Eat Your Genes: How Genetically Modified Food is Entering Our Diet

by Stephen Nottingham

Eat Your Genes describes the genetic engineering techniques used in agriculture. It explores the food industry's commercial motivations, why certain crop modifications have predominated, and the importance of patenting to the genetic engineering enterprise.

This book explains how crop segregation and labelling are central to the debate, and outlines the development of consumer resistance to the marketing of GM food in Europe. The potential health and ecological risks, the ethical issues, and the implications for both industrialized and developing countries are examined.

The author argues that genetic engineering is still a long way from meeting its promises of feeding the world's hungry and contributing to a more eco-friendly agriculture. As the public debate over the desirability of GM food continues, this is the book to help you think through what is involved.

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whilst GM food has always interested me to a certain degree, I never looked too deep into it past how carrots used to be purple etc. I picked up this book on a whim as something to challenge my brain, and it did just that, I learnt so much from Nottingham's book. Teaching me that GM food modifications are much more than simply changing foods to be more aesthetically pleasing and to increase yield sizes, which prior to reading was the extent of my knowledge. I now understand the major impacts that GM can have on livestock and consumers alike. Something that peaked my interest in particular is the topic of increased allergens in foods.
The book itself is well written, which clear chapters focusing in on the different topics. Nottingham clearly has a wide range of knowledge and is obviously confident in what he is talking about. He transfers his thoughts onto paper in a way that is easy for even the uneducated within the topic (me) to understand. However, unlike some, this ability to allow broad audiences to understand his writing does not come with the cost of sounding less knowledgable.
I would recommend this book to anyone who simply wants to challenge themselves to learn something new, someone looking to expand their GM food knowledge, or someone who is already knowledgeable, it is so full of facts and stats that there is bound to be something new to learn no matter your level.
Thank you to Stephen Nottingham, I look forward to now looking at the modern GM food industry as this book was written a while back, I am sure there must be changes. I'm going to challenge myself to learn more about the topic.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book basically talks about genetically modified foods from how it began and the positive and possible negative effects. Although genetically modified foods are said to be 100% safe to eat, there are still many risks involed such as ; increase production of allergens which will cause more allergic reationcs ; Antibiotic-resistant microorganisms, which means eating the GM foods may develop immunity for the bacteria living in the body. The ones benefiting from GM foods are the European union, which controls 70% of the production.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

For my exhibition i focused in depth on the risks in the human health genetically modified food has upon humans. In this book, I learned that one aspect that affects the human health is allergen. Allergen is an imbalance in the immune system which is also known as immediate hypersensitivity. This really helped me with my exhibition because allergen was one of the biggest points for my paper. This was an ok book to start with if you are planning on writing about genetically modified food next year.