It’s no secret that Americans are getting fatter. And sure, the usual suspects—more processed food being packed into our diets and too-frequent fast food fixes—clearly play a part, but now there’s another theory: genetically modified (GM) crops, according to new research.
As part of a long-term project studying the health effects of GM foods—crops that have had their DNA modified to resist pesticides and drought—researchers from Norway fed food containing GM corn to one group of rats and food containing non-GM corn to another group. Over the course of 90 days, the rats on the GM-corn diet grew fatter and ate more food than the rats on the non-GM diet. The researchers also noticed that rats got fatter when they ate fish that had been raised on GM corn.
"If the same effect applies to humans, how would it impact people eating this type of corn over a number of years, or even eating meat from animals feeding on this corn?" lead researcher, Åshild Krogdahl, PhD, a professor at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, told the Norwegian news site ScienceNordic.
Then there’s the nutrient issue. Research from the nonprofit Organic Center has found that nutrient levels in modern crops are anywhere from 10 to 25% lower than they were 50 years ago, likely because the crops are bred for higher yields, as many GM crops are. As nutrient levels go down, we have to eat more to get the recommended levels of nutrients we need, which may explain why GM crops led to overeating rodents in the Norwegian study.
Learn more about GMOs—and how you can avoid them—with The Biggest Food System Threat of 2012.
