We Incorporate Genetic Information From the Food We Eat, New Study Finds

you are what you eat. I was told time and time again. It was proven right time and time again.

I find this very interesting because I'm sure that everyone is like Midoman in hearing this time and time again, I know I have. I wish there was a link to find out more, does anyone know if the results have been published yet or is Popsci just telling us this has happened/going on?

i kind of always knew this. seeing how when i eat healthy food i usually feel better. and junk food just makes me sad.

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The people of the world only divide into two kinds, One sort with brains who hold no religion, The other with religion and no brain.

- Abu-al-Ala al-Marri

I wonder how much of our DNA is destroyed/changed from cooked animal meat. That is why I'm vegan.

I wonder how much worse plant DNA is for us. Thats why I'm a carnivore.

I wonder how bad meat and plants are for us? That is why I don't eat.

I hope we can synthesize food from petroleum soon so we get no DNA in our meals.

^ are the machines among us? you better watch out! >:)

Hmmm... it would appear the corn I ate last night was not fully incorporated into my RNA.

Could this explain skin color changes over several generations caused by a certain diet available from the immediate environment? How about facial features, intelligence, obesity, and lifespan?

Which reminds me ... maybe non-kosher foods are such because they were unfit for our evolution? *cough*

@boka did you notice that they mentioned that rice has a bad effect on the liver? Last time I checked rice isn't cooked animal meat.

I wonder how much of our DNA is destroyed/changed from cooked animal meat. That is why I'm a cannibal.

I wonder what gm crops actually do to us. I'm sure the truth will come out eventually. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction right? The action being modifying crops for better yield, resistance, etc. What could the opposite of that be?

Blow up a balloon really big and it makes a child happy. But eventually the balloon pops. Inject energy in a seemingly positive way, energy explodes back in your face in a negative way. That's the way things work.

i eat humans so i stay human. "f***ing smart."

What is the secret of Soylent Green?

Is it best to eat my own arm? Would this be perpetual existence? I know what my foot taste like. I often put it in my mouth. It doesn’t taste well. I imagine other people feet are bad too.

I am bored each time the word Soylent Green comes around.
I prefer a good old fashion human milk shake, don't you? If you worked for a company that makes human milk shakes, how nervous would you be as you come closer to retirement?

Bravo! Great thread!

I wonder how much DNA is destroyed/changed by eating meat. That is why no animals like to eat humans.

Being that everyone here is basically trolling and trying to start a vegan/not debate, I would like to say one thing to the people out there..

You people who are saying that eating human would be best, actually being that it ends up to cause major changes in your body and eventually kills you, I would think not.. Putting a foreign RNA into you may or may not have effects on you because the body incorporates it, but it couldn't do much with it because of how foreign it is.

Human on the other hand would be very very similar, so in essence you would be mixing your own RNA with someone else's, and because it is so similar the body WILL know what to do with it and will start manufacturing with it, thus causing many mutations that will eventually kill you. Isn't that great? Now if you were to eat yourself I see no problem with this, and if you don't feel like cutting yourself into chunks, I will gladly cut off your limbs and feed them to you.

With love, Shakou~

I love my veggies, fruits and grains with meat at the bottom. Junk food is evil incarnate, but I like that too on occasion. Yes, I believe in the long run we are affected by what we eat.

Wonder what GMO pushers Monsanto think of this. Hahaha. Gmos are a bad idea until we have done Many Many more studies, things like this, and its effects on the local ecosystem, really need to be weighted before we jump in head first, then again corporate money motivated businesses don't really care about that.

We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are. ~Anais Nin~

@1134 love the thumbnail :D
@ Shakou,
good thinking. i've never thought of it that way before.
I'd say our bodies are designed to incorporate random RNA into our DNA, like a neural network, which is like our brains, right? maybe All carbon based life forms work like that? Neural networks besides brains?

I really think we should all learn to till the land, compost, and above all, grow our own food from seeds we *know* not to be genetically engineered by the likes of agribusiness.

Be careful people - if we don't we lose our connection to the earth that gave us birth. I trust her before I trust any man.

