When Gardening is Toxic…

I will admit right off the top, that until very recently I have never been super conscious about what I eat.

I have always been skinny as well as fairly lazy and carefree, so it never really occurred to me to pay that much attention.

I just turned 48. I am still fairly lazy and somewhat carefree, but I am no longer skinny…don’t get me wrong I am happy in my body, but when you hit 45 and up, shit changes… I am now paying attention.

In the last few years at the Garden Centre, we have also seen a huge turn in people going organic, and wanting to buy seeds with no GMO’s.

So because we have so many questions about GMO seeds I figured I better do some research on it and see what I can learn.

I have learned there are many opinions about it, and much controversy. Some good points and a lot of not so good points…

I have discovered that Monsanto is the Genetically modified giant. They are taking over the world and it is NOT a good thing.

They have created seeds, that are genetically modified to be resistant to herbicides, such as glyphosate, which Monsanto also sells under the brand “Roundup” – Monsanto calls these seeds “Roundup Ready”, which means…the farmers can plant their glyphosate-resistant seed and then apply the herbicide once the plants emerge to kill the weeds, without killing their crops. It dramatically increases how much they can plant as they don’t need to plant rows as far apart as they would if they had to manually weed the fields.

90% of maize , soybean, cotton, sugar beet, and canola planted in the United States are glyphosate-resistant, as described in the GM crops article. Monsanto has also developed a “Roundup Ready wheat”.

First introduced into the food supply in the mid-1990s, GMOs are now present in the vast majority of processed foods in the US, and research on their long-term effects on humans is scarce, while they are banned as food ingredients in Europe and elsewhere, the FDA does not even require the labeling of GMOs in food ingredient lists.

This is terrifying to me.

The more I read, the more concerned I get.

Not only are we modifying and changing nature, we are then going to spray a herbicide that has for years killed all vegetation ONTO our food then eat it. Seriously not ok with me, at all.

I know there are a million and five things in this world that are bad for us. Some things we have control over, some…not so much.

And some, we don’t even know about.

This one, we do, and we can make choices about how we handle it.

Read up on it, learn what you can learn and make good choices about what you eat, what you feed your family, what and how you grow things in your own garden.

Until GMO and GE foods are labeled, your best strategy is to simply buy certified 100% Organic products whenever possible, as these do not permit genetically engineered ingredients, or buy whole fresh produce and meat from local farmers.

The majority of the genetically engineered ingredients you’re exposed to are via processed foods, so by cooking from scratch with whole foods, you can be sure you’re not inadvertently consuming something laced with altered ingredients. When you do purchase processed food, avoid products containing anything related to corn or soy that are not 100 percent organic, as most foods containing these two non-organic ingredients are about 90 percent likely to contain genetically engineered ingredients, as well as toxic herbicide residues.

I wonder how the big wigs at Monsanto feed their children. Do they ever think about what they are doing? Do they happily feed their children the food that they have modified, without the knowledge of what it will eventually do to them? I would bet not. At least I would hope not, but in this day and age money can be more important to some people than anything else, apparently even their children and their children’s future.

It’s a sad state of affairs if you ask me.

And it is mostly terrifying.

I know one person can’t change the world, but I think we can all make a difference. We all have a voice and a choice in how we live.

So let’s wake up to what is going on around us, to what we feed ourselves, awareness is the first step in making it better.