Fools and Food

 

Say no to GMO’s - or at the very least we ought to have the right to know!

The recent vote down against the labeling of GMO foods in California’s Prop 37 once again goes to show how a little misdirection by big business and a little bit of fear about the cost of eating and the economic effect of things goes a long way in fooling the public. So unfortunately here is another perfect opportunity to discuss the nature of ignorance versus knowledge and how being a fool is different than being a Fool.

First though, here is the simple and challenging truth about your food: if you don’t know what you are eating, you are likely eating food laden with GMO’s and grown in unsustainable, chemically laden ways. The reasoning is that it is cheaper and easier for farmers to grow mass amounts of GMO crops loaded with pesticides and herbicides than it is to grow non-GMO’s organically.  But it doesn’t need to be that way — it’s merely the way things became over time, it’s the business model that took off and took over in recent decades. Scientific research brought about some new discoveries and with a growing population there was a need to meet the public demand for more food. However we really don’t have proper impact studies to gauge precisely what the full impact of GMO’s are on the environment or our bodies.

Yet several studies reveal that GMO’s could be responsible for the wide spread Colony Collapse Disorder that is killing off bees. Meanwhile health issues ranging from disorders and diseases, to cancers and obesity problems continues to rise. You would think that such concerns would make people stop and reconsider the situation, but when big money is involved, the lobbyists and corporate machinery churns on - at the entire world’s expense.

The big uncertainty is exactly just how much harm GMO’s and pesticides do to your bodies when you eat them. However we do know that such things harm the natural environment!  It is more important than ever that we think twice about what we shove into our mouths and bodies, and where that food came from and how it will affect our bodies, our immune systems, our entire well-being.

There are indeed other practices and methods of sustainable agriculture that are being developed to meet the needs of the masses, but big business profits really don’t want it any other way. Derailing Prop 37 was a rather simple feat for them - they merely had to outspend the proponents of the bill.  They created enough worry about what the economic impact of the bill could be. The economy trumps our concerns about our health, once again revealing that money is practically a god in good ol’ consumer America. In general we are all like ostriches, who would rather keep our head buried in the sand than wake up to the hard, cold truth that GMO’s are everywhere in the country. We’d rather stay ignorant than pay a bit more to be informed.

Somewhere along the line, wisdom became uncool. Perhaps its because as life gets more complicated, as we hurtle along in a more confusing and daunting web of complexity we are desperately yearning ways to embrace more simplicity. We think ignorance is bliss. We think playing the fool will help solve our problems, and while I say that is a good intuitive response to follow — we need to careful about what type of fool we’re playing, for there is a difference! The lower-case fool ignores facts, ignores reason, and ignores taking responsibility. The capital F Fool, is more about doing things that seem outrageous and thinking outside of the box, the Fool is more about taking risks and changing the paradigm, the Fool is more about cultivating an essence of holy innocence that is peaceful and sincere.

Those difference and many more elements will be explored in “The Happy Happy ReBegin Day Celebration!” on December 29th from 7-11pm. Mark your calendars - for it will be a very festive AND informative evening of performance art starring April Hava Shenkman and yours truly.

In the meantime, is it too foolish to hope that sometime in the next four years we’ll receive proper food labeling on a national level? Or will the administration do something completely Foolish and truly change the way our agricultural system works so that it is safe? It may seem crazy and seem like a bad thing to do for the sake of the economy, but in the long run it could be the wisest thing we could do for the long term health of our citizens and the entire ecosystem of the world.

We need more Fools!