Holy crap — I've been eating genetically modified food. Where? In the sugar in my morning coffee. In the canola oil I cook with. And in the good old inexpensive American beer we've resorted to in wallet-pinching times.
Most sugar beets grown in the U.S. are genetically modified. Ninety percent of canola oil comes from GM crops. And corn syrup is used in many mass-produced, low-cost U.S. beers; 86 percent of all corn produced in the U.S. is GM.
There is growing evidence of GM food being harmful, says Smith, who points to increased allergies in humans, as well as liver, immune, and reproductive problems in laboratory animals, and examples of death and sterility in farm animals fed GM corn. There's another example of the insidiousness of GM food — it has entered our food supply as animal feed. Yet farmers report that animals will avoid GM when given a choice, says Smith.GM plants are radically different from the plants that have lived and multiplied naturally. Monsanto inserted genes from soil bacteria into the DNA of plant cells in order to create plants that would survive the spraying of entire fields with Monsanto's herbicide Roundup. This has led to an increase in the use of the herbicide, and increased residue on plants and in the soil.
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