Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Kurtis Frank on the Benefits and Risks of Genetically Modified Foods (GMOs)

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

There has been a lot of grumbling about genetically modified foods over the last decade or so, and many of the claims are alarming enough to scare your pucker shut. These foods are POISONOUS, some people say, and increase your risk of all kinds of disease and dysfunction. At some point, they prophesy, we'll look back on GMOs like we do fluoroscopes, lobotomies, and DDT. Hogwash, the other camp proclaims—GMOs are well studied and perfectly safe, and we should stop tilting at windmills and embrace this wonderful product of modern food science. Who's right? Well, that's what this podcast is all about. In it, Kurtis Frank and I break it all down, starting with what GMOs are and how they’re created, the difference between some GMO foods that are probably not a reason for concern and others that may be, why genetically modified plant and animal foods are different, and more. And in case you’re not familiar with Kurtis, he’s the co-founder and former lead researcher and writer of Examine.com, as well as the Director of Research for my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics. Let’s get to the show! 6:24 - What is a basic definition of GMO’s? 8:43 - How do you cross breed plants? 14:41 - Are they modifying one gene or multiple genes? 15:27 - What is an example of a modification that might not be a good idea to change? 16:53 - How do GMO’s affect humans? 22:38 - Are there consequences when we modify animals? 25:57 - How does Monsanto fit into all of this? --- Mentioned on The Show: Click Here to Shop Legion Supplements --- Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will

save 10% on your entire order and it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews, and we're here today to talk about GMO foods because there has been a lot of grumbling about GMO foods over the last decade or so. rumbling about GMO foods over the last decade or so. And many of the claims that are being made are alarming enough to scare your puckers shut. These foods are poisonous, some people say, and they increase your risk of all kinds of disease and dysfunction. At some point in the future, these people prophecy, we are going to look back on GMOs like we do fluoroscopes, lobotomies, and DDT.

The other camp, though, says all that is hogwash. They say that genetically modified foods are perfectly safe and well studied, and we should stop tilting at windmills and just embrace this wonderful product of modern food science. Who is right? Well, that is what this podcast is all about. And in it, Curtis Frank and I break it all down, starting with what GMOs are and how they're created, the difference between some GMO foods that are probably or almost certainly not a reason for concern and others that may very well be, why genetically modified plant and animal foods are different, and more. Oh, and in case you're not familiar with Curtis, he is the co-founder

and former lead researcher and writer over at examine.com. So if you've ever poked around examine all of more or less all of the highly technical, highly detailed, highly referenced information that you find at examine was researched and written by Curtis. And he is also the director of research for my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics. All right, well, let's get to the interview. Curtis Frank has returned. Hello. Sounded like you just did a line or something. Oh no, I just coughed a little bit and tried to say hello after, but I forgot the H. I thought this might be more of an interesting interview than I anticipated. Well, yeah, I'm a little bit, I don't know, loose, happy. That's good.

Not drunk, just to confirm. That's even better. Yeah, I figured the first two may have sent everyone on a little adventure with their minds, thinking maybe I was drinking a bit too much. But nope, not yet. Just high on life. Oh, totally. Life energies. All right.

So we're talking about GMOs today, genetically modified, I guess, specifically we're going to be talking about genetically modified food. This is something I've been asked about fairly often, and I've kind of always punted. I've just said, you know, I'm not sure because I understand that there is quite a bit of research that if you take it at face value, it indicate that GMOs are great and that we should just eat as many of them as possible. And anyone who says otherwise is a conspiracy theorist. And then on the other hand, of course, you have people who have basically the polar opposite position of these foods are basically poison. My assumption has always been that it's probably

somewhere in between. And in the limited amount of reading that I've done on it, that seemed to be supported by at least some smart people who were specialists in the field who were saying that, of course, there are positive aspects of this technology and there are potential downsides. Maybe we shouldn't race to embrace it as quickly as we are. And maybe we should be a bit more careful. And there are some real open questions as to how these foods or some of the foods might be okay. Other foods, maybe not so much, especially when you're getting into animals as well. And especially with some people. And I intentionally have not really, I haven't written about it and I haven't spoken about it because I didn't want to put the time needed into that it would require really to do it.

And so that's why I'm just using you, Curtis, to make me look good, to share the information that I didn't want to go dig up. And to be honest, you're a better person. I wanted to find somebody who understands biology in a way that that's above my pay grade. For me to try to get to your level of understanding of biology would take a lot of time. I'm excited to have you here to break this down for us. Well, you're basically using a cracked mirror to make yourself look good here. Like it's decent enough because you're good and all that,

but bit of a problem because I should clarify to the audience that I'm not an overall expert of GMOs. I just know genetics and all that and what it means to modify them and the implications thereof. But this podcast will probably not answer a lot of questions. It'll probably just give you a good base of understanding of what GMOs actually are. And then we can get into some of the, at least some of the open questions as to, are there legitimate reasons for concern?

