Genetically Modified Food

[beelzebubble]

i'm terrified that they're going to start adding gluten to non-gluten containing grains in an effort to make them more useable for breads. i don't know. just thought i'd ask.

[SabrinaLuvsGluten]

I worry about GM foods too! Are they allowed to GM organic foods? Maybe if they arent allowed too, we should just stick to organic flours...wish I knew more about it, but to answer your question, YES I worry about those types of things sometimes..Im a worry wart though!

Sabrina

[Guest nini]

GM foods scare the crap out of me. I avoid them at all costs if I can. I specifically look for products that say "non GMO"

from what I've read in my studies, wheat was actually developed as a kind of GMO centuries ago. It is literally a hybridized weed. The earliest civilizations developed it as a way to inexpensively feed the massive amounts of slave labor they had. Wheat was NOT a food for the Kings or the Elite. (I found this info in my religious studies, I'll have to see if I can dig it up for you guys)

[plantime]

Most genetic modifications right now are to make the plant drought and pest resistant, and make it produce more. I'm not sure crossing gluten grain plants with nongluten grain plants would work. You can't take pollen from just any plant and use it to pollinate a totally different plant, it doesn't usually take. However, I don't put it past scientists to try and force it to work!

[tarnalberry]

I have read studies about them gene splicing gluten producing fragments into the DNA of other, currently gluten free, plants. At the same time, they're looking at using GMO techniques to make a gluten-free wheat.

All in all, for environmental reasons and others, I'm against artificial genetic modification. Standard techniques, including cross pollinating, going through multiple generations to select certain features, grafting, and so forth - I'm fine with those. Without them, we wouldn't have seedless organges! ;-) But splicing fish or insect genes, for instance, into plant genes... please. The extended ramifications are nigh untestable and potentially dangerous.

(You guys have read about the effect of GMO corn on butterflies, right? It's not a gigantically huge impact, but it's measurable. What else is being impacted that we aren't measuring?)

[celiac3270]

Oh, I had heard that it was often given as a....fancy sort of present ...perhaps not. Umm...oh yeah, they're researching genetically modified wheat for celiacs that would be safe.