6+-+Frankenfoods

**//Focus Questions: What are the different ways of growing/raising food? What difference might this make to our health?//**
When you go to the supermarket, you don't think about what the food is made of, how it may affect you, or if it can even be defined "food" and not "pesticide". You think about the price. Chances are is that you are getting some of the 80% of genetically engineered food in the supermarket. Before the 1940's, everybody ate organic. Ivan the Terrible. P.T. Barnum. Sitting Bull. Socrates.

Today we eat mutated vegetable drowned in pesticides and insecticides, meat made out of several kinds of meat, and foods that can make us sick. Not many people are willing to farm organic, however- yet eating organic is the key to getting out of this swamp of genetically engineered (GE) food. The problem is, we don't know how. We aren't told our food is registered as a pesticide, or that some organic food is pumped full of gas so it stays "fresh".

There are many solutions to knowing what we eat- going to the farmers market, where everything is organic, or labeling food saying that the food is organic or genetically engineered. You'll probably know if food is organic or not- organic food will be labeled. Biotech companies are constantly fighting to keep the food ingredients hidden. After all, if consumers knew our food was tampered with, they may not buy it.

Different ways of growing and raising food is naturally or scientifically. Naturally is when we give the plants no pesticides, poison etc. When we raise the food scientifically we mutate the food or we feed them pesticide or chemicals. If we eat mutated food it makes a big impact on our health because it can trigger allergic reactions. What if a person is allergic to nuts and they eat meat that has been mutated with a nut they can be really sick. Also there is a small possobility that peoples own DNA can change by eating mutated food!

If you want tips on saving money on organic food go to http://jamsconsumerawareness.wikispaces.com/Alejandro

If you want to hear about the health and environmental impacts of GMOs, go to http://jamsconsumerawareness.wikispaces.com/Janis

If you want to be more aware of GMOs go to http://jamsconsumerawareness.wikispaces.com/Ivan

Does Frankenstein like the burger because it has mutated food in it? **RESOURCES:**

[|BBC News | Sci:Tech | Terminator gene halt a 'major U-turn'] [|BIO | Food & Agriculture | Overview] [|Biotechnology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] [|Can we afford to eat ethically? - Pinched- Tales from an Economic Downturn - Salon.com] [|Carbon Farming Being Tested As a Way to Store CO2 in Soil – CleanTechnica- Cleantech innovation news and views] [|Carbon Farming] [|Everything Joel Salatin Does is Illegal | Blogtown, PDX] [|Exploding Watermelons] [|Genetic engineering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] [|Genetic Engineering, GMO - The Issues - Sustainable Table] [|Genetic use restriction technology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] [|Genetically modified food - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] [|H.R. 5269 [109th- Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act (GovTrack.us)]] [|Hungry Planet- What the World Eats, Part II - Photo Essays - TIME] [|Joel Salatin, America's Most Influential Farmer, Talks Big Organic and the Future of Food - TreeHugger] [|King Corn] [|Monsanto ~ Home] [|Monsanto Terminator Technology -- Worldwide Famine & Starvation] [|No Bar Code | Mother Jones] [|Polyface, Inc.] [|Say no to genetic engineering | Greenpeace International] [|The Big Apple- SOLE Food (Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethical)] [|The Center for Food Safety | Protecting Human Health and the Environment] [|The Future of Food] [|The Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act – H.R. 5577 – Eat Drink Better] [|The Land Institute] [|The Omnivore’s Dilemma | Michael Pollan] [|U.S. Department of Agriculture] [|What I Eat] [|What the World Eats, Part I - Photo Essays - TIME 2] [|What the World Eats, Part I - Photo Essays - TIME] [|When eating organic was totally uncool - Sustainable food - Salon.com]