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This should get Will going.........

Okay, Will. you must have some strong opinions on this subject.................

I watched a movie on GMOs.

Obviously very one sided, but interesting. I get it. I prefer to deer to beef because I know what it ate and where it came from. I am trying to grow some of my veggies too. But is it realistic to think that with a population of nearly 8 billion we could successfully feed everyone without GMOs? I am trying to think of the havoc a pest or invasive plant could do to a farm in a single season. I just don't believe at this point of humanity we can go all natural. Heck, one could argue that the abundance of food created through genetic engineering has contributed to the population boom.

Then take it one step further. If you are against GMOs then should you also have an issue with where medicine has gone?

I am feeling very philosophical this evening :) Pete

You know what your deer ate?

And I though this thread would be about Bernie. What a relief.

Now now, brothers & sisters... just because will wears socks & sandals doesn't mean hes a crazy vegan anti-gmo hippy. Lol

He may be a little crunchy, but he also whacks & stacks with the best. :)

1.) If you want to trigger me, Pete, then you need to come on and suggest that the Vegan "documentary" about sports performance (The Game Changers) that came out recently shows good science. Ill have about 20 papers linked to this site faster than you can get your first WE step on a tree - and that's pretty fast! Seriously, if any of you reading this have co-workers asking you about that or telling you how bad meat is because of that movie... Wholly smokes, just ask and Ill load you with good science up to your eye balls. That dang movie is such a load of crap it's not even funny... I mean, just absolutely blatant misunderstanding of science, of what you see in basic labs, of performance, of protein metabolism, of, well, literally everything. Hell, being vegan could be done healthy, so that part doesnt get me.. but the blatant BS that frames that movie is SOOOO bad it makes veins pop out of my head just thinking about it.

2.) Frankly, almost everything is GMO - in essence, it's high speed human engineered evolution rather than selective trait based evolution. IE, this soy bean will survive drought better because we did X Y Z... Or that Salmon will grow faster due to X. In a perfect world, everyone is fed and we dont need to speed the process... But in the end, fed and healthy humans are better than those things not happening... So... GMO for it. That said, if we could improve supply chains and storage ability those things would likely help a lot too... The reality though, is that eventually even those things dont make up for the number of hungry mouths on earth. GMO is a valid tool in the quest to feed the world.

3.) Do try to figure out how to use fewer chemicals when farming and make more use of limited resources like water when farming.

4.) Do try to eat more locally and by all means, kill your own proteins and grow your own veggies/fruits as much as you can. It's satisfying, healthy, emotionally really positive and an extremely strong case can be made that it's the healthiest option.

5.) I'm not really a Bernie guy. He seems like a good guy, and like he cares for folks. And that's great. He'd be fun to have coffee with. And c'mon, a Bernie press conference if he was president would be fantastic. It would be like Larry David was talking to us and frankly, it would be hilarious. I'm currently undecided I know a few folks I would not vote for, in a primary at least or in the general... but I'm not committed as of yet to any individual in the group I'm pondering. (that was just for BC, wanted to make sure I made it a little political :))

In mentioning The Game Changers you've now triggered me :-p Have you watched "the debate" or the various breakdowns of said debate? Oh man brutal stuff in that movie and I love me a crappy documentary.

On the GMOs: they can be used for good; GMOs that result in sterile offspring and screw up the broader ecosystem's ability to function aren't so cool. Drought resistance and disease resistance are another matter. I'm legitimately curious about the CRISPR'd mosquito that can decimate native populations and what if any impact ridding the world of most of the mosquitoes would mean. It's a great power, and with great power...

Ok I’ll bite with my stupidity, what the heck is GMO?

I've never understood what all the fuss is about GMO's. Everyone I've spoken to who are against them are afraid of what could happen to human health, but from everything I've read there is nothing to prove that GMO's do anything negative to the human body. The only real negative I can see is the fact that crops are being manipulated to handle higher doses of pesticides, which cant be good for any living thing. But as you mentioned how else do we feed 8 billion people? The fact is we are probably beyond earth's capacity to house the number of people we currently have in a sustainable manner.

Our agricultural system absolutely created a population boom. There was a huge spike in world population that coincided with the invention of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. "The Omnivores Dilemma", by Michael Pollan, has some great info on the subject, and tons of other great info if you're into philosophical food writing.

Genetically Modified Organism

I’ve heard organic beef is more organic than some deer because the deer eat farm crops which can be gmo and coated in pesticide/herbicide/ fertilizers. I thought that was worth considering.

