SAY NO TO GM FOODS: Why Schools Should Remove Gene-Altered Foods from Their Cafeterias

News from Health Lover, Ilena Rosenthal:
http://ilenarose.blogspot.com

The public relations billions of Monsanto were long ago merged with
junkscience.com / acsh.org and their quacky frontgroups ... defending
GM foods ... while bashing organics. It is one of the many fronts of
the "snake-oil vilgilantes" filling various media with disinformation.
www.BreastImplantAwareness.org/snake-oil.htm
http://www.BreastImplantAwareness.or...WatchWatch.htm

This article is very very very important.

I really saw a documentary on Monsanto ... God help us all before it's
too late.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMleWZXhi6s
The World According to Monsanto (part 1 of 10)

By Jeffrey M. Smith
Comanche County Chronicle, Elgin, OK, September, 2008
Straight to the Source

http://www.organicconsumers.org/arti...icle_14507.cfm
from Institute for Responsible Technology, Spilling the Beans
newsletter on GM Foods
by Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of Deception


Before the Appleton Wisconsin high school replaced their cafeteria's
processed foods with wholesome, nutritious food, the school was
described as out-of-control. There were weapons violations, student
disruptions, and a cop on duty full-time. After the change in school
meals, the students were calm, focused, and orderly. There were no
more weapons violations, and no suicides, expulsions, dropouts, or
drug violations. The new diet and improved behavior has lasted for
seven years, and now other schools are changing their meal programs
with similar results.

Years ago, a science class at Appleton found support for their new
diet by conducting a cruel and unusual experiment with three mice.
They fed them the junk food that kids in other high schools eat
everyday. The mice freaked out. Their behavior was totally different
than the three mice in the neighboring cage. The neighboring mice had
good karma; they were fed nutritious whole foods and behaved like
mice. They slept during the day inside their cardboard tube, played
with each other, and acted very mouse-like.

The junk food mice, on the other hand, destroyed their cardboard tube,
were no longer nocturnal, stopped playing with each other, fought
often, and two mice eventually killed the third and ate it. After the
three month experiment, the students rehabilitated the two surviving
junk food mice with a diet of whole foods. After about three weeks,
the mice came around.

Sister Luigi Frigo repeats this experiment every year in her second
grade class in Cudahy, Wisconsin, but mercifully, for only four days.
Even on the first day of junk food, the mice's behavior "changes
drastically." They become lazy, antisocial, and nervous. And it still
takes the mice about two to three weeks on unprocessed foods to return
to normal. One year, the second graders tried to do the experiment
again a few months later with the same mice, but this time the animals
refused to eat the junk food.

Across the ocean in Holland, a student fed one group of mice
genetically modified (GM) corn and soy, and another group the non-GM
variety. The GM mice stopped playing with each other and withdrew into
their own parts of the cage. When the student tried to pick them up,
unlike their well-behaved neighbors, the GM mice scampered around in
apparent fear and tried to climb the walls. One mouse in the GM group
was found dead at the end of the experiment.

It's interesting to note that the junk food fed to the mice in the
Wisconsin experiments also contained genetically modified ingredients.
And although the Appleton school lunch program did not specifically
attempt to remove GM foods, it happened anyway. That's because GM
foods such as soy and corn and their derivatives are largely found in
processed foods. So when the school switched to unprocessed
alternatives, almost all ingredients derived from GM crops were taken
out automatically.

Does this mean that GM foods negatively affect the behavior of humans
or animals? It would certainly be irresponsible to say so on the basis
of a single student mice experiment and the results at Appleton. On
the other hand, it is equally irresponsible to say that it doesn't.

We are just beginning to understand the influence of food on behavior.
A study in Science in December 2002 concluded that "food molecules act
like hormones, regulating body functioning and triggering cell
division. The molecules can cause mental imbalances ranging from
attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder to serious mental
illness." The problem is we do not know which food molecules have what
effect.

The bigger problem is that the composition of GM foods can change
radically without our knowledge. Genetically modified foods have genes
inserted into their DNA. But genes are not Legos; they don't just snap
into place. Gene insertion creates unpredicted, irreversible changes.
In one study, for example, a gene chip monitored the DNA before and
after a single foreign gene was inserted. As much as 5 percent of the
DNA's genes changed the amount of protein they were producing. Not
only is that huge in itself, but these changes can multiply through
complex interactions down the line.

