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I thought food labels couldn't surprise me anymore, until I started noticing something strange. On almost everything in the grocery store, and I mean almost everything. I was just there this morning. You can find this tiny message hidden on the label. It's not a warning. It's not an ingredient. It's a new term the FDA quietly approved. And the craziest part is, people are loading their grocery carts full of foods with this label without even realizing it. You'll find it on breads, canned vegetables, condiments, crackers, foods that look totally normal and that most Americans eat daily.
So, what exactly is this mystery label and why did the FDA quietly slip it into our food system? Well, my name is Lily. I'm a certified nutrition health coach, and today we are covering the tiny little line on the back of food packages: "Contains a bioengineered food ingredient." This is the FDA's new term for genetically modified organisms, what we used to call GMOs.
Basically, what happened is companies used to have to put on the front of their package a big GMO label. Though, as more and more consumers became aware of the dangers of GMOs, they started buying less of those products. Because, let's face it, if you saw "genetically modified organisms" in bold print on your bread, you might put it back on the shelf. And as a result of consumers buying less of these GMO products, big food companies made less money, which they can't have that, you know. So they went straight to Congress and heavily lobbied to have a national law that wouldn't make labeling as alarming to shoppers.
So in 2016, Congress passed something called the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, officially replacing the word GMO with bioengineered. The rollout didn't happen until years later, very slowly. And so it was a quiet thing that happened without any major public announcement. So by the time the new label showed up on the shelves, the news cycle already moved on and no one was paying attention, and consumers didn't realize the fine print that had changed.
So what does the word bioengineered actually mean? According to the USDA, it's when a food contains genetic material that's been altered in a lab, something you wouldn't find naturally in nature. In other words, scientists literally edit the DNA of a crop, typically corn, soy, canola, and sugar beet. And by editing the DNA of the crop, it makes the crop be able to grow faster, withstand chemical sprays, and be able to have a longer shelf life, so it doesn't appear old. That's why we can have Cheerios on the store shelf today whose oats were harvested almost a year ago, yet still look fresh.
But let's be honest, this is old food. Not only does editing the DNA of a crop mean we are ingesting foods our bodies were never designed to handle, but additionally, one of the biggest problems with bio-engineered foods like corn and soy is they're modified in a way that they can survive heavy spraying of herbicides like glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. That means these crops are drenched in chemicals that don't easily wash off. I want to repeat that again: we spray our food with chemicals to kill bugs, and then we eat that food, getting trace amounts of those chemicals in our bodies. At this point, research has linked glyphosate exposure to gut imbalances, liver and kidney damage, inflammation, hormonal disruption, and even certain cancers.
And maybe you're watching this video and you're thinking, "Okay, well, does this apply to me? I don't eat glyphosate." Well, most of the calories that Americans consume today can be traced back to these four crops: corn, soy, canola, and sugar. These crops dominate our food supply. They're used to make the oils people cook with. Actually, the oils that are found in most processed foods from pizzas, chips, cookies, crackers. These crops are even the feed used to fatten up our cows, chickens, and pigs. And these crops are used to make sweeteners used to make sodas, candies, cereals, and yogurts. In fact, roughly 60 to 70% of all processed foods in US grocery stores contains ingredients with one or more of these crops.
And again, the major issue with these crops is they are heavily sprayed with glyphosate, a weed killer that the World Health Organization has classified as a probable carcinogen. Now, sure, having a tiny amount of this on a single serving of food is unlikely going to make someone sick today, but when your breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, snacks, and even condiments are all coming from these same glyphosate-sprayed crops day after day, year after year, it can add up. So that brain fog that you can't explain, the chronic fatigue, the bloating, the autoimmune flare-ups, the weight that won't budge. So many of these issues are tied to inflammation from our modern food system. It's not about eating one cookie or having one slice of bread. It's the cumulative exposure, the years of our food being chemicalized, genetically modified, and altered in ways that our bodies were never designed to handle.
Big food companies say that glyphosate is safe because humans don't have the same pathways as plants, but they forgot our gut bacteria do. Which is why more research is coming out that glyphosate can create digestive issues and alter the gut microbiome. Which makes sense because we're basically spraying weed killer inside of our stomachs. And when you destroy the gut, you are destroying the foundation to life.
