Monsanto!

My friend sent me this link today.  If you don't know anything about the company Monsanto, they have patented seeds (corn, soy, etc)!  They do not allow the practice of saving seeds from year to year, which we have been doing since the start of agriculture (that's 10,000 years of seed saving practice).

http://www.slashfood.com/2011/03/30/group-challenges-monsantos-patent-on-genetically-modified-seeds/

Group Challenges Monsanto's Patent on Genetically Modified Seeds

by Jessie Cacciola, Posted Mar 30th 2011 @ 3:00PM

Photo: Norberto Duarte, AFP / Getty Images

Biotech giant Monsanto has been sitting pretty on their patent for herbicide-resistant seeds for more than 15 years now, but that may all come to an end soon. On behalf of 270,000 plaintiffs, including thousands of certified organic family farmers, seed-saving organizations and farmer advocacy groups, the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) filed a lawsuit in a federal district court in Manhattan yesterday.

Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association, et al. v. Monsanto is groundbreaking. It challenges the very "usefulness" of the GM seed product (a requirement for patents) and calls for protection for organic farmers from "being accused of patent infringement should they ever become contaminated by Monsanto's genetically modified seed," states the PUBPAT foundation.

It's sadistic but true: Monsanto has aggressively sued farmers whose organic crop fields became contaminated with their product simply by way of the wind. In Monsanto's mind, that equals patent infringement.
Organic farmers want nothing to do with GM seed, but Monsanto admittedly has no control over where their crops pollinate. This includes widely-planted canola, corn, soybeans, cotton, sugar beets and alfalfa. So if cross-pollination occurs, which it often does, farmers not only lose organic certification, they're forced to defend themselves for something Monsanto caused. They also couldn't save those GM seeds even if they wanted to because patented products must be purchased -- an entirely new concept for agriculture.

Furthermore, the case questions Monsanto's right to a patent in the first place. The company produced the world's first genetically engineered plant cell in 1982 but its products have since proved economically and environmentally taxing on American farmers, claims the plaintiffs. "None of Monsanto's original promises regarding genetically modified seeds have come true after 15 years of wide adoption by commodity farmers," states David Murphy, founder and executive director of plaintiff Food Democracy Now!, a sustainable farming advocacy group.

"Rather than increased yields or less chemical usage, farmers are facing more crop diseases, an onslaught of herbicide-resistant superweeds, and increased costs from additional herbicide application." Not to mention less diversity at the farmstand.

Read more: http://www.slashfood.com/2011/03/30/group-challenges-monsantos-patent-on-genetically-modified-seeds/#ixzz1ICSsD1dY

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. -Michael Pollan

Ok I will start writing about my attempts to do just this.  And about my attempts to return "back to basics."  I might just have to make my own ketchup like Nakiya said high fructose corn syrup free!!!

Food, Inc.

http://www.foodincmovie.com/
Please visit this site and watch the trailer.  Or better yet, watch the whole movie.  You can watch it for free using this link Food, Inc.  it is only 93 minutes.  It will really make you think about where your food comes from.  I saw this movie over a year ago and it has always stuck with me.  I watched it again about a month ago and I was then struck to really think about where my food comes from and what is being placed in my foods.  It opened my eyes about the food industry, I knew nothing about it before, and this is what has made me want to get "back to basics" when it comes to eating/cooking. 

Michael Pollan

"Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it — in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone — is not really eating. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” — no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

But if real food — the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food — stands in need of defense, from whom does it need defending? From the food industry on one side and nutritional science on the other. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat, a question that for most of human history people have been able to answer without expert help. Yet the professionalization of eating has failed to make Americans healthier. Thirty years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals."

http://michaelpollan.com/books/in-defense-of-food/

I read this book a few months ago.  I think everyone should read it because it makes you think and makes you realize that in human history 70-100 years of us eating HAS changed.  For the better or the worse? 

The fact that twinkies can remain the same consistency and color for TWO YEARS on the shelf is a bit disturbing. 

In my previous post I talked about corn being Genetically Modified (GM).  This is from Wikipedia...

"The Grocery Manufacturers of America estimate that 75% of all processed foods in the U.S. contain a GM ingredient.  In particular, Bt corn, which produces the pesticide within the plant itself, is widely grown, as are soybeans genetically designed to tolerate glyphosate herbicides."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food

There is no harm in eating GM crops, though there have not been that many studies done about it. 
Most GM crops are grown to with-stand the pesticides they will later be sprayed with.  If that same crop were grown organically, or like we have grown crops for 10,000 years, then that same crop would be more nutrient dense because it would have to fight and struggle to survive and reproduce.  While GM crops are not are nutrient dense because they don't have to try as hard to survive.
Why are we growing crops that do not have as many nutrients as they did 60 years ago? 
Does that seem backwards or is it just me?

I was at work the other "landscaping."  I put landscaping in quotes because I do work for a landscaping company but I don't really know anything about landscaping so I just walk around and look like I'm doing something....shhh...don't tell my boss.  So I was talking to one of the guys who is a for real landscaper and was asking him questions about trees.  He was telling me about how they (scientists) can modify a plant and take out a gene from the plant's DNA.  (Now mind you I have just read a little bit about genetically modified (GM) food.) We were talking about the fruit of cherry trees and how scientists can alter the DNA and he said just like they do for seedless watermelons.
I went on to tell him that most of the corn grown in the United States is GM and that it is really changing how humans are eating.  He completely agreed with me which shocked me because I wouln't think that he would care about nutrition.  He made a point that if we mess with nature too much, that nature will win!  We will mess with it too much and thats how we will be taken care of....meaning extinction.   



Interesting thought

I was talking to a friend this morning on my way to work, (not to worry I was using a hands free device) and we were talking about food (umm hello, I love food).  She was saying that she watched Food Inc. (please go watch it, it's free on the internet, just do a little searching) anyways, she was saying that we don't really know what we are putting into are bodies at times and maybe that is what is causing all different types of cancers and other diseases.  (JUST A THEORY but I've heard this same type of thing before from another source....probably a different friend).

Actually for lent I was going to 'give up' processed foods, but that seemed a bit overwhelming.  I mean, how far was I going to take the term 'processed?'  So instead, I'm going to try to return Back to Basics and actually COOK something instead of opening a box/container/pre-cooked/instant whatever.  I mean, haven't we been doing that for thousands of years, cooking not opening boxes, and in the last 100 years we have revamped how humans eat?

But does making bread in a bread machine count as cooking?  I think yes.  My grandfather used to make his breads, sans bread machine!

Welcome

Welcome to my blog!
I have been reading a lot about the food industry and farming and food laws.  You might ask why I would be doing this.  Well I watched the film, Food Inc. (again) a couple months ago and this time it really got me thinking.  WHERE DOES MY FOOD COME FROM? 
My grandfather was a dairy farmer in Ohio.  Every since I was young, I thought that was 'cool' and I wanted to take over his run-down farm.  That never did happen but that idea has stayed with me till this day.  I live in Maryland and have worked at a produce stand for a number of years, so I know where my fruits and vegetables come from but what about everything else I eat?
I have started to look at the food labels of items I thought were simple; breads, crackers, pasta, peanut butter, ketchup, etc.  And I was amazed at the list of ingredients that I found!  High fructose corn syrup in ketchup!!  I thought it was tomatoes with a little tomato paste and maybe some water....guess not. 
Well I'm not going to stop dipping my fries in ketchup but I will start looking a what I am putting into my body!