Should we care at all? Or is all of it just alarmism being used to try to oftentimes sell us stuff, sell us organic food or sell us supplements that we're supposed to take if we're eating GMOs and stuff like that? Well, I guess I should start with just saying the basic definition of GMO is genetically modified organism. And the more you think about it, the vaguer it gets. It basically means that there is some sort of organism which had at least one gene modified. Now, with all the genes we have in our body, this could be completely worthless. You could literally modify a gene in your body right now and not be able to detect it.

A single gene is usually not that potent. But the idea behind GMOs is that they target a specific gene that they want to increase or decrease because they think it'll make the product or species better a good example like this is a egotistical example but it's a good one it's when gmos made tomatoes more red the only reason they did this was because red tomatoes sold better, but they made the tomatoes more red and people bought them more. So they earned more money. It didn't have any nutritional benefits, didn't have any nutritional downsides, had no major effect at all. They were just slightly more red because of a GMO, a completely neutral, unreactive GMO. And just to add to that, genetic modification has also been going on for a long time,

even before we had fancy technology, just through interbreeding, right? And so maybe people could have figured out how to naturally make these tomatoes grow more red by, I mean, I don't know anything about botany, honestly, or agriculture, but I'm sure that somebody who knows about those things could put forward a theory like, okay, if we want these things to come out more red, what we're going to do is we're going to take this plant here, and then we're going to take this plant here, and we're going to work with them this way. And maybe over several several generations we'll get redder tomatoes but that would take more time than just being able to go in with technology that can edit a gene and be like

cool we're done precisely the main benefit of gmos is that not only they're precise they're fast so you could simply crossbreed plants but that takes a long time, a lot of generations to go through. Sorry to interject, but how do you crossbreed plants exactly? I don't even know if I've ever even grown a plant in my life. Maybe in school we did a project, I'm not remembering. You're not asking a botanist right now. All right. Well, while you continue, I'm going to Google and I'm going to find my answer and I'll share it with everybody. I'd find your answer, but I'll just continue. So it started with cross-breeding plants.

Then GMOs eventually started speeding things up with bacteria and viral genetic modification of their target plants. They were initially not the best, but they refined on it and made it faster. And now we're in the CRISPR days. refined on it and made it faster and now we're in the crisper days and if you don't know crisper is basically a technology that allows for very rapid and very precise genetic modification and crisper is actually awesome i just need to say that like it's not like some weird conspiracy theory like off the wall crazy shit it's actually just something we really really want more of because it can amplify the rate of science so fast but it also amplifies the rate of gmos

and as long as safety procedures are followed we're good but the main issue is that if people don't abide by the safety regulations then perhaps some issues could come up in the future. But so far, no major ones have happened yet. Still could be a concern for the future. Not an issue at this moment in time. Yeah, I've read a bit about CRISPR. Seems interesting. I mean, it was in the context of gene editing humans and kind of designer babies, which seems kind of freaky.

But yeah, that's like the end goal of GMOs is when it hits to humans because humans are organisms. And that's when all the ethical issues hit, because right now we can just like play with the tomato as much as we want. Pump up the lutein, pump up the vitamin A, pump up the redness, pump up the plumpness and all that. No one bats an eye. The moment we go to a human, it's like, well,

we should just like plump up the muscularity. Whoop, eugenics. And then like the huge wall is hit. That's what China's for. They don't care. Yeah, exactly. But like GMOs at this point in time are good for vegetables and fruits and all that. Pretty sure eugenics are good for

vegetables and fruits too. Technically they're the same thing. It's funny how that word, I mean, not to go on a random tangent, but that word has a very negative connotation of course. But if you take the recent history out of it and you just look at the dictionary definition, it's a good thing. Like, yes yes we want more of this please you talk eugenics or eugenics yes eugenics get please people with the best dna please get together and make babies for the collective future of our species uh do you even want me to uh continue with that line of thought? I'm just saying that if you were to say it that way, you'd be like, yeah, that's cool. And you'd be like, well, that's eugenics. Well, no, because there's a guy talking in front of Congress and he had Down syndrome, right?

But everything about him was completely normal, aside from the fact that you could see he had Down syndrome. I forget his name. I really should have remembered it for the podcast but he mentioned how us with down syndromes are the canaries in the coal mine if we go away a lot more of you will go away the next few years which is why i do really i'm super cautious about any genetic modification of humans, because I know that those people will be targeted first. And I know that whoever targets them will not stop. Capitalism has no brakes. Oh, yeah, yeah.