Will I'd be interested to hear your side of the vegan thing because a couple guys I know just got through telling me how bad meat is for you after watching some documentary. I have to assume it's the same one. funny thing is they are both as blue collar manly men as it gets, they split a cow last year, I gave one of them about 30lbs of venison, one is big into smoking meat, etc. Funny how it changed their opinions. I'm interested to know what you think was misleading in the doc.

Pink lady apples are freaking delicious

I’ve thought the same thing arrownoob. If the deer are eating daily on ag fields , how does that affect the meat? Will?

It is interesting science. I agree with Will, it is basically just speeding up the process in many cases. But, I think one could argue that it also allows for things to grow where they probably would not be able to otherwise. So if that is the case, could a tomato, for example, be an invasive species in certain areas? What is the impact? What gets wiped out as a result? There is also an argument to be made that more nutrients are pulled out of the soil, rendering top soil useless in a very short period of time. Again, I am not a tree hugger, and we have to feed everybody, so GMOs are necessary. But you have to wonder the unintended consequences over time. No different than wiping out the wolves in parts of our country; there are consequences.

So my, reading has led to flour. I make my own bread so I was interested in the different types out there. Of course, this led me to the use of roundup to help with the consistent maturity of wheat prior to harvest. Right before harvesting, the farmers spray the wheat with roundup to stimulate the greener wheat to maturity.

I think the biggest issues with the GMO thing is that crops have been developed to become Roundup resistant. This allows for farmers to spray Roundup widely and destroy everything in the field except for their crop. In the farmer's defense though, Roundup is FDA approved and supposed to be safe.

As for any discussion about meat being bad...... ya okay. Now, how it is processed and how long it sits around until it gets to my house, that is another discussion. I butchered a fresh pig this fall. ZERO smell to the meat. ZERO smell even after a month. When is the last time you unwrapped a piece of pork from the store and not had that not so great smell? That right there is reason alone to kill your own meat.

Matt for a second I thought you said Genetically Modified Orgasm lmao.

I will admit, I've mellowed on this. With time, comes grace perhaps. I was at a dinner party with a bunch of medical researchers once and when the idea of GMO's came up I was aghast at the concept and prospect of what it was putting into the world. Wholly smokes, that dinner party did not go well :) I was respectfully torched, but it was needed, I was looking at it from to myopic an angle. That intellectual smack upside the head opened my eyes.

I stayed open and learned more about it. The ideas of things growing/living where historically they did not is one with merit. The challenge comes, at least to my eyes, with people who live where survival may not be possible, or where "technically" carrying capacity has long since been passed. I dont know where the moral lines could be drawn on that issue. But I'm good with feeding humans. So while I'd like to be able to do that with traditional farming and ag processes, it's not realistic, so I accept we can use our minds to solve that issue to some degree. There in lay's the GMO end of things. It allows us to do something we couldnt to ease human suffering and improve the health of humans around the world. Given how much we have influenced (and one can make a strong case that influence in many ways has been negative) the environment... GMO seems a reasonable step to this point. Unless we get to discussions of making GMO humans with extra arms or taller or whatever. That's just way to far - though even that is not an easy or black and white discussion in reality, and in cases, up to some points, likely makes good sense (IVF could be described as a sort of help in this area for example, and in absolutely NO way would I want to see that ended)

Enough of the heavy stuff. On to that movie that turns nutritional science and sport science into fantasy land pseudoscientific BS... Here are a few links to articles written by actual nutrition experts but in "popular" style. The first one is the best in my opinion. Asker Jeukendrup is the world authority on fueling performance in sport and has provided literally reams of field changing and evolving information to the world over the past 20 to 30 years or so. The others are experts, but certainly are writing with a bit more of a loose and bloggy style. If more are needed, I can find em on my hard drive.

https://www.mysportscience.com/single-post/2019/11/06/Is-game-changers-game-changing-or-is-it-sensationalism

https://dieteticallyspeaking.com/an-evidence-based-review-of-the-game-changers/

https://www.biolayne.com/articles/research/the-game-changers-review-a-scientific-analysis/

Frankly, the movie is great at providing info that feels so good and like one wants it to be true. Especially if you want to affirm your vegan beliefs or have considered it. They make it look awesome. But they do, frankly, BS tests to prove some points, and cherry pick wonky data while leaving out the majority of data and views of the majority of experts in the field based on a few case studies which are basically organized to affirm, rather than discover, for the film.

