After eliminating GMOs from my diet, I intuitively can tell when I accidently eat gmos. I get a specific "sluggish feeling." Humans used mercury to harvest gold because we did not know better. Life is complex. We live in relationship to life. When we seek to control, superweeds pop up. How do you understand your place in the world?

Expert response from Jennifer Schmidt

Maryland Farmer and Registered Dietician

Tuesday, 01/14/2014 17:04

As you say, life is complex, as is the question you pose! Intuitive eating begins with the concept that people are mindful of their food choices, how much they eat, when they eat and when to stop eating. It is the psychology of food and food consumption and comes wrapped in a number of personal beliefs and an individual's philosophy.

As a farmer, a mom, a consumer of food and a registered dietitian who also eats intuitively, I’ve never experienced any “sluggish feeling” related to consumption of genetically engineered foods. We grow both GM and non-GM crops. Our family eats what we grow, lives on our farm and has the utmost respect for the stewardship of the land and the resources we have so that the farm can be passed to the next generation to continue the family business.

But I have to ask more questions in order to answer your question: Which specific foods containing GMOs give you this sluggish feeling? Is it physical or cognitive sluggishness? Is there a specific body system, such as your GI tract, that feels more sluggish over another? There are many health reasons that can cause sluggishness—such as anemia, hypoglycemia, hypothyroidism or depression—not related to foods, GM or otherwise.

Since the proteins that are in GM foods are not “novel” proteins, we would experience this sluggish effect with foods produced from all types of farming systems: regular foods, organic foods or biotech foods. The best example of this would be Bt, which is a bacterium found in soil that contains proteins that are toxic to specific insects. Its insecticidal properties have been known and used in organic agriculture for 100-plus years. It is also used by conventional farmers and is the protein that is used to protect corn and cotton from European corn borer, rootworm and boll weevil. It is well established that Bt is nontoxic to mammals and has no way of surviving the digestion process. Since it used as a spray in both organic and conventional agriculture and is ubiquitous in soil, it is, as you say, “in relationship to life” and therefore to our bodies.

As to your point about “superweeds,” weed resistance is an agronomic issue, not a genetic engineering issue. As I point out in my blog post, “Top 10 Annoying Words About Agriculture,” the International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds shows that herbicide resistance occurred well before any genetically engineered crops were commercialized. Roundup, the herbicide mostly commonly associated with genetically engineered crops, ranks sixth behind five other classes of herbicides to which some weeds have developed resistance.

Farm families probably understand their place in the world most intuitively because we rely on the bounty that our land and our soil provide for us and for the people who consume the products we grow.