No, I mean, to be specific. Yeah, I'm not talking about eugenics. Again, I'm talking about just in a dictionary sense, right? So reproduction in a way that's improving the genetic material over time instead of... Oh, yeah, but you're talking morality, and I'm talking capitalism, and capitalism don't care about morality. But we've been doing it. All I'm saying is we've been doing a natural form of eugenics, at least here in the West for a long time. I mean, even female hypergamy, right? Women, just the biological drive to mate with kind of the cream of the crop to get the

best genetic material to mate with, that is a natural form of eugenics. Well, yeah, true. I feel we may lose listeners unless we get back to the tomatoes. Oh, I don't know. Maybe they're waiting. Where else is this going to go? We'll get back into the precise German science soon. By the way, to cross breed plants, so let's see, what you do is you take the male pollen from one parent plant, a flower, and then you put it onto the female reproductive part of the other plant. And then you have to harvest the seeds and then you got to grow those so that actually makes sense you violate plants and then you steal their children

and you turn them into uber plants don't make me think of farms as concentration camps it gets worse it's it's i know it gets worse but yeah basically i just want to summarize. Farmers are Nazis. That's all I'm saying. Totally. But I just want to summarize and get us all back on topic. GMOs are not inherently bad, nor are they inherently good.

All they mean is that a single gene was modified. This could be good. This could be bad. But we need to be specific of which gmo we're speaking of and any claim to all gmos overall is false because it is far too vast a topic with way too many diverging examples to summarize with a single blanket statement and it's just a single gene you could modify multiple genes but to classify as a gmo you need to modify at least one gene okay at least one yes you could modify like five yeah you want it's still a gmo yeah but like most people are very

precise like they see a tomato that is delicious, but it rots really fast. And then they say, whatever gene makes it rot, knock it out. But if they find that three genes work in concert to make it rot, they knock them all out. And then, boom, the tomato doesn't rot anymore. And so if modifying a tomato to make it more red is an example of benign modification, what's a bunch of foods that have been edited in that way. Even if it's just in some people, even if it's how the foods interact with people's individual genetics, you know. That's a pretty difficult question. But I would say that anything that influences the plant's composition or nutrient growth sort of thing.

Interesting. Like in the end, not even a plant, but this applies to animals as well. So let's say an egg, you want to make an egg, but people say that they don't want enough cholesterol. So you want to make a GMO egg that has low cholesterol in it. But cholesterol is the first byproduct in the synthesis of androgens and estrogens. So if you were to modify the gene in most likely the chicken, because it lays the egg, you can't like inject every single egg as soon as it pops out of the butt, you're going to negatively influence the chicken because of your, you know, short-sighted desires to reduce cholesterol at an egg kind

of thing. And that may actually be the main, at least in my opinion, the main downside of GMOs. How might that then negatively affect people who eat the egg or the chicken as well? Well, before I continue on that, it's just, I feel that like at this moment in time, I don't think GMOs are negative at this moment in time. But I feel that if GMOs, especially due to CRISPR accelerating things, continue on their route, there may be negatives in the future, but they will impact farm animals before they affect us. Because, you know, there are a lot of regulations preventing people from selling dangerous compounds to humans. But there's less regulations when it comes to injecting your chickens

with some weird-ass virus. The animals will hurt more before us. But beyond that, like, when it comes to humans, it's the whole... You know how when it comes to the food pyramid, every decade or so, people just say, oh, this nutrient is bad or that nutrient is bad or this macronutrient just don't have any of it. And it changes every 10 years. GMOs could straight up take an entire crop, if there's enough power behind it, and eliminate a huge portion of that macronutrient. What if all potatoes just had half the carbs at all? Like all American potatoes, just half the carbs.

Just because the government agency decided, you know, carbs bad, thus genetically modify our entire agricultural industry. That's like a worst case scenario but you know it could theoretically happen if there's just enough backing behind it like not to carbs mind you like carbs are proven enough that it would never happen to them but when it comes to some sort of micronutrient like let's say the zeaxanthin or lutein in eggs if ablating cholesterol growth in eggs will result in less zeaxanthin and lutein i could see some industry saying that is completely acceptable and then the main source of zeaxanthin in american diets just goes away you know it's not to anyone's fault or anything it's just because anyone's fault or anything.

