GMO OMG the movie - Who controls the future of your food?

Today's Wall Street Journal has an interesting article/op-ed (Page A15) on the General Mills decision to create a GMO-free version of Cheerios. I can't link to it since access is limited to WSJ subscribers. Interestingly, GMO critics are quoted as belittling General Mills for its effort.

I will read that, but screeched to a halt at this sentence:
''In one of the blood samples the relative concentration of plant DNA is higher than the human DNA. - ''
say WHAT? Explain please! You can't mean that of the entire mass of the blood sample, there is more plant than human. Can you?

Further on
" In one of the blood samples the relative concentration of plant DNA is higher than the human DNA. The plant DNA concentration shows a surprisingly precise log-normal distribution in the plasma samples while non-plasma (cord blood) control sample was found to be free of plant DNA.” (0)" Ok, better--that doesn't say the plant DNA is all GMO=plant DNA, maybe this is how digestion has gone on for millenia. Still want to understand how they measure 'amount' of DNA in blood sample.

" microbes found in the small bowel of people with ilestomy are capable of acquiring and harboring DNA sequences from GM plants." Ok- are microbes in the small bowel capable of acquiring DNA from ALL plants? Is this again something that's gone on forever?

" fact that DNA from GM foods can be transferred to humans and animals, " Define transferred, and specify in what way. again, is all plant DNA transferred, is this actually a normal part of digestion?

I'm just saying, there are ways to say things that leave the reader able to make assumptions based on his/her pre-read position. Pointing out that DNA transfers from crops to weeds, can lead some people to think transfer to humans is just as easy. I say that is not credible.

May go back and read the link to pig studies

So what I'm saying is, this title
Confirmed: DNA From Genetically Modified Crops Can Be Transferred Into Humans Who Eat Them -
will be read as some to say
It's Been Proven that GMO DNA is Altering Human working Dna and causing mutations

You have raised a good point, sallyg.

Link to the pig study
http://www.organic-systems.org/journal/81/8106.pdf

Very detailed and I can't find a criticism (but I'm no RicCorey)
Interesting sentence page 51
"One explanation for the (stomach) inflammation results could lie with the Cry 3Bb1 and Cry 1Ab
proteins that these GM corn varieties are engineered to produce"
So it may be a protein causing the inflammation, not the actual genetic material doing something to the stomach. To me, an interesting difference, but if MY stomach was inflamed I guess that wouldn't matter.

This message was edited Jan 21, 2014 11:31 AM

Ah America! Land of the Free (opinions)...Yoga Flying? Where was I when this started up? Can I sign up fer it somewhere? And while I'm up there, guaranteed I'll meet up with some flyin' saucers...yippee!
I LOVE this thread!

Don't forget Bigfoot.

Hey, some guy in Texas claims to have shot Bigfoot, so now all we have left is the Loch Ness Monster. Better get to Scotland before Nessie is gone too. I hear they make some decent whiskey. Scotch and haggis, YUM-O!

What, did he go poof when shot. Don't remember any proof.
Like all the people that see him in the woods, didn't have their cell phones along to take a picture.
What's he doing down in Texas ?

Yoga flying ... I've had dreams like that. I really liked it!

One magazine had ads for "reincarnation insurance". I thought that was a neat idea, but it knew that it was a HUMOR magazine!

"There's a sucker born every minute".

Although P. T. Barnum usually gets the credit for that quote, Wikipedia says that it was more likely originated by David Hannum, who was trying to debunk Barnum,

I like the survival seed canisters that are for sale.
Nothing going to grow in your underground bunker. Above ground will be nuclear waste.

Hi GHG

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/01/09/confirmed-dna-from-genetically-modified-crops-can-be-transfered-to-humans-who-eat-them-2/

I'm going to have to go back and read that when I have more time and more objectivity. The Frankenface on the ear of corn, and the cute little child suggest propaganda to me.

Another prejudice trigger for me:
>> PLOS is an open access ... journal


The website's banner and mission want to "expand my way of thinking" so that I will "begin thinking consciously about what it means to be a human on the planet".

The ads are about testosterone boosters, how to become a (title case) Expert Lucid Dreamer, and an 88 year old yoga teacher sharing her "secret" to never ending energy ...

They say they are "one of the worlds most popular alternative media" and they have the biggest and most persistent Facebook banner I've ever seen. I don't see any pictures of wind chimes, but there was an article about "joining the movement" (cannabis). And one titled " Psychedelics Don’t Harm Mental Health; They Improve It ".

