From 29 UNLABELLED GM sugars will be in candy, cereal, granola bars, baby food, breads, in fact all common foods that contain sugar in America. Just think of how many processed foods contain sugar;
‘Bob Evans vegetable stirfry contains 31 grams of sugar and 505 calories.
Kentucky fried chicken’s teriyaki wings contains 30 grams of sugar and 480 calories.
Quaker natural granola contains 30 grams of sugar and 420 calories’
‘This year, farmers are planting Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready GM sugar beets for sale to food producers for the first time. This beet is genetically engineered to survive multiple, direct applications of the weed killer, Roundup, and its active ingredient, glyphosate. What’s particularly appalling about the approval of this GM sugar beet is that at the time of its approval, Monsanto convinced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to increase the glyphosate residues allowed on sugar beetroots by an astounding 5,0 percent. This opens up the possibility for excessive pesticide spraying on GM sugar beets’
Despite widespread consumer demand for labeling, the biotech industry has stubbornly refused to label its GM products. Why? Because if consumers could make informed choices about foods that contain GM ingredients, chances are they would not buy them. Poll after poll has confirmed consumer distaste for GM foods, particularly given the absence of human health studies that prove GM foods are safe for human consumption. Yet, the biotech industry remains arrogant in its refusal to give consumers the labels that they demand and deserve.
Food producers, like consumers, have also been held hostage by the biotech industry, which has steadfastly denied them the right to know if the food they purchase has been grown from GM seeds. GM beet sugar, which could be released into the food supply as early as 29, will be combined with non-GM sugar and sold as “sugar,” with no indication that some of it has come from GM beets. Manufacturers of candy, cereal, granola bars, baby food, breads — anything that contains sugar — would be hard-pressed to avoid using sugar derived from GM beet sugar once it’s introduced into the market. This “no label” policy eliminates food producers’ right to know, choose, or refuse to use non-GM sugar in its products. It also keeps consumers in the dark’
So, does it bother you?
Sources – direct quotes
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/28/10/29/152739…
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Health-People-Healt…
http://www.organicconsumers.org/kelloggs.cfm
http://www.wellsphere.com/weight-loss-article/20-h…
Update:
The label won’t tell you anything, it will just say sugar. You as an American consumer, have no right to know, no way of knowing if it is GM sugar, but then, neither will the food manufacturers!
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✅ Answers
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It certainly bothers me even though I live in the UK and will not be directly exposed to GM sugar.
There are three worries.
Firstly, official research in the UK has demonstrated that growing crops that are genetically modified to be tolerant to Roundup can be damaging to biodiversity.
Secondly, there have been many examples of “alien species” (this is the technical term for species that are not native to the area) doing damage when released into a new environment. (For example Japanese Knot-weed is a plant that is damaging British flora and American grey squirrels is an animal that is damaging British flora and fauna). Genetically Modified organisms are another example of alien species that may well do enormous damage to crops and wildlife throughout the world. The environmental consequences of releasing such organisms could be catastrophic and no amount of testing can foresee all such consequences.
Finally, there are the unforeseen consequences for human health.
I am glad that European and UK law provides me with labelling that helps me avoid foods produced from genetically modified organisms and I would advise US consumers to demand similar protection and information. I feel entitled to offer such advice because the world threatened by these methods is the world I inhabit too. I am also at risk from inadequately labelled imports from the USA.
You can avoid GM foods by buying certified organic food. But it is also important to campaign against GM crops and to demand proper labelling.
Source(s): 42 years working for the UK Government Departments for agriculture and the environment.
Good timing on asking this question. I just moved from Idaho, right in the heartland of where these GM sugar beets are being planted.
For the first time there were sugar beet fields completely free of any weeds.
Since I’m guessing most people have never seen a sugar beet weed in their life, I’ll tell folks about it. When the sugar beet fields are mature, the leaves stand about 1 1/2 feet tall. they look like giant spinach leaves. The weed that plagues the sugar beet fields grows about 4-6 feet tall. It shades the sugar beets, and sucks up the water. If you cut this weed off, it dies.
The weed (sorry, I don’t know the name of it) grows faster than the sugar beets the entire season. Sugar beets are always shorter, weed is always taller.
So if at any time during the growing season, the farmers ran a chopping blade set up at a higher level than the sugar beets, and cut the tops off this particular type of weed, it would die.
Instead, they can now just plant roundup ready sugar beets, and use roundup.
When sugar beets are harvested, they send in a chopping machine, and cut off all the leaves of the sugar beets, and any standing weeds, leaving them where they lay. It’s going to be a month or more before they actually dig the sugar beets out of the ground, so the leaves will be completely dried up, and no longer a problem for the digger machines (no fresh leaves and weeds to bind up the machines).
