GMO. Genetically Modified Organisms. In our corn, canola, sugar beet, and any processed food we consume on the daily. They have also found their way into organic crop fields,and are virtually unavoidable in the United States. Not to mention, they have also been found in feminine hygiene and personal care items in drugstores across America. We consume them every day, but according to a study released by Rutgers University, 53% of Americans know little to nothing about GMOs and their safety.

So what is a GMO? Why are we using them, and how do they come about? In this laboratory process, genes from the DNA of one species are extracted and forced into the genes of an unrelated plant or animal, creating a new unstable cross breed with more characteristics than it had naturally. This process has enabled certain crops to inherit the gene of another crop or animal with genes that are resistant to infecting plants and disease. The upside: farmers can spray crops with pesticides without killing them. The downside: farmers can spray crops with pesticides that we consume. So the question is, is it helping us or harming us to eat them?

I myself had never heard of them. I knew the title, had seen the label on some packages in the grocery store stating "No GMOS", but never gave them much thought until now. What were they? Why was having none of them a good thing? Or a bad thing? It was not until my friend showed me a documentary on Netflix called "GMO OMG", directed by Jeremy Seifert, that educates and highlights what GMOs truly are, and the back and forth on if they are a potentially good or bad science. The documentary highlights a father's journey in discovering GMOs, his concern for his children's health and feeding them it, and what he discovers when he searches for the truth.

In his journey he starts with the mindset of the unknown, not being set on if GMOs are in fact helping us or hurting us. But through his findings, he starts to doubt the legitimate "safety" of these new lab experiments. After researching and discovering how much of our food GMOs are in, he tries to sit down with the root of it all, biotech companies, and ask them some questions. What he gets instead is no questions, no interview, and he is asked to leave Monsanto's headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. So if the GMOs are safe enough to be in our food and products, why will they not talk about it? Why the privacy?

Now, I enjoy documentaries and conspiracy theories, but I don't instantly convert my beliefs based on what I found. Documentaries are made to open up our minds, see the other side of stories. However; this story was a powerfully compelling one. Besides the Monsanto interview segment, the film goes on to talk more about biotech companies and their discrepancy. The USDA approved experiments produced by the biotech companies themselves which usually lasted only 3 months. 3 months, and we've been consuming these GMOs for how long? After discovering this information, Seifert looked at a different long term study performed on rats, by Dr. Gilles- Eric Seralini, who fed the rats RoundUp ready corn and RoundUp ready herbicide. What they found after performing the only long-term study on rats outside of a biotech company, was that a majority of them got infected with tumors and other illnesses by the end of the study.

Putting aside all of the technical and scientific aspects that determine whether or not GMOs are healthy for us, Jeremy Seifert puts a much different spin in the documentary, pertaining to the differences of a culture. He delves into the Monsanto and Haiti exchange in 2010, when Haiti rejected a donation of seeds from Monsanto, and marched in the street and burned the seeds to protest the gift. When asking a Haitian native on the logistics of the protest, the native explained that the seeds were poisonous, and would poison the land and people. In an interview on analyzing the differences in the two cultures, Seifert says, "They were fighting for something we had lost without even knowing we were giving it up".

So what have we given up? Pure, natural food, because the United States has to yield mass crop production to "feed the world"? But what if we didn't feed the world? What if we are actually harming the world by feeding it? Like I said, I'm not one to quick jump on board with whatever new conspiracy is surfacing, but this one made me realize how wrong I have perceived the United States in retrospect to other countries standards. Talk about food for thought.