It's just because some industry thought it was a good idea and there were a bunch of idiots. Hey, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Every ingredient and every dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. To check everything out, just head over to legionathletics.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps,

use the coupon code MFL at checkout, and you will save 20% on your entire order if it is your first purchase with us. And if it is not your first purchase with us, you will get double reward points on your entire order. That's essentially 10% cash back in rewards points. So again, the URL is legionathletics.com. And if you appreciate my work and want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. And what about, let's see, there's genetic modification with agricultural products humans, then it's good. And in the case of animals, how does that look? Because also I'm just curious as to if, again, are there legitimate criticisms or is a lot of it just complete alarmism?

What do you mean when you say in regards to animals? I mean, again, I haven't looked too much into it, but aren't there instances of where animals or DNA is spliced into? And this may actually be outside of the food supply, actually, now that I think about it. Not necessarily. Like, if I remember correctly, there was salmon that was genetically modified for people to... Yeah, the awkward vantage salmon. It's a GMO salmon. And what's the story there?

Well, if you give me a few seconds to read the wiki page. From what I can tell, a general growth GMO. They just made them grow faster. But aqua advantage salmon was the first example of a species that lived, that lives, and was GMO modified and still fed to humans. What are your thoughts on that? Just because we hear that GMO has, and GMO foods also, that when livestock and other animals have eaten a bunch of GMO corn or GMO feed of one kind or another, they've not fared nearly as well as with non-GMO. And so I'm just curious as to why. Do you think that's more of just a nutritional thing,

or could there be unintended consequences of at least certain types of modifications that are made to food that are impacting the animals in a way that we don't understand yet and then if that's the case would it be fair to assume that that also could be happening to some degree in humans as well i wouldn't say that it would happen to humans in the same degree but beyond that i agree with you because when it comes to tomatoes being gmo modified the tomato is already dead you plucked it off the branch put it in a box and it was shipped out it's dead it's not gonna like reproduce with any other tomatoes at least from what i've seen i haven't seen tomatoes getting it on at the grocery aisle. But when it comes to something like the awkward vantage of salmon or just other GMO species that are currently living, as you mentioned, there are some discrepancies with feed efficiency ratios in these animals.

And it's because when you modify one gene, you don't modify necessarily one parameter. gene, you don't modify necessarily one parameter. Humans don't know every single thing about every single gene at this moment in time. So because of that, there may be unintended consequences. It's okay when it's applied to a tomato that is destined for death, which is, you know, thrown into a grocery supermarket and you're going to eat eat it but if it's applied to something that could escape and start reproducing the wild it's a bit complicated this one genetic modification you put in the animal if it made it stronger and more robust and made it more able to reproduce with other species it could propagate and if it propagates, what does that mean? Not just propagate, but dominate.

That would take like one to 200 years. And let's be honest, it's not going to happen these days. But at the same time, like you don't want modified organisms escaping and just getting out into the wild. Because at the very least, if something goes wrong with a modified organism and it proves to harm humans you should

be able to kill the entire crop immediately if it's out in the wild and it starts reproducing with others then there's no way to curtail it at all and for the rest of human history now this entire species is compromised that That's the main issue. Interesting. And as far as agricultural foods go, as they're dead, they're obviously inert. It's less of a concern in that regard. As long as they don't... You've heard of invasive species before, right? When it comes to plants? Yeah, I've heard the term, but I probably couldn't give it a good explanation.

It's basically plants that dominate other plants and spread out a lot. So the only time GMOs for plants would be an issue is if they became an invasive species. But at the same time, GMO plants are under a lot of surveillance and they don't have the chance to become an invasive species. It's not like we have GMO plants in the wild after all. So because of that, there is low risk when it comes to agricultural GMOs. For the most part, it's the living GMOs that we need to be concerned about. I see. And how does Monsanto fit into this? Because I think a fair amount of the criticism of GMO comes from that company and many of their practices.

And so it's, what do they call it? They call it the horn effect, right? Where because that company has done a lot of things to piss a lot of people off and has also been big into GMO, the assumption is that, oh, GMO must be bad. If I recall it correctly, Monsanto is the organization that did both the greatest good and the greatest evil of GMOs. The greatest good is golden rice. And to put it simply for those who have not heard of golden rice, they made golden rice, like it's just rice, but then they added beta carotene to it, which is the vitamin A precursor.

And some variants just added a little bit more of other nutrients. And then they shipped a ton of it to Africa. And in Africa, they had vitamin A deficiency rampant to the point where like seven-year-old kids would be blind by glaucoma. Kind of bad. But golden rice just prevented a lot of that. And at this moment in time, golden rice has saved millions of lives. It is perhaps the greatest thing ever to happen with GMOs. Take a basic food product, modify it to have more nutrients in it, and ship it out to areas that need those nutrients with no downsides whatsoever.