In spite of the potential for dramatic changes in the composition of
GM foods, they are typically measured for only a small number of known
nutrient levels. But even if we could identify all the changed
compounds, at this point we wouldn't know which might be responsible
for the antisocial nature of mice or humans. Likewise, we are only
beginning to identify the medicinal compounds in food. We now know,
for example, that the pigment in blueberries may revive the brain's
neural communication system, and the antioxidant found in grape skins
may fight cancer and reduce heart disease. But what about other
valuable compounds we don't know about that might change or disappear
in GM varieties?

Consider GM soy. In July 1999, years after it was on the market,
independent researchers published a study showing that it contains
12-14 percent less cancer-fighting phytoestrogens. What else has
changed that we don't know about? [Monsanto responded with its own
study, which concluded that soy's phytoestrogen levels vary too much
to even carry out a statistical analysis. They failed to disclose,
however, that the laboratory that conducted Monsanto's experiment had
been instructed to use an obsolete method to detect phytoestrogens
results.]

In 1996, Monsanto published a paper in the Journal of Nutrition that
concluded in the title, "The composition of glyphosate-tolerant
soybean seeds is equivalent to that of conventional soybeans." The
study only compared a small number of nutrients and a close look at
their charts revealed significant differences in the fat, ash, and
carbohydrate content. In addition, GM soy meal contained 27 percent
more trypsin inhibitor, a well-known soy allergen. The study also used
questionable methods. Nutrient comparisons are routinely conducted on
plants grown in identical conditions so that variables such as weather
and soil can be ruled out. Otherwise, differences in plant composition
could be easily missed. In Monsanto's study, soybeans were planted in
widely varying climates and geography.

Although one of their trials was a side-by-side comparison between GM
and non-GM soy, for some reason the results were left out of the paper
altogether. Years later, a medical writer found the missing data in
the archives of the Journal of Nutrition and made them public. No
wonder the scientists left them out. The GM soy showed significantly
lower levels of protein, a fatty acid, and phenylalanine, an essential
amino acid. Also, toasted GM soy meal contained nearly twice the
amount of a lectin that may block the body's ability to assimilate
other nutrients. Furthermore, the toasted GM soy contained as much as
seven times the amount of trypsin inhibitor, indicating that the
allergen may survive cooking more in the GM variety. (This might
explain the 50 percent jump in soy allergies in the UK, just after GM
soy was introduced.)

We don't know all the changes that occur with genetic engineering, but
certainly GM crops are not the same. Ask the animals. Eyewitness
reports from all over North America describe how several types of
animals, when given a choice, avoided eating GM food. These included
cows, pigs, elk, deer, raccoons, squirrels, rats, and mice. In fact,
the Dutch student mentioned above first determined that his mice had a
two-to-one preference for non-GM before forcing half of them to eat
only the engineered variety.

Differences in GM food will likely have a much larger impact on
children. They are three to four times more susceptible to allergies.
Also, they convert more of the food into body-building material.
Altered nutrients or added toxins can result in developmental
problems. For this reason, animal nutrition studies are typically
conducted on young, developing animals. After the feeding trial,
organs are weighed and often studied under magnification. If
scientists used mature animals instead of young ones, even severe
nutritional problems might not be detected. The Monsanto study used
mature animals instead of young ones.

They also diluted their GM soy with non-GM protein 10- or 12*fold
before feeding the animals. And they never weighed the organs or
examined them under a microscope. The study, which is the only major
animal feeding study on GM soy ever published, is dismissed by critics
as rigged to avoid finding problems.

Unfortunately, there is a much bigger experiment going on one which we
are all a part of. We're being fed GM foods daily, without knowing the
impact of these foods on our health, our behavior, or our children.
Thousands of schools around the world, particularly in Europe, have
decided not to let their kids be used as guinea pigs. They have banned
GM foods.

The impact of changes in the composition of GM foods is only one of
several reasons why these foods may be dangerous. Other reasons may be
far worse (see http://www.seedsofdeception.com).

With the epidemic of obesity and diabetes and with the results in
Appleton, parents and schools are waking up to the critical role that
diet plays. When making changes in what kids eat, removing GM foods
should be a priority.