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You Are What You Eat: Genetically Modified Foods Include “Information”
Smart Publications ^ | January 14, 2012 | John Morgenthaler

Posted on 02/04/2012 4:00:27 PM PST by opentalk

Vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients in our foods, we expect. But information?

According to recent research from China’s Nanjing University, when people eat rice, tiny sequences of microRNA from the plant-based food can survive the body’s digestive process and end up absorbed in human tissue where — and here’s the reason why we need to know about this study — plant microRNA may actually affect how our cells behave and function. In the study, Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA, published in the Journal Cell Research, the genetic material from rice showed up in human liver cells where it appeared to influence cells’ uptake of cholesterol from the blood.

First discovered only a decade ago, microRNA is a short, single-stranded RNA molecule that plays a pivotal role in how genes express themselves. For example, as Maverick of Medicine Ray Kurzweil explains, short RNA fragments produced by the human body do things like, “tell the heart cells that only the certain genes which should be expressed in a heart cell are expressed.” The Chinese study is ground breaking because it shows that plant microRNA introduced through diet may have a similar influence over human DNA

....Don’t expect the GMO food industry itself to begin looking for answers to these questions anytime soon. As food writer Ari LeVaux observes, the Monsanto website currently states that, "There is no need to test the safety of DNA introduced into GM crops. DNA (and resulting RNA) is present in almost all foods. DNA is non-toxic and the presence of DNA, in and of itself, presents no hazard.” They have no more incentive to look for bad news about GMO foods than the cigarette companies had to look for negative health effects of smoking cigarettes

(Excerpt) Read more at smart-publications.com ...


TOPICS: Food; Health/Medicine
KEYWORDS: clinton; dna; epa; fda; food; gmo; michaeltaylor; monsanto; rna; usda
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1 posted on 02/04/2012 4:00:31 PM PST by opentalk
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To: AdmSmith

pong


2 posted on 02/04/2012 4:05:34 PM PST by nuconvert ( Khomeini promised change too // Hail, Chairman O)
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To: opentalk
referenced link in article

The Very Real Danger of Genetically Modified Foods

3 posted on 02/04/2012 4:10:09 PM PST by opentalk
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To: Scythian

Ping


4 posted on 02/04/2012 4:10:26 PM PST by gov_bean_ counter (Yo Mitt - Money can't buy you love...)
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To: opentalk

“Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Smith. You have a healthy baby with all his fingers and toes, and a prehensile tail.”


5 posted on 02/04/2012 4:12:03 PM PST by tumblindice
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To: opentalk
Sure, all the real experts are at Glorious Communist Nanking University. DNA and RNA get broken down into mononucleotides by the nucleases (DNase and RNase).
6 posted on 02/04/2012 4:14:46 PM PST by Olog-hai
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Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!

7 posted on 02/04/2012 4:15:44 PM PST by SunkenCiv (FReep this FReepathon!)
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To: opentalk

Well wouldn’t we be absorbing micro-DNA from non GM food too? In fact genetically engineered crops could be designed to make the foods safer.


8 posted on 02/04/2012 4:17:23 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
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To: opentalk

So if I eat the brains and liver of a person, say someone I beat in a fight, I get that person’s smarts and strength? Same concept but with rice.


9 posted on 02/04/2012 4:21:09 PM PST by DBrow
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To: tumblindice
You have a healthy baby with all his fingers and toes, and a prehensile tail.

Personally, I think that would be pretty cool, except for the tailoring bills.

/johnny

10 posted on 02/04/2012 4:26:54 PM PST by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: Paleo Conservative
more from the article:

The good news?

Some experts speculate that the ability of plant microRNA to affect human cellular behavior might be a way to partially explain the effectiveness of herbal medicine. Beyond vitamin, minerals, and other components of herbs, might it be possible that genetic information in the plant comes preprogrammed to tell certain cells how to initiate healing? In the Nanjing University study, for example, researchers noted that rice microRNA consistently ended up in human liver cells where it interacted with cell DNA to change how cells used cholesterol.

