from Mike Abrahams, Wild Oats Wholefoods (store), Bristol
Sir; I was amused by your report last week on Monsanto, promoting GM technology as yet another solution to our panoply of health problems by putting Omega-3 genes into soya and rape.
Omega 3 fatty acids are also called Essential Fatty Acids. Essential because we can’t make them ourselves and essential for brain structure, cell membranes and a host of body structures and functions. They are plentiful in wild fish and seafood and present in the germ of whole grains and pulses and to a lesser extent in most natural fruit and vegetables.
So if there’s plenty around already, why aren’t we getting enough? Well, essential fats are highly unstable and react with oxygen. For example, linseed oil oxidises so readily that it forms the foundation of paints and varnishes, turning as it does into a hard transparent varnish within hours of exposure to the air. Thus natural foods containing EFAs are unstable and go rancid quickly. So our manufacturers, in their wisdom, remove all essential fats from our foods in the processing, thereby ensuring greater stability of products and longer shelf lives. It’s now less of a food, but who cares, it’s now a more stable (and hence profitable) product.
But now we have the answer. A ground-breaking product: a GM “food” that contains lots of wonderful essential fats.
But won’t these products now be unstable, with short shelf lives due to the EFAs present? Why won’t the processors just go right ahead and rip out these offending ingredients, just because they are now unstable? And so we will in due course be left with yet another new, all singing, all dancing, but nutritionally depleted, refined GM “substance”, resulting in a continued need to supplement with more fish oils.
There is a simple alternative to this waste and risk. We could choose to eat only natural organic whole foods and free-ranging animals that have grazed on fresh growing vegetation, as an economic and sustainable solution to this problem. But unfortunately this won’t make the same profits.
Sir; I was amused by your report last week on Monsanto, promoting GM technology as yet another solution to our panoply of health problems by putting Omega-3 genes into soya and rape.
Omega 3 fatty acids are also called Essential Fatty Acids. Essential because we can’t make them ourselves and essential for brain structure, cell membranes and a host of body structures and functions. They are plentiful in wild fish and seafood and present in the germ of whole grains and pulses and to a lesser extent in most natural fruit and vegetables.
So if there’s plenty around already, why aren’t we getting enough? Well, essential fats are highly unstable and react with oxygen. For example, linseed oil oxidises so readily that it forms the foundation of paints and varnishes, turning as it does into a hard transparent varnish within hours of exposure to the air. Thus natural foods containing EFAs are unstable and go rancid quickly. So our manufacturers, in their wisdom, remove all essential fats from our foods in the processing, thereby ensuring greater stability of products and longer shelf lives. It’s now less of a food, but who cares, it’s now a more stable (and hence profitable) product.
But now we have the answer. A ground-breaking product: a GM “food” that contains lots of wonderful essential fats.
But won’t these products now be unstable, with short shelf lives due to the EFAs present? Why won’t the processors just go right ahead and rip out these offending ingredients, just because they are now unstable? And so we will in due course be left with yet another new, all singing, all dancing, but nutritionally depleted, refined GM “substance”, resulting in a continued need to supplement with more fish oils.
There is a simple alternative to this waste and risk. We could choose to eat only natural organic whole foods and free-ranging animals that have grazed on fresh growing vegetation, as an economic and sustainable solution to this problem. But unfortunately this won’t make the same profits.
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