GMO foods are becoming a staple in our diet, yet do we really know what they are, what they do, or what foods they hide in?

Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMO, refers to organisms such as vegetables, fruits, grains, plants, meat, fish, mammals, yeast, and bacteria that have had its genetic material altered via genetic engineering in a lab.

It all started around the 1980’s when it was first discovered that sections of DNA could be swapped from one organism to another.  This breakthrough led to the idea of potentially genetically increasing a foods nutrients, preventing foods, such as tomato from deteriorating rapidly once picked, making a food seedless such as in watermelon’s, or making a crop survive heavy chemical spraying.

Most non-organic corn and soy is genetically modified to withstand saturation with the herbicide Roundup. How much rinsing of this food is required to rid it of Roundup before you can eat it? And what about the corn or soy snuck into foods you can’t rinse, like biscuits, bread and snacks?

Other GMO goes so far as to actually grow a seed to genetically be resistant already to bacteria and pests called Antibiotic Resistant Marker Genes (ARG).

There is widespread concern in the science world, that this particular genetic infiltration into our bodies is firstly- killing off our own highly important bacterial community: our gut bacteria. Gut bacteria being recently discovered to have the power to affect our body, mind and emotions profoundly, as well as switching on or off disease states.

The second issue is that the ARG branch of GMO could be enhancing antibiotic resistance in communities who eat a lot of these GMO foods.

GMO crops and farms are also impacting land, soil and the earth, making it harder and harder to grow produce naturally in land, and costing us as consumers, and farmers, more and more to keep it all going.

With our population growing and our increased need for GMO foods, could we be paying for it already, with the health of our bodies and environment?