Modern Farming, GMO’s & The Future of our DNA
Published on Love Grace Blog • August 23, 2016
It is well known that a mother’s health and diet directly affect the development of her child. Pregnancy is commonly the only time we are taught to consider how our personal habits will impact a future generation, and typically the only time we internalize that sense of responsibility. It’s lesser known that the genes of your grandchildren begin to form the moment of your child’s conception too. And whether or not we procreate, what each of us put into our bodies today will determine the health and biology of future generations and our planet in more ways than we think.
To understand what we are putting in our bodies, we must first understand how that food grows. On a large scale, agriculture has taken a departure from natural methods and we’ve seen how industrial farming methods and fertilizers negatively impacts our environment and soil. We’ve all heard that GMO’s are ‘bad’, but the monopolized monoculture is not just detrimental to the environment. There is a growing body of research on the health risks of GMO’s, herbicides and other common faming chemicals such as Glyphosate, that have been proven in numerous studies to impact human health by causing nutritional deficiencies and systemic toxicity.
Research has shown these chemicals to be a key factor in the development of western chronic diseases such as cancer, MS, Parkinson’s, autism and several others. Studies on Genetically Engineered crops have also shown unprecedented, bizarre mutations in both animals and humans. A well-known study done on rats showed a significantly higher mortality rate in baby rats born to mothers who had consumed GM soy – and the surviving rat babies experienced some of over 400 gene mutations such as significantly stunted growth. Unfortunately, such herbicides are widely used on almost all US conventional and GMO crops. If this stuff is getting into our bodies, and we’re reproducing, the consequences will be widespread.
If the health of our species and our planet were at the forefront, our farming methods would be sustainable, regenerative and biodynamic. While such farms exist, governments heavily subsidises industrial farms that grow the very crops used in the ultra-processed foods that contribute chronic disease instead, like soybeans and corn. The more we support these methods, albeit to the benefit of these corporations’ profit margins, the sicker we make ourselves and our environment.
The future of life on our planet is affected by the choices we are each making several times a day: what we eat, and were we eat from. The further that these depart from the earth, the more extreme the disharmony we are feeding in our own bodies and for the generations ahead of us.
By embracing and leveraging nature, we can become more in harmony with it. Regardless of how chemically polluted our world may become, nature still grants us accessibility to all the solutions we need to allow the body to repair. We all have the opportunity to re-wire our immune system and strengthen the body to adapt and defend itself from our modern threats. The body is wired for resilience in any case, and inevitable exposure to some glyphosate will be more tolerable to a body with a healthy terrain and properly functioning detoxification systems. When we’re in a dynamic state of balance, the load can never get too heavy.
Catabolism is a key way to lighten the load of toxic accumulation, and the most accessible ways we can practice this is through exercise and fasting. Daily movement can mobilize toxins out of the body and free our lymphatic system and bioenergetic meridians from stagnation. Likewise, avoiding food when the sun is down and practicing fasting periodically in periods of low stress can effectively boost autophagy and the removal of debris from the body.
Building a relationship with soil and natural microbes is also an important way to support a healthy, diversified microbiome in your gut and consequentially a thriving immune system. Spending time in nature is also regenerating and detoxifying, as contact with the earth’s negative ions extracts toxins from our bodies. This connection with the earth can be practiced by a barefoot walk on the beach or an afternoon spent gardening.
Finally, we need to nourish ourselves properly. It is not natural for the human body to eat poison, nor accumulate it. How we fuel ourselves has a huge impact on how efficiently we build immune resilience on a day-to-day basis. We ought to be nourishing the body with raw materials that it can use to self-repair: fresh, whole, organic, seasonal, and wild growing foods. Focus most on where each ingredient comes from. Supporting your local farmers when you shop for your family is a big step in the right direction.
By making these choices for ourselves, we support sustainable and regenerative agriculture, which is the most effective way to help repair the broken food system, and thus provide many big solutions to chronic disease, healthcare costs and environmental problems. In fact, it is a foundational step to solving all of these global concerns, and one that can be moved by the people from the ground up.
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