Truth vs. Opinion about Our Food
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Truth is built upon facts. Opinion is built upon interpretation, which in turn is often influenced by personal prejudices. People can hold differing—even diametrically opposed—opinions about the meaning and relative importance of fact-based truths, but people can’t have their own facts.
For instance, Monsanto may claim that glyphosate in its Roundup weed killer doesn’t cause cancer in lab animals when used according to the label directions. Researchers in France may say that it can cause cancer in lab animals when used according to the label directions. Both can’t be true.
This is why we have the scientific method. Scientists treat Monsanto’s statement and the French researchers’ statement as hypotheses, and they test each one. They get results. They do the tests again. The result that repeats over and over and over again through many trials of the test is true. Unless the other hypothesis also yields consistent results, it is false.
What if half of the time, the glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer and half of the time it does? Does that mean that both hypotheses are true? No, because if a substance causes cancer in half of its trials, then the statement that it can cause cancer is true.
But it all turns on semantics. “Doesn’t” cause cancer is an absolute. It means that glyphosate will never cause cancer. “Can” cause cancer is qualified. It means it may or may not cause cancer. It’s not the same as saying that glyphosate “must always” cause cancer.
If the two hypotheses were stated as absolutes (glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer/ glyphosate always causes cancer), then scientific testing might likely show that both hypotheses are wrong. But while both absolute statements can be wrong, they both can’t be true.
The truth is that glyphosate may sometimes cause cancer. And that’s exactly what the World Health Organization said about glyphosate, over the vigorous protest of Monsanto.
In other words, WHO spoke the truth. Monsanto offered its opinion.
It’s no wonder that many people are confused about the long, contentious debates about our food supply’s nutrition and safety. Not only are the issues thorny, but many folks simply don’t have access to the truth, or the truth is being twisted into opinion to support somebody’s agenda. What’s a person to do, especially a parent who wants to feed his or her family safely, with properly nutritious food, in a way that protects the environment and is sustainable?
The answer is that there are facts out there that you should know about in order to make wise and healthy food choices. In this post, I’m going to give you the facts, not my personal opinions. You look at the facts and then make up your own mind. I promise this will be as concise and to the point as I can make it. I’ve been researching the areas of food and health for close to half a century, and doing it by following scientific research published in reputable, peer-reviewed journals.
Here’s what I’ve found to be true:
Biodynamic Gardening and Farming
Let’s start with Biodynamics because it was the first of the organic methods of growing food, derived in the 1920s from a series of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in Germany. Steiner was an anthroposophist. Anthroposophy is a spiritual movement, founded early in the 20th Century that attempted to bridge the gap between our material world and the world of motivating spirit. As Steiner said, “Anthroposophy is a way of knowledge—a cognitive path that leads the spiritual in the human being to spiritual in the universe.”
He made this journey into his own consciousness and on his return, founded Biodynamics, Waldorf education, anthroposophical medicine, the Camphill Movement, Eurythmy, and other disciplines. He also was the architect of the Goetheanum, one of the masterpieces of European architecture.
As agriculture was heading into the chemical age with mineral fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and so on, Steiner promoted an agriculture that was holistic, conceiving in a blaze of “as-above-so-below” thinking that the farm is a living being, just as the whole earth is a living being (Gaia), and as a single plant or animal is a living being.
As such, the farm (or garden) must be sustainable, containing within itself everything it needs to operate in good health in perpetuity. This means recycling back to the soil all plant and animal wastes through composting, limiting outside inputs to the farm, and taking into account not only the soil and living components of the farm, but the sun and the moon and the stars as mechanisms for timing plantings and applications of Biodynamic preparations. The preparations, Steiner taught, put the farm in touch with forms of energy in the earth, air, and sky that are beyond the ken of ordinary thinking, thus linking Biodynamics with German mystical traditions.
The Upside: The point of Biodynamics is to grow the healthiest food possible in as earth-friendly a way as possible. And Biodynamic practitioners swear it works just fine. By founding a toxin-free agriculture, Biodynamics opened the door to what today we know as organic agriculture.
The Downside: Critics call Biodynamics magical thinking, quackery, and pseudoscience. But it has grown greatly in popularity in recent years, and it is essentially a careful way to harmlessly treat the life of the farm.
