Free Republic

Around the world, obesity levels are rising. More people are now overweight than undernourished. Two thirds of British adults are overweight and one in four of us is classified as obese. In the first of this three-part series, Jacques Peretti traces those responsible for revolutionising our eating habits, to find out how decisions made in America 40 years ago influence the way we eat now. Peretti travels to America to investigate the story of high-fructose corn syrup. The sweetener was championed in the US in the 1970s by Richard Nixon's agriculture secretary Earl Butz to make use of the excess...

General Mills says some Cheerios made without genetically modified ingredients will start appearing on shelves soon. The Minneapolis-based company said Thursday that it has been manufacturing its original-flavor Cheerios without GMOs for the past several weeks in response to consumer demand. It did not specify exactly when those boxes would be on sale. Original Cheerios will now be labeled as “Not Made With Genetically Modified Ingredients,” although that it is not an official certification. The labels will also note that trace amounts of GMO ingredients could be present due to contamination during the manufacturing process, said Mike Siemienas, a company...

China rejected two shipments -- almost 546,000 tons -- of U.S. dried distillers' grain, a corn byproduct, because it contained genetically modified material, state media reported Friday.

The startup is housed in a garage-like space in San Francisco’s tech-heavy South of Market neighborhood, but it isn’t like most of its neighbors that develop software, websites and mobile phone apps. Its mission is to find plant replacements for eggs. Inside, research chefs bake cookies and cakes, whip up batches of flavored mayonnaise and pan-fry omelets and French toast—all without eggs. Funded by prominent Silicon Valley investors and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Hampton Creek Foods seeks to disrupt a global egg industry that backers say wastes energy, pollutes the environment, causes disease outbreaks and confines chickens to tiny spaces....

Argentine union members on Thursday clashed with environmentalists protesting the construction of a plant by U.S.-based seed giant Monsanto. … Construction of the corn-processing plant was halted in October when environmentalists began disrupting entry of supplies. Activists oppose the use of genetically modified crops, which Monsanto produces and (environmentalist Vanina) Barboza says they’ll continue to block roads and access to the plant. …

Late last year, in a small health-food eatery called Cafe Sprouts in Oberlin, Ohio, I had what may well have been the most wholesome beverage of my life. The friendly server guided me to an apple-blueberry-kale-carrot smoothie-juice combination, which she spent the next several minutes preparing, mostly by shepherding farm-fresh produce into machinery. The result was tasty. But at 300 calories (by my rough calculation) for a 16-ounce cup, it was more than my diet could regularly absorb without consequences. Nor was I about to make a habit of $9 shakes, healthy or not. Inspired by the experience nonetheless, I...

Did you know that the Obama administration is negotiating a super secret “trade agreement” that is so sensitive that he isn’t even allowing members of Congress to see it? The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being called the “NAFTA of the Pacific” and “NAFTA on steroids”, but the truth is that it is so much more than just a trade agreement. This treaty has 29 chapters, but only 5 of them have to do with trade. Most Americans don’t realize this, but this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, health care, the trading of derivatives, copyright issues, food...

UPDATE, 8:20 p.m.: With 20 counties reporting– including King, Pierce, Spokane and Thurston — the initiative that would label genetically engineered food was trailing 47 percent to 53 percent. More results are coming.

If one believes the backers of Washington State Initiative 522, Tuesday’s vote is simple commonsense: It’s about the “right to know” what’s in our food... “To be clear the Just Label campaign is not an anti-GMO effort,” says Gary Hirshberg, founder of organic food maker Stonyfield Organic, and head of Just Label It... But in less guarded moments, Hirshberg makes it clear that the labeling movement has nothing at all to do with science, information and discourse—it is exclusively an anti-GMO effort...

As a tech-obsessed child growing up in the nineties, Rob Rhinehart was always puzzled by food. Here he was, eagerly embracing the wonders of the information era, and he had to gnaw on seared chunks of meat and raw vegetables. “I remember when I was very young, eating lettuce and thinking it was very weird to be eating leaves, sitting in this nice house with all of these electronics around us,” he says now. These days, Rhinehart doesn’t eat much lettuce or anything else recognizable as food. Instead, the 25-year-old gets most of his nutrition from a water bottle filled...