These are ALL popular topics among a group of people who often pooh-pooh analytical thinking altogether. I'm not saying I'm not [u]interested[/u] in those two articles, but if some Journal of Extreme Technical Specialization boasted all of those together on its TITLE page, I would be a little skeptical of their attention to mundane detail and mundane logic.

Does "Collective evolution" even believe in the scientific method? I'm somewhat into New Age spirituality, but my Skeptic Meter pegs when I think I'm encountering someone's idea of "New Age Science". After I expand my consciousness, I want to [u]come back down[/u] before I rely on my analytical faculties or operate heavy machinery.

As I say, I need to feel more objective about them before reading the article, to give them a fair chance. When I know I have an ufair bias, I do try at least somewhat to balance it off.

One friend of a friend IS mixing New Age consciousness and traditional science, but I trust her scientific training and integrity, so I'm interested in what she can do with the combination.

But a website I've never gone to before, that starts out mooning about so many "alternative" topics has to earn my respect back after abusing it.

But if you recommend it, I will try when I have time. "Collective Evolution" should have an interesting take on speculative horizontal gene transfer ... but if they play as fast and loose with facts, logic and language as all of the other strongly New Age - flavored and 'alternative-flavored" websites have turned out to be, so far, I would trust any of their claims without completely independent sources.

Hi SallyG

The " stomach inflammation" article sounds like the best study I've read yet. I assume it's the same one that I read and reviewed a few weeks or months ago, maybe in some other thread.

It was long term, and done with actual GM fodder, not artificial concentrates or extracts of triple-stacked bacterial products. They did point out, somewhere, that they were doing autopsies more detailed than ever before done for animal studies (they didn't go that far, but they stressed that they were looking closer than your average lab study). They also did cytological studies on blood cells that I couldn't evaluate (but it sounded to me like their lab's specialty).

The results they found, I thought were very subtle, even though it was cited somewhere with a headline like "Study proves GMOs cause leukemia". Monsanto could have spun it like "well-conducted long term study only found trivially minor changes due to GMO fodder in pigs". That wouldn't be fair: THIS study, I thought, genuinely DID point out some things that should be pursued with similar expensive and long-running studies. Or maybe experts know to dismiss minor gut irritation and cytological studies for reasons I don't know - but this was the first study that seemed honest and interesting to me.

One weakness - they did take one big batch of of GM fodder at the beginning of the study and used that for the whole study. I THINK the control feed was GMO-free but (perhaps) fresher. In any event, they documented levels of aflatoxins and other nasty toxins that form when fodder has certain mold fungi (Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus,) I thought it was possible that the GM fodder was accidentally stored poorly, got moldy, and caused stomach irritation.

They made the point that the levels of tested-for toxins would have easily passed legal standards for pig fodder, but no test for determining such standards would have been as demanding as the test they were performing. They might well have spent tons of money to find a more sensitive way to test for damage caused by normal or legal pig-fodder-storage methods.

That's one small example of why long-term animal studies can be difficult. Drug testing in rats and mice was ALL hooey until someone realized that using CEDAR CHIPS in their cages activated production of certain enzymes that invalidated all the tests being done. Talk about phase of the Moon!




This message was edited Jan 21, 2014 5:27 PM

I mostly skipped past the inflammatory "CE" article and jumped to the first source tjhey cited, which I think mainly takes its data from yet other articles.

(At least CE DOES list its sources!)

SOURCES:

(0) http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0069805

(1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14730317

(2) http://natureinstitute.org/nontarget/reports/bentgrass_001.php

(3) http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/20questions/en/

(4) http://www.food.gov.uk/policy-advice/gm/gmanimal#.UsxuFPbXFGH

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2004/Transgenes-Human-Gut1feb04.htm


I respect the first source for saying this:
"There are many, sometimes contradicting, theories concerning the release of cfDNA and its distribution in the body. Also, we are only at the first steps to uncover the cellular and molecular mechanisms that transfers cfDNA from cells to blood."

and
----
"Food.
DNA from consumed food is usually not considered as a possible source of cfDNA since during food digestion all macromolecules are thought to be degraded to elementary constituents such as amino acids and nucleotides, which are then transferred to the circulatory system through several complex active processes [3]. Though, there are animal studies, mainly focusing on the GMO issue [4], supporting the idea that small fragments of nucleic acids may pass to the bloodstream and even get into various tissues. For example foreign DNA fragments were detected by PCR based techniques in the digestive tract and leukocytes of rainbow trouts fed by genetically modified soybean [37], and other studies report similar results in goats [38], pigs [39], [40] and mice [5]."

