Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Our changing food supply


The landscape of food has changed.

It is also full of lots of ingredients that just didn't exist when we were kids.   So while our food may look the same, it now contains  artificial, engineered and genetically altered ingredients that are so new that patents have been filed on them in the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  Starting in 1996, the USDA has allowed these "novel proteins" into our food supply to maximize profitability and with no human trials.  

While most countries require that changes to our food supply be proven safe before they are allowed, the United States goes about it backwards.  As long as it hasn't been proven dangerous, they will allow it.  In other words, the burden is on the American public to determine (via disease and possibly death) the safety of these changes.  Here is one example from the dairy industry.  Here is another one where the actual corn seed is the insecticide itself.

The following TED talk by Robyn O'brien is eye opening and potentially anger inducing.  Her research was prompted by her child's sudden onset of a food allergy.  The following 18 minute talk includes some of the following startling statistics:

  • Cancer rates are highest in the United States
  • According to the American Cancer Society, cancer is the second most common cause of death in the United States and results in 1 out of 4 deaths.
  • 1 out of 2 men and 1 out of 3 women will get cancer in their lifetime
    • Of those women, 1 our of 8 will get breast cancer
    • BUT only 1 out of 10 cases are genetic (in other words 9 out of 10 are environmentally triggered)
Take a look at the following video and post your thoughts to comments.








1 comment:

  1. i suppose i had heard a lot of this before, but hearing the facts presented in this talk really made me so furious. it reminds me of how my parents think i waste so much money feeding my family, but i say that food today isn't the same as food when they were raising me. back then it wasn't quite as important buy specifically organic, specifically non.gmo, specifically grass.fed, etc. because more often food was real food. today, things are simply worse than ever.

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