Organic Gardening and Farming
Take away Steiner’s metaphysical approach to food production and what’s left is essentially the organic method.
Many people think that organics is simply growing and processing food without the use of toxic agricultural chemicals or anything artificial, like food coloring or man-made flavor compounds. That’s true as far as it goes, but there is a more over-arching concept that’s at the core of the organic method: biodiversity is the key to health, and health can be transferred through the food chain, from the soil to the human being.
So the organic method stresses the need to first increase the health of the soil. By “increase the health of the soil” is meant stimulating the biodiversity of all the creatures that live in the soil—the microbes, especially, but all the other plants and animals that dwell in the soil. The more different kinds of creatures, the healthier the soil. And how are these creatures to be made healthy? By feeding them organic matter like composts, plant wastes, cover crops turned under, composted manure, fall leaves, and farm and garden wastes; that is, anything that was once living tissue. As the organic matter decays through the action of the soil’s creatures, plant nutrients are released into the soil solution, as soil moisture is called. They are released in the forms that plants like best and in the quantities needed depending on the time of year. Fully decayed organic matter is a substance called humus that further regulates the release of nutrients in a timely way for the optimal health of the plants growing in the soil.
Healthy plants are eaten by farm animals that, in the organic method, are raised humanely and with consideration of the animals’ natures. They are not subjected to antibiotics that are, in effect, like pesticides against microbes. Organics is about supporting biodiversity. The more creatures that live on the farm or in the garden, the healthier the whole system is.
Antibiotics are used in agriculture primarily to prevent disease that would spread rapidly in the kind of crowded conditions in which conventional animals are raised. But any killing agent—pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics—puts pressure on the target organism to evolve defenses. And so pesticides create pressure for the evolution of pesticide-resistant insects, herbicides push plants to evolve herbicide resistance, and antibiotics cause disease organisms to develop resistance to them, which is just what we see today when doctors and researchers are confronted with antibiotic resistance across a wide spectrum of diseases. Similarly, growth hormones that force the production of excessive amounts of meat and milk from farm animals harm the health of those animals.
In organic food production, healthy soil means healthy plants and healthy animals who eat those plants. And so we come to the human beings who, if they choose to eat organic food, eat both the healthy plants and the healthy animals. Thus health is transferred from the soil to the human being.
There’s much more to be said about the organic method, but it all comes down to biodiversity—supporting all the forms of life on the farm and in the garden. And that means pests have their place. First of all, pest insects are food for beneficial pest-eating insects. No pests and you have no beneficials. Since health is the objective, diseases are controlled naturally, as the definition of health is the absence of debilitating disease. Do individual plants and animals and even humans get sick on the organic farm? Sure. An organic farmer may need to use antibiotics to save a sick cow, but for the duration of the treatment, the cow cannot be called organic. Antibiotics are never used routinely as a preventive. One course of antibiotics for a sick cow is not going to force evolutionary changes in the disease organisms. Routine use of antibiotics will.
Because organic plants and animals are grown or raised with their health in mind, they are given all the nutrients they need to maximize the flavors and nutrition created in their tissues as they grow.
There’s another corollary to the organic method: nature knows best. The job of the organic grower is to understand nature well enough to follow her rules, to work to enhance her objectives, and to move food production decisions toward the ultimate objective of nature: a climax ecosystem in which every source of food is utilized by one or another of nature’s creatures, where the web of life is so strong and drawn tight that no pest or disease can break out and cause the system to crash. That’s biodiversity, and biodiversity is the key to health.
The Upside: Organic food production augments health through the whole system. Toxic chemicals are eliminated. The nutrient content of foodstuffs is maximized.
The Downside: Because organics threatens the business of agriculture—that is, the sale of agricultural products like seeds, toxic chemicals, and processed foods—large food companies spend huge amounts of money fabricating false science and spreading disinformation about organics, as well as proclaiming the safety of the chemicals used in conventional farming. When you hear that more people get sick from organic food than conventional food, or when you hear that half the world will starve if agriculture goes organic, or when you hear that there’s no difference between the nutrition in organic and conventional food, or when you hear that the chemicals used in agriculture are safe, don’t believe it. The truth is quite different. And that’s not my opinion.