"
I finally found the Source #0 (PLOS) pargrapoh where they assert their conclusion.
I did not understand the text they used to support that claim:

"The number of aligning short reads shows large differences between the various samples (see Table 2). Most of the matches are in the 1st fraction of IBD that contains the longest (10 kb) intact DNA segments. This is surprising in the light of the current paradigm [43], which assumes that during digestion and absorption DNA is degraded to nucleotides. Our results show that not just some of the DNA can avoid the complete degradation, but fragments large enough to carry complete genes can pass from the digestive tract to blood. "

They are clearly saying "this must happen all the time with normal plants"

I guess they are implying that if a whole gene might get from the gut into blood circulation (which surprises everyone), a transgene or genetically modified gene could get into our blood circulation.

Then implying that it could cross over into white blood cells or blood vessel walls. I'm OK with saying "COULD", or "potentially could".

But if this is happening all the time with plant and bacterial genes, the risk seems like an evolutionarily familiar one.

Except for the idea of plasmid promoter regions, "zippers", alleged fragility and so on.

If true, the chain of unlikely events that would be needed for GE genes to make it all the way from a crop into human gonads is one step shorter (the gut wall DOES sometimes pass lengths of DNA into the blood).

To be excessively cynical, speculate that the paper might have floated around for a while, being rejected for a variety of reasons, despite being pretty good. But papers that just chew over data from other papers must have an uphill struggle to get published.

Then suppose the authors got the idea of adding a headline about "COMPLETE GENES might enter your bloodstream" and puffing up the results a little where a fraction of DNA looked surprisingly big. Then they submitted to a New Agey "Collective Evolution popular medium" that was delighted to have a staff author puff it up much more and put a Frankenstein face on it.

Anyway, I hope someone does confirm that whole DNA or other macromolecules can pass through the gut! And put some numbers on it, like one part per billion or one part per trillion. And make sure that it applies to non-cabncer patients. That would be new knowledge (if true). Then find the mechanism.


Thanks for the link!

My pleasure, Rick. And thanks for the analysis! I agree it was a bit New-Age-y in its packaging, and those sources are always suspect. Usually I try to find the original research and put in a link for that so that it's not tainted by sites with a specific point to make. But in this case I just copied it and posted it here.

I do think the whole issue with discrediting Seralini (the guy with the rat tumors) is fascinating; a lot of scientists are saying that the only reason to withdraw a study is fraud or errors, neither of which was the case here. But time will tell what happens with that one. I do know that the EU is having scientists attempt to replicate his work, so at least they're taking it seriously to that extent.

No matter how flawed, a paper that causes other people to prove something interesting is a valuable paper!

I guess that makes even the sleazy "open source" journals valuable. I just have trouble getting over my resentment when something looks like a scientific paper, but oozes with bias and intentional misleading text, or even propaganda.

>> Usually I try to find the original research

I agree that that's the way to get past people who deliberately misrepresent studies to support their own hobby horse.

Say, I found some links over in Cubits that claim that barcodes on fruits and vegetables already document whether an apple is GM, or was grown organically, or grown "traditionally, presumably with pesticides.

http://doctornalini.com/organic-gmo-how-to-read-bar-codes-on-food/

http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2009/04/how-to-read-produce-sticker-organic.html

http://www.drfranklipman.com/what-do-those-codes-on-stickers-of-fruits-and-some-veggies-mean/

4-digit code: non-GMO & not grown organically

5 digit code starting 9: 9xxxx - grown organically

5 digit code starting 8: 8xxxx - GMO crop, genetically engineered.

But by now my skepticism knows no bounds! What if an evil conspiracy is just spreading Internet rumors, and the "8xxxx" barcodes mean something totally different, or are never used at all? That would get us to buy GE crops, thinking they were not!

Or, more likely, there are loopholes, or the labeling scheme might even be voluntary.

Not counting possible DNA transfers, what about the actual herbicide/pesticide that is in the seed kernels that goes into our system?

Rick, I had read about the bar codes a while ago, but I don't see how they can reflect whether there are small amounts of GMO foods in the form of for example canola oil or corn starch. Sometimes even the food producer isn't sure which ingredients have gone into their product. For me it's much safer to go either organic or look for the GMO-free symbol on a package. I wish I had a source of organic pork, though. Meats are a problem for us.

