crash diets ruin metabolism

[music]alright! this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com, today we have another exciting episode foryou and many of you guys saw that last episode where i spoke at the march against monsantoin las vegas, nevada and i know you guys had a lot of positive comments, but also there’sa few negative comments. it saddens me that some people still don’t know in 2015 whatexactly a gmo is, if it’s good, if it’s

crash diets ruin metabolism, bad, if it’s indifferent, if they shouldbe here, if they shouldn’t be here, i mean this is almost like either right and wrong,good and bad, good against evil, i don’t know, bad against good, democrat versus republican,like people are slow like-sided, it’s either you’re on this side, you’re on the farright, or you’re on the far left, and there’s

like no middle ground right? maybe the middleground is just requiring gmo labeling, and if you think it’s so good, label it, andbuy it, and be happy with it. and if you don’t want it, then don’t buy it. i think themain thing for me about gmos is people need to have a choice, right? people need to havea choice, you know? and that’s the strongest thing about me, like you wouldn’t knowinglyeat poisoned food, i mean back in the times of england, they had a joker, a jester, idon’t know somebody that tasted the food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned before theguy would eat it. and if things are poisoned we should know better, it should be labeled.and that’s “if” right? big if. so because of your guys’ comments, both the good andthe bad comments, i kind of want to get more

light on this gmo topic, because it does affectnot only us home gardeners, but everybody that’s living on the planet in this dayand age, so i thought i’d probably get the number one consumer advocate for non-gmo foods,non-gmo products, who has done thousands of hours of research about this topic on theshow today, i brought him literally to my backyard garden, and i got the chair set upover there where we’re going to go ahead and sit down and interview him in a second,his name is jeffrey smith, he wrote a book “seeds of deception,” and had a movie“genetic roulette,” that i would encourage you guys to check out, i’ll put links, ibelieve probably the video’s on youtube now, you can check it out down below, andjust educate yourself about the gmos right?

i mean the proponents of gmos primarily arethe companies that stand to gain a benefit from the gmos right? because business, it’snot about feeding the world or helping people let’s get real, you know? business is thereto make a profit, i mean i majored in business, it’s all about the bottom line, making money,and all this stuff, so i mean they’re doing their job, i could appreciate that but atthe same time, i want some responsibility and minimally, labeling. and so in this episodeyou get to learn about some of the things about gmos by one of the leading guys that’sdone probably the most research on the planet about this in my opinion, and i guess withoutfurther ado, let’s go ahead and head over and talk with jeffrey smith.so now i’m with jeffrey smith, he’s the

executive director of the institute for responsibletechnology, so jeffrey thanks for coming to my garden today and being here to answer someof the questions for my viewers today, so probably the first question is, what’s yourbackground and why do you know so much and why did you decide to know so much about gmos,like more than anybody that i’ve ever met? well in 1996, i went to a lecture by a geneticengineer who was kind of blowing the whistle, saying “i know genetic engineering verywell,” he was an nih award-winning scientist, and he said the technology’s not ready tobe put into food, it’s not ready to put outdoors, that the primary result of geneticengineering is surprise side effects, and the technology could never at that time bepredictable and safe, let alone without any

requirements by the fda in place. so thiswas just before the seeds were being planted widely in the state to state that i was livingin in iowa, and i realized no one else knew about it, and we needed to get the word out,and i have a background in communications and education and marketing, and so i decidedwell maybe i’ll help this scientist translate the science into english so it can end upin the hands of decision makers, and i’ll throw a little time in there, and that timehas turned into 19 years so far, visiting 42 countries, interviewing dozens and dozensof scientists and doctors, as well as thousands of people who’ve removed gmos from theirdiet and noticed incredible changes in their health, and so i’ve come up with two booksand three movies and countless testimonials

before government bodies etcetera, and i justsort of ended up here. wow. well cool, thanks for being here today.so first of all, for all my viewers that don’t know, because i know there’s still a lotof confusion about what gmo even stands for, what does it stand for and actually what exactlyis it? well, gmo means genetically modified organism,if you walk around this garden you’ll see that these plants reproduce through sexualreproduction, where the mother and father elements combine, and there’s contributionfrom both sets of genes. let’s say you wanted to create a tomato that had properties thata pig had. you could put a pig and a tomato in a room, and lower the lights, and playsome music and serve some wine, but you’re

not going to end up with a offspring of littletomato piglets. so what this does is it takes a gene or two or three from some species insome kingdom, and forces it into the dna of another species possibly in another kingdom.and the gmos that are on the market, soy, corn, cotton, canola, sugar beets, alfalfa,those are the six major ones, they’re all engineered primarily not to die when sprayedwith an herbicide, most popularly round up, so you have round up ready versions of eachof these, and you also have zucchini, yellow squash and papaya, which are viral-resistantvarieties which can resist certain viral infections. but the primary reason is to allow the fieldsto be sprayed with round up and then the secondary for corn and cotton plants, it produces itsown toxic insecticide to break open the stomach

