Halloween Hijinks: What We're Reading - October 2016

Halloween Hijinks: What We’re Reading – October/November 2016

Between Halloween, the Day of the Dead, and Election Day, the end of October and beginning of November can be a scary time of year. With all the ghosts, goblins, witches, and clowns wandering around, there are many things to be afraid of.  But what you shouldn’t be afraid of is the food you eat or how it’s grown. Some are still trying to use scare tactics to get people to avoid GMOs, but the chilling truth is that they have been proven safe to eat, and GMOs are nutritionally the same as non-GM crops.  There were a lot of non-scary stories about GMOs that caught our eye this month. Let’s take a look at a few of them and see who deserves a treat.

Oh, and let’s set the record straight on one thing.  Those giant pumpkins you see at this time of year?  Not GMO.  Merely selective breeding.  Now on to the goodies!

Black Cats, Vampire Bats, Witches and Other Spooky Myths

Black cats aren’t bad luck.  Vampires don’t turn into bats. (And aren’t real).  Witches aren’t stealing children.  These are all well-known myths.  And there are many myths about GMOs, too.  In a new article in the Detroit News, Registered Dietitian and Nutritionist (RDN) Bethany Thayer dispels some of the myths about GMOs.  From the rumor that GMOs are harmful, to the idea that GMOs are bad for the environment, Thayer explains the facts about this technology.  She notes, “Farmers have intentionally changed the genetic make-up of plants for over 10,000 years. Every fruit, vegetable and grain that is commercially available today has been altered by humans. Plant engineering began centuries ago when farmers started crossbreeding plants to come up with tastier or more disease-resistant crops.”

To learn more about the answers to some of the most common misconceptions about GMO, read the entire article at the Detroit News website.

And for more spooky myth busting, check out this resource at the GMO Answers website.

Lips Like Sugar

Candy and Halloween go hand in hand.  In recent years many candy companies have been sweetening their products with sugar from GMO sugarbeets, which make up about ninety percent of U.S. sugarbeet production. 

You may see some companies selling organic or non-GMO candy, but there’s no real difference between cane sugar, organic sugar, or sugar from GMO or non-GMO sugarbeets. It all ends up being the same thing: sugar.  

In her blog, The Sweet Truth, sugarbeet farmer Laura Rutherford explains, “The refined sugar you eat is the same at the molecular level, regardless of whether it is grown from conventional, organic or genetically engineered seeds. Sugar is a pure and all-natural plant product that is the same whether it is produced from sugarbeets or sugarcane.”  This is because as Caitlin Kennedy notes in her blog The Halloween Folklore Around Sugar from GMO Sugarbeets, “Sugar made from GM sugarbeets is indistinguishable from other sugar because the GMO protein in the beets is removed in processing.”

There are a variety of benefits to using sugar derived from GM sugarbeets: price and sustainability, to start. And as an article in the Chicago Tribune notes, there’s the environmental benefit as well:

“The reason why sugarbeet farmers use these seeds is because the crops are better for their farms; the U.S. Beet Sugar Association identified more than two dozen environmental benefits to genetically modified sugarbeets such as needing fewer chemicals and less water to grow. "Using GM sugarbeet seed means that we use less hand labor and tractor passes to remove the weeds," said Suzanne Rutherford, a California sugarbeet farmer. "We actually use less herbicide now. Genetically modified seed has put us on a path to sustainability."

Don’t be tricked into thinking that organic or non-GMO sugar is better. Take a break from the scare tactics and just enjoy your booty.

Do the Monster Mash

Mention Frankenstein’s monster, and people picture a hulking, lumbering creature, his monstrosity partly defined by how he was created. 

Mention Frankenfoods, and people think of GMOs and monstrous strawberries, seedless watermelon, or tomatoes injected with fish genes – “unnatural” foods they imagine created in labs by mad scientists.  (By the way, none of these foods are actually GMOs.)

Real GMOs are misunderstood for a variety of reasons, including fear of the unknown and fear of technology and how they are created. But, as Steven Cerier writes for Genetic Literacy Project, “In one form or another many plant breeding techniques including GMOs rely upon the use of a laboratory; by that measure, most crops that are produced could be considered to be Frankenfoods.”

In GMO phobic? The Real Frankenfoods Might Surprise You, Cerier also explains how a lack of understanding of modern plant breeding and pervasive Frankenfood imagery reinforce “public suspicion that GMOs are dangerous to human health”:

Many anti-GMO articles that warn of the dangers GM crops are often accompanied by an image of a fruit or vegetable with syringes sticking out of them. Very often it is a fruit or vegetable for which there is no current GM equivalent such as a tomato. This depiction is used to reinforce the notion that GM foods are created in laboratories and not by nature and therefore are dangerous to consume.

David Zilberman, a professor of agriculture and resource economics at the University of California, Berkley, has noted that Frankenfood was “a terrible word, a stigmatization word, one that’s used to scare people… People are afraid of GMOs for little or no reason. GM is simply a tool. Because it allows us to modify plants with far greater precision and control than (sic) before, it will be very valuable.”

The reality is that the vast bulk of the foods we consume whether organic or conventionally grown have had their genetics altered in the field or in a laboratory via a process of selective breeding or advanced biotechnology techniques, and all such foods are safe to eat. The altering of genes in plants is even known to occur naturally as highlighted by the sweet potato.

So, don’t be afraid of the monster in the meme! Whether you’re buying a pint of summer’s last organic strawberries or the GMO non-browning apple, you can feel confident your food is safe for you and your family.  

Time to spirit away and stick a knife, err, fork, in this article. If you have any more questions about GMOs, please feel free to explore the rest of the GMO Answers site. You might want to start with our Explore the Basic page. It’s a spook-tacular resource!