does lean cuisine have gmo

male speaker: professor gibney,he's an expert on human nutrition. he served on several eu andunited nations health committees. he's been a professor at trinitycollege and at ucd. that's interesting politics,both sides of the fence. he's currently the directorof the ucd institute of food and health. and actually, one of his hugeaccomplishments, probably his

biggest one, is his daughter,sinead, who's here in dublin. and so we kind of declared thewhole [inaudible] familial, and sinead has actually driventhe whole of our social aging policy, which has been actuallya tremendous success. also then, just to declare myinterest in the whole area of the food services business, iactually-- if you all remember from sandwich gate acouple years ago-- i serve on the boardof green corps. so i'm obviously deeplyinterested in this area, and

have actually spent most of myevenings in the last week on board meetings relatedto this. mike's book is called "somethingto chew on." if you had a chance to read it, you'llknow he has some pretty controversial views. if you haven't, i think whatyou'll do is you'll hear, during the course ofconversation, those it might encourage you to go outand actually get the book. we probably have a coupleof copies here, as well.

so first of all, mike, let'ssee if you can convince us. mike gibney, welcometo google. [applause] professor mike gibney: good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. it's a pleasure to behere as part of the google author scheme. i'm here to talk about a booki've written, and i'm also going to mention a blog thati operate, gibneyonfood.

i used to upload once a week,but i found it too much. so the most recent one iuploaded was "dietary supplements-- useless or useful?" thatwas this week. so i have about 35,000hits and about 200-- it's rising up to about100 a day, 150 a day. and i wrote both of thesebecause i'm sick and tired of rubbish i read in the media,sick and tired of people who are being confused by quasiexperts in the media, in the

print media and in theelectronic media. and very often, when i givetalks to the general public, i try to leave as much time aspossible for questions, the reason being that people rarelyget a chance to talk to someone who is, technicallyspeaking, expert, and neutral, and willing to sayit as it is. quite often, the people whowrite books are writing from a very narrow, sensationalist,and poor science-based point of view.

so that's my take. so what i'm going to try anddo today is to say the book covers a wide variety of things,and i can't possibly cover them all. what i've tried to do is makea list of seven myths. and i'll go through these,and if time allows, i'll finish them all. and if it doesn't, i'llstop wherever i feel. but i'll try to go forabout a half an hour.

the first one i want to look atis whether or not obesity is a uniquely modern event. on the right-hand side of thisscreen, there's a book there called "the end of overeating."it's by david kessler, who is former head ofthe fda in the united states. he's a pediatrician, orwas a pediatrician. he wrote this in his book. for thousands of years,human weight stayed remarkably constant.

throughout adulthood webasically consume no more than the food we needed to burn. people who are overweight stoodapart from the general population. please remember that, thatthey stood apart from the general population. millions of calories passedthrough their bodies, yet with rare exceptions, our weightneither rose nor fell. rare exceptions.

and everything changedin the 1980s. now, if kessler is correct,then the solution to the problem of obesity willbe around the 1980s. something happened in the 1960sand '70s, or perhaps into the '80s and maybe '90s,but he's got a 40, 50, or even a 60 year period to lookfor the solution. but if he's wrong, as i'm goingto show you, then he's going to make a messof things. i'll go back to hippocrates.

he wrote, in relation to thescythian race, about their children, that the malechildren, until they were old enough to ride, most of the timewere sitting in wagons, and they were talking verylittle since they were often changing their placeof residence. and the girls get amazinglyflabby and podgy. but that's not a rare event. then one of the greatest writersof roman time, lucius columella, he wrote that, "theconsequence is that ill health

attends so slothful a manner ofliving; for the bodies of our young men are so flabby andenervated that death seems likely to make nochange to them." then you go to the cityof florence, the city-state of florence. and this gentleman, cornaro,wrote this book, still available on amazon,by the way. he wrote it at the age of 94. and it's pretty importantto read what he says.