of certain insects to kill them. so by eatinggmos, we’re eating the insecticide and the herbicide and the dramatically mutated dna.when i say dramatically mutated, the other side, the biotech industry thinks or doesn’tthink they pretend that it’s a very precise technology, and they think you think in termsof splicing a gene neatly into the dna. well, suppose you wanted to turn this plant intoa built-in insecticide. you take a gene from [inaudible] bacterium called [inaudible],you make millions of copies of the gene, actually first you put an “on” switch from virusand an “off” switch from some other kingdom, and then you make millions of copies and putit into a gun and shoot the gun into a plate of millions of cells, and then clone the cellsinto a plant, or you infect the cells with

bacteria, and then clone them into a plant.now the process of insertion plus cloning creates massive collateral damage to the fourpercent of the dnas different, hundreds, even a thousand genes can change their levels ofexpression, so not only are you eating the toxic insecticide, the toxic herbicide, butyou’re also maybe eating higher levels of toxins, allergens and carcinogens producedfrom within the plant itself. wow, so if that’s what a gmo is, it’sa genetically modified organism, haven’t gardeners and people and agricultural industriesand societies for hundreds or thousands of years actually, been modifying plants?modifying plants absolutely – saving the best seeds, creating crosses. modifying thegene pool through human intelligence in conjunction

with the nature of nature, sure. but not takingindividual genes or several genes and shooting it with a gun, no that’s different.so this is a lot different than hybridized seeds and seeds like heirloom seeds and allthis stuff, this is completely different right? it’s not only completely different, butthe experts at the fda made it absolutely clear, they said in a memo that was from thecompliance officer linda call in 1992 summarizing all the research and work done by all theexperts at the fda that were supposed to look at gmos, they said “the process of geneticengineering and traditional breeding are different, and according to the technical experts atthe agency, they lead to different risks.” now the next thing that was said was verytelling, she said by trying to force the conclusion

that there’s no difference is like tryingto force a square peg into a round hole. why was she saying that? why was she saying tothe political appointees in charge of the fda “by trying to force the conclusion,”it’s because they were doing just that. in the policy which came out ignoring lindacall, ignoring all the technical experts at the agency, they claimed that the agency wasn’taware of any information showing that gmos were significantly different, therefore nosafety studies were needed, no labeling was needed. it was a lie, it was exactly the oppositeof the consensus of the scientists’ work at the fda, it was against the scientistsworking around the world who understood the process of genetic engineering, and that itcould produce side effects. but it is official

us policy, and that’s why no safety studiesare needed. and so the biotech industry grabbed onto this concept of no difference, whichwas a lie, and they propelled that into the psyche with millions and millions of dollarssaying “oh gmos are just an extension of natural breeding, we’re doing the same thingwe’ve been doing for hundreds of years,” and they convinced well-meaning scientistswho have no idea of the truth, that that’s the case.so it’s completely a lie that it’s the same because it’s completely different.it is completely different, the type and amount of mutations are different, what goes in thereis different, you’re forcing the gene that’s in there to turn on and function 24/7, whichcan rob the cell of different energy that

would be available to it, and you can changethe biochemical balance due to the over production of something, you have antibiotic resistantdiseases, you end up with bacterial genes that can transfer to [inaudible] bacteriamore readily than other genes, there’s all sorts of things that can occur genericallythat are different. and then you have amino acids that are produced in different organismsthat may be folded differently or have different molecular attachments, all this can turn aharmless protein into a potentially deadly one. you have the rna figure which is therna that gets produced from that inserted gene, it’s getting very technical but thekey is this – the most common effect of genetic engineering is surprise side effects,that’s what i learned in 1996, and it’s

still the case.wow, and most people still don’t know that today, it’s quite unfortunate. so what aresome of the combinations of crosses that they’ve done, like different species to differentspecies to make different kinds of crops? well here’s where, you can’t make thisstuff up, they took spider genes and inserted them into goats. it’s a concept you don’twant to think about, in the hopes that they could milk the goat to get spider web proteinto make bulletproof vests. they’ve taken human genes and put them into corn to makespermicide, they’ve turned pigs into footballs with cowhides, they’ve done all sorts ofcombinations, some of which we know about, most of which we don’t.wow, that’s pretty crazy, and what they

did, one time they did tomatoes and fish right?oh yeah, the fish has an antifreeze gene that allows it to survive in cold temperaturesin the arctic, and so the tomato, or the [inaudible] now has the antifreeze gene. that was nevercommercialized because it was bitter, but it was intended.wow. so big question for me jeffrey is i grow the majority of my vegetables year-round,i also got out of the whole industrialized processed food system 20 years now, this ismy 20 year celebration of getting out of the food system and eating a whole plant foodbased non-gmo food, and i was eating non-gmo before they even had gmo luckily enough, soi’m safe in my opinion, but what are some common foods that are in the supermarket todaythat americans may be purchasing and eating

