say no to gmo

gary, I totally agree with you- & I'm getting a kick out of reading this thread! But don't waste your finger muscles trying to argue your point... This boards beliefs are like a cafeteria- take what you want, leave the rest. People argue vehemently, yet only on single points that they grasp out of vast amounts of info. Whatever... you just got to go with your gut instinct, no pun intended. I guess you could take that literally too though- I mean, what if you chose to eat only GMO/"crap" for 3 months, & went into remission? You could open up a whole 'nother argument! Again, no food I eat seems to make one bit of difference- organic, GMO, fast food, slow food.... And I do primarily seek out local farm foods, I'm not a Costco type shopper. My wallet wishes otherwise.

I didn't call anyone names, you must be talking about someone else... I hope!

It's obvious that nobody's mind will change. But we at least deserve to choose what we eat, i.e. LABEL THE GOD DARN GMOs.

Then Gary et al. can eat all the genetically modified food they want, and we can have the option to stay away from it. Take another look at the rats from that French study. I wonder if that is why Monsanto never published any studies longer than 90 days. If Gary et al. want to trust that corporations would never put profits before the health of the nation, that is their privilege. But I really want individuals to make their own decisions: LABEL THE GOD DARN GMOs!

But apparently our fearless leaders don't believe we are mature and responsible for our individual choices, at least here in the U.S.A., so they continue to block labeling of our food.

Post Edited (BabeintheWoods) : 4/1/2014 6:02:07 PM (GMT-6)

Take it easy there AZYooper, you went a little overboard by suggesting Gary's humorous little analogy about cavemen was the sort of comment from “... a spokesperson for a chemical company or someone that is politically opposed to all regulation.” That is extremist. Gary's remarks are quite reasonable, given the misguided attacks directed his way.

We aren't all like like Soydud, rocking on the front porch, not trusting anyone , and freaking out over every chemical that has a scary sounding name. ;-)

There really are many important things to get riled about, from pollution, land clearing, human rights, pay rates, wars, abuse … in fact, the list is endless. Perhaps GMO's are not at the top of the list for everybody ?

I once lived in a hippy community (for those of you old enough to remember) full of eco-warrior, organic recycling, peace and love activists. If people think they might be extreme because they choose to eat organic food – errr, you aren't. And that old hippy community is now a multimillion dollar resort, built by some of the kids of those hippies ;-).

My definition of extreme is when the huge majority of people aren't against something (let's use GMO as an example) and a very small vocal minority is against it, then they would be extremists, or far outside of the mainstream. As I said much earlier in this thread, that doesn't necessarily mean that one side is right and one side is wrong, merely that the voices of this huge minority have extreme viewpoints on the subject. Contrary to some poster's beliefs I am not actually saying that I am going to defend GMO foods forever. I'm saying I don't know right now and I see no proof that anyone else knows either. There are many warrantless accusations with no evidence other than theories, hypothesis, and beliefs and even the believers use phrases like POTENTIALLY harmful. I just want to hear anti-gmo believers say they don't know now and that they don't know what the end result is going to be when more evidence comes in. That's what I'm saying. I don't know and I'm waiting to see when more evidence comes in. Right now I don't see anything that warrants being anti-gmo other than paranoid fear of the unknown.

As far as grape seed extract goes, it has been working wonders for me but I challenge anyone to find a post of mine where I'm saying it is the cure for all UC or that it applies across the board for everyone, such as people trying to convince us that Carrageenan is bad for everyone. If I was hammering on everyone that they should try grape seed extract because it would help everyone then I would be an extremist in that view. I don't.

Thanks to Eva and Ambling. One of my major faults is that sometimes I like beating my head up against a brick wall until it bleeds.

dmacell: You've actually got it completely backwards. As I said up above in this post, my mind is actually not made up. My mind is open to evidence. I just haven't seen any yet but I'm not going to condemn something without a fair trial on theories, hypothesis, or beliefs that something could POTENTIALLY be bad for me. That just means it could be POTENTIALLY good for me. The truth is that it is the anti-gmo's who have their minds made up before any real evidence even comes in. I think you and others give way too much credit to Monsanto. They are not the all powerful omnipotent God you believe them to be. They do not own the government.

Babe: I have absolutely no qualms about labeling GMO's and absolutely think that they should to give people the freedom of choice to buy or not to buy, knowing the facts. I would donate money to that cause - as long as it was not an anti-gmo cause. I certainly don't trust corporations to always do the right thing. GM automaker is under the gun for that right now. But, that doesn't mean that you find something guilty (such as GMO foods) with no proof, just feelings and beliefs and a little extremist blogs thrown in for good measure. The thing is one of the biggest things I have learned in my life is that nobody is ever right 100% of the time and nobody is ever wrong 100% of the time and it bugs me that these people with extremist views feel that they are right 100% of the time. I'm willing to admit that I'm not right 100% of the time and I am willing to listen to reasonable evidence on GMO's. I just haven't seen any yet. It's not a case of me being brainwashed by Monsanto backed studies. It's a case of me not being convinced by flawed studies from the anti-gmo people.

dmacell said...
I eat bread. I make it myself from organic ingrediants. No added yoga mat in my bread.

