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What GMO apologists will constantly tell you is that genetically-modified food is essential to feed the world.

They’ve spent so much money on lobbying and influencing politicians – $572 million from 1999 to 2010 – that a majority of people in Washington D.C. have actually come to believe this nonsense. (University of Michigan’s Catherine Badgley explains here why organic can feed the world.)

But GMOs, we are told, won’t just feed the world. They’ll supposedly nourish it as well.

One prime example of this is GMO ‘Golden Rice’, which was touted as a way to help solve a major global health problem by providing kids adequate amounts of Vitamin A. 

Just as The Environmental Working Group recently put out its bottled water rankings, The Cornucopia Institute has done something similar but with eggs.

While many people may assume that all organic eggs are very similar, this does not appear to be the case. Cornucopia rated all brands of eggs based on 22 criteria that are important to consumers, and the results — not to mention the accompanying video — were quite telling.

The more time that you spend in the organic industry, the more you learn about what is truly going on and what you find is pretty scary.

While I try to remain as optimistic as possible, the reality is that the organic industry is under a constant existential threat from genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).

Even though organic food has never been more popular, nearly 80% of the food on supermarket shelves contains GMOs and organic remains less than 1% of all farmland acreage in the U.S. While 64 nations around the world require GMOs to be labeled, the U.S. does not. Why?

Because the ag-biotech industry has “purchased” agricultural policy in our country, by spending $572 million on campaign contributions and lobbying from 1999-2010.

Whenever I think about a lot of the food that I ate growing up, it isn’t overly pleasant. It was the standard American diet with all of the processed, fast food that most of the country still consumes today.

Fortunately, my childhood took place before the emergence of GMOs (mid-90s) and growth hormone milk (late 80s), so I escaped some of the really bad things when my body was in its crucial stage of development.

One food that I fondly remember eating, and loving, at family dinners was potatoes. And it wasn’t just the insides of the potatoes. I particularly loved eating the skins. Yet, little did I or my parents know just how toxic they were.

When many people think of the most important foods to be eating organic, potatoes do not immediately come to mind as quickly as apples, grapes, or spinach do. But they should and here’s why.