and they’re unknowingly getting gmos becausethey are not currently labeled? well the good news is, the produce sectionis relatively safe. the produce section might have five different gmos in them, they wouldhave edamame made from soy, corn on the cob, zucchini and yellow squash might be gmo, andpapaya that’s from hawaii or china. the rest of it is non-gmo at this point, potatoesand apples were recently approved, but not yet on the market in 2015. then you have themeats, we’re going around the south side of the supermarket okay, the meats will benot from genetically engineer animals, but from animals that have been fed geneticallyengineered feed, soy corn, cottonseed oil, cottonseed meal, canola meal, sugar beet pulpand alfalfa are all used as animal feed, they’re

all genetically engineered, and that doeschange the structure and function of the animal’s physiology for sure, it’s been published[inaudible], it’s been verified, and we don’t know the impact on humans, i haveplenty of anecdotal stories from individuals and their doctors that it does have an impact,but not a single research paper has been published on the effects of eating an animal or eatingmilk from an animal that’s been eating gmos. if you go to the center part of the supermarket,boxed and canned, most of it will have a derivative of soy or corn or cottonseed oil or canolaoil, or sugar from sugar beets or from animals that are fed gmos or dairy from animals fedgmos, or animals injected with bovine growth hormone, so all that’s genetically engineered.if you put it all together, maybe 80 percent

of the products in the supermarket, maybe90 percent of the processed packaged foods have at least some, even a tiny amount ofa gmo, and we americans eat maybe 190 pounds of corn a year, most of its genetically engineered,90 percent or more. so we eat our weight in gmos by the end of the year, so it’s nota pretty sight. wow, well i’m one person that’s not eatingany gmos… except us.according to what i know, and doing the best i can. so are there any studies on what itdoes to the animals when the animals eat the gmo foods?yes in 2009 one medical organization looked at the animal feeding studies and found gastrointestinalproblems, immune system problems, reproductive

problems, organ damage, accelerated aging,dysfunctional regulation of cholesterol and insulin, and declared it was a hazard. theysaid every doctor should prescribe non-gmo diets to every patient, the government shouldput a moratorium on it, the government ignored them but a lot of doctors did not. thousandsof doctors are prescribing non-gmo diets, and since 2009 there’s also been high levelsof infant mortality, some birth defects found, multiple massive tumors, hormonal damage,a whole series of things. plus reports of people that are seeing the animals in thelaboratory between the gmo and the non-gmo, animals that are fed the gmo tend to be moreaggressive and have more anti-social behavior. now if you take the experience of the animalsand you translate it into human experience,

we see that when individuals get off of gmos,according to them and their doctors, and i’ve talked to thousands, they get better fromthe same categories of diseases that the lab animals are suffering from. same with livestock,pigs and cows, they get better from the same category, same with dogs. these same categoriesare on the rise in the us population since gmos were introduced, and i don’t thinkthat’s a coincidence, it is correlation but i think it’s based on causation, andif you look at the two main toxins in gmos, the round-up and the bt toxin, and the processof genetic engineering, that could fully explain the variety of these diseases on the risefrom deaths from senile dementia, stroke, hypertension, obesity, you have diabetes andautism, you have all sorts of cancers and

all sorts of gastrointestinal problems, andall sorts of mood and behavior problems from insomnia and anemia and schizophrenia andadhd etcetera all of that is laid out and shows a tight correlation either between gmoexpansion or the use of glyphosate which is the active ingredient in round up, which issprayed on most gmos. so let’s talk about the glyphosate, becauseyou know as gardeners hopefully you guys are not using any glyphosate, i mean i know plentyof gardeners and farmers that “oh yeah i grow organic but i spray glyphosate in therows to keep the grass down.” what are some of the challenges with the glyphosate?glyphosate being the active ingredient in round up, you can use the them interchangeably,they’re not interchangeable, glyphosate

is toxic, highly toxic, and yet round up canbe as much as 1000 times more toxic, because it has these supposedly inert ingredientsthat are not inert at all, there’s at least one ingredient that’s 10,000 times moretoxic than glyphosate. so glyphosate was just declared by the world health organizationas a probable carcinogen. since then it’s been banned in many countries, it’s beenbanned in sri lanka, it’s been banned and declared a carcinogen in denmark, it was bannedfor commercial or for home use in amsterdam or in holland already, 30,000 physicians inargentina are calling for its ban, there the federal prosecutor in brazil is calling forits ban there, it was just banned by the government of colombia to spray for the cocoa plantationeradication, etcetera etcetera, and it should

be banned here, people should not use it.it’s been banned in some german stores, they won’t allow it, there was a swiss chainthat just banned it today. so it’s on its way out for the people that know about it.and just to give you more motivation, let me tell you what it does beyond probably causingcancer. when they say probably causing cancer, i say it definitely causes cancer in animals,it definitely causes mutations in human dna which can lead to cancer, and it definitelywhen it’s used in the farm is associated with spiked incidents of cancers, and thereason they [inaudible] a definite cancer is because they don’t have any human studiesto draw from, just the epidemiological evidence and the lab studies, and the extrapolationfrom the animal studies. it also creates birth

