Do GM Foods Make Us Fat?

A new study shows that genetically-modified food is contributing to the obesity epidemic. Researchers found that GM corn fed to mice led to an increase in overall body weight of almost 4%, while also increasing the weight of their livers by up to 11%.

No matter how you feel about genetically-modified food, it’s interesting to discover how they are made.

The first step in the process is finding a useful gene. For instance, in StarLink corn, the important gene is a resistance to the pesticide Roundup, which means that whole fields of corn can be sprayed with the pesticide, rather than weeded, without any of the corn crop dying. In some cases, this gene is found by accident or is "created" by disabling other genes. Large companies like Monsanto are spending huge sums looking for genes that might fill agricultural needs, such as plants that can withstand drought.

Not surprisingly, scientists defend these GM foods as healthy. In the March 5th edition of the Washington Post, Brian Palmer quotes researcher Jonathan Jones as saying, "If you have a plant with 30,000 genes, and you add another, you have a plant that is 99.999% identical. It’s very unlikely that would make a difference for human health."

But spraying Roundup pesticide on GM crops is causing an unexpected problem: farmers sprayed so much Roundup that weeds quickly evolved to survive it, producing pesticide resistant superweeds. In order to grow crops, farmers now have to spray their fields with more toxic herbicides, return to labor-intensive methods like regular plowing, and even pull weeds by hand.

In the New York Times, William Neuman and Andrew Pollack quote farmer Eddie Anderson as saying, "We’re back to where we were 20 years ago. We’re trying to find out what works."

They quote weed scientist Mike Owen as saying, "What we’re talking about here is Darwinian evolution in fast-forward."

If you’ve been eating TOO much food–whether it’s GM or organic–we have the solution: Anne Strieber’s famous diet book "What I Learned From the Fat Years." Using scientific principles, she devised a diet that helped her to lose 100 pounds and YOU CAN TOO, and at less than $5, it costs MUCH LESS than the ineffective diet books you’ll find in stores!

You won’t go hungry at our great Dreamland Festival in May–we offer you a meal plan where you get three great meals a day, in a lovely dining room where you’ll get a chance to meet lots of people who ARE INTERESTED IN THE SAME THINGS YOU ARE. You won’t go hungry–for either food OR new information–but don’t delay, our Festival sells out EVERY YEAR.