Reality, is that humans can be incredibly healthy on a variety of diets. Eating meat as part of an omnivorous diet rich in plants being likely the "average" baseline of nutritional strategies our species have used. But that's swayed given regions our ancestors lived/developed in, and what was available. That's seen still, where some cultures eat almost all animal foods with little in the way of anything else and sustain great health... And some others are almost or actually are vegan and have great health. Our evolution was successful due to our amazing adaptability - that's across the board, our ability to learn, to move over long distances, to think into the future, to remember the past, to work as teams, and to eat a wide array of foods.

So, if someone wants to be a vegan, I have no issue with it so long as it's their view of ethics or a desire to see if it helps with a specific health concern they have. When that view becomes dogma though and is pushed with religious pressure... that is the point where you know someone is not seeing reality any longer, and is seeing only their agenda. Which is, again, fine... so long as they recognize other approaches yield the same results for other people (or even better).

GMO's have been around since the dutch figured out how to modify a tulip and the Roman army conquered the known world on oats and a fist full of anchovies..

Apples, pot and corn are the biggest modified products in this country.

That's a really interesting point notme. Apples are GMO out the ying yang. Corn as well.

I had no idea on the smokey dope. Makes sense though the more I think about it.

Notme,

Tulips are the result of selective breeding. just like all the shapes and sizes of dogs we see. The first artificial genetic modification accomplished using biotechnology was transgenesis, the process of transferring genes from one organism to another, was first accomplished by Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen in 1972.

There are now genetically modified plants, animals and even humans. It really is uncharted territory. Lots of potential for good, lot's of potential for evil. Time to knap some flint.

Knapping stone. Think about that. The first technology. A species, homo sapiens modified a natural material and starts humans on the path to domination over every other organism on the planet.

After that Netflix vegan movie came out joe rogan had a guest on who debunked The Whole thing in 2-3 hours. It’s worth listening to. Chris Kessler or Kressler? https://youtu.be/Dq4Apc2Xk7Q

Tekoa, Wouldn't selective breeding be a simple form of genetic modification? Somewhere someone along the line in ancient Rome decided they wanted a bigger and stronger war dog and came up with different variations of mastiffs, same as the Dutch with they're tulips or Bill and Ted with ghangi . It all started somewhere

Not really. Unless something is seriously screwed up and you have a genetic disease or mutation, within a spcies evey individual has the same basic genes. But the gene can have more or less copies or sections might differ resulting in why we all are a bit different looking. The phenotype is what we are, tall short, white, black etc. Genetic modification means incorporating new or different genes that will result in something unique.

Its still basically the same thing only faster to reach the same results .

The concern is gmo is not through natural breeding. Humans are going in and fiddling with dna. It’s too fast for some people. people have faith in naturally occurring food and skepticism for engineered food. Kind of like growing tissue in a lab and calling it hamburger.

Good read on the subject, and the entire time line of GMO, literally 30,000 years worth.

http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/from-corgis-to-corn-a-brief-look-at-the-long-history-of-gmo-technology/

Pi, in nature most mutations result in nothing or failures... but the positive ones lead to, frankly, amazing things.

Positive mutations lead to us. IE, mutation leads to trait, trait leads to new interactions with environment, new mutation eventually happens, process repeats and with messy slow progress, things evolve.

Ill take the good mutations/traits... It's why we are all here able to read this and discuss it :)

PI, yup you got it..

Oh boy ...here we go, "Something put the code into life, Something drives it forward , Something made the complexity and basic system for mutations to reside in"

Oh.. I know...the Anunnaki? The Engineers from Prometheus? Wheres my tin foil. :)

So this took an interesting turn.

So back to GMOs. We can all agree that most GMOs are not bad, and man is actually helping to accelerate the positive mutating process, or whatever you guys want to call it. However, are we all comfortable with the unintended consequences? I think that is a legitimate question. Higher crop yields for example lead to faster soil degradation. So what else are you killing off because your soil sucks and it is dowsed in roundup? Is it the honey bee because certain flowers are no longer around? Maybe not, but maybe so. Or maybe you have to haul in soil or compost from outside the native boundary because you soil now sucks. What is in the compost? Will you introduce a negative chain reaction?

Lots of positives with doing this stuff, and quite frankly, given our population we have no choice. But one has to wonder what we are f'g up as a result. I am not saying we are, I am saying we don't know what we don't know. Interesting to think about though.

One thing has been proven over and over during modern times. You change the natural order of things and there are always unintended consequences. Sometimes good, but many times its pretty bad.

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