GMO Corn Hides in Your Food

Time to share more about genetically modified food. In my preparation to teach the college nutrition course, I discovered some things about our food supply that surprised me.

I really thought that I did not eat genetically modified food until the documentaries Food, Inc. and King Corn taught me some new things. Eighty-eight percent of corn grown in the United States is genetically modified. That means the corn tortillas I eat come from GM corn. Any corn product and corn is in almost every processed food in one form or another is most likely processed from GM corn.

So my new motto – only eat products from organically grown corn, which by definition cannot be made with genetically modified plants. Also look for non-GMO on food labels.

My second big eye opener: the meat I eat most likely comes from animals that have been fed GM corn. That means when I eat beef or chicken or turkey or possibly even farmed fish, I’m exposed again to GM corn.

Cattle brought to huge feeding lots stand around in their own manure fattening up on GM corn. But if cattle have a choice between GM and non-GM corn, they totally avoid the GM corn. They have that built in wisdom that we as humans have somehow lost.

But alas, they don’t have a choice, so they have to eat the GM corn. Free range cattle fed on grass remain healthy a long time. But force them to eat corn as their main food source and they develop acidosis, a metabolic condition that leads to early death. But this march to death is intersected by the slaughter house.

So the meat we buy in the super market comes from metabolically deranged cattle.

Grass fed beef contains good healthy oils for our bodies. Corn fed beef contains more fat and more fat in an unhealthy form for us.

Here’s the problem. Cattle reach slaughter house ready weight much faster when they are confined and fed mostly corn, ready for market in less than a year. That means corn fed beef costs less than grass fed beef.

Grass fed beef takes 2-3 years to be market ready and so it costs more.

So do you want the cheap stuff or are you willing to pay more for healthier food?

That’s the question I had to ask myself.

It’s not easy to get over the quest to always find the best bargain. But the cheap food may actually be the worst bargain when you consider the toll it takes on our health that leads to more money spent on medical care and more lost time from work. And how can you put a price on the way you feel, dragging and droopy versus energetic and alert?

So here’s the question I asked my students:

What do you think might be happening to your body when you eat corn-fed beef?

Ryan Kwiatkowski answered:

I think the saying “you are what you eat” comes into play here. If the cattle eat GMO corn, then this affects their entire body. Cows that eat this corn develop diseases and will die prematurely if they are not sent to the slaughterhouse.

So if we eat cows that are unhealthy and have terminal diseases, what is that going to do to us? Logically if we consume a large amount of corn-fed meat, there is a good chance that we will develop serious diseases and possibly die earlier than we would if we did not eat corn-fed meat.

Furthermore, since the corn-fed meat is “fat masquerading as meat,” this would add to the unhealthy nature of corn-fed meat, and possibly account for the widespread obesity of Americans today.

I think that the “unhealthiness” of this type of meat is compounding. To start off, the cows are not “free-range,” but are penned up in stalls, not being allowed much movement. Adding to that, the cows are corn-fed, which makes them even unhealthier. Then the fact that the corn has been genetically modified compounds the problem even more. So the end result of adding all these factors together is a dire dietary situation.

And here’s part of Jennifer Schipper’s answer:

Also, because the corn is modified, humans have no idea what kind of corn they’re eating- the corn that the cows ate leading them to death. If the beef doesn’t kill us, the corn probably will.

So take a look at Food, Inc and see what revelations you get.