Great collection of articles and resources on GMO crops in Nature this month.

The NPR blog ‘The Salt’ has a post on busting common GMO seed myths. I found the part about organic foods containing some amount of GMO ingredients particularly interesting.

An excellent post on wiseGEEK answers the question, “What Does 200 Calories Look Like?” in a creative, graphical way by showing a calorie-equivalent serving of a variety of foods.

Joe Hibbeln: More “Vegetable” Oil? MORE Heart Deaths | Me and My Diabetes.

This is an interview with Joe Hibbeln, a fatty acid biochemist and acting chief of the section on Nutritional NeuroSciences for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the NIH, here talking about his group’s meta-analysis of a data set originally used to promote polyunsaturated fatty acids in diet over saturated fats. His group’s analysis shows a greater rate of mortality in the intervention group given unspecified vegetable oils in place of saturated fat, and he speculates that omega-6 FAs are particularly dangerous.

It’s Time to Rethink America’s Corn System: Scientific American — A sobering look at why the U.S. grows corn, where it goes, and why this might not be the best thing.

Clarifying recent news about Golden Rice.

The rice strain with high grain levels of beta carotene still faces a number of hurdles before being cleared to distribute to farmers.

Farmer’s Fight With Monsanto Reaches The Supreme Court : The Salt : NPR.

I’m eager to hear where the Court lands on this one. The case involves a farmer who bought seeds for a second (late season) planting of soybeans not from Monsanto but from the local grain coop. Those seeds contained Monsanto’s patented resistance genes.

People in the rich world should become “demitarians” – eating half as much meat as usual, while stopping short of giving it up – in order to avoid severe environmental damage, scientists have urged, in the clearest picture yet of how farming practices are destroying the natural world.

via Halve meat consumption, scientists urge rich world | Environment | The Guardian.

“The need for protected field sites is a sad reflection of the power of anti-science groups, who prevent public and private research to be done in Europe.”

Switzerland Creates Secure Test Site for GM Crops – ScienceInsider.