defects, and that’s also verified througha pathway, and birth defects are found both in animals and in humans associated with glyphosate.it also causes endocrine disruption at even tiny levels, parts per trillion, which canalso lead to cancer as well as changes in our estrogen and testosterone levels, andother problems. it also kills beneficial gut bacteria, it’s a patented antibiotic, whichcan throw the balance of the gut bacteria off, dysbiosis in gut bacteria is linked toleaky gut and many other diseases, it’s linked to autism, etc. it also blocks thebacteria’s ability to produce precursors to serotonin, dopamine and melatonin, whichis tryptophan and others, so you end up with all sorts of mood issues and insulin regulationissues and insomnia and possibly parkinson’s.

so you have a whole slew of issues associatedwith round up. in addition, it blocks a very important pathway, the p450 cytochrome pathway,which allows the liver to detox and also allows the body to produce vitamin d. and these arejust some of the problems associated with it, and what it does, it’s a very simplemolecule, deceptively simple, but grabs onto metals and minerals making them unavailable,metals and minerals are absolutely essential for the functioning of certain metabolic pathways,certain bacteria, hormonal production, etcetera, so it’s a massive disruption and there aregraphs that link glyphosate increase with all sorts of diseases, and we think it’sbased on these factors. wow, i mean that’s what it does, and howit kills the plants is it basically makes

the plant not able to uptake the minerals,and that’s basically, if it’s inside you, it sucks out your minerals, you know, so that’swhat they’re teaching is suck out the minerals that kill plants, i’m actually teachingadd trace minerals because all these trace minerals, i add 70 to 90 trace minerals inmy garden, that’s what i recommend to you guys too, because all these minerals are unstudied,they don’t know what a small amount of this, a small amount of that, there’s pathwaysand enzymes that break these down that can give you extra immunity and all kinds of crazystuff for the plant, but also for us, right? and even conventional and even organic farmingare not adding these very important trace minerals in the garden in the farms that’sgrowing your guys’ food, so that’s why

i say you guys need to grow your own.and for meat eaters, most of the meat in the united states comes from animals that havebeen grazing or eating gmos. so that means that the animals are also nutrient-deficient,they have mineral deficiencies and vitamin deficiencies, and there’s a widespread universalepidemic in the united states for livestock from [inaudible] and things like that, whichbinds very tightly very glyphosate, so we’re eating weak and sick animals, we’re eatingweak and sick plants, both from glyphosate, and we’re eating residues of glyphosate,which as you say binds with the minerals in us, making them unavailable. and that is thebasis for so many diseases. wow. so i mean there’s still a lot of confusion,just one of my last videos one of my viewers

commented, i want to read the comment on theshow today. “there’s nothing wrong with gmos, it is not poison, you have been eatingthem all your life and are eating them now, this gmo nonsense is way out of hand. eightypercent of what you buy at the grocery store is gmo.” so at least he got one thing right,the 80 percent of what you buy at grocery store is gmo…or has it in it. or has it in it, so jeffrey what would yousay about “gmo is not poison, you’ve been eating them all life?”well, the first gmo to be commercialized for food was in 1994, so that was the tomato takenoff the market within three years. those that have been born since 1996, when soy and cornwere introduced, yeah, you’ve been eating

it all your life, but i was born before thatso it’s not true. yeah me too. [laughter].eighty percent of the stuff is gmo? actually only nine food crops are genetically engineered,but they’re in 80 percent of the stuff in the supermarket, so i would say there’sa partial correct there. i’ll give him a b. so check your facts. the fact that it’snot poison? well if you look at what the scientist said at the fda, they said gmos could increaseallergens, toxins, new diseases and nutritional problems. so you may, and they also said aboutpoisons, [inaudible] toxicology said it could increase existing toxins, create new toxins,bio accumlate toxins from the environment. [inaudible] veterinary medicine said thateating the milk [inaudible] animals fed gmos

have unique risks and what they probably meantwas bioaccumulation of toxins. what we do know is that in spite of monsanto’s claims,glyphosate does bio accumulate as you can tell from the amount of it that’s foundin breast milk, it does bio accumulate in mammal tissue, and we eat the mammals, andso we could absolutely be poisoning the animals that are fed gmos, and of course most gmosare designed as a platform to deliver poison, either they produce an insecticide, or they’resprayed with herbicide, and so 99 percent of all the gmos are in fact poison deliveryvehicles. now if you just took the gmo itself without that, you still end up with the higherlevels of allergens and toxins, in fact monsanto’s soy has up to seven times the amount of aknown soy allergen, and monsanto’s corn

as a new allergen that’s never been in cornbefore, part of the background noise. so whether you call it a poison or a toxin or an allergenor something unusual, unfortunately is misinformed, but is probably disinformed. you see peoplewho are very well-meaning and sometimes have been studying science all their lives havenot been getting the direct information, and you look at the research done by the industry,and i’ve done that with many, many scientists in my second book, “genetic roulette: documentedhealth risks, genetically engineered foods,” i have a 41-page section all about how theindustry rigs its research, how they use tobacco science, how they have bad science down toa science to hide the evidence about the dangers, and they project that false information tothe world, and the mainstream media buys it,

