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Video: CNN –Dr. San­jay Gupta on pes­ti­cides in produce.

Do you really need to wait for a study to be done or for the gov­ern­ment to tell you that con­sum­ing pes­ti­cides is a bad thing? If you wouldn’t spray a can of Raid into your mouth, don’t eat some­thing that has been soaked in it please.

In the video Dr. Gupta failed to note any­thing about GMO and in par­tic­u­lar the GMO corn he noted as being one of his favorites. That said, this was  main­stream news media and I don’t expect them to tackle some­thing so big or scary as Mon­santo. If noth­ing else  Dr. Gupta’s clout will sim­ply help to fur­ther aware­ness about organ­ics and that is a good thing.

There is so much good info in this movie. Corn is in every­thing and it is genet­i­cally mod­i­fied to boot! If there were two movies I could give to every­one for free, this would be one of them. Food, Inc. would be the other. This DVD is avail­able through the “Stuff We Like” page. Rent it, buy it, just make sure you do get the chance to see it.

If you have ever won­dered what those four or five digit num­bers on fruits and veg­eta­bles are for you are not alone. They actu­ally do serve a higher pur­pose beyond dri­ving busy cashiers every­where mad. Those num­bers can tell you a great num­ber of things about your favorite golden deli­cious or zuc­chini squash. Things you really should know.

Most impor­tantly these num­bers can tell us one of three things. They can tell us if our pro­duce is:

Con­ven­tion­ally Grown – This means that one or more of the fol­low­ing may have been used:

• Syn­thetic pesticides
• Fer­til­iz­ers made with syn­thetic ingre­di­ents or sewage sludge
• Syn­thetic herbicides
• Antibi­otics
• Bio­engi­neer­ing
• Added hor­mones
• Ion­iz­ing radiation

Organ­i­cally Grown — This means that the pro­duce is one that was grown with­out the above listed items for con­ven­tion­ally grown produce.

Accord­ing to United States Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA) “organic food is pro­duced by farm­ers who empha­size the use of renew­able resources and the con­ser­va­tion of soil and water to enhance envi­ron­men­tal qual­ity for future generations.”

(GMO) — Genet­i­cally Mod­i­fied Organ­ism – This means that the pro­duce has had spe­cific changes intro­duced into its DNA by genetic engi­neer­ing. con­tinue reading…

If you are read­ing this you likely already know that “con­ven­tion­ally grown” pro­duce is not good a thing because pes­ti­cides and chem­i­cals in and on the food you eat is bad. (click here if you are not sure if you have been eat­ing con­ven­tional, GMO, or organic) I am amazed that so many peo­ple still choose to ignore this, espe­cially when they go to the gro­cery store. To be fair, I too once let the pretty arrange­ments of pro­duce  intox­i­cate my senses when shop­ping.  All that  unnat­u­rally pretty, oddly col­or­ful,  and uni­formly shaped pro­duce looks appeal­ing. This com­bined with a naive sense of faith in “the pow­ers that be”  also helped me to ignore the obvi­ous. If I ever did let my mind wan­der to images of rat poi­son and the like, I quickly dis­missed those unpleas­ant thoughts. It was eas­ier to believe that that the gov­ern­ment (and even their gro­cer) had my back on this issue. They wouldn’t allow  any­thing on the food that wasn’t well tested and safe for my fam­ily and I to eat right? This is eas­ier to  believe because if you choose not to, you will be forced to ques­tion other things. That is unset­tling for many peo­ple and a lot of work too. con­tinue reading…