Sugar beets are being harvested right now, in Idaho. Potatoes are harvested first. Sugar beets can sit in the ground and wait. It doesn’t matter if the sugar beets freeze…it doesn’t harm them.
Sugar beets are then trucked to a rail line. The trucks dump them with the help of a machine. The machine piles the sugar beets as high as a three story house. The piles will be miles long. There will be several piles (three stories high) running along side each other, by the rail lines.
A HUGE bulldozer will scoup and load the sugar beets into miles of railcars. The train then goes to California, where the beets are turned into sugar. The sugar is then shipped out to stores.
Bet people had no idea their sugar had so many food miles on it, or that such a vast amount of petrolium products was used to produce sugar, did ya?
The only way to fight the GM sugar in the U.S. is to buy the more expensive, and specifically marked “sugar CANE” sugar. Of course sugar cane sugar has a lot of food miles too, since it’s coming by ocean.
Of course the other thing people could still do, who are bothered by the GM sugar is have food storage. The sugar my family currently using is from 1976. Sugar does not ever go bad.
Sugar is unfortunately one of the things I’m unable to produce on my farm. I am however going to be experimenting a lot more with cooking with honey, apple sauce, and maple syrup, and trying to eliminate as much sugar from our diets as possible.
I personally am completely HORRIFIED by the lack of choice over the purchasing of the GM foods, and the laws that are getting passed to protect companies like Monsanto.
~Garnet
Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years
Yes, very much.
Let me begin by stating my very strong bias against Monsanto. I believe they are the highest form of evil in our world today, even surpassing the Taliban. Just so y’all know where I’m coming from.
Consumers have a right to know what is in their food supply. Having been schooled in foods and nutrition, I am aware that not all GM foods are “bad,” just as not all natural foods are “good.” Meaning that there is no one perfect food that meets our needs, and that no single “bad” or “junk” food will do significant damage. I was educated on the “everything in moderation” principle, but we cannot even fall back on that, because the Super-size generation has no concept of what moderation means.
If Monsanto is successful, there will be a huge supply of their product, keeping it’s price low, so that food manufactureres will choose their product over any other based on simple economics. GM sugar will find its way into every restaurant, vending machine and box or bag of “quick snacks” in every town in America.
Organic foods will appear to be a poor economic value, especially to the uninformed and those whose priority is immediate gratification. These people will not be considering the long term health effects of consuming the less expensive, product containing GM sugar.
What is a health conscious consumer to do? I stopped using artificial sweeteners and have avoided corn syrup sweeteners due to an allergy. Now when I buy “sugar” it may contain GM sugar without my knowledge?
YES. This is very disturbing indeed!!
The widespread sugar bothers me. Its source doesn’t. The sugar is unhealthy. As a biochemist, I can say with confidence that sugar is sugar and that there is no rational reason to be concerned about any genetically modified foods that I am aware of.
The original poster is 1% correct that consumers are wary of genetically engineered products, just as they didn’t want irradiated meat, though it was clearly safe and was the best way to kill bacteria and prevent food poisoning. When surveyed, average folks tended to think their food would be radioactive. Consumers don’t know science, as a rule, and should not overrule experts in matters of public safety.
I’m all for labeling GM products. I’m also for educating people about their safety. Then consumers can decide – I expect we both agree there.
Source(s): biochemist
I am quite reluctant to consume the GM (genetically modified) foods of vegetables and animals and milk. However, the prices competitions among food producers in this world will never end and it continues for applying more scientific and technological advance to yield higher quantity and productivity regardless the harmfulness to consumers. It is not that harmful as the GM but the GMO (genetically modified organism) of some Chinese vegetable growers that grown those Chinese favorable vegetables that repelled the insects. It was rumored that it killed the worms and insects after they chewed the growing vegetables in the farmland. Many Chinese vegetable growers don’t eat the vegetables they grow, they buy it from other organic vegetable growers. The most recent melamine contained in the Chinese government recommended brand of Sunlu milk powder that caused many infants have kidney stones. The following articles provides the overview of all GM and GMO produced products.
It’s bad, but you can avoid it. For food to use the organic label, it can’t have GM products in it. I am reducing the amount of processed sugar that I eat so it won’t affect me much. We have allowed the food giants to process food and take all the nutrition out of it, so having genetically modified sugar is just the next step. If you really care then hopefully you will get off the junk food bandwagon and if you are addicted to junk food, one more step toward soylent green won’t make a difference.
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We have world wide markets now, if manufacturers do not know if the sugar they use is GM then there is no way of consumers knowing. It will definitely make me think twice about holidaying so regularly in the USA I definitely won’t be taking my two young nephews and niece as I usually do.
This is serious stuff. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Heck yeah, it bothers me. And thank you for doing your homework, and helping to educate others. We need to read our labels, people, this isn’t just a fad.
I wonder if any bills are in place to counter this or make them label it properly.
If not, we should make one.
Yep it sure does bother me.