Here's another interesting study comparing the proteins in GMO vs. non-GMO corn. This one is from Brazil. It discusses the differences found and their implications as a baseline for further research.

http://www.proteomesci.com/content/11/1/46

Here's the ever present challenge to the general public- Finally we get our hands on something that looks (to me) completely scientific and unbiased. And I can barely understand it for the depth of technical language.
The conclusion is "...the genome changes in GM maize may have an impact on the gene expression, but with a significant environment modulation. Nonetheless, the detection of changes in protein profiles does not present a safety issue per se; therefore, further studies should be conducted in order to address the biological relevance and implications of such changes."

Or, I think can be restated--they find (chemical, metabolic) measurable differences in the plant parts of GMO plants, which vary significantly with the growing environment of those plants.


This message was edited Jan 22, 2014 5:12 PM

Pretty much, Sally. They're saying that gene changes can affect phenotype, or the appearance of certain traits, but so far it's unknown whether that can cause a safety issue currently or in the future, so more study is required.

Ok, so as I read the "plosone" paper, it says (to me, a non-biologist) that whole DNA might be able to "get into" the blood stream. I don't see this in anyway as a connection to GMOs. If it's true, it's been happening "forever" and is something creatures deal with all the time. I think, if my understanding is correct, that an organism wouldn't know genetically spliced DNA from any other DNA, so there'd be no preferential transfer of only spliced-in DNA, and, furthermore, it seems to me that all of the DNA in a GMO that is spliced-in, as opposed to "original", has come from another organism that we've likely eaten all our lives.. For instance, if the crop you eat is a bt GMO crop, you've been eating bt bacteria all your life (YUM-O) and you've been eating soy all your life, so the fact they are combined in one organism (the soy) rather than two (the bacteria and the soy) seems irrelevant in terms of creating some new "threat".

Am I reading/understanding correctly?

Willy, that is pretty much as I am seeing it. Slight difference, maybe.
I would say for myself, whole DNA MAY have been getting into our bloodstream all along ( we may not have known cuz we didn't look) . And the addition of the plasmids (?) that make gene insertion possible is a new variable, which may or may not change that. Have the plasmids made the DNA-to-blood possible? Could the plasmids make DNA in blood able to further be inserted into other body cells?

>> whole DNA MAY have been getting into our bloodstream all along ( we may not have known cuz we didn't look) .

I agree.

>> And the addition of the plasmids (?) that make gene insertion possible is a new variable, which may or may not change that.

I agree: maybe, maybe not. That is really real science: every possible answer opens more questions than were resolved.

>> Have the plasmids made the DNA-to-blood possible?

Almost certainly not. Most (or all?) of the macromolecules they mentioned were unrelated to the GM transgenes so they were from entire whole other parts of the chromosomes.

>> Could the plasmids make DNA in blood able to further be inserted into other body cells?

Maybe! That would be really interesting and very scary. But most or all researchers in the area thought that was impossible or the work would all be done in Class 5 bio-isolation chambers and not corn fields ... or am I too trusting?

At least a whole plasmid is MUCH bigger than any 1-2 genes, and the likelihood of a whole one getting into our blood is tiny even after that one study.

Could we speculate that some fragment OF a plasmid might have some horrible unexpected potency? I was speculating about that in one post, but I intended to include the words "science fiction" several times in that post.

But who knows? No one, until we know whether the "circulating free DNA" study is accurate (by replicating it), and then figure out what the [u]mechanism[/u] of the alleged passage through the gut is. And discover some instance of the science-fiction-speculation actually occurs.

The fact that we bumped into lots of new questions and "more study is needed" makes me think that now we are finding some "real" science. First a few hints at surprises, then more studies while teams try to scoop each other to get there first, then tentative "discoveries" that lead to more questions and more studies ...

Then years later and millions of dollars later if we're lucky, something relevant to the "real world".

I originally thought I wanted to do research in molecular biology, but research is too hard and frustrating and underpaid and totally lacks job security. I went into computer programming instead.

Sallyg said:

>> something that looks (to me) completely scientific and unbiased. And I can barely understand it for the depth of technical language.

I agree. I'm guessing they said the same thing you thought they said.

One upside of the scientific method is that an article like this is a thumb in the eye of everyone else who published studies that said "not much difference".

Now many teams (who DO understand the esoterica of those particular specialties) HAVE TO answer this study, either by replicating the results or by debunking whatever defects are invisible to you and I.

