?

The announcement has been made. The pillars of medicine have decreed it so..............so ya gotta believe it!

These two rates are littermates, both 19 days old, the larger one fed standard rat chow, the smaller one also fed genetically modified soy. H'mm - GM foods are safe?

We now have an epidemic of chronic non-communicable diseases in the world. This includes diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease among others. As a medical doctor with a keen interest in nutrition it strikes me as quite a coincidence that this is occurring and escalating rapidly just a few decades after we began introducing, and widely distributing genetically modified foods into the diet of the world's people.

Years ago when I first learned about the genetic modification of food I wondered (a) if it would work and (b) why it was needed and I even wondered (c) whether it would be a risk to life and health on the planet. I understood Mendelian genetics and with the hybridization of plants by cross-pollination I felt that agricultural science probably already knew the best ways to increase crop productivity and increase plant resistance to pests.

Plants have been genetically modified in order to increase crop yields and decrease susceptibility to pests. By far the most common genetic modification to these plants is the addition of a gene that codes for a pesticide. Pesticides kill microbes and insects by inhibiting their living enzymes. Apparently our government believes that pesticides won't affect our enzymes or that we can wash off the pesticides from the plant foods that contain them. When it comes to genetic modification, this is one thing that cannot be washed off because the insecticides are already inside the cells of the plants.

     The majority of the soybean plants grown in North America contain genetic modifications. For corn it's the same thing - even now with sweet corn.These two are the most successful genetically modified crops. Among other noteworthy GMOs were the frost tolerant tomato plants which were not successful, because they didn't taste so great with a salmon gene spliced into them. Genetically modifying or splicing of genes is done through a DNA virus which can insert the desired gene into the target plant or organism.

Though there is no hard evidence it has anything to do with genetic modifications, along a similar line comes the issue of soy formula and the dramatic increase in type I diabetes among children who were fed soy based infant formula. The world medical community is well aware of this. I agree wholeheartedly with European Pediatricians who now strongly discourage the feeding of soy formula to infants. Because of the coincidental timing of the epidemic of chronic diseases and the mass introduction of GMO foods, I strongly encourage the agriculture and food industry researchers to explore this coincidence to find any link that may exist.

What can we do in the meantime? We can vote with our pocketbooks, and simply refuse to buy any foods which have been grown from genetically modified crops. Check out our website, Food 101, for more information on genetically modified foods. 

Jonathan B Murphy, MD

Bugs resistant to Monsanto Bug-resistant Corn? This cannot be!

An article in the Wall Street Journal on Monday August 29th affirms that “Monsanto Corn Plant Losing Bug Resistance”. 

Corn genetically modified to be resistant to insects which feed on it is no longer resistant. The insects are apparently more clever than the scientists, and have evolved a way of still being able to eat their preferred food, despite our best efforts to thwart them. What I found most interesting in the whole series of articles I downloaded from the Illinois University Bulletin is the recommendation to go back to crop rotation – which farmers have been doing for millennia – to avoid creating a breeding ground for resistant insects. That way, the insects get some, but the population does not get out of control, and the people get some, and the farmers are not forced to spend excessive amounts of money on “insect-resistant” seeds which are, as it works out, not insect resistant at all. Everybody wins except the producer of the genetically modified seeds. 

And this fall farmers will have the opportunity to purchase a genetically modified sweet corn, according to an article I just downloaded from the Monstanto website. So I hope everyone had all the sweet corn they could eat this summer, because our protection from GM corn has just disappeared.

We do appear to be breeding insects that can survive in extremely harsh climates – climates which are actually intended to kill them. One can only hope that we human beings can evolve the same resistance to chemicals which our insect brothers are developing, since we are all being exposed to the same lethal mixtures in the food we are consuming. So far, with the prediction for a cancer diagnosis in 1 of every 2 men and 1 of every 3 women within the next decade, I’m afraid that the chemicals are winning.