Day 17: Non-GMO. 61 Percent 61Percent Rock Canyon High School

Transcription

1 Day 17: Non-GMO 61 Percent 61Percent Rock Canyon High School

2 Us At Our Study Break! Left to Right: Kyathi, Maya, Gloria, and Jacob Not Pictured: Aubrey (she took the picture!)

3 What did we do? The Date: We planned this study-break to be on 10/25/16. How We Got the Word Out: We talked to our friends and got into contact with them, ending up with a total of 5 people showing up to the meet-up! Our Purpose: We wanted to spread the word about non-gmo, educate ourselves better, and brainstorm ideas. What We Did: During this meeting, in accordance with our purpose, we looked at what non-gmo looks like and how it can be modeled in our lives, our community, and in our school. By doing this study-break, we believe that we were able to do so! After this, we better understand the potential harm that can come out of GMO crops and how we can manage genetic modification appropriately so no people or the environment gets hurt.

4 What did you bring? My mom made this salad for us out of completely non-gmo vegetables. ~Maya I brought an organic and non-gmo egg quiche I made myself! ~Jacob I made these organic pumpkin spice muffins all by myself! ~Aubrey I really like bananas so I brought non-gmo bananas for everyone! ~Kyathi I brought each of you get a bag of non-gmo project certified chips ~Gloria

5 The Consensus on Our Food We all really thought that the food that we prepared and bought was really good and way beyond what we expected it to be. We all thought that the food tasted really great, especially the muffins and the salad. Because of this, we would definitely make/buy the products that we brought to the study break. We got all of the ingredients necessary to make our food from our local grocery store s organic section, as we know that organic foods are guaranteed to have low levels of GMOs in them. For the chips, we got them from our school s cafeteria! They re starting to stock some non GMO and organic options, which is fantastic.

6 The Hidden Reasons for a Non-GMO Diet So...all this food I ve been eating has been linked to all these sorts of diseases and cancers? Why didn t anyone ever tell me about this before? Why would they still let people eat these things? That s just nasty. ~ Maya Umm haha are you sure this is right? Oh my gosh I ve been eating these foods for all my life! Are bad things going to happen to me? What devil came up with the idea to make non-gmo s? ~Kyathi

7 More Responses GMO s are bad for people and the environment. They have been shown in some cases to cause cancer and can outcompete native species, leading to loss of biodiversity. They should be further tested before mass consumption. ~Aubrey It s really astounding how something such as GMO s can be so integrated into our economy and into our lives that the damaging side effects of careless genetic modifying are ubiquitous in our lives. We need to better managing the genetic modification of food. ~Jacob Note: Nobody wanted to be filmed on their responses, but you can see all of us in the picture later on!

8 Our General Thoughts on GMOs We all have agreed that, currently at least, GMO s can be extremely destructive to environmental and personal health. They can mess up our internal ecosystem of bacteria and introduce incredibly aggressive species into the environment that harms biodiversity and the structure of ecosystems. As a result, we agree that GMOs need to be regulated much more and need to undergo extensive testing before they are actually implemented. Idealistically, however, we think that GMOs can have a place in our society if properly regulated. Genetic modification doesn t have to be inherently bad, and it s certainly possible to genetically modify foood without creating adverse side effects. We ve seen this through artificial selection, and if we can find a way to accelerate this process and encourage the growth of crops in a certain way in an environmentally conscious way, we think that having GMOs in our society is definitely feasible if done right.

9 Our Idea for Promoting Non-GMO Step One: Educate the Students Currently in our school s eco-club, we are working on educating students and encouraging sustainability. Because of this, we could seamlessly integrate non-gmo ideas into our education. At our school, we have a very receptive group of students, and with administration fully on board for educating students on sustainability, we should easily be able to accomplish this step of our plan. Step Two: Implement the Idea! Here, we will focus on trying to push for more non-gmo food in our cafeteria, encourage students to transition to a more environmentally conscious lifestyle by consuming less GMOs, and just generally promoting the concepts of non-gmo that everybody can get behind. We can start a movement in our community and encourage everybody to make changes.

10 Social Media Post