@Vapur9,

"Which reminds me ... maybe non-kosher foods are such because they were unfit for our evolution? "

I find it unlikely that Jews from thousands of years ago were aware of miRNA or evolution.

Although, I will admit it's possible the dietary restrictions in religions were based on patterns of sickness/health recognized by the village elders/shamans who then orchestrated "religious laws" as a way of tricking the members of their society into being healthier.

Typically the outlawed foods are trickier to eat safely than non-outlawed foods...

More people are allergic to shellfish than cow (if anyone is allergic to cow at all), and hence shellfish aren't kosher but cows are.

Of course if you admit that, then you must also admit that dietary habits have changed quite a bit since then and that it likely doesn't make sense to apply regional dietary "rules of thumb" from thousands of years ago to a completely different region, agricultural, and healthcare system.

(if you are allergic to shellfish, you are unlikely to die from eating some by accident due to modern medicine)

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"Do not offer sympathy to the mentally ill.
Tell them firmly:
I am not paid to listen to this drivel.
You are a terminal boob." - William S. Burroughs

'I wonder how bad meat and plants are for us?' That is why I photosynthesize

This is why we should not be forced to eat GM food... down with Monsanto hehehe

Everyone seems to assume that the body incorporates RNA quite by accident, and then jumps to the conclusion that this or that will be bad nourishment.

I see no reason to rule out that the body's incorporation of RNA from food sources is something the body is doing "on purpose" (to the extent that expression can be used for the body as a system).

GMO you say? None of you know what you are talking about. the real definition is Government Mandated Organisms. Seems the more sushi I eat, the more scales I grow but when i eat corn from the roadside vendor in minnesota that says "sweet corn' and I end up barfing my guts out it's because he sold me GMO corn intended for ethanol production. It's pure poison to us. I'd rather takes my chances with stuff we don't grow than what we do unless it's from a backyard farm. Never be afraid to question what you eat. Your life may depend on it.

I've recently served as Principal Science Advisor for a new National Geographic book, The Big Idea: How Breakthroughs of the Past Shape the Future, and in the biology and environment chapter we discuss genetics at length. This study is extremely intriguing considering the impact is has on the future of genetically modified organisms, such as the corn which has been altered to resist pests and herbicides. What does this study mean for the consumer then? Will these genes be expressed in humans over time as genetically modified food slowly makes its way into our supermarkets? On the other hand the first genetically modified organisms were bacteria and they are now doing good: producing insulin to treat diabetes, serving as human growth hormones to treat various forms of dwarfism, etc.
-Prof. Jim Trefil, Principal Science Advisor The Big Idea: How Breakthroughs of the Past Shape the Future

"Will these genes be expressed in humans over time as genetically modified food slowly makes its way into our supermarkets?"

- The study looks at miRNA which can bind corresponding mRNA resulting in gene silencing (not translation of a plant gene for eg: glyphosate resistance). As far as I know, no study has been published which looks at whether mRNA can also be transfered from our food into our cells for translation though this would be a logical next step to take. I would not expect there to be a generalised mechanism of mRNA transfer from the food we eat for 2 main reasons: (i) mRNAs are usually much larger and less stable than miRNAs and (ii) translation of all plant mRNAs (including for instance all mRNAs involved in photosythetic pathways) would be extremely wasteful for human cells and would therefore have been subject to selective pressure.

-also for everyone else, there seems to be some misunderstanding about miRNA. miRNA does not, as far as I know, have any effect on DNA, only on RNA. miRNA will not change your DNA but will change the pattern of protein synthesis resulting from mRNA translation. Once the foreign miRNA is degraded, protein synthesis levels should go back to normal.

clarifications:
(i)glyphosate resistance is a gene from some GM plants.
(ii)a generalised mechanism of mRNA uptake from food would be subject to selective pressure (not the mRNA itself).

It's best to be vegan and avoid gmo foods, in my opinion.

Unfortunately data from my personal experience contradicts these findings. I am borderline vegan, and do not eat animal flesh whatsoever. Thus I have certainly never cannibalized any Rockefeller, Rothschild, Morgan, or any other member of the secret elite... So these findings do not at all explain how it is that I RULE YOUR WORLD!