modern life vs. human nature

Before I begin I would just like to say that I don’t like eating. I would rather be doing something else; biking, swimming, playing sports or even working on a project. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be fat. Maybe it’s because my Mom would force me to eat canned peas when I was young or maybe I’m missing something very important in my life..such as a cook.

However, when I do eat 75% of the time I want it to be healthy, nutritional food because I understand that good food means energy to do the things I like to do. Accordingly, I like to know what I’m eating  and if it’s crap I want to know.

So I recently watched a documentary about Monsanto. If you don’t know this company, it is a bio-tech company that now makes seeds; mainly corn and soya beans. Yes, they make genetically modified and patented seeds. Cool technology. In the past they have produced “agent orange”(think millions poisoned in Vietnam), bovine growth hormone(banned in Canada and Europe) and now genetically modified organisms(GMOs).  So although the first two items might be a little on the “holy crap, that’s some evil stuff” they seem to be working toward a nicer, gentler albeit genetically enhanced future.

Oh I forgot to mention that Monsanto has created some of the world’s most famous food chemicals including aspartame; a yummy, sweetener that causes cancer and is found in all gum and most carbonated beverages.  But I wrote about aspartame earlier so let’s move along to these franken-seeds. The patent part was the real kicker. It’s a savvy business strategy whereby Monsanto creates genetically modified seeds that are immune to it’s own weed killing pesticide so that the farmer can grow more crops with less labour. By spraying on the pesticide the farmers don’t have to hire weed pickers and therefore save money. The unfortunate part of the tale is that the pesticide contaminates everything but the genetically modified crops(or so they say). The really smart part is that Monsanto charges farmers a royalty on all crops that use GMO seeds. The crazy smart part is that when the GMO seeds mysteriously show up in farmers crops who don’t buy Monsanto’s gmo seeds they can can still charge the farmers a royalty; because Monsanto owns the patent on the seed and therefore the plant. Now , the insanely ingenius part is that through natural pollination the gmo seeds creep into other crops anyway so the farmers don’t really have a choice. So when the farmers use the Monsanto pesticide to kill the weeds it kills all the other non-gmo seed and plants as well because only the Monsanto seed is engineered  to withstand the pesticide. If that isn’t the best strategy for domination of the global food chain I don’t what is. Move over McDonald’s your methane spewing, rainforest wrecking, steroid induced cow burgers have just slid down the scale of “world’s biggest super evil, greedy pig corporation”.

So what does this mean for you and me? Well, for me it means no more soy or corn unless it is from a non-gmo crop and more so that organic and local vegetables are the way to go…even if I have to eliminate strawberries in the winter.

Here’s the link from youtube.

enjoy!