Wait, they make GMO chocolate now? No, of course not, though there is nothing natural about chocolate anyway. A lot of corn and soy is genetically modified and those are in chocolate products. Science has made wonderful progress in bringing safe food at reasonable cost to billions more people than was once thought possible and cheap Valentine's Day candy when chocolate was once reserved for nobility is testament to that.
Valentine's Day candy sales is just one example of how America leads the world in acceptance of biology.
Should you be worried if your candy does not have a GMO warning label on it? Not if you are rational. But the groups fomenting fear and doubt count on irrationality. The claim from the GMO Inside press release is that "genetically modified organisms have never been proven safe for consumption" which is a weird, illogical assertion. No product in the world can be proved safe, including water. Go ahead, try it with anything. If I say 'prove air doesn't cause cancer' all you can reply is that no studies have shown air causes cancer and an anti-science person can just say it "hasn't been studied enough" and that every person who has gotten cancer has been shown to have been breathing air. That's where we are at with anti-science groups and GMOs as well.
Since their secondary claim is that they are concerned about transparency, let's be transparent about Green America, the company behind GMO Inside.
What you find in the page about their team is how much experience their employees have in outreach, membership drives and raising - lots of that, but what you won't find is a single biologist, despite the fact that they claim to be experts on GMOs. They do have a Senior Researcher, whose experience prior to being a senior researcher was being a membership coordinator for the company.
GMO Chocolate will turn you into a ZOMBIE.
And I got their press release not because I follow them regularly, nor did they send it to me directly, instead one of their highly-paid PR companies sent it to me. That is what their goal is; money and membership which leads to campaigns to get more money and membership, not advancing food science or helping people. Everyone in that economic chain is getting paid to spread distrust of biology - and yet I am not getting paid to defend it. Who's the real dummy? Yep, me. Oh, and biologists, for doing science.
So, if you care about rationality and progress and poor people, please purchase the following products. Warning: All of these products do contain too much sugar and that is going to harm you, but the fact that some of the sugar came from GMO plants is nothing to worry about:
Reese’s Peanut Butter filled Hearts because they contain sugar, soy lecithin, and cornstarch
Hershey Hugs because they contain sugar, soy lecithin and corn syrup
Valentine’s Colored M&M’s because they contain sugar, soy lecithin, cornstarch, and corn syrup
Valentine’s Snickers because they contain soy lecithin, corn syrup, sugar, and partially hydrogenated soybean oil
Wait, that's it?
That's only four products. I want to know how to make a whole GMO Valentine's Day meal. Please tell me where I can find some GMO-alfalfa-fed animal or other, something made with canola, served on something made from genetically modified cotton and some GMO papaya and sugar beets as a side dish. It may be hard to find zucchini and yellow summer squash in February but I bet if I go to Whole Foods and buy imported organic versions of those vegetables, they will be genetically modified anyway, because they are from China and a sticker is all it takes to be organic.
I may be out of luck on creating a whole Valentine's Day meal - that means you are too. But even if you can't make a whole GMO meal yet, accepting science and eating GMO candy is a great way to show loved ones you care about the future.
Sure, GMO Inside believes science is putting us on the verge of a biological holocaust, but it's the month of romance, so give one of them a big kiss the next time they annoy you claiming Bt toxin is great when sprayed on organic food the day it is shipped to stores but a natural Bt expression in plants is causing FrankenM&Ms.
Their odd recommendation; buy M&Ms in Europe, where supposedly those companies are caving in to major retailers who want no GMOs, which gives researchers in Europe another chance to do a giant scientific facepalm. Whole environmental activists want America to be more like Europe. Europeans scientists want Europe to be more like America.
But buy M&Ms in Europe in the future. They are recommending you buy them in Europe without knowing that those companies have not switched yet, they just said they are going to and then charge a lot more. So anti-science activists should be happy; they are taking Europe back to the past, when only the nobility could afford chocolate.
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