and their advertisers want them to buy itbecause their advertisers largely use gmos, and so we end up being fed not only the gmosbut also a bucket of lies at the same time, and so well-meaning people can be misinformed.so i have compassion for those, not for the liars but the lied to, and realize that whatwe don’t know may in fact hurt us. wow, i mean i definitely agree, i was so gladwhen i started eating non-gmo whole plant-based foods, diet before the gmos came around, andthat’s what i encourage you guys to do, increase the amount of fresh produce thatyou guys eat, and grow as much of it as you possibly can and get away from all the processedfoods, and all the animal foods and all the gmo foods. i’m not really an advocate ofthose guys, and i believe they may cause harm,

and i definitely do not put them in my bodyand wouldn’t recommend that to any of my family or friends. another quote actuallyi got from another viewer jeffrey was “i disagree with round up-ready technology, butgmos are not bad. science are trying to create crops that use water and nitrogen more efficiently.god gave us tools and medicine to heal us right? would he not have also given us thetools to become better stewards of the earth? yes genetic companies have done things i disagreewith, but we need to start thinking about how to adapt to climate change and conventionalbreeding. maybe too slow to bring about crops that can handle rising temps and less water.”your comments? great question, and this again is part ofthe public relations talking points that have

been spewed out for a generation. it turnsout that the process of genetic engineering is based on fundamentally flawed principlesof gmos. it came about when some people thought one gene produces one protein produces onetrait. it turns out very few traits are produced from one protein from one gene, genes actin concert with other genes as networks or families, and we have not yet cracked thecode on that complicated form of interaction. and so the biotech industry got lucky withherbicide tolerance and the production of bt toxin, but for things like higher yields,soil tolerance, drought tolerance, and using less water, that requires interactions ofgenes that we don’t yet understand, and so selective breeding has been far greaterand more successful and quicker in producing

those type of traits. and this is verifiedby the companies themselves, i think it was the head of [inaudible] that said “yeah,selective breeding beats gmos every time in these things,” in fact is the concept thatgmos will feed the world, it’s nonsense, it doesn’t actually even increase yield,whereas [inaudible], the kind of stuff that you promote, can increase yields by 100 percentin developing nations, even 200 percent depending on the study and the location and the crop,and gmos on average reduce yields according to usda reports, according to union of concernedscientists, independent research, etcetera etcetera. so the process of genetic engineeringcould theoretically at some time in the future be used predictably and safely to increasethe yield to do these type of things that

this person said to make things drought-tolerant,soil tolerant, and use less water. right now the gmos on the midwest require twice theamount of water. in fact if you look during the drought, and you looked at the round-upready soybeans or corn next to the non-round-up ready soybeans or corn, and it’s at thetime of the drought, the stuff that was non-gmo did phenomenally better, sometimes 100 bushelsper acre better than the one right next to it, because the one right next to it was dyingmore easily because it required more water. so it’s a failed technology, even the herbicidetolerance is failing because the weeds have outsmarted monsanto and are now resistantin half the farmland, the bugs are now resistant to the bt toxin in more and more states, soit’s a failed technology, the promise is

still there, maybe eventually, possibly wecould do it, and for that reason i’m not against continuing to do research, but who’sgoing to do the research? is it going to be a private company that takes a patent whenthey discover something that is forced to release the product before the patent expires,long before the science is ready and the technology is safe, or is it going to be public moneythat will push it forward at an appropriate level and do safety research at the same time?so far we’ve had no responsible research in this area that allows the technology tobe deployed at an appropriate pace. the independent scientists that i know of all around the worldall agree that it was put on the market long before the science was ready, maybe it willnever be ready, maybe it will be, but not

yet. i mean i agree with that actually, i’m forresponsible technology use, and when the science is done properly, i’m all for gmos, so don’tget me wrong on that point, i’m all for advancement, but on the same token what weneed to do is look towards our ancestors and agro ecology and how our ancestors grew foodsuccessfully for thousands of years, you know the [inaudible] soil with the biochar, andbuilding the soil. another thing the gmos and glyphosate and the pesticides and thechemical synthetic fertilizers do is they ruin the soil. they turn it into dust, thedust bowl in the middle of america right? what we need to do is build the soil, becauseif you have healthier soil, you’ll have

healthier yields, plants that need less water,plants that yield more, and you put good nutrients in the soil like i recommend to you guys,you have more nutritious crops, and this is truly the answer, we have the technology,the technology is already existing on earth. we just need to revisit the old ways. we alwayswant to create something new, but the old ways really works if you do it right, andthat’s what i teach you guys on my show. so jeffrey, another thing that some peoplesay is that there’s 1800 studies that say gmos are safe, and there’s prestigious scientificorganizations that say they’re safe, what’s the truth about this?well let’s start with these prestigious organizations, the fda allows it on the market,so how could it be so bad? well we said that

