Friday, June 1, 2012

How To Reverse The Effects Of GMO Foods

This is another post from my week last week at Autism One.  And once again, this is definitely a post that is relevant not just to those who have or know someone with autism but for everyone.  I am sort of freaked out by GMO foods the more I read and hear about them, and this is only part of the reason we try to do organic foods as much as we can.  The presentation by Bill Scheffler, who is from Pure Prairie, a farm near Chicago that provides organic and nutrient dense produce for local restaurants and farmers' markets.  They are opening a U-Pick operation this year, and I'm personally going to do my best to get down there to supplement the veggies I am not managing to grow.

What I loved best about this presentation is that it wasn't all doom and  gloom based.  Instead, Bill focused on what we can do to reverse the effects of what we're ingesting on a daily basis.  This is all evidence-based, and if you weren't ever sure how Round-Up and other pesticides used today work, this is great information.  Thank goodness we already love our berries around here!

Bill Scheffler, from Pure Prairie, at Autism One:
GMO foods are not an improvement.  This is DNA species crossing, and the plants don't react well to it.  It's like if you took some stray dogs or horses and put into your spare bedroom because you have an empty bedroom or garage, and therefore the problem is fixed.  The scientists don't bother to check to see what's going on in the house.  They say the protein is the same, etc.  Animals won't eat GMO grains unless they're really hungry.  To get animals to eat the GMO grains, they cover them in molasses. 

If you happen to see some squirrel food that is traditional (GMO) grain, try this experiment by putting some out for squirrels.  Then put out some GMO free popcorn. The squirrels will take the popcorn every time.  GMO foods aren't nutrient dense.  Field hybrid corn weighs about 55 pounds per bushel.  Popcorn (GMO free) weighs 75 pounds.  It's the missing minerals that makes this difference.

The pesticides used now aren't poisons.  Round-Up and all the others are chelators.  They go inside the organism and grab copper or another mineral.  Since these minerals are needed in the organism to function, the nervous system can't function in the bug so they twitch or in the plant so they can't function either.  But it isn't a poison. 

We use enzymes to turn things on and off.  The organophosphates hold the coppers; it's like I took the key out of the car.  I didn't break your car, but it doesn't work.  If you have a spare key, then it will work again.  The key is to take in the micronutrients - that's how you can overcome all the pesticides on our food and get our bodies working again.

When these foods go into us, they are low in minerals, and the pesticides will chelate a mineral in our bodies and deny it to us.  It's like disease by nutrition.  We need to supply the minerals to our body to get it working again.  Fortunately, the organophosphates are like sponges.  They have a limited ability to work.  Once the sponge is full, they stop working. So if we keep supplying our bodies with the nutrients, it keeps the sponges full so we have sufficient minerals for our bodies to function correctly.

Round-Up will grab manganese, iron, zinc, and copper.  Round-Up does not kill a plant; it weakens the plant so the disease kills it.  In a sterile soil, Round-Up won't kill a plant because there aren't any diseases.  Round-Up weakens us through malnutrition.  There are three growing points for a plant - the seed, the roots, and the tips.  Some of it goes into the body of animals that eat the grains or grasses, but most of it goes through.  That means it ends up going into the manure, so organic farmers cannot use manure compost/fertilizer anymore.  When a traditional farmer applies the manure, they're applying Round-Up on their soil, as well.  They won't see it in the beginning, but it will keep adding up and be visible.

If we eat the foods with the minerals of manganese, iron, zinc, and copper, our bodies can replenish these.  The preservatives and all the other additives added to food will be removed, as our bodies can differentiate.  Plants look for calcium.  If they can't find it, it will go for the next best thing, which is generally lead.  There is a lot of lead in our soil in Chicago, so we need to add calcium to the soil to keep the lead from being taken up.

What foods are high in these minerals?

Manganese is also called the seed of life.  When plants want to make a seed, they start with manganese and build out from that.  Strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, pomegranate, zucchini, tomatoes, etc.  Every seed has manganese in it.  If you want to supply your body with manganese, eat things with seeds in them.

Oats have all four minerals in them.  Oats have exactly what Round-Up takes out.  Oats have a high glycemic index, so our children might be sensitive to this.  When we eat our nutrients, the minerals are available to our body 10 times more than they are in your supplements/from a bottle.  They are ten times more powerful.  To supplement, look at kelp tablets, which are very concentrated.  You can also cook with seaweed - it contains 78 minerals.  Alfalfa has 60 minerals.  Comfrey has 43 minerals.  Kale has 20-30 minerals.  This does depend on the farmer, however.  It's more important to know your farmer than to buy organic.  So much organic food is low in calcium.  They haven't been taught nutrition and are just not spraying pesticides.  This is especially true for organic fruit growers.

How do you recognize nutrient rich foods?  The aroma.  They will also be heavier for their size - because of the minerals.  They won't be bitter.  If you have vegetables that are bitter that you're cooking, drizzle a tiny bit of molasses over it, and that will smooth out the bitterness.  You don't want to be able to taste the molasses - this is like dipping a fork and drizzling, and that's it.

The reason that preservatives and GMO foods and pesticides are hurting us is that they are damaging us through malnutrition.  We need chlorophyll, so keep up on our greens.  If the greens taste bad - they should be mild, even a little sweet - then use molasses right there in the pan while you're cooking them.

