In the absence of government action, citizens take on GMO labeling themselves.

You know the saying: “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” That’s especially true when change moves at the speed of politics and we need something done now.

Label It Yourself is a decentralized, grassroots movement that lets consumers label foods containing genetically engineered (GE) ingredients. It’s an idea that combines elements of DIY,  culture jamming, and a even a bit of the Occupy movement to basically give a big, fat middle finger to policy makers who refuse to regulate the spread of genetically engineered organisms, and the global corporations that lobby against such regulations.

You can start now. Download the artwork, print up a bunch on label sheets, head out to the grocery store, and slap labels on packaged foods that likely contain GE ingredients.

They won’t be hard to find. It’s estimated that up to 70% of packaged foods contain some GE material.

Tips for identification:

1. Start with any non-certified organic packaged food containing any of the top genetically modified food crops—corn, soy, canola (rapeseed), and sugar beets.

2. Don’t stop there. Read ingredient labels to look for derivatives of those crops commonly found in packaged foods. These include corn flour, corn oil, corn starch, corn syrup, fructose, dextrose, and glucose, modified food starch, soy flour, lecithin, soy protein, soy protein isolate, and isoflavone. Also look for cottonseed oil (as much as 93% of US-grown cotton is genetically modified). Vegetable oil and vegetable protein are suspect since they could easily be derived from GE soy, corn, canola, or cotton.

3. Identify sweeteners: After the approval of GE sugar beets, acreage in production exploded, making any non-organic product that lists sugar, but doesn’t designate it as 100% cane sugar, suspect.

Kellogg is already feeling the pain of the Label it Yourself movement. Activists began posting photos of the label on Kellogg’s corn flakes on Kellogg’s Facebook Page, although Kellogg’s keeps taking it down.

For all you rule followers, there’s positive news regarding the various political efforts to label GE foods: The Just Label it Campaign, which is gathering signatures to ask the FDA to initiate Federal labeling has 1 million signatures and counting. California’s Right to Know campaign garnered enough support among voters to qualify for November’s ballot. None of these efforts are mutually exclusive. Polls consistently show that 90% of American consumers want GE food labeled, so they can decide on their own.

Now, if we could just take on global warming ourselves.

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ColumnWant to change the world? Stop eating packaged food.

A block and a half from my apartment there is a Safeway. For the last few years it has been a dingy place with dark aisles and dusty shelves, the kind of grocery store where you might just see an unmentionable rodent scurry across the floor. Then it got a remodel.

Located in the heart of a neighborhood where bike commuting and raising chickens are of the norm, Safeway knew their demographic, and the remodel followed suite. A few weeks ago the new and improved version opened, complete with brick walls, high ceilings, an abundant organic produce section and even an outdoor patio with tables and chairs for sipping afternoon coffee. Take away the Safeway sign and replace the Starbucks something a little more hip – Blue Bottle for example – and it would look just like every other yuppie-centric food shopping center. Don’t pretend you don’t have an affinity for such things – we’re all slaves to marketing.

Having always avoided the store except for last minute shopping emergencies, I entered the remodeled edition with an open mind. Access to grocery stores is not something that should be taken for granted; the fact that I can buy whole grains, fruits and vegetables a block and a half away from where I live is a luxury, and I try my hardest not to take it for granted. After all, a full grocery cart from Safeway is leaps and bounds from a dinner at McDonald’s.

On first look I was impressed. Fresh looking carrots, apples and kale? Check. Bulk foods? Wow. Topping the charts on sustainable seafood ranking? Hat tip. But as I walked around the periphery and was offered a variety of samples – “Would you like to try some nonfat yogurt with fiber cereal?” – panic started to set in. That nonfat yogurt was strawberry flavored, with who knows how much sugar. And the fiber cereal? Just one of hundreds of packaged cereals in the breakfast aisle touting the benefits of vitamins and minerals and all that other stuff that is part of a complete breakfast.

A quick look down the aisles to see jars upon jars of peanut butter (only one brand made without sugar or high fructose corn syrup) and dozens of different chewy granola bars confirmed my fears: I was in packaged world hell. Yes, much of it was branded as “healthy” – I am sure we would all be better off if kids were eating 100% Fiber Bites instead of High Fructose Neon Colored Synthetic Gems – but is healthy food just a name? As it turns out, as Americans, we don’t have an understanding of what healthy is anymore. We think avocados are fattening and bran muffins and a non-fat vanilla latte are a good way to start the day. Time for a reality check?

To pretend that I normally shop at grocery stores that don’t sell packaged food would be ridiculous – we live in a world of convenience after all and no matter where we shop, packaged foods abound. But what happens in the large percentage of big box chain grocery stores is the quantity and messaging. There is an overabundance of food that isn’t really food; it’s food elements combined with a handful of synthetic nutrients that we’re told is good for us, and because we’re busy, overworked and need to eat, we buy it. Yet our addiction to pre-made products wrapped in plastic, boxed in cardboard and labeled with colorful messaging should certainly be put to question, because not only is our health at risk, so is the planet’s.