A 2009 study concluded that golden rice is effectively converted into vitamin A in humans. A 2012 study that fed 68 children ages 6 to 8 concluded that golden rice was as good as vitamin A supplements and better than the natural beta-carotene in spinach. Recently, scientists gathered evidence from Mozambique and Uganda that vitamin A enhanced sweet potatoes are, in fact, improving people's lives. Children who are eating them do have more vitamin A in their blood. Based on other studies of the effects of vitamin A, nutritionistsare confident that the boost is big enough to improve the health...

The Coca-Cola Company isn’t smiling about the latest effort to force labels on foods and beverages that contain genetically modified organisms – this time in Washington State. It’s on a long list of manufacturers that sell products using ingredients derived from either corn or soy, both of which are nearly impossible to source in the United States without using genetically modified crops. In fact, should Washington pass its ballot initiative 522 next week, good luck finding any processed foods or beverages in an Evergreen State grocery store that don’t have GMO warning labels. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo both are on a...

Let’s get real. It doesn’t matter if you think Monsanto is evil. Genetically modified  food is safe—no matter what logical fallacies will lead liberals like Bill Maher to believe. If Monsanto has anything to do with it, it must be evil. That seems to be the prevailing opinion on the monolithic biotech company. Following that logic, if they produce corn or soybeans or another crop that has been genetically modified (GM), those too must be evil. That’s Bill Maher’s reasoning at least—reasoning that lures liberals away from science and towards denial. Making the leap from Monsanto’s business practices—whatever you may...

Humans are the enemy! A new study published in Ecology and Society claims that longer life expectancy for us is bad news for the planet. From the study by Aaron Lotz and Craig R. Allen: We found a positive relationship between life expectancy and the percentage of endangered and invasive species in a country…The overall trend in high-income countries with improvements to the Human Development Index, which includes human life expectancy as one of its variables, is toward a disproportionately larger negative impact on a country’s ecological footprint. However, some lower-income countries have a high level of development without a...

WASHINGTON — It’s long been known that America’s school kids haven’t measured well compared with international peers. Now, there’s a new twist: Adults don’t either. In math, reading and problem-solving using technology – all skills considered critical for global competitiveness and economic strength – American adults scored below the international average on a global test, according to results released Tuesday.

The detection of a small amount of genetically modified material in a Washington state farmer's non-GMO alfalfa crop constitutes a "commercial issue" only and does not warrant any government action, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday. The Washington state farmer had complained in late August to state agricultural officials that his alfalfa hay had been rejected for export sale because of the presence of a genetically modified trait that makes the crop resistant to herbicide. The event triggered a wave of concern from consumer and agricultural groups who have fought the government for nearly a decade to keep...

The left is in a frenzy over the American agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto and other agribusinesses that tinker with crop genetics. Is there any truth to their scare stories asserting that we’re being poisoned with “Frankenfood,” breeding new strains of superbugs and superpests? Genetically modified crops, known as GMOs (genetically modified organisms), have been used by American farmers since the mid-1990s in order to increase crop yields and reduce the use of pesticides. The FDA has approved their use. Today, 70-80 percent of grocery products in the U.S. include genetically engineered ingredients. In contrast, only 5 percent of the food...

On August 8th, 400 protesters ripped out seedlings of a new genetically modified plant called golden rice at a testing ground in the Philippines. Genes from bacteria and corn have been added to the rice to make it a source of vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency can lead to blindness and weakens the immune system, contributing to 2 million deaths every year. (Golden rice is being developed by a non-profit organization, not Monsanto.) As the Philippine government prepares to rule on whether or not to allow farmers to grow the wonder-crop, the anti-GMO movement is digging itself in for...

has been common knowledge to anyone paying attention within the alternative news community for years, but once again the media is now admitting that the US military and intelligence agencies are indeed running massive propaganda campaigns that cover a vast array of online networks.  US military soldier on social media. How many times now has such ‘conspiracy nonsense’ now been reported years later by the mega media as undeniable fact? In the case of the US intelligence propaganda machine that even the New York Times has covered in an article entitled ‘The Real War on Reality‘, we are seeing just...

Biotechnology giant Monsanto is scrapping plans to win approval to grow new types of genetically modified crops in the European Union. It says the move is due to the lack of prospects for cultivation in the EU... It comes just days after the EU began talks with the US on a wide-ranging trade deal, with agriculture likely to be one of the toughest issues. The company said it would now concentrate on growing its conventional seeds business in Europe. It will also look to get EU approval to import its genetically modified crop varieties from the US and South America...