And this brings me to today's video sponsor, Armra Colostrum. If you don't know what colostrum is, it's the first milk that mammals produce right after giving birth. The first nutrition that we receive in life, containing all the vital nutrients we need to thrive. And Armra Colostrum contains 400 plus bioactive nutrients including a host of peptides, antibodies, whole food prebiotics and antioxidants that can strengthen the gut barrier and promote gut health. I just add Armra into a cold beverage, though most of the time I just add it into my yogurt since it's easy for me to just throw it in there, mix it up, and it just makes it very convenient for me. As you guys know, we live in a world that has more toxins, pollutants, chemicals, pathogens, ultra-processed junk foods, and things that are threatening our physical and mental well-beings now more than ever. And this is where something like Armra steps in. If you'd like to give Armra a try and support this channel, then you can use code Liyane at checkout to get 15% off, or you can get that 15% off by clicking the link in the description, arra.com/lcane.
Now, back to the bioengineered label. This is where things get really interesting. The FDA doesn't actually require companies to let you know which ingredient is bioengineered. It could be the corn syrup, the soy lecithin, the oil, the sugar. You don't know. It's just this vague little phrase on the packaging that says "Contains something." And again, this is actually on most processed foods in the US grocery store. So many people are having these GMO products in their grocery carts without even realizing it.
But the most frustrating part is, the FDA doesn't even require companies to put the label "Contains bio-engineered food ingredients" on the packaging. The USDA actually allows them to use a tiny QR code instead. One that says "Scan for more info." But who the heck is going around in the grocery store scanning QR codes, minus me for this video? And some of these QR codes were really small and hard to find. And so the FDA, sure, requires disclosure, but they also made it easy for companies to hide this.
And so to me, it's not really even about the labeling. It's about trust. For years, people asked for clear disclosure of GMOs so that way they could make informed decisions. Though, when the GMO name got a bad reputation and sales went down, rather than fixing the problem, let's just switch the word. Let's do a little switcheroo and call it something different. And that's what bothers me the most is the lack of honesty. I don't believe that every genetically modified food is evil, but I do believe we all have the right to know what's in our food rather than having to scan some QR code or decode some label just to make an informed choice.
And granted, I am an advocate of people buying single-ingredient real whole foods. So, foods that don't have a package. I don't buy foods with an ingredients label. Though nowadays there are some packaged foods that aren't terrible, but then the naughty products snake in with their labeling laws saying "heart-healthy," "great source of fiber," and other silly labels that don't really mean anything because at the end of the day, it's still junk food.
And granted, these labeling laws don't just apply to food. Your deodorant, your shampoo, your laundry detergent. Companies will quietly change the ingredients and formulas to their products. And I don't think they're necessarily doing this because they want to poison people, but because companies want to make more money, and if they can find a cheaper ingredient to make their product, then they're going to do it. My husband used to use a certain deodorant, but over time, slowly, the company changed their formula where his armpits started becoming more irritated and red until he looked at the ingredients and he's like, "Oh, great. They changed the ingredients and they didn't tell anybody." So, my advice would be to frequently look at your labels of your ingredients of products that you have been buying for years just to make sure that they haven't changed the ingredients and formula.
When GMOs and bio-engineered foods take over our food supply, we lose access to what our bodies truly need: real, whole, nutrient-dense foods. Instead of fresh beef, eggs, and vegetables, most people are eating products built around genetically modified corn, soy, sugar, and canola. These are four of the least nutrient-dense foods on the planet. They're cheap, they're easy to produce, and they're designed to last, not to nourish. We sprayed our food with weed killer because we wanted it to grow faster and look prettier. And we called that progress. But what we really did is we traded good, real food for convenience. And we forgot that what kills weeds doesn't magically become safe for us to consume just because it's on our plate.
The FDA quietly approved this label, but we don't have to quietly eat those foods. And this isn't just about labels or politics. It's about your health. When the FDA silently approved this term, they didn't just change a word. They changed what shows up on your plate. So, my challenge to you is: don't accept it. Read your labels. Question what's in your food because your body deserves honesty. And once you know what to look out for, you can take back control. You can choose to buy foods from farms, not factories, from nature, not from a lab. And at the end of the day, this isn't about being perfect or paranoid. It's about awareness. Because when we have transparency, then everything changes. Because it's really not about GMOs being good or bad. It's about the right to choose. You deserve to know what you're putting in your body. And you deserve to have food grown for health, not for profit.
Now, my goal is with these YouTube videos, people are inspired to take action, be motivated, and start living a healthier life. And I think a lot of y'all have done that already. Though, for those of you who just keep consuming YouTube content and are not taking the action, I do offer one-on-one health coaching and I will whip you into shape. Okay? So, if you are looking for someone to help with accountability and getting you on track, I'd love to serve you on your health journey. I'll help create a meal plan, answer questions, help with accountability, and there's a link to my one-on-one health coaching in the video description. If you enjoyed today's video, I know you're going to enjoy this one. Don't be silly. Subscribe to Lily and I'll see you.