Stunning Corn Comparison: GMO versus NON GMO

reply to post by boymonkey74

but in this day and age organic foods are too expensive for me

If organic food was the norm it wouldn't be so hard to get and it wouldn't be so expensive. I have a friend who simply grows all his own organic food and he saves a lot of money. It's not that hard to grow in reality, he uses very few pesticides and has little trouble maintaining his garden. Plus don't GMO foods require more water because they need to grow bigger?

I don't have a pony in this show and am ambivalent about GMOs for the last couple of years. However I will point out that I couldn't find an actual research paper, just some web report.

For this type of study, you can't just go out and get a few ears of corn and have them "analyzed." You have to preform a well-controlled and documented multi-year experiment. Such claims can only be made across a wide variety of soils, weather conditions, rainfall, cloudiness, fertilization and supplement plans, pest control plans, soil exhaustion control, harvest timing, and more. It's not easy and not something a small company is likely to do, although it's possible if they have the knowledge and budget.

I for one would look at the source of the paper -- if it's an anti-GMO company or could profit from an anti-GMO finding it's just as suspect and in need of careful review as if it were from a company providing GMO seeds or could profit from GMO crops. A neutral study may be no better and may actually be much worse. Careful review, and knowledge of proper experimental measures in agricultural studies are an absolute must.

The devil is in the details. The stark contrast here smells like experimental design error or bias. It might not be, but until details of the methods surface it and is reviewed by experts, the study is worth about the amount of attention as used Charmin. Send me a link to the actual study design and I'll let you know if the study passes as probably sound statistical methodology or not.

I've a bachelor's in botany, masters in soil science from Montana State University, 3.84 gpa, 3 years intensive research in plant growth and nutrition (1979. I really do doubt that these figures are accurate (the ones about Monsanto, not my academic record), not that I'm a sellout to Monsanto. In fact, I don't think you could get a job in plant and soils back in the day without being a sellout to the Monsanto philosophy. My career in science shortly went down the tubes as well due to the government agencies being a fellowship of booze, sexual trysts and general incompetence. So, it was a good education because I put 16 hours a day into it for 8 years, also risked a bullet in Vietnam for the GI Bill to pay for it, but that's how it goes. Not to complain, that's how I met Christ, and I won't be seeing Monsanto in the afterlife.

I have been sick 4 times since December, and I'm beginning to wonder what the f is going on. Anyone else having similar issues? Maybe I need to start a thread about it. I have never had issues like this before. I have started go wonder if gmos have anything to do with it. I also take a couple prescription drugs regularly that I am suspect of. Anyone else????

reply to post by colbyforce

Probably "chemtrails". Or may sunspots.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by colbyforce

 

Probably "chemtrails". Or may sunspots.

Yeah, probably just bad luck, right? Phage, you bring me back to earth. If it can't be proven, why worry about it. No chemtrails here, but sunspots. .. you may be onto something..... haha

"GMO" does not refer to one thing, or one modification. I'm not saying I'm for genetic modification, but this is ridiculously unfair.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
reply to post by boymonkey74

 

but in this day and age organic foods are too expensive for me

If organic food was the norm it wouldn't be so hard to get and it wouldn't be so expensive. I have a friend who simply grows all his own organic food and he saves a lot of money. It's not that hard to grow in reality, he uses very few pesticides and has little trouble maintaining his garden. Plus don't GMO foods require more water because they need to grow bigger?

They would be more expensive, because they're a lot harder to maintain and grow (both are very easy on a small scale). You also have to use a lot more organic pesticides, fertilizers and so on than the non-organic alternatives, and these organic chemicals are not always good for you. The synthetic ones are produced to be cheap, efficient and safe. Organic doesn't mean good, and synthetic doesn't mean bad. There's no way the world could be supplied with organic crops unless we farmed them ourselves.

reply to post by cusanus


Ah yes, the good old days of wage and price controls: prices going up 8% or more a year, wages staying flat, interest rates going through the roof, decent jobs hard to find! Often the best decision was to get yet another degree. Good to hear you found Christ and a honest thank you for serving. Those were hard years and none of the choices were easy or made lightly.

