Re: More Reasons to Grow Yer Own...or...Maybe It's Too Late - Page 2

 

In article


See Crazy Bill's contribution to this thread. Amino acids are like leggo
blocks and can be assembled into a vast number of proteins. Proteins in
turn can be structures (muscle, fingernails, hair) or enzymes that
function like catalysts. GMO place DNA (blueprints for enzymes) from
different species together in a cell. Intermediaries (m-RNA and t-RNA)
between the DNA and the ribosomes in the endoplasmic riticulum (where
the protein construction is carried out) from the different species
didn't evolve to work together. The results may (and I emphasize, MAY)
create unique proteins that didn't exist in either of the two parent
species. Then it becomes problematic whether the consumer of these
proteins is allergic to them. It is not a give, that all GMO crops are
bad for us. Some GMOs may be just fine. The problem is we don't know
which ones. Are we sure that there is a problem? See article about
StarLink corn http://www.purefood.org/ge/kellogpanic.cfm  
and reference to GMO potatoes in England
http://www.purefood.org/ge/kellogpanic.cfm
Other crop news

   1. BASF Plant Science is to conduct a 5 year trial of genetically
modified potatoes on a farm hear Hull.
   2. However, UK Greenpeace is calling for the trials to be cancelled
after obtaining results from experiments carried out by Russia¹s
Institute of Nutrition which highlighted links with cancer in laboratory
rats.

These two references should be enough for consumers to demand labeling
and through testing of GMO products BEFORE being approved for
consumption.

How about GMOs being used as fodder for animals?

As we read in Omnivore's Dilemma:
"So it makes evolutionary sense that pastured meals, the nutritional
profile of which closely resembles that of wild game, would be better
for us. Grass-fed meat, milk, and eggs contain less total fat and less
saturated fats than the same foods from grain-fed animals. Pastured
animals also contain conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a fatly acid dial.
some recent studies indicate may help reduce weight and prevent cancer,
and which is absent from feedlot animals. But perhaps most important,
meat, eggs, and milk from pastured animals also contain higher levels of
omega-3s, essential fatty acids created in the cells of green plants and
algae that play an indispensable role in human health, and especially in
the growth and health of neurons‹brain cells. (It's important to note
that fish contain higher levels of the most valuable omega-3s than land
animals, yet grass-fed animals do offer significant amounts of such
important omega-3s as alpha linolenic acid‹ALA.) Much research into the
role of omega-3s in the human diet remains to be done, but the
preliminary findings are suggestive: Researchers report that pregnant
women who receive supplements of omega-3s give birth to babies with
higher IQs; children with diets low in omega-3s exhibit more behavioral
and learning problems at school; and puppies eating diets high in
omega-3s prove easier to train. (All these claims come from papers
presented at a 2004 meeting of the International Society for the Study
of Fatty Acids and Lipids.)"
----

We are affected by what our food eats, so concomitant testing on
livestock should take place as well.

Also as long as GMOs are in the environment, the madness of charging
Percy Schmeiser with stealing Monsantos soybeans when it was Schmeiser's
farm that was polluted by Monsanto's soybean pollen must stop. This same
type of pollution is affecting heirloom corn in Mexico.

Lastly, another quote from Omnivore's Dilemma:

"Taking the long view of human nutrition, we evolved to eat the sort of
foods available to hunter-gatherers, most of whose genes we've inherited
and whose bodies we still (more or less) inhabit. Humans have had less
than ten thousand years‹an evolutionary blink‹to accustom our bodies to
agricultural food, and as far as our bodies are concerned, industrial
agricultural food‹a diet based largely on a small handful of staple
grains, like corn‹is still a biological novelty. Animals raised outdoors
on grass have a diet much more like that of the wild animals humans have
been eating at least since the Paleolithic era than that of the
grain-fed animals we only recently began to eat."

Are naturel foods always good for us? No. That is why we have a liver,
to try to detoxify the natural poisons in our environment. In many cases
humans have had hundreds of thousands of years (if not millions) to
acclimate to the foods that comprise our diets. The foods may be altered
by selecting for traits, bigger, more productive, non-shattering rachis
(as in wheat), but biologically they remain the same set of chromosomes,
the same proteins.

The was the argument that GMOs would provide larger crops. That has not
proven to be the case. The most common types of GMOs are Roundup Ready
corn, which allow a farmer to spray more herbicides and damage the soil
even more, and Bt corn (genetically altered to express the bacterial Bt
toxin, which is poisonous to insect pests) which will undoubtedly lead
to Bt resistant pests.

There is no good argument for GMOs in our food chain, at least not yet.
--

- Billy
"For the first time in the history of the world, every human being
is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the
moment of conception until death."  - Rachel Carson



http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050688.html

 

On Wed, 27 May 2009 10:10:50 -0400, Bill who putters



Nice addition, thanks.

Like it is said.....takes one to know one, eh?  ;-)

Charlie

Seal  -- Crazy


If all were there when we first took the pill,
Then maybe, then maybe, then maybe, then maybe...
Miracles will happen as we speak.

But we're never gonna survive unless...
We get a little crazy.
No we're never gonna survive unless...
We are a little...
Crazy...
No no, never survive, unless we get a little... bit...