You can add 1 tablespoon of molasses to 1 quart of broth.  This will also make it far more nutrient dense and also adds a huge amount of flavor when you're making soups.  The molasses also makes it much richer.  Try it for chili or lentil soup or even chicken noodle soup.  Use the darkest molasses you can find.  A little maple syrup will work, too.

When fruits and vegetables are nutrient dense, the plants make their own food - it is mineralized sugar that make fats and essential oils, just like what maple syrup and molasses is.  The Omega-3 that fish have come from the cell walls of the chlorophyll from the micro-algae that the krill eat that then everyone else in the sea eats.  It's just concentrating the chlorophyll for us.  The fish don't actually make it themselves.  Same with the cows - the omega-3s come from the grass they're eating that gets concentrated.  The oils are made from minerals and sugars.  They are copper based enzymes that put these together.  Farmers need to make sure the plants have the raw materials they need to do this, and they need calcium to do this.

If our body has iron and iodine, then our body can make it in our liver.  This is another good reason to take a lot of kelp.  Leukemia is an extreme deficiency in these minerals.

Diseases don't run in the family.  Malnutrition runs in the family.  Families tend to eat the same things and the malnutrition for the same issues appears over and over.  Try changing the foods you eat, and look for the difference.

You can improve your digestion very much with the use of lemons.  It's the same as the acid in our stomachs.  The liver needs calcium to make bile to break down foods.  For generations now, farmers have been making low calcium foods (unintentionally, but still doing so).  To get the calcium up, one of the best remedies is hydroxyapatite, available at Whole Foods and elsewhere.  There is also a calcium orotate. 

If you want a food source for calcium, powdered milk is the best for calcium - it is calcium glycinate and will be in your body in 20 minutes.  It isn't a food, but it's a great calcium supplement.  Home gardeners who have blossom end rot in their tomatoes, put 2 ounces of powdered milk in a gallon of water 2 times a day, then spay your plants.  It will get rid of it quickly.  Here, the liver is not functioning and your bile is weak, so you aren't digesting well.  Take one ounce fresh squeezed lemon and nine ounces water, sip on that and it will help a lot, especially when you're eating a lot of fats in your food.

Raw fiber is good, as your body will pull gelatin from the fiber which will loosen bowel movements.

Because corn is self-pollinating, there are a lot of concerns about cross-contamination with non-GMO corn.  A lot of organic corn guys wait until two weeks after the other guys have planted their corn - maybe until June 1 so that your corn is tasseling when the conventional corn is finished.  This will help with the cross pollination.  There is a gene that is owned by a private corn breeder in Indiana that not allow foreign pollen to cross-pollinate with the sweet corn.  The sweet corn breeders have been using this for awhile to keep the conventional corn pollen off their sweet corn.  Other quality oriented plant breeders are working closely with him to make the genetics available to them so more can have the excluder gene - this is not a GMO, it is a natural occurring plant defense.
So what do you think about GMO foods and the pesticides used routinely?  Are you concerned?

7 comments:

Tami June 1, 2012 at 2:47 PM  

That was a lot to take in. I've been expanding my garden every year just so we can eat healthier as a family. It's a start. I am going to try some of your suggestions too. Thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge.

Sandra June 5, 2012 at 3:38 PM  

This IS a wealth of knowledge here. I've learned so much from this post. When you break it down into such facts, it really makes us aware of how our bodies are what we eat. Hmm, lots of think about...

Jen@BigBinder June 6, 2012 at 8:27 AM  

Holy cow, Michelle! This is awesome! I shared on my FB page for the UnProcessed Kitchen!

Christine Eubanks June 19, 2012 at 8:54 PM  

"The reason that preservatives and GMO foods and pesticides are hurting us is that they are damaging us through malnutrition."

I guess, it is hurting us due to the chemical we've taken? What do you think?

Unknown October 12, 2012 at 8:19 AM  

Okay so here is the cliff notes reversion of what I am getting at....
I have pet rats. Their staple food while nutritionally complete and the best for them, fortunately does not contain corn but does contain GE soy and canola. I supplement their diet with an organic seed and grain mix which contains a couple of the foods you listed such as kale, strawberries, and old fashioned rolled oats. I hope to incorporate kelp into their diets as well. So you are saying that by feeding this supplement, I can be reversing some of the effects that the GE soy and canola could potentially be doing to them???

Michelle October 15, 2012 at 9:19 AM  

Christine - I have no issues with Mercola. But creating a blogger profile just to link to his articles is a bit disingenuous, no? I'm pretty sure you are well aware of the issues.

Shawna - Now there's a comment that looks like it's spam, but wow... it's totally not. You really are serious about your rats, and yes, feeding the right foods rich in magnesium, etc can make a huge difference in the effects of GMO foods, for rats and for people.

Michelle October 15, 2012 at 9:22 AM  

Tami - It is a lot to take in, you're so right! It's one of those things where I want to just bury my head in the sand, but ... I know I can't.

Sandra - This wasn't me, this was the awesome presenter breaking it down. I just took notes :) But yeah, it's a lot to absorb. Literally.

Jen - Thanks, Jen. It's scary all that we've done to our foods and our bodies!

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