Golden rice is bloody perfect. Can't stop praising it. also had the idea, the genius idea, to make a kill seed where if a farmer bought seeds from Monsanto, that after about three generations, the seeds would just stop producing food. So you'd grow corn, you'd take the corn from the plant, then you'd get the seeds from the plant, and you can plant the seeds again get more corn from it without paying anything but monsanto realized that this cuts into their profit margins so they made it so you can only do this about two or three times before the seeds just stopped working this is perhaps the most dangerous idea ever introduced to gmos because if that happens to crossbreed with other plants, all plants die.

That's it. They just die. It's a reasonable risk for billions of shekels. Well, I mean, America is just all a desert now. Everything, there's no plants. Yeah, but I have my compound on the edge of the world so that's not my problem invest in cactuses they might live and then of course there's also there was a lot of controversy that that created with farmers who are like no oh the farmers were the ones most pissed off because like farmers get the shit out of the stick all the time yep and they didn't want to have extra shit on the same stick. And they just want to get some seeds and grow some food.

I remember seeing headlines of there were instances where, I mean, one where Monsanto was pressuring, they were trying to force farmers to start using their kill seeds. And then in some cases where there was cross-pollination occurring between non-GMO and then these GMO crop fields. And so it was causing problems for farmers who didn't want to use these modified seeds. And I'm assuming that that's one of the reasons or probably the first point that you made is one of the main reasons why GMOs are not allowed in some countries. I'm right with that, right? Like some countries, they just don't allow Monsanto GMO corn,

for instance, to be grown. And I believe these are Western, like highly industrialized developed countries too, right? Well, I'm not sure about international policies, but while I'm normally a defender against gmos as a general concept if someone specifies one santo gmo corn yeah yeah you can ban that like i'm totally okay with that just ban it why because the kill seeds oh so it's specifically for that crop okay well like it's just the general idea like when you don't want to ban an entire category,

you want to ban the specific instances of the category which are negative. Sure. And the kill seed is a definitive negative on anything that is applied to. So if someone wants to ban kill seeds from happening in their country, go for it. If a worst- case scenario happens, at least you guys got food. Yeah, I'm just looking at on this point in particular, because I want to pull up like which countries are definitely, I guess, according to an article written in The Nation published in 2013. At that time, there were 26 countries that banned GMOs.

And you know, you screwed up when you're in private company getting banned by multi-nations yeah no like multiple nations yeah yeah yeah well especially when you're a multinational company who has enough money to do a lot of lobbying and you still can't make it you're still banned by 26 nations you're pretty bad someone screwed up you're pretty bad. Someone screwed up. You're pretty bad at this game. It's this BT toxin in particular that was used in GMO corn. It's commonly used as a biological pesticide. So it's to make crops more pest resistant. Let's see. There is research that showed that it was detected in the blood of pregnant women and

their babies. That's not a good sign. And then there's the point of genetic contamination, particularly with this GMO, BT toxin, BT corn, as they call it. Examples of cross-pollination in indigenous varieties of corn in Mexico. There's an example here. There's a study published in Nature that was looking into this. Then you also had mentioned this, that so bringing something like this into an environment can have toxic or lethal impact on other living things. They have an example here. There was a study that showed this BT corn was destroying the larva of the monarch butterfly. Obviously, not good.

My British blood is boiling within me. Did someone just destroy a monarch? Just a butterfly, just a butterfly? I will pillage them. Just a butterfly, just a butterfly. I will colonize them. You guys don't have guns anymore, so put your butter knife down. Got a knife. It is not made for butter. It's made for the queen. Yeah, so it's just this point.

It looks like the more controversial that has some research behind it points are the GMO foods that are either designed to produce their own pesticides or to be resistant to herbicides. So then the herbicides can be sprayed in massive quantities without harming the crops. That's smart. That was sarcastic. Well, I mean, again, smart if your only metric is monies. It's financially prudent, as you will say. your only metric is monies. It's financially prudent, as you will say. And then insects develop resistance to the chemicals, which require more chemicals and different chemicals. And then there's the kill seed point of just concentrating power in the hands of a few of these biotech corporations that are able to dictate who gets the special seeds and who doesn't yeah i

played enough uh day is x in my youth to know that's just a bad idea biotech is evil have you not heard about the day's x series of course i just never played any of the games i've listened to the soundtrack of one of the more recent ones many times it's a good soundtrack actually oh yeah definitely but like it's all about how if capitalism has no restraints they just go straight up evil kind of thing controlling everything it's mostly uh pharma and cybernetic stuff but you know they like control so if they control the entire food supply in the entire world they're gonna do it i forget who said this how is this quote the primary goal of adam jensen oh is he a character in the game he's a protagonist he's one of good i never i never asked for this how did i

