Waiter, there’s DNA in my dinner!

GMO Shortens Life Span by Michael. This shirt design was submitted to Atrium in the No GMO t-shirt design challenge.

Threadless recently hosted* a t-shirt contest for Jeffery Smith‘s Institute for Responsible Technology: the No GMO t-shirt design challenge (see Karl’s post Vote for talking, not fighting for more details). One of the shirts really struck me: GMO Shortens Life Span by Michael. The artist proposes an equation:

plants + DNA  = death

This slogan really makes me wonder – does the artist know that plants have DNA? Does he know that his own cells are teeming with DNA? That without DNA, life wouldn’t exist? Do most people know that DNA is essential for life? What would the average person say if told that they eat about 100 thousand miles of DNA in the average meal?

If this is the level of understanding, or rather, misunderstanding, that persons have, can we ever expect to have useful discourse on the subject of biotechnology or even biology itself? This worries me greatly. Just in case anyone out there reading this is concerned that DNA is dangerous, I’d like to provide a simple recipe that anyone can use to see and touch DNA for themselves.

Are there unintended health effects of genetic engineering?

Caduceus with DNA via Ancestry.com

Francis Thicke, agronomist and organic dairy farmer in Iowa, asks:

Do you think there are unanswered questions about the health effects of GE foods? I have heard GE critiques frequently contend that there have been very few feeding trials on the health effects of GE foods, and that in the feeding trials that have been done, the results have raised questions about the safety of GE foods.

For starters, what is your opinion on the case of Arpad Pusztai and the results of his GE potato feeding trials that abruptly got him fired. Has anyone ever replicated his experiment?

There are a lot of important things to discuss in relation to these questions.

2010 World Food Prize

The 2010 World Food Prize Laureates David Beckmann and Jo Luck were introduced by the President of Iowa State University Gregory Geoffroy for a talk titled: Grassroots Efforts in the Fight against Global Hunger. The speakers were met with record attendance for this annual event, about 500 students, faculty, and community members. Tonight’s lecture is part of a week long series of events celebrating the legacy of Norm Borlaug and looking to what we can do to solve hunger in the US and across the world.

Many World Food Prize Laureates have been scientists, and scientists are undoubtedly important in developing new crop varieties and new methods that can produce more food with fewer inputs, particularly for small famers. This year’s Laureates have a new message to share. As David Beckmann pointed out during his talk, great scientists are important, but it also takes groups like Bread for the World and Heifer International to organize and mobilize people to help. This year’s Laureates share a message of hope and inspiration.

What’s for lunch?

The victory of parents against HFCS in chocolate milk from Berkeley Farms in one school district in California rings sadly hollow. The change has no effect on the children’s health, but leads parents to believe that they’ve made a difference. Hopefully, this small change will lead them to fight for larger changes, but if they aren’t fighting for the changes that actually affect the health of their children, do all their efforts do any good?

Corn syrup myths

There are a lot of myths out there about high fructose corn syrup. While there are plenty of reasons to avoid consuming too much corn syrup (and all sugars), that’s no reason to spread rumors.

Have any commonly held beliefs about corn that you’d like to know more about? Let us know in the comments.

Myth: Huge amounts of the sizable US corn crop go to HFCS production. Here’s an example that sums up this idea from Grist: “The Big Corn People began to grow so much royally-subsidized GMO corn that they turned it into millions of gallons of high fructose corn syrup.”

It’s true, a portion of the US corn crop is used for HFCS production. It’s also true that corn syrup is cheap because the corn industry receives subsidies. But there’s a lot more to this story.