You are quite right. If this blog were correct, this GMO corn would be the best diet food ever. The blog post claims 100 ergs for GMO corn vs 340k ergs for non-GMO corn. That would mean GMO corn would supply 0.03% of the energy of "regular corn." Or 3400 ears of GMO corn has the same calorie content as 1 ear of "regular" corn. You, and any animal, could eat all the GMO corn ever desired and still die from lack of calories. Also, for those unaware, 1 Cal = 42 BILLION ergs. Corn nomally has about 0.4 Cal per kernel. If we take the non-GMO result as accurate, the sample size was something like 0.00002 of a kernel.

You have to ask yourself -- how can you homoginize corn well enough for a fair comparison to be dealing with such tiny samples? Let's see the protocol and methods! Until then, it's not worth looking at. And if it's true (somehow) every diet company on the planet should be buying GMO corn because it's the perfect diet food -- eat all you want, there's no calories. Tap water may be more fattening due to bacteria content!!!!

reply to post by Phage
you are a respected member here so it may important to throw in that the study that was done is disputable. i don't think you can throw it out just because another study said it wasn't done good enough. afterall, there maybe another study to undermind that study. i have a feeling most of these "studies" have there own agendas anyway.

reply to post by Hopechest


You are right it's not natural, because most of it is GMO. Also, humans have been cross breading different corns to get good traits in the new batch. Humans cross breading is a far cry from GMO manipulation. In one case humans use nature to their advantage using a natural medium to manipulate the growth, in the other we are playing with the source code of corn trying to control nature.

Silly humans nature doesn't belong to you, you belong to nature.

reply to post by SpearMint


We have tons of people who need to work, so creating more jobs in the sense that non-GMO need more attention is good for the economy no?. Label the food as GMO and let the free market decide what is good for them.

At first it will be expensive, but in the long run costs will go down as it popularity rises. It's the law of supply and demand.

I say leave both products on the market properly identified. We will see who will come out victorious.

I was under the impression that GMO corn or 'plants' would not put out viable seeds from their plant. In other words you had to get gmo seeds every year, not just harvest seeds from your grown crop.

To the people that say GMO is all good, do you grow your own food? It honestly isn't expensive, I grow my own vegetables and fruits. Everything I grow tastes better, lasts longer and is chemical free.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by FyreByrd

 

And now a few scholarly (about health dangers of GMOs):

And now a few more scholarly articles:

Perturbations in peripheral immune response were thought not to be age-specific and were not indicative of Th 2 type allergenic or Th 1 type inflammatory responses. There was no evidence of cry1Ab gene or Bt toxin translocation to organs or blood following long-term feeding.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

The magnitude of change observed in some serum biochemical parameters did not indicate organ dysfunction and the changes were not accompanied by histological lesions. Long-term feeding of GM maize to pigs did not adversely affect growth or the selected health indicators investigated.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

Treatment differences observed following feeding of Bt maize to sows did not indicate inflammation or allergy and are unlikely to be of major importance. These results provide additional data for Bt maize safety assessment.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...$=activity

edit on 3/27/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

All official Government sources - which, these days, don't mean Scientific Validity.

I'm actually intolerant to corn (it gives me eczema on my hands). It took me years to figure it out, I only discovered it by going gluten free (which improved my health in many other ways) as my corn intake went up.
Gluten free food is full of it.

So even for non-GM varieties; I don't regard corn (or wheat) as healthy foods.

Originally posted by Kaone
To the people that say GMO is all good, do you grow your own food? It honestly isn't expensive, I grow my own vegetables and fruits. Everything I grow tastes better, lasts longer and is chemical free.

Not a lot of people have land, or even a patch, to grow on. Then there is the problem of contamination from neighbor's use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

A good option, one I endorse, but many, many people do not have the space, time or resources to do so.

Originally posted by boymonkey74
reply to post by Phage

 

The thing is many here on ATS think instantly GM food bad, but I do think It can do so much for the planet and ourselves.
Yes test and label but please don't just dismiss it when it can do so much good

You have yet to ennumerate the 'good' GMO foods can do - other then 'superrice' which I don't know enough about to comment on.

GMO crops aren't about doing 'good', they are about market protection, monopoly and profit.

reply to post by FyreByrd


www.guardian.co.uk...

They are trying to help nature on its way to provide us with crops with a better yield and better resistances to disease and environmental problems.

reply to post by solongandgoodnight


I'm actually quite excited to find out that GMO corn has a fraction of the calcium, with all the calcium and fluoride in our water supply calcifying our pineal glands, we really don't need more in corn products since they make up over half of our foods.