the fda scientists said there was danger whenthe political appointees overruled them, they ignored them. why was that? the white househad instructed the fda to promote gmos, that’s why. and so they hired michael taylor to bein charge of policy at the fda, and michael taylor was monsanto’s attorney, monsanto’sthe biggest gmo company. he was in charge of the policy that said no safety studiesare needed, no labeling is needed, and he also allowed bovine growth hormone, monsanto’sgenetically engineered drug for cows on the market, and then he became monsanto’s vicepresident, and then he became the fda’s food safety czar under the obama administration.so there’s a lot of organizations like that, a lot of them, american association for theadvancement of science was headed by a pro-gmo

cheerleader, the usda secretary, tom [inaudible]was the biotech governor of the year. we have so many people in government and also in academia,and in key regulatory agencies that have direct ties to the industry, and if they don’thave them in the past they may have them in the future like the person who was in chargeof the biotech approval committee for europe ended up becoming a vice president of [inaudible],one of the top five gmo companies. so we can’t just look to alphabet organizations and say“well they approved it, we can approve it too.” and we can’t just say “oh theyhave 1800 studies.” if you look at those 1800 studies, the vast majority of them havenothing to do with safety, they’re commercial studies. they look at the weight gain of chickensand things like that that have nothing to

do with whether it’s going to influenceour health or our children, etcetera. and when you look at those 1800 studies, you knowwho put them together, people who are trying to force the conclusion of safety, becausethe ones that show problems are mysteriously left out. and there’s even some that arein that compilation of so-called safety-proving studies that show serious problems. and sothey just put it together in order to have these sound bites, and it’s the sound bitesthat end up being ricocheted around in a chorus that’s constructed of these people thathave these front groups and have these highly credentialed titles saying the same thing,so we must believe it’s true. but if you drill down even slightly below the surface,you find that it’s all a charade.

wow, and what about the claim that we’vebeen modifying plants for 10,000 years and gmo is just a new way of modifying plants?that’s the other one we mentioned that, and it’s a talking point, and i rememberasking dr. belinda martino, who actually was a scientist on the first genetically engineeredcrop, the flavor saver tomato, we were at a public forum i said “so belinda, is gmojust an extension of natural breeding?” and she rolled her eyes and said “no ofcourse not.” and yet there are some scientists that will repeat that dutifully.so why are gmos being allowed to be grown and sold in the usa but many other countrieshave banned them or passed minimally labeling laws?well the government is still deciding that

they want to promote gmos, it’s still theofficial policy of the fda, it’s the official policy of the epa and the usda and the statedepartment, if you look at the wikileaks it shows how the ambassadors at various countriesare calling on washington to put pressure on brussels and to create up a retaliationlist against countries to cause some pains so that they stop rejecting gmos, they’repaying for reporters to be flown to the us to be taught by monsanto how to report ongmos, it’s a complete travesty when you look at what the government is doing, andi remember speaking to a senior government official, and i told them “no gmos are notthe same, the scientists at the fda all believe that,” and she stopped and said “but that’sthe entire basis of us policy on gmos.”

yeah that’s right, it’s all based on alie. so we covered if gmos will feed the planet,but what about gmo technology that’s going to put beta carotene in rice so that peoplethat are malnourished in foreign countries can now get beta carotene in rice?well first of all let’s be clear: if this rice ever turns out to be effective, it doesn’tmean that we should embrace the technology completely and say “oh it’s okay to beeating monsanto’s herbicide, because a different product all together is saving children.”will golden rice save children? very, very unlikely. first of all using a primitive destructiveand disruptive technology so you may end up increasing the amount of beta carotene inthe rice, and causing all sorts of allergens,

toxins, new diseases and nutritional problems,just as the fda scientists predicted, and it’s not being evaluated at all, and therewas even a feeding trial in china where they didn’t have the proper informed consentand never did the studies even on animals before they fed them to humans, and neverfully evaluated the content of the product, so it was a complete travesty, and there wassome firings in china and there was suspensions and whatnot in the united states. so if youlook at david schubert[?] of [inaudible] institute’s article on gmos and a new generation of gmos,he talks about how this particular change is an example of a technology that might befar more dangerous than the gmos that are already on the market, because you’re changingactive principles in the crop, and you may

end up creating changes in the retinoic acidwhich is part of that pathway, that’s what i couldn’t think of before, retinoic acid,which is linked to certain diseases and birth defects. and so in producing a change in thebeta carotene, you’re very likely to produce a change in the retinoic acid, and very likelyto promote, or have a potential to promote other diseases, and this is not being lookedat. so you’re creating changes in metabolic pathways that produce very active compoundsthat are important for growth and also very dangerous. now you also have beta carotenewhich [inaudible] to be uplevel to vitamin a, so it’s used by these vitamin a deficientchildren, in order to do that you typically need fat in the diet, well these same childrendon’t have much fat in their diet, so there’s