Really? Home-made bread with actual gluten? I love freshly-baked bread!

I might just pay a visit to your house then... >_>

Edit: My brain has gone into hibernation mode for the night, so I'm not even going to pretend to say anything intelligent, but yeah, like ambling strongly hinted at, there's other things going on under the sun besides GMOs, other things which will end up impacting your health and lifestyle far more than GMOs ever will.

Post Edited (NiceCupOfTea) : 4/1/2014 7:51:57 PM (GMT-6)

Who exactly made you arbiter of this discussion, ambling? Last time I checked, you were not a mod. If you wish to apply for moderator status and control these discussions, please get in touch with the admin. He'd be more than happy to accommodate for you.

If AZYooper wants to voice his opinion, that is his prerogative. It does seem to fall within the bounds of the rules for him to make those comments.

It also wouldn't be the first time someone made those kind of remarks towards Gary. JJ-3 just made a thread about leaving this forum because Gary's comments pushed her over the edge. I don't think he fully realizes how ridiculous some of his posts are.

I also don't think the accusations towards him are baseless or unfounded, as I've made the same ones to him. I don't have him on ignore, but I just roll my eyes at some of his posts.

I think sometimes people are so fixed in their ways that they aren't willing to listen to any contrary viewpoints. I was the same way for 10 years. I really wish people could go through my post history because I said the same things he is saying about GMO foods and ingredients.

And babe -

People have changed. I've frequented this forum for some time and many have made changes to their diet for the better. What's the alternative? There's no pill or treatment that will provide some of the risk reductions in cancers and illnesses that fresh, wholesome foods will do. We have to do everything in our power to overcome this predicament and work harder than the rest of the population. If that means giving up junk foods which are linked to obesity and other illnesses, then so be it. The sooner the better, right?

And there's enough research and evidence on carrageenan that it should not be in our food supply. If other countries decide to prohibit it from their infant formulas and various products, then there's a reason behind it. It's not like these countries play spin the bottle and decide to ban ingredients randomly. Safety, again, isn't the priority of the FDA. If that were the case, drugs like Rofecoxib would have never made it to the market. Lobbying and money have a great deal of sway in America.

Gerasim said...
Who exactly made you arbiter of this discussion, ambling? Last time I checked, you were not a mod. If you wish to apply for moderator status and control these discussions, please get in touch with the admin. He'd be more than happy to accommodate for you.

So ambling was trying to censor AZYooper, while AZY was not at all trying to control what Gary said. No, of course not.

The hypocrisy of this board astounds me at time.

A certain group of you have started to gang up on ambling recently and it doesn't take a genius to see why either. None of you can answer his posts. I mean, not really answer, that is. So you're trying to drive him off this board by other means, such as bullying and ridicule.

It probably won't work, chums.

SG (I see you calling yourself 'Gerasim' now, which my Russian in-laws would consider pretentious and offensive) I see you've popped in to make more wild accusations about me, and others.
Carageenan is not a GMO, nor does so-called junk food necessarily contain GMO's - I don't see the relevance.
You claim I have acted like an arbiter, shown a desire to be a mod, and tried to suppress AZY's ability to post - they are ludicrous claims. As you well know I remain vigilantly objective and ruthlessly reasonable (quite unlike yourself I'm afraid.)

Soydud, my 25 year battle with severe IBD is not something for you to try to mock with little 'jokes' and baseless remarks.

Thanks NCOT, I do notice the paucity of sensible responses to my posts. I'm sure there are many here who feel the same way about their posts – getting childish outbursts rather than any sensible responses. Such is the nature of an open forum.
Is it wrong to see personal attacks as unnecessary, and sometimes cruel?

Yes, most junk food has GMOs. But GMOs themselves, as far as I'm concerned, aren't junk food.

Take the virus-resistant papaya, which is a GMO. The papaya ringspot virus was destroying the papaya industry in Hawaii. Once a virus is in a plant, there's no getting rid of it. The virus is vectored (passed from plant to plant) by aphids (bugs).

At any rate, the virus coat protein was inserted into the plant, rendering it resistant to the virus. Now, if you ate a papaya from a tree that was infected with the virus, you ate the virus coat protein. And plant viruses don't infect people -- it's just not possible.

So please tell me, someone, how this GMO is bad and will hurt us or the environment?

I don't deny that a good portion of the GMOs out there were mainly created to benefit the seed industry, but I also don't believe that all of the corn/soybean GMOs have been harmful to the environment. They're looking at transforming corn so that it'll fix nitrogen, just like soybeans do. That means farmers won't have to apply nitrogen to the soil, meaning that nitrogen runoff will no longer be an issue.

I'd encourage a lot of you to read about Mark Lynas.