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
The most common ways that new cultivated varieties of plants are discovered is through selection. Luther Burbank was probably the world champion at this technique. He’d scatter thousands of seeds and select for the tastiest or showiest or most interesting or strongest of the resultant seedlings. Farmers have been doing this since the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago.
There’s a reason that nature has created plants and animals as species within their genus. That’s so evolutionary lines are kept consistent through time. So today’s wild tulip species is the same one that popped up each spring 2,000 years ago. There may have been mutations during that time. The advantageous ones gave the plants a reproductive advantage and so they thrived. Other mutations may have died out.
Occasionally, when two species have the same number of chromosomes, they can interbreed and produce hybrids of the two species. If each species has the number of chromosomes that don’t match another species, even within their genus, they can’t successfully reproduce, or offspring are sterile. Most of the sweet corn you eat every summer is a hybrid between two corn types that have genes for sweetness.
Very rarely, when chromosomal numbers line up, there can be an intergeneric hybrid, where two genera (the plural of genus) interbreed and hybridize. An example is the intergeneric hybrid between the perennial flower Coral Bells (genus Heuchera) with the pretty Eastern Foamflower (Tiarella) to create the hybrid x Heucherella, with the x denoting that it’s an intergeneric hybrid.
All of these hybridizations are sexual, with each partner donating half the genes. Each gene contains a code that instructs the body to produce certain proteins that then are used to create the creature, be it plant or animal. The result is often vigorous and shows traits from each parent. The genes in the strands of DNA that make up the chromosomes are not modified in any way. As with any organism, each parent donates half the genes. If nature allows the parents to cross, it’s a safe bet that the result will be part of nature’s ongoing plan of evolution.
If nature doesn’t allow the cross, no offspring are produced. If offspring are produced, but are weak or prone to evolutionary disorders, the offspring either are sterile or die off. All of this is nature’s way of protecting us from the “unintended consequences” of unwise monkeying around with reproductive processes.
So what is genetic modification and what are GMOs?
Unlike selection or sexual hybridization, genetic modification is another thing altogether. It involves determining the function of individual genes, which are certain stretches of molecules along strands of DNA that determine the physical structure and characteristics of any organism. When a gene is found that codes for the production of a certain protein or trait desired by the genetic engineer working on creating a novel life form, that gene is snipped out of the DNA of one organism and inserted into the DNA of another—often unrelated—organism.
So, for instance, the gene in the bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis that allows the bacterium to make a toxin that kills caterpillars has been inserted into the DNA of corn plants, among other crops. Every cell of the plant now produces a caterpillar toxin. But would a bacterium and a corn plant sexually reproduce in nature? Highly unlikely. Similarly, the gene that causes certain sea plankton to phosphoresce has been inserted into the DNA of cats, and there are now cats that glow in the dark.
One of the most environmentally impactful bits of genetic engineering has placed a gene for resistance to the herbicide glyphosate—the active ingredient in Roundup—into the DNA of corn, allowing farmers to spray their cornfields to kill weeds without affecting the corn plants.
There are three possible consequences of this kind of genetic engineering. The first is that some good will come from it. It may be that in humans with a genetic bias in favor of a disease like multiple sclerosis, that insertion of a certain gene could protect the person from developing the disease.
The second is that the genetic modification creates neither anything good nor anything bad. It simply makes the cats glow, or whatever.
The third possibility is that something could possibly go wrong, and that unintended consequences kick in, and that something harmful could be unleashed upon the world, something impossible to stop, and that that genie can’t be put back into the bottle. Like Frankenstein’s monster. And that’s why genetically modified food is often called Frankenfood.
Actually, there’s mounting evidence that the third possibility is actually happening. Whenever a natural organism is threatened, it adapts. And so more and more insects are adapting to the presence of the once-useful Bacillus thuringiensis toxin and are becoming immune to it. Similarly, weeds are adapting to Roundup-resistant crops, and the herbicide is losing its potency.
Furthermore, evidence is increasing that eating GMOs (genetically modified organisms) damages the internal organs of the animals that eat it. Not only that, but there is evidence that the Bacillus thuringiensis toxin gene lodges in the human gut and becomes part of our own DNA—thus permanently turning our guts into pesticide factories.