know that i haven't even played the game i'm impressed i know just a quote from i think it was an economist who said that the primary goal of any corporation is to engulf everything or something like that i hate how that's accurate engulf everything i think that's literally why i'm a liberal it's like yeah capitalism do your things until i hate you and then i'll curtail you but you're you're liberal in in the classical liberal sense we should qualify that oh yeah like i'm i'm a liberal in classical sense leading libertarian the only reason i'm not libertarian straight up is because they're all like let all corporations do whatever they want they can have as much

power as government agencies whatever it's totally fine and then i look at them it's like no no this is not fine this is definitely wrong so I agree. I'm over my libertarian days where I used to think like just. I'm so classical liberal that people confuse me for conservative. And that's a sign of the times. That's a sign of clown world. Yeah, like there are so many people who are like, oh, you're a conservative. It's like, no, I shouldn't be insulted by that. I don't even know what I consider myself.

Like I try to try to explain it. I'm like, yeah, I guess I have like a heavy dose of maybe you'd call it traditionalism. And I think there's a lot of value in tradition and not just trying to overthrow everything because there's a lot of, it took a lot of work to get to where we are and to get a stable society that is relatively unviolent if you look at it in the context of history. And we have a lot of prosperity here. We have a lot going for us. Maybe we shouldn't assume that we understand the system that got us here as well as you might want to think we do. And therefore, maybe we should be a little bit more, should be a little less enthusiastic about just ripping random parts of it out and Frankensteining other random body parts in and just hoping that everything comes out nicely. Have you ever taken the eight values test? No. Okay, I'll send it to you after the podcast. And maybe we can link it in the description.

But it's basically just a general idea of where you stand on the political spectrum i ended up with centrist slightly leaning towards libertarian which is exactly where i thought i'd be i have it pulled up i'm going to take it after this eight values dot github.io yep yep that's exactly the same site. It's just interesting because I never knew how much of a fence sitter I was until that moment. I don't want to divert this conversation too much, but I mean, the running internet joke, right, is libertarians are driven partially, like 50% of them hates roads and 50% of them just likes child porn. And that you have people that one of the reasons why,

and there's actually, I mean, it's a joke, but it's obviously just sensationalism to make you laugh. But the point is that sure, there's the whole, all governments are bad and all taxation is theft, which I don't even necessarily agree with. And all force is bad, which is stupid. But then there's also this idea that everyone should just be able to do whatever they want, so long as it makes them happy. And I'm always suspicious. I had just written about this recently in a book review I did. I'm always suspicious of people who are reluctant to take a strong moral stand against what people should and shouldn't be doing and maybe shouldn't, shouldn't even be allowed to do

and are very, quote unquote, libertarian or, quote to do and are very quote unquote libertarian or quote unquote liberal or quote unquote classically liberal. And, you know, just live and let live. Who are you to judge if they want to sit around and smoke crack all day and live on Netflix and in video games and hentai porn? Who cares? And whenever I hear that, I just think that, type horn. Who cares? And whenever I hear that, I just think that, are you so tolerant because have so much compassion and empathy? Or are you really just trying to make a play at self preservation here? Are you really yourself a degenerate? And you know that in a society with any real standards, you would be ostracized real quick. And so that's why you are so live and let live. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, totally. And I'm pretty sure they're all self-preservative.

I think probably in a lot of cases it is, or it's just kind of naivete. And I remember again, in my early twenties, I was very much the libertarian kind of, you know, so long as people aren't hurting others, you know, who cares? Like, you know, drugs, for example, like, should they be illegal? Should we really care? So long as people aren't hurting others, who cares? Like drugs, for example, should they be illegal? Should we really care? So long as people aren't hurting others, but you see that's the problem when you really start looking at a lot of different behaviors and life choices that people make, they do impose costs on others. Maybe they're not outright just going out and directly harming others, but they are certainly imposing costs. And should other people have to pay the

costs? Should other people have to carry some of the burden for other people's stupid decisions? Maybe a little bit, that's part of being a part in a society. But when you have people who are actually just being a net negative on the whole, why should society accommodate that? We should GMO them. Apparently they just need to eat a bunch of BT corn. No, just find the aggression gene and just like snip it out. Give them like a red gene. You'll find like a bunch of people who look like tomatoes.

And it's like, ha ha, that person is not aggressive. Oh, what a great segue. Bravo, bravo. That's too good. And don't worry, China's already working on that. I promise you. They're going to figure out when your social score drops below a certain number and stays there for long enough, they're just going to forcibly sterilize you and then figure

out some way to give you a genetic kind of scarlet letter that anyone can see. Do you get political with other people on the podcast or is it just me am i the blessed one you're one of the blessed ones you're one of the initiated praise be to baphomet i'll throw you a bone okay when it comes to like you know having three million of your own people in concentration camps and also harvesting your own people's organs and also keeping all this news away from the media and stealing IPs from other nations,

maybe you're doing some creepy scientific shit behind everyone's back. Just hypothetical. I don't know. It's not like a communist regime ever does anything immoral. You sound like a conspiracy theorist. Oh yeah, totally.