"gluttony kills every year asgreat a number as would perish during the time of the mostdreadful pestilence or by the sword or the fire of manywars." rare event? i don't think so. and then finally, i'll take youthrough to the 18th and 19th century to sir william waddin london, who pointed out that the increase of wealthand refinement of modern times, have tended tobanish plague and pestilence. they have probably introducedthe increased frequency of

corpulence. for every one fat person inspain or france, there are 100 in england. though that's stillthe case, i think. apologies to my englishcolleagues. now, this is a modernanalysis. it's interesting to look back inhistory, but we really need to do some science here. this is a study which haslooked at birth cohorts.

now, birth cohorts are veryimportant because you take a group of people born in acertain period, and you follow them throughout their lives. and then you take another groupborn 20 years later. you follow them throughtheir lives. so you take a group in 1880,1900, 1920, '40, '60, and follow them onwards. when you put it all together,you get a picture of the rate at which obesity has grown.

in this particular study, you'llsee that from 1880 onwards to 1980, there hasbeen a linear rise in the level of obesity. it isn't something that hashappened at a flat rate, and then suddenly appearedin 1980. and if you look at the rate ofchange, you'll see that it comes in waves. it starts, it slows,it rises again. i call this the tsunamiof large.

now, if you take a differentapproach to this-- this is started from the us military-- and they've lookedat four periods. i've taken the 45-year-oldmilitary personnel there. they showed an increase of 3.4units of body mass index. the increase was 7% for thefirst 30 years, 17% then for the next half century. the next one shouldread 17 years. half of it took place in that17 years after the war.

and then again, it slowed downin the 1960s to 1990s to only a quarter of it. so again, you have thisundulation and growth. it's best seen in some studiesin denmark where they took children in the 1930s. they had seven, eight, nine,10, 11-year-olds, and they followed them on a six-monthlybasis. as you can see, there's a slowgradual rise, and then in the 1940s, there's a spurt, and thenit drops off again, and

then there's anotherhuge spurt. and then if you take the danishmilitary recruits, just start at the end of the secondworld war, again you see the same pattern-- a slow rise, a suddenrise, a dip, and then a very fast rise. so basically speaking, theauthors of the paper i referred to-- and many of themi could have shown you, but this was one i particularlylike--

they make two conclusions. "insofar as bmi values have beenincreasing gradually over a century, researchersattempting to understand the causes of the pandemic need toreflect or focus on the 1980s and thereafter to a much longerrun process of social, technological, economic, andcultural change." and then they go on to say that "thefinding also implies that the policies to attenuate or reversethe trend would have to reach deep into the socialfabric and take into

consideration that suchsocio-economic forces generally change atglacial pace." so kessler has it wrong inthinking that it all happened in the 1980s. when he looks around for asolution, and he will identify sugar sweetened beverages as oneof the causes, he'll have gotten it wrong. the problem is with obesity isthat i see there are two types of people take a scientificapproach to obesity-- the

solutionists and the analysts. i'm an analyst. i like to find out why. the solutionists have an ideaof what to do, and they justify doing it, suchas taxing sugar. now, this is the secondmyth, and it's about the stigma of obesity. i'll just go back and say thati'm going to introduce you to a number of impressions thatmost of you people in this

room will have aboutobese people. most of you will have these. if you're really truthfulto yourself, you'll admit yes, you have. first of all, you'll believethey're lazy. then you'll believe thatthey're dishonest, that they're untidy, untrustworthy,unreliable, can't manage their time, have poor self-control,possibly low iq, and low self-esteem.

now, that view is widely heldby professionals who look after obese people. it's held by obese people. and sadly, it's heldby obese children. the only thing that's true onthat is the very last one, self-esteem doesn't happenbecause you are born with bad it happens because you gotoverweight or a little bit fat, and you experienceall these prejudices. and your self esteem suffersbecause of them.

so if there's one thing i'd hopethat would happen after this talk, the next time you seesomeone that's overweight, just be a little bitsympathetic. just be a little bitsympathetic. so don't always imagine-- i'm going to show you a studythat was repeated twice-- and this was donewith children-- that shows you the scaleof the problem. boys were shown drawings ofboys, and girls were shown

drawings of girls. and there were six types. the first one was healthy,nothing wrong with them at all. the next one was adisfigured face. the next one was on crutcheswith a brace on one leg. then there was one witha wheelchair-- one with no left hand. sorry--

one in a wheelchair coveredby a blanket, and one that was obese. the children were asked to rankthem, who they'd like to be their friend most. five was the one you didn'twant to be friendly with. one was you wanted to befriends with them. the results are staggering. nobody wanted to be friendswith the obese children. they'd rather be friends withpeople with all sorts of

physical impairments, butnot an obese child. this is ingrained in children. it comes from their parents,and it's part of the way society thinks. so again, i say to you, theone thing i want you to do when you leave here is be alittle bit considerate. here are some peoplethat are not lazy. they're not all of the thingsyou think about them, and they're all fat and famous.

