Non Gmo Foods

Non-GMO, fair trade, whole grain, organic, gluten-free and all natural, all these labels on the package of various foods recently become a trend. Lots of the consumers will undoubtedly follow this trend, however, it's not a bad thing though. Obviously, these labels not only stimulate the sales for retailers but also are in some degree educative for customers. So, let's start with Non-GMO. 'Non' means no or not, whereas GMO is the abbreviation for genetically modified organisms. As the name suggests, GMO is an organism whose genetic structure has been recombined with a single gene or multiple genes from another organism or species that adds, removes, or modifies a trait in the organism. (Environmental Encyclopedia, October 21, 2010) Therefore, Non-GMO actually is, quite literally, natural stuff without any genetic engineering techniques. As technology advanced, we have to face the situation that even the most common things in our life should be labeled. So the reason that Non-GMO foods advent in our daily life, their types and their future become our main concern.

It all starts with the GM foods. Surprisingly, genetic modification foods are not new. Even the natural breeding process centuries ago might include genetic modification. However, it only happened between the same or closely related species due to cross-pollinate. Since the modern biotechnology has been developed, the genetic engineering technique made a huge leap forward in the field of breeding. Now through this technique, you can try to modify the structure of any DNA molecules you want theoretically. As a result, tons of GM products are born with the new traits people preferred, such as pest resistant, high production or even frost-tolerant. So these new foods start to grow wildly, and gradually occupy our world which even makes us take them as granted. In 1996, U.S. farmers planted the first commercial GMO crops. Until today, up to 93 percent of U.S. soybeans and 86 percent of U.S. corn are genetic modified. What's more, there are already as much as 75 percent of processed food in the United States contained GMO ingredients by 2003. Yet the protest against GM foods never stops since the GM foods were first created. More and more facts showed that GM foods effect human health and environment. In 2008, Austria's Ministries for Agriculture and Health found out that GM corn appears to decrease both birthrates and the size of offspring in mice. Environmentally, it has been reported that the pollen from Bt corn could kill the larvae of monarch butterflies in recent studies. The impact brought by GM foods give us a warning. And people began to defend for themselves. Non-GMO Project has come up; the Non-GMO verification labels start to show on the packages and the Non-GMO Shopping Guide has been created.

Of course, the types of Non-GMO foods are a lot according to all the different kinds of GM foods. So far, there are as many as