Like I'm the anti-LeBron James. I have no sticker deals. You can't take them from me. Yeah, exactly. You're officially banned in China now, by the way, just in case you were wondering. Their AI will find this and you're banned. That likens me to South Park and I'm grateful for it.

And I should also mention to all people who are listening watch this season of south park because it goes in hard on china and it's just hilarious i got the show band there yeah like they actually had an episode that was called band in china but it was a music band, right? But it was a double entendre. And they went so hard on China. But basically, South Park is literally Band in China now. It is straight up Band in China because they went in so hard that the Chinese communist president got his panties in a twist and said, Wah, wah, I don't like this.

And now South Park's not allowed in China. Badge one. That's how you know it's quality. And it's actually a smart PR move. Like, I mean, just think of how much free media that got them. I mean, getting banned is just great marketing. And the episode was literally called Banned in China. And that's what they got them banned.

They knew what they were getting into. Respect. They played it awesome respect all right well circling back around to genetically modifying people and animals and foods and things with people that was your idea man maybe you're a eugenicist at heart aren't you uh only if everyone looks like me you can make that happen like some jengis khan some jengis jengis khan action jengis frank hey it has actually has a ring to it because the franks were pretty pretty savage in their time no i like i can't abandon my first name i should actually mention this to uh the people listening because it's gonna be hilarious because my name is Curtis Frank, right? And it turns out that I had to send an email to somebody, I won't mention who,

and they were getting a bit on my nerves and I was in a position of power over them. So I had to casually mention to them how I was disconcerted with their disposition, disconcerted with their disposition, as we may say. So I basically said that the Kurt in my name stands for honest. The Frank in my name stands for honest. And honestly, do X by Monday, otherwise we're abandoning you. And did it work? I got a response in 10 minutes after not getting a response for two months. See, but according to libertarians, you just violated the non-aggression principle, you fascist. I'm so aggressive. And that is honest for both my names mean it. Kurt doesn't mean honest though. It just means like brief. It actually means kind of rude,

right? It has like a rude connotation. So that. So that was your rude honesty, actually. Perfect. Well, frank means like honest in and of itself. But curt is very much similar to an aggressive bluntness, where it means honest, but kind of aggressively and don't say anything. I'm going to shut you up right now. Type of honest. anything i'm going to shut you up right now type of honest i think you enjoyed that email maybe a little bit too much particularly that point you're like you're like oh this is too perfect this has to work this is like a hack my entire life i've waited for that email i am mr honest honest man no rude honest man honestly rude honest man and i shall be honest Mr. Honest Honest Man. No, Rude Honest Man. Honestly, Rude Honest Man. And I shall be honest yet a bit rude. Some inception action there. Is it even possible to segue this back into GMOs anymore or no?

Yeah, now we're just going to say that, I mean, those are the main points that I had on GMO. And I think that hopefully this episode's been at least partially informative to people listening. I'll throw in some random commentary in the end and then turn it back over to you, Curtis. But if based on my limited reading, there does seem to be some valid concerns with some of these foods, like some of the stuff that I mentioned with BT corn, that's what I had heard about previously, was that it was pest resistant and herbicide resistant foods. Those actually may be a problem. We may not want people eating a bunch of those foods. And then there were the other issues of contamination and consolidation of

seeds and just power over who can grow what, how these foods also might impact just the ecosystems that they're grown in, the other animals that eat them and what other things might get in the soil that might cause issues. But that from what I've read, and what I was looking into before we got on the podcast seems to be again, limited to there are certain specific examples of that, that does not apply to any and all genetic modification that is done to foods. And yeah, that's pretty much the main reason why I really was excited for this podcast, because I wanted to defend the notion of GMOs. Because as long as the notion of GMOs is active, then we can have wonderful foods like golden rice. But we need to

have a large amount of criticism. and just because something is GMO does not mean it's good. It could be very bad, but we need to specify each specific GMO targeted specifically. And hopefully ethically, where certain people definitely were thinking like, if we take this food here and we jack up this bacteria that is a natural pesticide, maybe that's not going to be good if people are eating a bunch of it. Whatever. Turn it loose. See what happens. Well, it all depends. I mean, resveratrol and caffeine are both natural pesticides.