Besides the story of Frankenstein’s monster, there’s another cautionary “fairy tale” that’s applicable here: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Nature has been at this evolution game from the dawn of time, and she has developed a system of checks and balances to keep things running fairly smoothly and protecting her children from nasty surprises. Along come humans with our tools for genetic modifications, and we say, “Move aside, mom. We know better than you what we need. We’ll take evolution from here and direct it as we see fit, not as you see fit. We are smarter and wiser than you.”
But are we? Isn’t this the sin the ancient Greeks warned about: hubris? Since we are just a part of nature, shouldn’t our attitude be that Nature knows best and that we should follow her, rather than lead her into the unknown? The organic farmers and gardeners from the beginning have said that the way to raise food and other crops is naturally, following nature. And if you look at the result, you see that organic farming and gardening is healthy and efficient, with a host of unintended benefits—all because the crops are grown and the animals raised by relying on nature’s wisdom.
Nature’s wisdom is the wisdom that creates the climax ecosystem, where biodiversity is maximized, all trophic niches are filled, a plethora of creatures abound, all interacting in ways that allow them to make a living in a safe and healthy manner.
Bottom line: Genetic modification is a technique to be used with the utmost—I mean utmost—care, because we can’t see the unintended consequences.
Now here’s a timeline about GMOs.
1994 – GMOs Hit Grocery Stores
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the Flavr Savr tomato for sale on grocery store shelves. The delayed-ripening tomato has a longer shelf life than conventional tomatoes.
1996 – GMO-Resistant Weeds
Weeds resistant to glyphosate, the herbicide used with many GMO crops, are detected in Australia. Research shows that the super weeds are seven to 11 times more resistant to glyphosate than the standard susceptible population.
1997 – Mandatory Labels
The European Union rules in favor of mandatory labeling on all GMO food products, including animal feed.
1999 – GMO Food Crops Dominate
Over 100 million acres worldwide are planted with genetically engineered seeds. The marketplace begins embracing GMO technology at an alarming rate.
2003 – GMO-Resistant Pests
In 2003, a Bacillus thuringiensis-toxin-resistant caterpillar-cum-moth, Helicoverpa zea, is found feasting on GMO Bt cotton crops in the southern United States. In less than a decade, the bugs have adapted to the genetically engineered toxin produced by the modified plants.
2011 – Bt Toxin in Humans
Research in eastern Quebec finds Bt toxins in the blood of pregnant women and shows evidence that the toxin is passed to fetuses.
2012 – Farmer Wins Court Battle
French farmer Paul Francois sues Monsanto for chemical poisoning he claims was caused by its pesticide Lasso, part of the Roundup Ready line of products. Francois wins and sets a new precedent for future cases.
2014 – GMO Patent Expires
Monsanto’s patent on the Roundup Ready line of genetically engineered seeds will end in two years. In 2009, Monsanto introduced Roundup 2 with a new patent set to make the first-generation seed obsolete.
And if you’re interested, here’s a more complete description of the microbiology of DNA.
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the cells’ energy factories, organelles called mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA), that are passed down from the mother exclusively.
The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people. The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.
DNA bases pair up with each other, A with T and C with G, to form units called base pairs. Each base is also attached to a sugar molecule and a phosphate molecule. Together, a base, sugar, and phosphate are called a nucleotide. Nucleotides are arranged in two long strands that spiral around one another, called a double helix. The structure of the double helix is somewhat like a ladder, with the base pairs forming the ladder’s rungs and the sugar and phosphate molecules forming the vertical sidepieces of the ladder.
An important property of DNA is that it can replicate, or make copies of itself. Each strand of DNA in the double helix can serve as a pattern for duplicating the sequence of bases. This is critical when cells divide because each new cell needs to have an exact copy of the DNA present in the old cell.
A gene is the basic physical and functional unit of heredity. Genes, which are sections of DNA, act as instructions to make molecules called proteins. Think of a strand of DNA as a rope. This foot and a half of rope means you’ll have blue eyes. This next section means that you will have a prominent nose. And so on throughout your body. In humans, genes vary in size from a few hundred DNA bases to more than 2 million bases. The Human Genome Project has estimated that humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes.
