Apparently, anti-GMO folks have decided to check out my blog because they read my post in Mana Magazine on, “Honor and Respect Our Farmers the Local Way.”   Pat came to my blog via the printed page and landed on this post.  Here’s what she wrote:

Note that Pat also works for Molokai Soaps, which is an interesting site to visit.  She apparently makes soaps that contain a chemical in it, known as 1,3,7 trimethyl xanthine.  While she accuses papaya farmers of using “toxic pesticides,” little does she realize that this chemical is actually more toxic than some of the things papaya farmers use.  I also wonder about that chemical called sodium hydroxide that’s used to make soaps and it’s toxicity.

As with many anti-GMO activists, the topic of toxicity is always on their minds yet most of them fail understand it.  Here’s a great blog post that talks about it in simple terms.  Many of these activists collected their information from naturalistic, green, holy nature, yoga brahman, and TV doctor websites that tell them GMOs are poisonous and so on.  (Most don’t even know how Google works and why those kind of sites keep popping up either.  The message is repeated over and over that they figure it’s the truth and just don’t research what they read.)

Let’s compare these chemicals below based on oral ingestion in rats:

• Sodium hydroxide is 100 mg/kg
• 1,3,7 trimethyl xanthine is 192 mg/kg
• glyphosate aka RoundUp is 5600 mg/kg

The lower the number means that it takes less of the substance to kill half a population of rats, which means the two things. For one, the chemicals she uses in her soaps are WAY more toxic than glyphosate and two, she exposes herself it to daily.  And if you’re wondering what two substances Pat puts in her soaps, it’s caffeine and lye.  Why is she not afraid of that?

My message to Pat, and others who keep harping on toxic pesticides and cancer, is that the more you know, the less you have to fear.  If you’re scared, find out why you are afraid to begin with.

Well, at least she acknowledges that the body can’t tell the difference with papayas and that I sound educated.  I’ll take that as a compliment.

**For the record too, I did indeed write that post and all of my posts unless noted.  I can’t find it anywhere on there that  I wrote an “add” for Monsanto however. **