I haven’t done a general, life-type post in a while… mostly because my life right now consists mainly of running, working, and sleeping. Here are things I’ve been up to in the little smidges of time that I’m not doing one of those things. I’m linking up with Amanda for Thinking Out Loud to catch you up on the little bits of life lately…

1. Feeling old. My big brother is engaged. Two of my best friends are pregnant (on purpose). I told a student he couldn’t use 9/11 for the “current events” portion of a project because it was too long ago for him to remember.  And an assignment for kids in the college-level intro-to-research class I teach was to research what happened on the day they were born. Their findings included such gems as the OJ Simpson trial,  The Spice Girls releasing an album, and people wearing baggy pants and listening to portable CD players. Or, you know, my early adolescence.
   
   And Titanic came out, and we all mooned over Leo…
2. New diet. I finally decided to stop whining about feeling crummy all the time and do something about it, so I went to a dietitian last Friday. She put me on a low-FODMAP diet. If you’re not familiar with the acronym, it stands for a bunch of different types of naturally-occurring sugars that some people can’t tolerate. We’re eliminating those sugars from my diet to see if that helps. Among things I can’t eat right now: beans, wheat, dried fruit, apples, broccoli, onions, garlic, legumes, almonds, pears, stone fruit, soy, beets, cabbage, mushrooms…. She looked at my food log and said, “So… basically everything you ate yesterday.” But the strict elimination phase only lasts a few weeks, and then we’ll start reintroducing different things to see what I can tolerate. And if it helps, I don’t care if I can’t eat any of those things again. I just want to feel better.
3. Making vacation plans. J and I have booked a week-long Caribbean cruise for this summer! Sure, it’s still several months away, but I’m still excited.
   
   Toot Toot! That’ll be us soon! (image source)
4. And not making running plans. I’m halfway through this training cycle, and honestly, I’m already a little burned out. I want to try to kill it in Lincoln, and then spend the summer running whatever I want, doing whatever other workouts I want, and getting outside as much as possible — without a training plan.
5. But kind of toying with the idea of an ultra. Yes, this contradicts what I just said. But trails are fun (and I like fun) and people like Logan and Heidi tempt me every time I read their blogs. AND I just found out that Chase the Moon (which we did last year) and the Wild West Relay (which I’ve heard is a kick) are BOTH the weekend that I turn 30. Those are both relays, too, so  I wouldn’t actually have to run an ultra…

That’s about it in my world right now. What’s new in yours?

As I scrolled through Facebook the other day, I saw a link to an article headlined “Over 80 percent of Americans support mandatory labels on foods containing DNA.” I chuckled and clicked the link, thinking I’d be heading to The Onion. Imagine my surprise when The Washington Post loaded in my browser instead. The article’s lead made my stomach sink: “A recent survey by the Oklahoma State University Department of Agricultural Economics finds that over 80 percent of Americans support ‘mandatory labels on foods containing DNA,’ about the same number as support mandatory labeling of GMO foods ‘produced with genetic engineering.'”

As I read on, I thought that surely this study was flawed — they must have surveyed a non-representative sample, or the question must have been written poorly. I clicked over the survey’s results (linked above), where I learned that the survey was given to a pool of 1000 people. The pool was designed to reflect the demographics of the U.S. The method was sound, so I thought the problem must have been the wording of the question. Wrong again. “Do you support or oppose mandatory labels on foods containing DNA?” is a pretty straightforward question.

DNA: It’s already inside you! (image source)

The study wasn’t flawed. The results weren’t shady. Apparently, 80 percent of Americans simply do not know what DNA is. Almost the same percentage of people said they also support mandatory labeling of GMOs. The study also asked respondents if they had “read any books about food and agriculture in the past year.” Eighty-one percent of people said “no.” Three percent said, “I don’t know.” And yet, these same people are anti-GMO and anti-DNA. People: acronyms do not automatically make a food dangerous. Please, please educate yourself before you decide that something is evil.

I’m a huge advocate for knowing what is in your food, for not consuming the weird, potentially dangerous substances that frequently make their way into processed foods. But you must actually know what it is that you’re consuming. You can’t assume that some substance on the ingredient list is healthy for you just because the manufacturers claim it is, and you also can’t assume that something is dangerous just because you’ve never heard of it (and maybe you didn’t pay attention in seventh-grade science class). You cannot assume that because it has an acronym or a scientific-sounding name, or because the Food Babe says it’s icky, that something should be banned.

(Image source)

This type of ignorance is harming American agriculture, an industry taken for granted by far too many Americans. You may not want to admit it, but the notion of the small, local, organic farm, with the farmer who raises a little bit of everything and sells his wares at a cute little booth at the farmer’s market, is just not realistic to feed the entire country. The population of the world is continuously growing, and the population of farmers is slowly but steadily decreasing (see 2014’s Census of Agriculture). What worked in 1820 is not going to work forever.

If we want to keep eating (all of us, not just those of us who can afford the cute farmer’s market booths), we must be open to innovation. Should we view innovation with a healthy dose of skepticism? Of course. But it must be educated skepticism. As consumers, we must be informed, jumping neither to acceptance nor rejection without first doing our research. Our health and the health of our country depend on it.