The Brazilian authors hope that the effect is to make more researchers start to use THEIR fancy proteomic - gel electrophoresis - mass spec technique, which would count as a big feather in their cap.

Of course Monsanto et al. need to debunk it. If they can't or they cite "defects" that are bogus, then we can trust this study as meaning something.

With luck, by the time the specialists finish one-upping each other and saying "Nah nah nye nah nah" or "you stink" in very esoteric ways at scientific conferences, some of those studies will also happen to reveal something relevant to human health about GM corn.

That's what funding priorities are supposed to accomplish: to direct research in directions that are useful to normal people, not just researchers who want to study things, understand a little more about Nature, get grants, and impress other nerds.

Evelyn, I agree that we suck up herbicides and pesticides in most food, and that they cause more human heath damage than GMOs do or are likely to.

I would also say that GMO crops tend to have much fewer toxins added, less of them, and less toxic toxins.

greenhouse_gal said:
>> I don't see how they can reflect whether there are small amounts of GMO foods in the form of for example canola oil or corn starch.

Those links only addressed the mini-barcodes stuck to fruit and vegetables. For any processed food, unless it has some convincing "organic" sticker, I assume that it contains ingredients from GMOs. But those don’t worry me at all - those ingredients are practically pure chemicals and once they are THAT processed, I doubt you could find differences with a mas spectrometer.

Maybe proteins in some processed ingredient could have tiny differences, and who can say what causes allergies for someone, somewhere?

The article that claimed that huge macromolecules can migrate right through our gut and into our bloodstream was interesting ... if true.

Carl Sagan coined the phrase: ""Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". I agree.

Interesting study! I hope their technique is more widely used. It seems very sentive, or at least it seems to detect things that no one else was able to prove.

They picked good strains to compare: a Yieldguard ® corn with it's pre-GM parent. But it's funny, I thought they had to do a lot of selection after inserting the plasmid, which I would have expected to cause some genetic drift.

"one GM P32R48YG maize hybrid (MON810 event; Yieldgard ®), containing a single insert, was subjected to comparative profiling using the near-isogenic non-GM hybrid P32R48 as the comparator."

>> comparing the proteins in GMO vs. non-GMO corn.

At first I thought they weren't finding different [u]proteins [/u] in GE corn and non-GE corn. They were looking at how the patterns of protein [u]expression[/u] changed [b]"under different agroecosystems conditions in Brazil".[/b] Which I think means the exact same thing as "under different conditions in Brazil"

"Protein expression" being simply what % of what proteins were present", or maybe in different parts of the plant or at different growth stages.

Most of the test I saw at first seemed to be about pattern differences mainly due to changed location.
Then I found this, which IS interesting:
"The Campos Novos experiment presented eight proteins that were detectable only in the GM. The remaining eight proteins were absent in the GM (Figure 4a and 4b)."

So they found some protein differences between GM and non-GM in areas that were surprising to me. I hope they found some control for "these non-GM plants were devastated by insects and highly stressed, while the GM plants were expressing normal protein patterns for healthy plants". They didn't say anything loike 'and the plants grew similarly, with similar yields and rates of growth" (or I missed it in a quick skim).

They have me interested (if there isn't some glaring defect I missed). I would agree that their fancy technique of gel electrophoresis and mas-spec identification of proteins like enzymes (I didn't know they could do that!) sounds like a really valuable and sensitive way of examining subtle plant changes.

If indeed the GM plants changed ONLY in their producing of Bt or resistance to RoundUp and some antibiotic resistance), then why WOULD this array of enzymes be changing noticeably - either between one location and another, or between GM corn and its close parent?

Good thread!

I wonder if DG is going to run out of room on their servers' hard drives?

I know that I'm wearing the ink off the keys of my keyboard!

"these non-GM plants were devastated by insects and highly stressed, while the GM plants were expressing normal protein patterns for healthy plants".

See how easily this could be stated as " the GMO plants produced proteins that were absent in non GMO plants" -- and the inference would be that the GMO made some weird alien proteins?

Here's a link to a brief article that ought to give all of us pause to be sure that what we're reading is from a reputable source--easier said than done, I'm afraid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair.

Couldn't find it, Willy. It wasn't available.

try Sokal hoax
click on Search for Sokal affair in existing articles; the first one in results has something

This message was edited Jan 24, 2014 5:03 PM

Sally, thanks!