So increasing their amounts could be kind of cool. But you could increase more of the pesticides that is not beneficial to human biology. Again, it's all like, the reason I want to mention golden rice so much is because when I mentioned golden rice, that is a very specific GMO. And it's one that everyone can look into and say, this did good. This GMO is great. And that's what I kind of want GMOs to be, where we look at every specific GMO and say whether it's good, bad, moderate, or indeterminate. One of those things. I just don't like the idea of judging all GMOs under the banner of GMOs. Some, like golden rice, are very good.

Some, like the Flavor Saver tomato, the Awkward Adventure salmon we mentioned earlier, and then just the whole increasing the redness of tomatoes, they're just inert for the most part. And then I'm sure there are some that are negative, but I couldn't really find them right now because they've been taken off the market. Can't find any negative GMOs on the market that we know about.

They could be there, but maybe the science hasn't been done yet. Well, I mean, the BT corn example that I gave is one that we know about. I mean, maybe it's not conclusively, okay, this is a huge problem, but there's at least reason for concern, it seems like. Yeah, it seems like it, but I wasn't able to come to conclusions myself. Yeah, and of course not. Again, not me. That's why I also wanted to pick your brain on the topic because I wasn't able to find anything that, even for myself, where I'm personally not concerned about eating GMO foods. Now, a lot of the foods I eat tend to be organic just because my wife likes to buy

organic food. And I do actually think some organic food tastes better than conventional. And I do like that some of it has more nutrition than conventional, but I'm not concerned so much about the genetic modification side of that. If they don't have what I might normally get in an organic, I get conventional and I'm not worried about it yeah same on my end it's just ultimately like if the organic is the regular or similar enough prices i'll go for whatever is cheaper uh sometimes like i'd say like maybe 60 of the time the organic looks better than the regular it's like technically a difference but not too much of a difference so i just buy whatever looks good to be honest and then i just keep my eyes out on if there's anything i need to completely avoid which so far i have not seen because usually they're

taken off the market as soon as they are seen to have a huge major health risk to the public. In this case, though, obviously it's a bit more complex because the amount of money that's behind it. Exactly. Science is great, but you can find corruption anywhere. And there are plenty of examples. I'm Canadian. You don't need to get into that. We know corruption.

I don't even know what that means. But I guess your government is like every other government is what you're saying i mean justin trudeau after all oh our blackface president bought off the media he doesn't even know how many times that he wore blackface oh no he knows exactly how many times he just said that so he got out of it he always has a mask on one mask or another yeah and he literally like if we're gonna in canada we literally had a media bailout like you know how in america they bail out the banks and how most people didn't know what this meant but thought if the banks went away that would be bad in canada we had a bailout of the

media of which a hundred percent of canadians thought, we don't care if the media goes away. They can just go away if all we want. Especially state-funded media. Please go. Yeah, pretty much. But their bailout went through anyways. And now every single media organization in Canada that is left-leaning is funded by trudeau himself i mean people aren't going to brainwash themselves curtis yeah like so we kind of have defunded media

in canada now totally unbiased mind you they say so i mean people don't lie we know that no liars at all it's like i've never been in blackface. Whoops. they haven't used steroids or just never mentioned that they haven't used steroids. And that that was then assumed to be conclusive. Like, well, either they said they didn't use steroids or they never mentioned it. And so they must not have used steroids. I'm like, no, or they're lying or they just didn't want to tell you. Why would a D1 football player lie about his steroid use? I don't know like fuck man i don't know what kind of world you live in a different world my friend and what part of me wishes i lived there too why would somebody lie to earn six digits a year i don't understand and have a shot at seven or even eight why would a bodybuilder lie and say that he's natural to compete again in a natural federation yeah like

the entire friggin difference between natural bodybuilding and regular bodybuilding it ain't regular we all know that no it just means more drugs that's all natural means a lot of drugs and natural means as many drugs as you can get away with. You can get away with a lot. And it's actually, it's not even that. It's also your physique. You can only get so big before it's like, all right, you need to go to the regular bodybuilding crowd. It's too many drugs for us here.

Come on. We're supposed to at least look semi-normal. And then when you get to regular bodybuilding, you just kind of look like an inebriated turtle at that point. Well, a true natural bodybuilder, you can spot a true natural because they just don't to get a regular bodybuilding just kind of look like an inebriated turtle at that point well a true natural bodybuilder you can spot a true natural because they just don't look very good they get on stage and you're like that guy looks small and kind of flat and it's like somebody sewed 50 balloons together let's stop now thanks Curtis. It's been great as always. And we'll be back. We'll be back with some other discussion that hopefully is equally stimulating as this one has been.

And slightly more controversial. Oh, we could do that. That'd be easy. here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout, and you will save 10% on your entire order. And it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not,

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