Civil Liberties, Health Care, Food Policies

How to Avoid Genetically Modified Foods

January 13, 2020

Huffington Post - This week's headline-grabbing news that agriculture giant Monsanto’s genetically modified corn was found to cause organ failure in rats is sure to send panicked shoppers into an anti-frankenfood frenzy. The good news is that this is precisely the kind of damning study (GM corn + animals = death) that will help bring to light the potentially catastrophic consequences of scientifically altered crops. The bad news is that even those who see that light will have a difficult time completely boycotting genetically modified organisms, or GMOs as they've come to be known.

That's because GMOs aren't just limited to the foods we eat; they're also in the clothes we wear (cotton is one of the most prevalent GMO crops) and in the everyday household products we use. Those who buy giant jugs of distilled white vinegar to make DIY eco-friendly cleaning products might be interested to know that their vinegar may, in fact, be distilled from GMO corn. I say may, because if you live in the United States, there's no proof that the products you buy or the food you serve your children hasn't been genetically tampered with. While the EU, Japan, China, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand have labeling laws for GMO foods, there are no such requirements in the US, despite the fact that a 2008 CBS News poll found that an overwhelming 87 percent of Americans would like GMO foods to be labeled.

As usual, lawmakers are light-years behind the American consumer. And with a GM crop pioneer now firmly planted in the Obama administration as director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, I'm not holding my breath for GMO crops to be restricted in the US anytime soon. Here's how you can take charge in the meantime:

Buy organic. Under USDA guidelines, organic foods must be produced without bioengineering. Keep in mind, however, that for multi-ingredient or processed organic foods (counterintuitive though that may sound), the label organic means only that the product is at least 95 percent organic. Translation: While the tomatoes in that "organic" spaghetti sauce may, indeed, be organic, the soybean oil it contains may be from GMO crops. Play it safe by looking for products that are labeled 100 percent organic, and stick to unprocessed foods whenever possible.

If you can't afford to buy everything organic, at least make sure that the animal products you purchase -- meat, dairy, eggs -- are. With conventional beef, for instance, you can be pretty sure that mountains of Roundup Ready corn were fed to those cows. That conventional zucchini? Not as looming a threat, at least where GMOs are concerned.

Beware the SCCC. No, it's not some new government agency (though maybe it should be). That stands for soy, cotton, canola, and corn, which are among the most common GMO crops. The statistics are startling: 91 percent of soy, 87 percent of cotton, 75 percent of canola, and 73 percent of corn crops grown in the US are GMO, according to the USDA. So unless the label specifically says organic, you can pretty much bet that any food or product you buy that contains any of the big four have been genetically changed. We're not just talking tofu and tortilla chips, either: It's the sheets on your bed, those potato chips fried in cottonseed oil, and the aspartame in your Diet Coke (made using a fermentation process that involves soy and corn).

Avoid processed, packaged foods. Thanks to farming subsidies that have produced unimaginable surpluses of cheap (mostly GMO) corn, we now have dozens of corn-based ingredients served up to us in increasingly creative ways by the processed food industry. As Michael Pollan points out in The Omnivore's Dilemma, "Corn is in the coffee whitener and Cheez Whiz, the frozen yogurt and TV dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes...there are some 45,000 items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn." Bottom line: If you're concerned about GMOs, don't eat anything with an advertising budget.

Check out the Non-GMO Shopping Guide. The site just launched last month, and offers more tips on how to avoid GMOs. The guide also includes lists of common name-brand foods that may contain them, as well as ones that are GMO-free.

Finally, the most important thing you can do, beyond voting with your dollars: Call your Congressperson to say that you want to see mandatory GMO labeling laws. If the jury is still out as to whether GMOs cause organ failure, then we shouldn't have to play this guessing game every time we go to the sup

Obama Information Czar Calls for Banning Free Speech

January 14, 2010

Prison Planet.com - The controversy surrounding White House information czar and Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein’s blueprint for the government to infiltrate political activist groups has deepened, with the revelation that in the same 2008 dossier he also called for the government to tax or even ban outright political opinions of which it disapproved.

Sunstein was appointed by President Obama to head up the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an agency within the Executive Office of the President.

On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” the man who is now Obama’s head of information technology in the White House proposed that each of the following measures “will have a place under imaginable conditions” according to the strategy detailed in the essay.

1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.

That’s right, Obama’s information czar wants to tax or ban outright, as in make illegal, political opinions that the government doesn’t approve of. To where would this be extended? A tax or a shut down order on newspapers that print stories critical of our illustrious leaders?

And what does Sunstein define as “conspiracy theories” that should potentially be taxed or outlawed by the government? Opinions held by the majority of Americans, no less...