...Dr. Garry Gordon, another pioneer interviewed in Mavericks of Medicine, thinks discoveries about microRNA may someday lead to diets and food choices that can target risk for specific diseases. “We can make foods that will actually lower your risk of ever getting Alzheimer's — even if both your mother and father’s side had the disease...Knowledge is the gene testing, and we can modulate genes by getting appropriate natural products — like RNA foods.”

But the not good news?

According to the article in The Atlantic entitled, "The Very Real Danger of Genetically Modified Foods", the study may inadvertently reveal a pathway by which genetically modified (GM or GMO) foods influence human health. In other words, if we eat corn that has genetic information telling it to act as its own pesticide, how will this plant’s microRNA behave in the human body? What about other examples of “frankenfoods”: vegetables with scorpion genes; tomatoes with flounder genes; and potatoes with jellyfish genes that glow when they need to be watered? What kind of microRNA do these GMO foods contain — and how will these affect our genes?

11 posted on 02/04/2012 4:27:47 PM PST by opentalk
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To: opentalk

i ma not a wuss.


12 posted on 02/04/2012 4:28:25 PM PST by bravo whiskey (If the little things really bother you, maybe it's because the big things are going well.)
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To: Paleo Conservative
Well wouldn’t we be absorbing micro-DNA from non GM food too?

You mean the ones designed by God? I'm betting they're safe.
13 posted on 02/04/2012 4:31:36 PM PST by LearsFool ("Thou shouldst not have been old, till thou hadst been wise.")
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To: DBrow

"Tastes like chicken. Pretty much..."

14 posted on 02/04/2012 4:31:56 PM PST by stormer
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To: opentalk

Reminds me of the study of flat worms and electric shocks.
Platyhelminthese (its been 50 years not sure of the spelling:) were subjected to light and then an electric shock. After a period of time the worms braced for a shock whenever the light came on. The worms were then ground up and fed to other flat worms which had not been subjected to the light/shock routine. When the light came on, they braced for a shock. Cool huh:) Remember that next time you eat flat worms.


15 posted on 02/04/2012 4:39:19 PM PST by Cold Heart
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To: opentalk; All

16 posted on 02/04/2012 4:39:25 PM PST by musicman (Until I see the REAL Long Form Vault BC, he's just "PRES__ENT" Obama = Without "ID")
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To: opentalk

We are screwing with the primordial forces of nature with all the arrogance of a god (small g). We do not know what we do not know. No good will come of this.


17 posted on 02/04/2012 4:45:13 PM PST by NonValueAdded (Limbaugh: Tim Tebow miracle: "He had atheists praying to God that he would lose.")
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To: Cold Heart
more from the referenced article

The Chinese research provides the first in vivo example of ingested plant miRNA surviving digestion and influencing human cell function in this way.

Should the research survive scientific scrutiny -- a serious hurdle -- it could prove a game changer in many fields. It would mean that we're eating not just vitamins, protein, and fuel, but gene regulators as well.

18 posted on 02/04/2012 4:47:02 PM PST by opentalk
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To: LearsFool

They may have been designed by God, but man has modified them an endless number of times over the past thousands of years.


19 posted on 02/04/2012 4:48:30 PM PST by Balding_Eagle (Liberals, at their core, are aggressive & dangerous to everyone around them,)
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To: opentalk

The last to paragraphs of this tripe from its vitamin commercial filled website:

“But where is the FDA in all this? Aren’t they watching out for our safety with respect to GMO foods? Well, in a word: no. They aren’t working for you or any of the other 99% of Americans. The FDA is working for … Monsanto itself along with a collection of the other most wealthy corporations in the world. This is why I gave one of my recent blogs the title: Occupy FDA: Smart Publications Alternative Heath Solutions Threatened. I make the modest proposal that the FDA should be working for us – the 99% – or it should be immediately de-funded.

If more studies like this one come to light, it’s likely that perception about GMO food safety will also change. In the meantime, as we begin to understand just how complex the relationship between food and our health really is, keeping GMO foods out of our kitchens and gardens is more important than ever.”

How about this keep the government out of it all together. I am an adult and I can pick my own foods with out anyone’s help. Since we do not have anything in our food chain that is not genetically modified I am not concerned.

By the way have you read about how viruses invade our DNA?


20 posted on 02/04/2012 4:48:59 PM PST by FreedomNotSafety
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