GMO tomatoe link Please read. Looking forward to the responses.
Don't worry about it being a nightshade, for the purposes of my question just imaginge its spinach, or broccolli or something you'd eat without worry.
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GMO isn't scary by itself. Lots of people are trying to make GMO be a scary thing: from the envrionuts who go around dressed in HASMAT suits protesting all the way to reasonable bloggers. This is yet another area where context matters: why is something GMO, what makes it better/worse in this case! For example GM wheat. why: it grows faster, stands up better, more yield per harvest. how: the extra genes in the wheat encode for more gluten which is a structural protein (and other proteins). So GM wheat has more gluten than wheat of yore, plus it has other proteins in it that may or may not be bad for us, we don't know. The problem is that because it's still called "wheat", it's still treated as "wheat" by the USDA and food labeling laws, but it actually is a different organism. Another example GM corn. why: it's resistant to Round-up (and other glycophospate herbicides). what makes this bad: well now you can just dump herbicides on your crops and kill the weeds. Just because the corn now doesn't die, doesn't mean that herbicides aren't in the food. Or that you're poisoning the water supply by such overuse of herbicides, etc. In both of those cases the GM component does something bad and often unintended. But that doesn't mean in general anything GM is bad. Nature does it's on GM with cross pollination and the like. You need to look at the output in each case and see if the GM did something bad. The main point, is don't be like the environuts out there and make tons of noise about a something because it sounds scary. Make sure you understand it. If it truly is scary, then make noise. |
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I worry about GMOs because the motives behind their production are based on profits rather than productive health. As others have said, I'm not against trying a new food source if it has been extensively researched. What does concern me is that $45 million has been spent in opposition of the labeling. Matt |
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I'm not blanketly against GMO. Each new product needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis. I am, however, skeptical of a new GMO product, so it needs to be scrutinized properly. So to answer the question, yes I would eat a GMO product if it's thoroughly proven to be an improvement over it's natural counterpart. |
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Yikes! No, I wouldn't touch that tomato with a ten foot pole. "Researchers genetically engineered the tomatoes to produce 6F, a small peptide that mimics the action of ApoA-1, the chief protein in high density lipoprotein (HDL or "good" cholesterol). They fed the tomatoes to mice that lack the ability to remove low density lipoprotein (LDL or "bad" cholesterol) from their blood and readily develop inflammation and atherosclerosis when consuming a high-fat diet." Are we also to assume that this study was done on humans that were genetically modified to lack the ability to remove LDL and readily develop inflammation and atherosclerosis? If so I don't see the relevance for a population at large anyhow.....moving on though..... This is a scary proposition. To artificially/genetically alter peptides to affect cholesterol (or to act as for a response). So now, not only are we afraid of fat and cholesterol, but we are making GM foods to alter our bodies levels and responses to such. So statins in the water supply may actually come to fruition I suppose. We also have to point out that your link does not actually show an improvement in health or longevity for the rats in question. Kinda like all the cholesterol hype. Bunch of markers that we assumed were associated with better health turn out to only be loosely correlated with one type of death while actually increasing the likelihood of overall mortality. Fact is you can ASSume this is safe if you like, but our track record with ASSumptions kinda sucks. |
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The paper doesn't appear to be available, but the way they are talking it doesn't sound like they used a control group. Tomatoes inherently have some beneficial properties and have improved cardiovascular health in mice before: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22224814 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17872457 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10052125 Including ApoE-deficient mice who are susceptible to atherosclerosis. If you want to say that new spiffy GMO tomatoes are da best tomatoes you have to compare them to regular tomatoes under the same conditions, because regular tomatoes improve cardiovascular health. The new changes could change nothing. Chris Masterjohn has written an article about the reverse cholesterol transport theory (HDL tha good cholesterol saves our arteries from cholesterol) and how it is a little more dubious than people think. He mentions an HDL-boosting drug that failed miserably to prevent heart disease...and killed a lot of people http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2009/03/wherefore-art-thy-protection-o-hdl.html It may not be the same thing, but I am scared of these tomatoes. Luckily they would probably be labeled as super-tomatoes. And those mice are an even worse extrapolation to humans than regular mice, why not just use normal mice if your tomatoes are beneficial under normal conditions? The mind boggles. Even if this product is safe, it wreaks of snake oil. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1N3oqbmSiMk/TgtAd0-HLoI/AAAAAAAAIH8/ZpktSCnzFck/s1600/Tom.jpg ??????????????? |
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I don't think I would eat it. At the very least I would not eat it till more time had passed and more testing was done but even then I don't know. I don't need to eat that kind of food. My cholesterol is great as is so why would I mess with what my body is already doing? If it's not broke don't fix it. |
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Since there's scant evidence from methodologically-sound, clinical studies that elevating HDL is a cause of reduced heart disease, I wouldn't seek these tomatoes out. |
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I absolutely don't trust GMO products and want them labeled, and will avoid them like the plague. The industry has consistently claimed to be improving our lives, yet their goals has been to own patent rights and to produce a system of farmer slavery. Further, while they've claimed to create or that they plan to create more beneficial products, in the end, it's about making more profits. GMO salmon has an increased level of growth hormone which we don't know the effects of on humans. BT Corn produces its own toxins to kill of insects. We don't know the effects on humans long term. Roundup Ready plants are drenched in far more glycophosphates than conventionally grown plants. This stuff is known as an endocrine disruptor. Who knows what other effects the plants have on humans even without the extra pesticides. These products are an unnecessary health risk whose only benefit is to enrich the companies that produce them. Thanks, but no. I've probably eaten the stuff without knowing it, and I don't know what harm it did. I seek out organic produce whenever possible, not just because organic is lots better than conventional, but because it avoids GMOs. The FDA is useless and owned by these interests - they don't require much testing of these items and only the say so of the manufacturer. The studies that they do are very short and are on mice, a lot of the results are hidden from the public and the studies repeated until they get the results they want. There's no oversight, there's no open review. It's one sided and the side that wins isn't the consumer of these products, it's the manufacturer. I would not risk my health, nor that of my kids and their future kids on any of this garbage any more than I'd go out and consume wheat, corn, or soy. |
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I avoid GMO like the plaque. And for anyone out there that has any IBS or gut issues: http://www.askdrgonzalez.com/gmo-foods-cause-bowel-inflammation/ |
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