no proof of principle that’ll ever actuallyprovide the vitamin a needed. and there are other methods to provide vitamin a which don’tcarry these risks and have already been proven to be safe – growing gardens, providingsweet potatoes, providing other products, providing a complete balanced diet so you’renot just doing a silver bullet approach for one particular lack of nutrient, but an entirebasis for overcoming malnutrition and increasing balanced nutrition. so we have a situationwhere they spent a hundred million dollars, and it still hasn’t proven to have goodenough yields to deploy, it’s still not ready even if there were no objections toit, it’s still never been tested for efficacy or safety, and you can feed two pills a yearwith high mega doses of vitamin a at a cost

of a nickel a year to children and preventblindness. so this is the poster child of the biotech industry, and you can see why.wow, to me it sounds like smoke and mirrors, like that guy in new york city that’s like“okay, what cup is the ball under?” and he totally tricks you, right? it sounds likethat because i mean i think they’re kind of saying “oh yeah this could be this,”but it’s totally not, and i mean i think it’s fear easier to grow some carrots orgrow some sweet potatoes right? sweet potatoes actually grow in high heat, and they’repretty tolerant of all kinds of stuff, and add nutrients to the soil to grow higher qualityfood, i mean in some of the studies i’ve seen with just using standard chemical fertilizers,nutrition could be half as much, minerals

could be half as much, you could have twiceas much protein in the same given carrot if you’re growing in a nutrient-dense fashion,giving the plant and building the soil, giving it what it needs instead of growing nutritionallydeficient foods using chemical fertilizers, round up and gmos and all this kind of stuff.so in my opinion, it’s much better to just get back to nature and use nature to benefityou right? there’s so many different new varieties of naturally-bred tomatoes thatare high in [inaudible] and all kinds of stuff, and they’re able to do this naturally. let’stalk about that, let’s move more into the whole gardening realm in gmos, because i knowa lot of my viewers out there, i mean people are scared, either they don’t care aboutgmos, either they think they’re fine, or

they’re indifferent or they’re reallyscared, like “everything in the grocery store is a gmo, every plant that i go to buyat home depot is a gmo.” what’s the truth about this jeffrey, is every plant that youcould buy at home depot or lowe’s or your local nursery that home gardener would buy,is that gmo? is it going to be gmo? mercifully not. i don’t know much aboutthe non-food plants, there’s not a lot of non-food plants that you can grow for gardensthat are genetically engineered, but it hasn’t been my area. but for food plants, if youlook at the list of those that are commercialized, it’s the same list for the seeds that youcan buy. you’d have to look out for yellow squash and zucchini. and it may not even mentionthat it’s genetically engineered. there’s

corn, corn on the cob, which corn usuallymentions, or almost always, maybe always mentions that it’s genetically engineered, i don’tknow if there’s a variety for home growers of genetically engineered corn, it’s usuallyfor farmers, but i’d look out for that. and because its cross-pollinates i would geta certificate from the seed producer that they’ve tested that particular batch andwhat the results of that test were for gmo contamination for corn. papaya wouldn’tbe a problem unless you’re in hawaii or growing seeds that you picked up in hawaiior china, and then the others you wouldn’t be growing cotton, you wouldn’t be growingcanola, sugar beets are for sugar and not for eating, you won’t be growing soy inyour garden. so, alfalfa is also used for

animal hay primarily. so you’re not goingto end up facing the issue right now, but the biotech industry’s stated goal is togenetically engineer 100 percent of all commercial seeds. that is their goal. they wanted todo that by now. in fact in the 1999 conference in san francisco, there was a whitepaper circulatingprojecting a 95 percent replacement of all commercial seeds by 2004. now what turnedthat around or at least derailed that fast track schedule was the gag order being liftedon a scientist in europe three weeks later where he was able to speak about the dangersof gmos and he was the world’s greatest scientist in his field, and he was being giventhe task to figure out how to test for the safety of gmos, and until he discovered theproblem he was a pro-gmo scientist, it was

a perfect set-up for a whistleblower, andhe was about to blow the whistle seven months earlier, and got fired and gagged and defamed.and when his gag order was lifted, over 700 articles were written in the uk press alone.within 10 weeks the tipping point of consumer rejection was achieved in europe, as evidencedby the april 27th announcement by unilever that they weren’t going to use anymore gmosin its european brands, and then nestle said the same thing the next day, and then everyoneelse said the same thing the next week. european brands, because that’s where the high profilefood safety scandal hit the headlines, not in the united states where it was all coveredup. so consumers were reacting against gmos, it changed the marketplace, it eliminatedtheir risk because they expressed their concern,

