Now that Halloween is upon us, candy is flying off the store shelves. I just read an article about certain candy products that contain genetically modified organisms (also known as GMOs). Of course, I had to dig further to see what GMOs are and their risk and advantages, if any.
It seems that there are 40 plants that have already been approved by the USDA for commercialization.
GMOs are used on these plants to do the following:
- Pest resistance
- Herbicide tolerance
- Disease resistance
- Cold, drought, and salinity tolerance
- GMOs could potentially help to solve some of the world’s hunger issues.
Risks involved with these molecular biologically transformed crops:
- Harm to another organism (unintentional)
- Introducing a new gene to a plant may cause a new allergen.
- Unknown effect on humans
- Economic concerns – bringing GM food to market takes a long time and is expensive.
My thought on this – I am going to try super hard to stay away from known foods that contain GMOs until more is known scientifically about how they could affect humans.
Here is a list of candy that is known to contain GMOs – GM sugars.
- Reeses
- Hershey’s
- M&Ms
- Snickers
- TWIX
- KitKat
- Skittles
- Baby Ruth
- Butterfingers
- Mounds
- Dots
- Crunch
- Tootsie Rolls
SIGH 🙁
Click HERE to find a list of non-GMO candy and treats! Obviously, it is your choice and we have grown up eating the sweets mentioned above, as did our parents, and we all turned out fine – right?!? (Although I don’t think there were GMOs in our parents’ candy just yet).
Katy Fitzgerald says
The link to candies without GMOs isn’t working for me.
Dana says
Oh no! Thank you for the heads up – I’ll look into it right now!