some of them are veryrich and famous. the third myth is that obesityis uniquely caused by the environment, and genes havenothing to do with it. i was explaining last night wheni was down in cork that i gave a talk, a lecture once. i gave the opening talk to theworld congress of public health nutrition. they asked me to pick fourtopics, any topic i liked, hot topics.

and i picked four,one of which was genetics and obesity. when i was finished talking,there was a queue at the microphone by eminent publichealth nutritionists, each vying to condemn me. how could i possibly say this? genes have not changedfor centuries. the environment has. therefore, it has to be theenvironment, stupid.

it can't be the genes. but i'll show youthat's not true. these are two maasai tribesmenfrom kenya. they look after cattle,and they're nomadic. they walk long distances,so they've huge physical activity. they eat berriesalong the way. they drink the milk. occasionally, they'll bleed thecattle, and mix it with

the milk, and drink that. they live in a non-obesogenicenvironment. it's impossible to get fatas a maasai warrior. impossible. you spend so much energy walkingaround after your cattle and eatingso sparsely that obesity just ain't possible. this is a food emporium in someshopping mall or other. you'd be familiar with them inairports and what have you.

and this is an obesogenicenvironment. this is cheap food. this is tasty food. this is abundant food. it's immediate food. it's every cuisinefood you like. now, if i was to take 1,000kenyan tribesman and bring them into this obesogenic environment, what would happen?

well, i would predict somewould get fat very fast. i would predict some wouldget fat, but very slowly. some would get overweight veryfast, and some would get overweight very slowly. some wouldn't gainweight at all. that is the difference. the difference in those peopleis due to genes. put them in the same obesogenicenvironment. how they respond to thatenvironment is genetically

determined. so we live in an obesogenicenvironment. those of us that gain weightare gaining weight because they have a geneticpredisposition to do so in an obesogenic environment. take away the environment,the genes don't matter. put the environment there, thegenes tell you who's going to get top of the league, middleof the league, or bottom of the league.

so genes matter. i'll show you somedata on this. this is an old study carried outin the 1970s and forgotten because it didn't suit publichealth nutrition. it involved overfeeding twins,identical twins. and it also involvedunderfeeding identical twins, all carried out in clinicalconditions. in other words, in a ward, wherethey were supervised. so if i take someexamples here--

let's take the overfeedingone-- and we have a greencircle here. that dot represents two twins,two identical twins. if you go down the line to thechange in body weight for twin b, it's around about 11 kilos. and if you go across to theweight gain on twin a, it's about 13 kilos. so they've gained more orless the same weight. whereas if you go downto the red one, they

resisted weight gain. those two twins resisted weightgain more or less to within a kilo of one another. and then if you go on to theperiod where 1,000 calories were taken away from them everyday, they lost weight. but look at the ones in green. they lost very little. they resisted. both twins resisted.

in red, both twins showedhuge weight loss. so again, you can see thegenetic component is determining who respondsto the environment, the obesogenic or the non-obesogenicenvironment. now, the criticism of all ofthat was it was carried out in the 1970s when we didn'treally have the highly obesogenic environmentwe have today. this lady, jane wardle, at theuniversity of london has done some incredibly good work withtwins, identical and

non-identical. and the thing about identicaland non-identical twins is they have a mathematical modelwhich allows you to work out what part of the traitis heritable. in the case of obesity, bmi, orbody mass index, or waist circumference, three quarters,roughly speaking, is accountable for it bygenetic variation. that was exactly what they foundin the 1970s, as well. about, you could say, of theremainder, a little bit more

than half was in the non-shared environment of the children. so one child went off to playhockey, another going to go swimming, another going todrama, another going to do something else. and the shared environmentwas the whole. now, just to take this a littlebit further, this is a longitudinal studyof 428 twins. they were from 100 obesefamilies and 100 non-obese.

both parents had tobe obese, or both parents had to be slim. they were followed from four to11, which is a seven year follow up, and they had an81% retention, which is very, very good. this is obesity at agefour and age 11. the gray bar represents thechildren of slim parents. there was no change in therate of obesity in those children between theage of four and 11.

