Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Modified: GMOs and the Threat to Our Food, Our Land, Our Future
    Unavailable
    Modified: GMOs and the Threat to Our Food, Our Land, Our Future
    Unavailable
    Modified: GMOs and the Threat to Our Food, Our Land, Our Future
    Audiobook11 hours

    Modified: GMOs and the Threat to Our Food, Our Land, Our Future

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A disquieting and meditative look at the issue that started the biggest food fight of our time--GMOs. From a journalist and mother who learned that genetically modified corn was the culprit behind what was making her and her child sick, a must-read book for anyone trying to parse the incendiary discussion about genetically modified foods.

    GMO products are among the most consumed and the least understood substances in the United States today. They appear not only in the food we eat, but in everything from the interior coating of paper coffee cups and medicines to diapers and toothpaste. We are often completely unaware of their presence.

    Caitlin Shetterly discovered the importance of GMOs the hard way. Shortly after she learned that her son had an alarming sensitivity to GMO corn, she was told that she had the same condition, and her family's daily existence changed forever. An expansion of Shetterly's viral Elle article "The Bad Seed," Modified delves deep into the heart of the matter-from the cornfields of Nebraska to the beekeeping conventions in Brussels-to shine a light on the people, the science, and the corporations behind the food we serve ourselves and our families every day. Deeper than an exposé, and written by a mother and journalist whose journey had no agenda other than to understand the nuance and confusion behind GMOs, Modified is a rare breed of book that will at once make you weep at the majestic beauty of our Great Plains and force you to harvest deep seeds of doubt about the invisible monsters currently infiltrating our food and our land and threatening our future.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9780698402294
    Unavailable
    Modified: GMOs and the Threat to Our Food, Our Land, Our Future

    Related to Modified

    Related audiobooks

    Personal Memoirs For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Reviews for Modified

    4/5

    7 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Modified is a book of memoirs, about researching this book. Shetterly travels the US and Europe, or has long phone conversations with various researchers on all sides of the Genetically Modified (GM or GMO) debate. While much of the rest of the world is fighting off GMOs, the United States is of course still debating, much like climate change, or evolution, or any number of other settled topics. And while it debates, it is flooding the world with the product.Section 1 is all about corn. A trip to Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa led Shetterly to meet people she had been talking to and messaging, informing her opinions on GMOs. The most startling image from that was of Iowa, where the GMO corn goes from property line to property line, she says, and there is little else. Only a couple of percent of the land is still prairie; 144 million acres are planted with GMO corn – and the pesticides they can survive. She says farmers are cancer-ridden in far higher numbers than the general population.Section 2 is about bees and honey, and how GMO pesticides are turning up in honey, while bees literally disappear. Section 3 is about contamination of non GMO crops and how Mexico at least is trying to stop the poisoning of its biodiverse corn heritage.Incredibly, half way through the book, Shetterly quotes a European official saying our plants are now toxic from the roots up. And she lets it go. That should have taken the book in a whole new, deeper direction, but she just mentions it in passing. She circles back over it again in the epilog with a quote from a Harvard researcher that amounts to the same thing, but the epilog is about her family eating well, including recipes you can try at home.This is not a hardhitting science book. You have to wade through Shetterly’s family, travel tribulations, recipes, and especially every meal she ever ordered in any restaurant, to get to the GMOs. For some, this will be a treat. For others, it will mean skipping paragraphs and pages. The most powerful section unfortunately, is the intro, in which both Shetterly and her infant son went through endless tests with endless doctors to determine what their respective symptoms meant. Years went by. Finally, a new doctor said her condition was due to the genetic modifications and pesticides in corn. And corn is everywhere, in the gas tank, in paper products, as dextrose and other additives in too many foods to be aware of. Pursuing that environmental medicine angle might have been a blockbuster, had she only pursued it. As it stands, Modified is informative and personal.David Wineberg