Tuesday, February 16, 2010

While strolling in the cheese isle...

Over the weekend I was walking through the grocery store and saw the cheese section, I casually trotted over to check out what they had. Just a note, I love love cheese. We always keep in the house and Martin and I usually eat alittle daily in a ramakin as a snack. In the grocery store, Fairway, mostly every food is offered conventionally grown and organically grown, and I've bought milk from there that was organic milk, so why not cheese??? As I was looking through the different kinds of cheese for one that said Organic, I came across one that said "Kosher, No RGBH". There weren't many of these cheese, and it got me thinking, what is RGBH? So I looked it up when I got home. while munching on my pieces of aged swiss, I scrolled through lots of information, and it turns out, there are ALOT of people asking themselves this same question! So what is RGBH? It stands for recombinant bovine growth hormone, and its made by Monsanto (the company that made Agent Orange, continues to makes genetically modified foods as well as tries to patent seeds, and was featured in the documentary "The Future of Food", that I reviewed a few entires back).  The more I looked into this stuff, the more interesting it got. Its a growth hormone used to increase the production of milk, but it can cause significant health problems in cows, things like increase in leg and hoof problems, mastitis and serious animal reproductive problems, things like infertility and birth defects.  Cows treated with RGBH produces milk containing elevated levels of a hormone called IGF-1, IGF-1 is associated with increased likelihood of human cancers. (more on this here or here, or just do a search online for RGBH, or better yet Monsanto) And in 1993, the US FDA approved its use in cows. What!!??? I just don't get it. The EU banned the use of it, and yet in America, a place where we are so smart and have so much education, our cows, aka our milk and cheese is loaded with it! There was a big controversey over a couple of well known reporters who were fired from Fox for creating a report showing that RGBH was bad after Monsanto became involved. More can be found on that here.  The good news is that Starbucks, Kroger and Walmart have removed their products containing RGBH within the last 2 years, so I am safe with my chai!!! :) 

Just wanted to share this info with you, so the next time you are at the cheese counter or the milk counter and you see a label that says "No added hormones or RGBH free or No Artificial Growth Hormones", you'll know what it means!!   Through my travels online, I stumbled onto this documentary "The World According to Monsanto" which looks interesting and is free on youtube if you have a second and want to watch.  Review to come tomorrow!

4 comments:

  1. MMMMM I love cheese. I don't know if I could NOT eat a cheese based on its label.... but I suppose I COULD start reading them...


    but its CHEESES!!!!!

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  2. We have had those labels in CA for some time. I make sure we are not eating any extra ca ca. YUCK!

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  3. I didn't know any of this. I don't understand why we have to keep adding this junk to our food.

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