You Are What You Eat

I have grown up in a family that truly has a passion for health and fitness. From the time that I was a child, my parents instilled in me the value of good health. I learned to understand that my life was a gift and that I needed to take care of this precious privilege. Since then I have been a gym rat and a health freak. I worry about everything I eat and what it does to my body, however up until just about a year ago, I was not questioning what I was truly putting into my body and I’ll explain what I mean in just a second. The truth is, food is more than what we tend to identify it as: a fat, carbohydrate, or protein. How a certain food is grown or raised also falls into its identity and eventually into our mouths. Nonetheless, very few people challenge the status quo. We accept food for what it is and we rarely ask questions. But what if I told you that the foods we are consuming daily could contain a slow killing poison? Would you then challenge the status quo? Would you wonder what you were really putting into your mouth?

The poison that I mentioned before is something that the agriculture industry refers to as a GMO, or genetically modified organism. There are thousands of different types of these “GMO’s”, however the most commonly used is the Roundup Ready Seed. These seeds have been genetically modified to contain Roundup, which is a chemical used to keep small insects and animals from consuming plants. Before this, Roundup was most commonly sprayed over fields of crops, however with rainwater washing the substance off the plants every time there was precipitation, many farmers began looking for a more effective way to keep their crops safe. Scientists quickly used their knowledge of DNA to slightly alter the DNA of these plants to contain this chemical. Lucky for them, it has been proven extremely effective and farmers have been able to grow billions of crops with little to no problems. However, very little time and money has been invested in researching the affects of consuming these plants that are laced with these relatively strong chemicals. No one can be completely sure that these chemicals are harmless to us upon consumption.

Luckily, a French scientist by the name of Séralini published a study in 2013 that entailed the results of feeding lab rats these Roundup ready seeds for a matter of about two years. Since its release, the study has been criticized greatly and many people from the environmental science community have mentioned that the results of this study were not conclusive. However, this study shows the possibility that these plants could potentially be harmful to humans upon consumption. That to me is enough to be concerning. I feel that we, as human beings, have the right to know what we are putting into our bodies and how the things that we are consuming could be affecting us. I have begun to wonder why no one is really questioning this issue. How can we be so preoccupied over the kinds of foods we are eating, and let pay no regard to what is really in those foods? After a long time pondering and constantly talking to my peers about it at every chance I get, I have finally come to several conclusions. The first being that most people don’t even know what a GMO is or that they consume them on a daily basis. The second is that those who do know what GMO means or what it stands for know almost nothing else about the subject. And so I hope that this blog post can make a small change in your thinking. I hope that I have sparked your interest. I hope that you will follow the links below and take just a few minutes to enlighten yourself on the subject. If we could create worldwide awareness of this potentially dangerous organism then we could finally begin to push for the answers. So let’s tell our friends, parents, neighbors, and families about this, so that we can finally settle this great question, are we truly eating healthy?

Want to know more about GMO's? Make sure to visit the references below:

http://www.gmoseralini.org/en/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/06/24/zombie-retracted-seralini-gmo-maize-rat-study-republished-to-hostile-scientist-reactions/

Documentary: GMO OMG (you can find it on Netflix!)

http://www.navdanya.org/

http://seedfreedom.info/

Finding the Equilibrium: An Introduction to Sustainability

Most people, if asked, would easily be able to define the word “life”. The Webster Dictionary describes the word as, “the general or universal condition of human existence. And so I pose the question, how do we sustain this state we refer to as “living”? Again, the question is relatively simple, human survival is simple in its most basic form. To sustain life, a human being must have food, water, and shelter. The world started off in this way. At the beginning of human existence the biggest issues to overcome involved finding something to safe to eat and discovering a secure place to sleep at night. However, the world has changed a great deal since those early beginnings and although some may still be focused on solving the world’s most basic issues, most have created new ones that now need to be tackled.

With the advancements of the human race come bigger, perhaps more cumbersome problems that need to be dealt with.  The big issue I am referring to is something called sustainability. We now are faced with sustaining life in our country as well as all over the world. If this concept seems cumbersome, don’t worry because I am about to break it down into its most basic elements.

What I really mean when I am referring to this abstract concept, “sustainability”, is preserving and bettering all of the systems we have put in place to improve the lives of human beings. You see, we have come a long way from fighting to survive and now we are working to make human existence much more enjoyable. In doing this, we focus mainly on the three aspects of sustainability: the economic aspect, the social aspect, and the environmental aspect. Technically everything we do should potentially benefit one of these aspects of sustainability and not take away from the others. However, this is quite often not the case. In fact, we often focus too much on one aspect and completely neglect the others.

            
In the United States, the rejection of any form of socialism creates the opportunity to neglect the social and environmental aspects of sustainability and focus solely on the economic aspects. People in the United States have begun to value money over everything else. But is there anything wrong with that? Well, this question is hard to answer quite honestly. It’s a matter of opinion obviously, however using the concept of sustainability, we can pull out some simple facts: maintaining an equilibrium between a focus on the economy, social issues, and environmental issues promotes sustainability. If we look at it this way, then technically focusing too heavily on economics may be partially sustainable for a short amount of time, however in the long run this system will not support human life.

            
The reason why I am so interested in this topic and therefore the reason that I would like to share it with all of you, is that this concept is applicable to almost every part of life, past and present and understanding this concept can help us to make people’s lives better. For example, in studying the indigenous tribes of the New World, I learned that the respect they held for nature allowed them to build entire empires with very little damage to the world around them. They were constantly aware of the impact that their lives had on the environment and tried their best to keep any negative impacts to a minimum. These practices can be studied and learned from today and although, we have advanced quite a bit since these times, many of these old concepts could be used to improve society today.

            
Hopefully, I have given you all the basic idea of sustainability and its inherent importance in life. I believe that the three aspects of sustainability are the basis of all of the issues surrounding “life” and in discussing this particular concept I hope to have given you all a little bit of background information to fully understand issues that I would like to discuss in the future. Thanks for reading!

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/category/sustainability/?_r=0

http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs141p2_024206.pdf