Genetically Modified Food and Gm Foods

It’s been said that humans are what they eat. The relationship humans have with food is unappreciated. Food is the fuel that keeps humans going, gives them the energy needed to be creative and productive; it is the building block of society, after all, it wasn’t until the Neolithic Era, when humans figured out a way to domesticate plants and animals, that any form of organized society formed. Even during the previous hunter-gatherer foraging era, humans were very connected to the food they ate; understanding where it came and having an idea of how it came to be was crucial to knowing what was vital to survive. In this time, food sources like grains, fruits, and vegetables were naturally abundant, whole. Humans could choose between many different types of nutritious food because there were thousands of varieties of species. Unfortunately, as populations grew and more civilized societies formed, various farming techniques were created, and a vast majority of these species became extinct to make way for the harvesting of a select few (Pringle). In the industrial era, societies around the world, especially western ones, emphasized the importance of technological advancements. With this pursuit of technology, nature became something to control rather than live with; an attempt at making life simpler, better. Breaching the gap between nature and technology is optimization. It is this obsession with optimization that most accurately characterizes contemporary America. Undoubtedly, it comes with great costs. As it turns out, optimization is a business, and a profitable one. Thus, the costs and effects of optimization are often hidden from the public by industrial leaders in an effort to maintain profits. They control the businesses they run and protect themselves by dumping millions of dollars into politics. Today, it seems that the gap between nature and technology has been breached with the propagation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The aliens that now fill