Sorry, the link doesn't even work for me, but, when you follow Sallyg's advice, the right article comes up--with the same URL as I posted!? The mysteries of the electronic ether...

If you check out what wikipedia is, follow this link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About

There is little reason to believe anything in there. as anybody can add their two cents worth to it.

I am keenly aware that Wiki is what might be called "open source" and that one needs to be careful in using information from it. Nonetheless, the Sokal affair is a fairly famous incident (I vaguely remember it) and the Wiki article gives a good summary of it. Do a search for Sokal hoax" or "Sokal affair" and you'll see that is true. Here's one link to a reliable source for you to check out: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/weinberg.html. (I hope it works this time) My point was simply to offer another example of how being published doesn't prove validity.

In defense of Wiki, I find it to generally be a very good source for general information. I wouldn't blindly trust it for inflammatory or controversial topics.

Last summer we had a strange creature in our strawberries. Found what it was called, but no info. Went to Wiki & found lots of stuff about it. It was a newly imported fruit fly. It decimated our strawberry crop. Now we hope to beat it this year.

I still think dihydrogen monoxide is a much more dangerous threat and would be making better use of our time if we read studies about how dangerous water is. I mean an objective look at water. Its not all good. Maybe some animal studies to see how drinking too much water caused an animal too have irritated bowels or die, and thus water is bad. Since this is a plant forum perhaps studies that show the detrimental effects of too much water on plants. Ok I'm just being silly again. No honestly I am one of those people that just wants to see both sides of water...and try to find the truth about it. Makes sure I'm not being lied to by American or United water companies or Desani or Aquafina. By the way did you know they add chlorine to the water? Pesticides in our drinking water added there on purpose! Chlorine is a weapon of mass destruction...a chemical warfare agent... That discussion could be a whole nother forum topic.

It is very fun to read all of your comments.

One thing I would like to say is the most of these animal feeding studies are skewed in my opinion. Because the animals are usually feed a mono diet of whatever food they are testing. Also one thing to consider is who is conducting or paying for the study and what the objectives of the study are. Also if all of the data is presented or not and the size of the study.
Often times associations are not proof of causation and studies need to follow the norms of statistics at a certain level of confidence...usually 95%.

I certainly understand the concerns of folks when we have plants producing bacterial toxins with insecticidal properties. One thing to keep in mind is that plants naturally produce many toxins to ward of insects. Some plants are able to sense insect predation and thus produce many toxins far more toxic than the toxins in Bt to minimize attacks. On a molecular level in a plant there is constant chemical warfare going on to prevent attacks from disease and insects. Also there is great variation in the varieties of a species in their ability to be resistant to insects or diseases. It might not be a bad idea to understand the naturally ocurring plant toxins to make sure these arent jepordizing our health.

One also should consider the millions of bacterias we consume on a daily basis...whether they be the ones that live in our mouth, on our hands, are on our food, that we breathe in etc. Bt is very common in the soil and is very non toxic to humans.

Many of the "good" bacteria found in yogurts and cheeses or that line our intestinal tract also contain toxins but very few avoid eating yogurt...in fact some look for the yogurts with the most diversity of bacterias to be more healthy!

How many have looked at studies to see the long term effects of all the other bacterias we come in contact with and the potential toxins they contain?

It is likely some of them might cause some irritation in some people.

Sometimes it takes years of exposure to determine that there's a problem. I can't think of the specific item now, but the FDA recently questioned the use of a substance that had been accepted as GRAS for decades. I forget if its use was implicated in heart problems or what the issue was. Caramel coloring, ubiquitous in sodas and other foods, has just been implicated as a carcinogen, too.

Car accidents cause more deaths than anything else. Why not get on a bandwagon to outlaw cars.
This is the silliness thread I have ever saw on DG.

Bernie, why follow it, then? Obviously some of us are getting something out of it or we wouldn't be wasting our time here. That's the nice thing about DG - something for everyone. I just ignore what doesn't interest me.

Silliness has a certain amount of entertainment value, which is part of the reason i drop in to read this thread once in a while. So, Since Bernie pays his dues to DG, it seems to me he has the right to both watch the thread and to express his opinion of it.

The other reason i watch it is because of my lifelong interest in, and trying to understand human behavior. I have yet to figure out why some people spend their lives worrying about all the possible things that MIGHT harm then, in preferance to just going ahead and enjoying a worry free life, while waiting to see which of the myriad possibilities finally do us in.

Ernie