The more processed food we eat, the further we are distanced from the food’s source. Don’t ever show a child a farm and a cow, and they might think that meat just comes from the butcher. Artichoke hearts are delicious on wood fired pizza, but do you know how an artichoke plant grows? I didn’t until a couple of years ago. The more we eat out of boxes and determine our diets by nutritional guidelines, the more we pull ourselves away from nature, losing our connection with the earth that is providing us with the food in the first place.

Take a look at zero waste efforts. In the last several years we have seen everyone from No Impact Man to My Zero Waste set out to reduce their footprint on the planet by pursuing lifestyles that reduce their all around waste. At first sight, that may sound like it’s all trash related, but take a closer look and it’s clear how inextricably linked food and waste really are. You can’t talk about one without the other.

In the documentary film The Clean Bin Project, which follows a Canadian couple as they commit to living waste-free for a year, one of the first scenes is a trip to the grocery store and an attempt at buying cheese at the deli counter that’s simply cut off the block and not pre-packaged. Buying food that isn’t packaged, even if you’re on a steady diet of whole foods, is difficult. When even bananas come wrapped in plastic, you know there’s a serious problem at hand.

Talk all you want about being an environmentalist, but if you haven’t taken a serious look at what is in your pantry, you could just as well be running over endangered turtles with a Hummer. An addiction to packaged foods doesn’t just contribute to waste, it contributes to an entire infrastructure that doesn’t support local farmers, encourages us to overeat and leads to obesity and is destroying our environment by continuing a process that is fueled by monoculture, deforestation and a multitude of other things you learn about in Environmental Studies 101. If living more in balance with nature is the path we want to take towards a more sustainable world, we have to start with food.

Question what you eat, where it came from and commit to simplifying, because real food isn’t complicated. Just because the sea salt, fennel and olive oil crackers came from Trader Joe’s and not from Safeway doesn’t mean you should be buying them. They’re still packaged, probably full of preservatives, and do you even know how easy it is to make crackers yourself?

If we have time to devote to watching trashy reality television, we have time to devote to eating well. No excuses.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Image: nanny snowflake, pawpaw67

The post Foodie Underground: Dealing With Our Packaged Food Addiction appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnThe real danger of functional foods.

You’re standing in the cereal, snack, drink, or dairy aisle and the packages are screaming their claims at you: “high fiber,” “low fat,” “contains probiotics,” “now with added soy protein.”

Welcome to the world of functional foods—foods that claim to have health promoting or disease-preventing properties beyond the basic function of supplying nutrients.

Healthy food doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The idea that we can take a nutrient that has been proven in one study to lower cholesterol, increase energy, or repair cells, and then simply add it to a processed food to give that food a healthier profile is faulty. It’s an illustration of our societal belief that every problem can be solved and there is a formula to doing so. If you don’t believe we in this society share such a belief, take a walk through the self-help section in any bookstore and look at the book titles.

It would be simple to advise not buying packaged food, and indeed, I have said that in this column before. But ultimately, I think we need to look at food and nutrition ecologically. Each nutrient is part of a functional system and each food that we ingest is a part of the body’s functional system. Beyond that, the food we eat is also part of our larger socio-economic and cultural system around food.

When I shop for food I think a lot about the different levels of nourishment in it. Does it nourish my heart, my soul? Does it nourish my pleasure centers by tasting good? Does it nourish the relationships I have with the people I’m eating with? Does it nourish the environment, or cause harm? Does it nourish the people who produce it, or exploit them?

To take an ecological view of food is to understand that the physical, cultural, social, environmental, and economic results of ingesting a food or nutrient cannot be predicted or understood in isolation. Foods interact with one another, in the body, around the table, and in society—all of which contribute to their overall ability to nourish. None of this can described by a marketing claim.

Next time you’re shopping, instead of thinking about whether the food in your cart is going to provide you with the proper balance of Omega-3s and 6s, sufficient antioxidants to prevent cancer, or enough fiber to lower your cholesterol, think about how it will taste, who you will eat it with, how you will prepare it, where it came from, who produced it and if it’s in season. In short, think about whether that food is the right thing for you to eat right now.

The marketing of functional foods is not just annoying because it takes advantage of consumer confusion and fear around nutrition, it’s also dangerous because it assumes we don’t have our own holistic understanding of food and, in the end, dis-empowers us to make our own decisions about what to eat.

When you see the following statements or ingredients on a package of food, chances are what you’re buying isn’t nutrition but marketing:

Antioxidants
Probiotics
Vitamins
Fiber
Soy protein
DHA
Green Tea (unless the product is tea)
Healthy
Reduces cholesterol
Clinically proven
Heart healthy
Digestive health

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: The Impulsive Buy via Flickr

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