B EYON D
THE FIELDS
WE KNOW
THE RISKS OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS
VOICES OF THE NON-GMO MOVEMENT By Jeffrey M. Smith
A number of years ago I was giving a presentation at a Cambridge book- store, and a young woman came up
to me shortly beforehand. “I heard you on
Coast to Coast radio last year,” she said.
“You changed my life.” No one had ever
said anything like that to me before. I was
deeply touched.
That was 2004. It was just 8 months
since the release of my book, Seeds of
Deception, and I had already toured five
continents. I didn’t know it at the time, but
I was just getting started. And I would meet
countless others whose lives were also
transformed by the truth about genetically
modified (GM) foods.
The world today is quite different than
when I started out as a non-GMO road war-
rior. Most Americans had said they would
avoid genetically modified organisms if
labeled, but now millions are no longer
waiting. They’re actively seeking non-GMO
foods. And many are enthusiastically get-
ting the word out to others.
Non-GMO Doctoring
I spent some time at the medical practices
of two Chicago-area doctors who, like
many I know, prescribe non-GMO diets to
everyone. The doctors had told me that
taking people off of GM foods is a very
important part of health and healing, but I
didn’t appreciate the full extent of it until
I spoke with their patients. One after the
other, they described chronic symptoms
that quickly improved or disappeared after
they changed their diets—skin conditions,
irritable bowel, migraines, weight problems, fatigue and much more.
At the end of my interviews I asked
one of the doctors where she first learned
about the health impacts of GMOs. She
smiled and said, “From you.”
I held back tears.
The patients I interviewed had avoided
GMOs by switching to organic food; some
had also eliminated processed foods and/
or specific food categories, so it was not
clear how much of the improvements were
based on avoiding GMOs versus making
other healthy changes. Soon after the visit,
however, I came across other folks where
the impact of a non-GMO diet was not
ambiguous at all.
Animals on the Mend
These were veterinarians and farmers
who had taken livestock—pigs and cows—
off of GMO feed. What do you suppose happened? Death rates dropped, stillbirth rates
were down, litter size was up, and overall
