17 Ways to Avoid GMO Food

by Rose on May 11, 2009

PhotobucketA friend of mine brought to my attention that my article 7 GMO Products I Bet You Are Still Using sounded scarey enough she didn’t want to read it. It made me realize that while the No GMO challenge is very informative it’s also pretty scary/overwelming sounding. It’s not just enough to make people aware of what’s wrong. There needs to be a path that shows how to fix it. Instead of saying “This is why GMO’s are evil / impossible to avoid” (aka, Look you are stuck in the path of an oncoming train) we need to remember to temper that with “This is what you can do about it” (aka, Here’s how to unwedge your foot from the train track.)

In the spirit of unwedging your foot for this week here are:

17 Ways to Avoid GMO Food

  1. Shop at your local farmers market. Ask about the food.
  2. Make your own bread. A Panasonic SD-YD250 Automatic Bread Maker makes it so easy you don’t even have to know how to cook.
  3. Pick restaurants that buy local food. You can search using http://www.localharvest.org .
  4. Menu plan so you aren’t hungry and eyeing McD’s at 6pm.
  5. Learn to cook. Check out my How to Cook series or buy a copy of The Art of Simple Food
  6. Each week find a GMO free alternative for one food you eat.
  7. Try growing a garden. All New Square Foot Gardening is a great book for beginners.
  8. Contact your representatives and request mandatory GMO labeling.
  9. Keep up with your dishes. It’s easier to cook in a clean kitchen.
  10. Move to France, or any where else in the European Union that has mandatory labeling rules. ;)
  11. Make snacks with your kids. They’ll like healthy food more if they helped make it.
  12. Buy Organic
  13. “Buy nothing your great grandma would not recognize as food” – In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (That includes ingredients)
  14. Print out and read the No GMO Shopping Guide (pdf)
  15. Read the small print. (For example the bag of oranges my husband requested while sick says in itsy bitsy print “Treated with imazalil, thianendazole. Coated with food grade vegetable wax”.
  16. Make your own cookies
  17. Remember that mountains are moved one pebble at at time. The smallest changes can add up over time to the biggest.

What changes have you made or plan to make to avoid more GMO’s? Leave a comment below and let us know.

For more posts about GMOs check out this weeks No GMO Blog Carnival.

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