Every person has two copies of each gene, one inherited from each parent. Most genes are the same in all people, but a small number of genes (less than 1 percent of the total) are slightly different between people. Alleles are forms of the same gene with small differences in their sequence of DNA bases. These small differences contribute to each person’s unique physical features.
In the nucleus of each cell, the DNA molecule is packaged into thread-like structures called chromosomes. Each chromosome is made up of DNA tightly coiled many times around proteins called histones that support its structure.
Chromosomes are not visible in the cell’s nucleus—not even under a microscope—when the cell is not dividing. However, the DNA that makes up chromosomes becomes more tightly packed during cell division and is then visible under a microscope. Most of what researchers know about chromosomes was learned by observing chromosomes during cell division.
Each chromosome has a constriction point called the centromere, which divides the chromosome into two sections, or “arms.” The short arm of the chromosome is labeled the “p arm.” The long arm of the chromosome is labeled the “q arm.” The location of the centromere on each chromosome gives the chromosome its characteristic shape, and can be used to help describe the location of specific genes.
In humans, each cell normally contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46. Twenty-two of these pairs, called autosomes, look the same in both males and females. The 23rd pair, the sex chromosomes, differ between males and females. Females have two copies of the X chromosome, while males have one X and one Y chromosome.
How Do Genes Work?
Genes are often called the blueprint for life, because they tell each of your cells what to do and when to do it: be a muscle, make bone, carry nerve signals, and so on. And how do genes orchestrate all this? They make proteins. In fact, each gene is really just a recipe for a making a certain protein.
And why are proteins important? Well, for starters, you are made of proteins. Fifty percent of the dry weight of a cell is protein of one form or another. Meanwhile, proteins also do all of the heavy lifting in your body: digestion, circulation, immunity, communication between cells, motion–all are made possible by one or more of the estimated 100,000 different proteins that your body makes.
But the genes in your DNA don’t make protein directly. Instead, special proteins called enzymes read and copy (or “transcribe”) the DNA code. The segment of DNA to be transcribed gets “unzipped” by an enzyme, which uses the DNA as a template to build a single-stranded molecule of RNA. Like DNA, RNA is a long strand of nucleotides.
This transcribed RNA is called messenger RNA, or mRNA for short, because it leaves the nucleus and travels out into the cytoplasm of the cell. There, protein factories called ribosomes translate the mRNA code and use it to make the protein specified in the DNA recipe.
If all this sounds confusing, just remember: DNA is used to make RNA, then RNA is used to make proteins–and proteins run the show.
All the proteins in your body are made from protein building blocks called amino acids. There are twenty different amino acids used to make proteins, but there are only four different nucleotides in DNA and RNA. How can a four-letter code specify 20 different amino acids?
Actually, the DNA code is designed to be read as triplets. Each “word” in the code, called a codon, is three letters long. There are also special “start” and “stop” codons that mark the beginning and end of a gene. As you can see, the code is redundant, that is, most of the amino acids have at least two different codons.
Just about every living thing uses this exact code to make proteins from DNA.
Scientists first studying DNA sequences were surprised to find that less than two percent of human DNA codes for proteins. If 98 percent of our genetic information (or “genome”) isn’t coding for protein, what is it for?
At first it wasn’t clear, and some termed this non-coding DNA “junk DNA.” But as more research is done, we are beginning to learn more about the DNA between the genes—stretches known as intergenic DNA.
Intergenic DNA seems to play a key role in regulation, that is, controlling which genes are turned “on” or “off” at any given time.
For example, some intergenic sequences code for RNA that directly causes and controls reactions in a cell, a job that scientists originally thought only proteins could do.
Intergenic DNA is also thought to be responsible for “alternative splicing,” a kind of mix-and-match process whereby several different proteins can be made from one gene.
In short, it now seems that much of the interest and complexity in the human genome lies in the stuff between the genes… so don’t call it junk.
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To sum up: When someone tells you that GMOs have been around since the time of Luther Burbank, politely ask if they would like you to give them a tutorial on the truth. If someone claims that GMOs are perfectly safe, remind them that unintended consequences are part of the picture.
GMOs represent an enormous gamble that human beings know better than nature about how to drive evolution into the future. That sounds like my opinion, but it is really a fact.
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