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There's one easy to remember rule of thumb that can help us all quickly and effortlessly identify genetically modified foods in our grocery stores, at least for those of us in North America and especially the United States. The golden rule of thumb is this: If it's sold in the grocery store and it's "edible," it's probably genetically modified.

Recently, the United States removed the ban on cloned animals from the country's meat supply. In fact, as current law stands, products potentially including cloned animals do not even have to display any sort of notification to the consumer on their labels or in the list of ingredients. If cloning isn't genetic modification it's only because it goes a step too far and falls instead under the category of genetic invention.

It's astounding to think that soybeans, which weren't even considered edible by people in this part of the world a century ago, have so pervasively invaded our food supply. There is soy in everything these days, and it's extremely harmful to people in the doses in which it is made available in a multitude of products in the American food supply; the doses consumed daily in Asian countries are far far lower.

Soy is in almost everything these days if you read the ingredients lists of common food items readily available at the grocery store. All the major brands of mayonnaise contain soy. You can't find salad dressing at the grocery store which does not contain soy. It is difficult to find any soy-free processed food containing protein in the grocery store these days.

The reason for this pervasiveness of soy is because of soy's cheapness and the tragically misled public's perception of soy's healthiness. The cheapness of soy in the global marketplace is due to Monsanto and their "RoundUp Ready" soybeans, which are genetically modified to withstand the round-up that kills all competitor plants in the farmer's field. The vast majority of the soybeans consumed in this country are from places like brazil where they're slashing and burning what's left of the Amazon rainforest at an incredible rate in order to clear more fields for genetically modified monocrops like RoundUp Ready soybeans. The public's misperception is a result of the widely held yet false belief that vegetarianism is a healthier human diet than an omnivorous diet, and the belief that soy is an acceptable substitute source of protein. Soy is actually quite dangerous because it contains phyto-estrogens, which produce a whole array of negative

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