There are plenty of good reasons to buy organic produce--the way the farms are run, greater USDA oversight, some organic items may just plain taste better to you--but there is no evidence that organically-grown produce is
healthier for you. The nutrition you're getting from conventionally grown produce is on par with organic produce. (Meats are a slightly different story as what the animals were fed affects the fat content of the meat, but for produce, things are pretty much the same all over, nutritionally speaking.)
I don't personally worry much about GM foods. Practically everything we put in our mouths is the product of so much careful breeding and selectivity that it bears almost no resemblance to its ancestral form; I don't know that our bodies draw much distinction between a soybean that's been bred over generations to be insect-resistant and one that's acquired its resistance in one generation thanks to modern science.
That isn't to say that there aren't potential negative effects of GM crops--loss of biodiversity leading to increased susceptibility to new diseases, for instance--but there doesn't seem to be evidence of health risks for consumption of them. On the flip side, there's a great deal of evidence about the health risks of eating the kind of junky crud I used to eat, so the way I see it, I'm far better off scarfing down conventionally grown GM veggies than passing up vegetables altogether because they're out of my budget.
In the world of risk assessment, the potential danger of GM foods is negligible compared to other risks we all take daily. I can see why some people take issue with them, but I personally don't; there seem to be many other things more pressing to fret about.
Nola Celeste , 10-29-2010 06:42 PM