that’s what’s happening in the unitedstates, it happened already in the natural products industry, that was tipped in 2013,it’s now making its way through the conventional food industry, similac baby and infant formulajust introduced a non-gmo brand. as that skyrockets the others are going to have to do the same,and that’s going to end up happening with the baby food and the breakfast cereal, etceteraetcetera, we’re going to see a tipping point here. the institute for responsible technology,my organization has been helping to engineer that by telling people the truth about gmos,we could use your help on that, we could use your help in many ways. so i want to takethis moment to do that. if you go to responsibletechnology.org, sign up for our newsletter so we can stayin touch with you, you can become part of

our tipping point network of about 10,000activists in north america getting the information out boots on the ground-wise. you can learnhow to speak on gmos, i’ve taught close to 1500 people how to speak on gmos, we havean online speaker training course. you can make a donation, we have a five-year masterplan to eliminate gmos which is very much needing your support to help us activate thetargeted demographic group education that we need to drive gmos completely out of thesupermarket and then animal feed as a follow-up. so we are confident that we can do it, becausewe’ve seen the changes, i’ve been working on this for 19 years, and i’ve never seensuch changes, 40 percent of americans already say they’re avoiding or reducing gmos, upfrom 15 percent in 2007. most americans, at

least three quarters two years ago were concernedabout gmos, the other side knows that their castles built in the air are going to goingto crash, they’re spending millions of dollars on public relations which is totally vacuous,and yet we have now thousands and thousands of people who are removing gmos from theirdiet, and reporting to others and to us at the institute, and to their doctors how muchbetter they’re feeling, and the symptoms are going away. i have a film, “geneticroulette: the gamble of our lives,” which is quite popular and available at geneticroulettemovie.com,but a new film is going to come out with actual testimonials and case studies of familiesthat switched to non-gmo and what happened was amazing.yeah i want to encourage you guys to switch

if you haven’t already switched. so jeffrey,it’s becoming quite apparent that people are more and more aware of the gmo issue,and is it true that actually the usda just came out with some kind of non-gmo label now?well the usda, it’s kind of leaked information that they’re going to have a verificationprogram probably for grains and whatnot. we don’t know how good it is, the non-gmo projectis the way to go right now. i very much doubt that the usda’s standards will meet oursas consumers, but it’s possible. non-gmo is becoming so popular that i expect all themajor food companies to switch to non-gmo in the next couple of years, so they’regoing to want to verify it for consumers, because if they simply put “non-gmo” onthe side of their package like cheerios, i

called up cheerios and said “well what doyou mean by non-gmo? what’s your standard?” they said “we can’t tell you.” so okay,fine, i’ll go to grape nuts that has a non-gmo project verified label on the front, and i’llknow exactly what they do, and i’ll personally go organic. but the other thing is to avoidglyphosate or round up, it’s not just important to avoid gmos now, because they use roundup as a ripening agent on wheat, barley, rye, oats, sweet potatoes, potatoes, lots of berriesand whatnot, fruits and vegetables. so buying organic is more important than ever before,because they sometimes spray this ripening agent glyphosate on crops just three daysbefore harvest, and of course it’s just sitting inside the food portion that we eat.so the highest priority is to avoid gmos,

and if you can at all buy organic and certainlywhat you grow yourself would even be better, go for that, especially children who are mostat risk. and we’re in fact going to launch a campaign on round up if you go to responsibletechnology.org,by the time this is out our campaign should be in place, and we’ll be providing a lotof training and information and materials to be active locally, so join the tippingpoint network and you’ll get everything you need.so how can somebody get a hold of your website once again and learn about that campaign onround up? responsibletechnology.org will give you thatinformation. to watch the film “genetic roulette,” you can go from there, or geneticroulettemovie.comwill bring it to you directly. and to help

you avoid gmos, go to nongmoshoppingguide.comwith over 31,000 products verified as non-gmo by the non-gmo project, and other tips andtricks to avoid gmos in the supermarket and in the restaurants.yeah i want to encourage you guys to eat non-gmo, i mean the easiest ways very simply are numberone, go organic, organic shouldn’t have any gmos in there unless there’s some cross-pollinationcontamination, which hopefully is small if any. get something that’s non-gmo projectverified that has the non-gmo project verified label, don’t believe any other claims becausethey may not be substantiated or verified, and of course eat things out of your own gardenthat you can grow yourself, and start with good, wholesome seeds, and of course growthe most nutrient-dense foods you can, because

in my opinion, i got into gardening, growingmy own food and this whole health journey because i almost lost my life when i was younger,right? i don’t want that to happen to you, and there’s all these pitfalls that mayget you, and the gmos is probably just one of them. so i want to thank you for helpingme out today jeffrey, i hope you guys enjoyed this episode, if you did please give me thumbsup, i may have some more episodes on the gmos in the future, other than that we’re goingto get back to gardening and showing you guys how to grow the best food on the planet. soif you haven’t already checked me out, be sure to check my past episodes, i have over1050 episodes now on how to grow your own food at home. also be sure to subscribe soyou don’t miss any of my upcoming episodes,

i have some really cool exciting episodeswhere i get some bumble bees for pollination and all kinds of cool other stuff happening.so once again, my name is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we’ll see you nexttime, and remember until then, keep on growing. safe eating.