the black bar representschildren both whose parents were obese. you can see that therewas a dramatic rise. even by age four, there was farmore obesity in those that had obese parents, and by age11, it was through the roof. of course, you might argue thatthat's due to the home environment. but what i've shown you is thatwhen you study twins, identical and non-identicaltwins, and you're able to take

away the effect of the homeenvironment, the environment comes out at less than 25%, thegenes accounting for 75%. i just want to bring in socialclass, because this is also another myth, so to speak. on the bottom, you see thatwe've broken this up now into two groups. we still have the children whowere born of lean parents, and over the seven year period, theyshowed no weight gain. now, we've divided them into twocolors, blue and sort of

red, and they're differentsocial classes. and social class makesabsolutely and utterly no difference if you happento have two parents that are slim. but if you go to the top ofthis where we have the children whose parents wereoverweight, then you see that social class becomesimportant. so what you have here is thesame environment, but if you have the genes to keep you slim,you'll be slim in that

if you have the genes that makeyou fat, you'll get fat in that environment. and that is the reality of it. once again, i say take away theenvironment and you take away the problem. there's nothing todo with genes. but if anyone thinks they canturn this city into a non-obesogenic environment in adecade, you're a better man than i, gunga din.

to add to what i've been saying,this is a recently published study of a hugenumber, 12,000 twin pairs from birth to 19 years of age. basically speaking, the blackline represents the inherited component of obesity. and the bottom line representsthe environmental side. at birth, the geneticside is quite small. but by six months,it's dominant. it drops at four orfive years of age.

i don't know why that is. maybe it's going to school. it drops again at seven. i don't know why. but right through adolescence,it's the dominant determinant of weight in an obeseenvironment. once again, we have anobese environment. we have winners that win the topof the league, the bottom of the league, and themiddle of the league.

and that's determinedby genetics. your position on the leaguetable is determined by genetics in an obesogenicenvironment. many people think that ifyou're talking about the genetic control of obesity,you're talking about metabolic parameters. you're talking abouthow muscle, liver, adipose tissue behave. but in fact, in man, we havesuch a complicated system of

selecting food, unlike rats,because we've got a big cortex, so we can like thingsand dislike things. it's quite likely that thegenetic variation applies to behavior as much as itdoes to metabolism. jane wardle did this study ofnearly 4,000 or 5,000 twin pairs, and she was looking atneophobia, whether children like new foods or don'tlike new foods. what she found was that 78% ofthe variability was genetic. this is beginning to openup an explanation of--

why is genetics important? well, it's only important if itinfluences something that influences obesity. she's shown now that neophobiais strongly inherited, and not necessarily taught. so we're making progressin that direction. ok. moving away from obesity tothings to do with the food chain, everything that'ssynthetic is considered by

people your age, roughlyspeaking, as being bad for us. and everything that's naturalis considered very good for us. so let's take a look at that. it was this chap by the nameof-- he was swiss-- philippus theophrastus aureolusbombastus von hohenheim and even if i hadhis name, i'd change it. but he changed it to paracelsus,which is equal to or greater than celsus, who wasa roman physician at the

turn of the millennium, andquite a famous person. so paracelsus gave usthis one statement. "all subjects are poisons andnothing is without poison, only the dose permitssomething not to be poisonous." swiss alpineair injected into your veins will kill you. pure kerry water taken wronglywill kill you. everything is toxic. only the dose and thecircumstances make the

difference. so the dose alone makesthe poison. if you look at the human foodchain, we have food divided nutrients and non-nutrients. nutrients are either addedor they're natural. if they're added, they can beintentionally added, or they can be contaminants. the naturals are what wecall phytochemicals. and i want to talk aboutthe phytochemicals now.

basically speaking, plantshave a lot of colors and things like that, and smells,and tastes, for their benefit, not for ours. so the fact that the coffee beanis nice for us, it has nothing to do withthe coffee bean. the coffee bean isdesigned for the coffee bean's purposes. they're not thatphilanthropic. this is a bird now, pollinatinga flower,

attracted to it by a scent. the bees are humming aroundthe other one. there's nothing on the thirdflower because it's quite toxic, and the birds andbees don't go near it. it does its owncross-fertilization. and then you have, onthe bottom left, two little shoots appearing. did you ever wonder how a seedknows when it's springtime? how does it know thatit's springtime?

it detects temperature. so there are compounds in theseed designed for the seed to detect temperature. they detect water also. and when there's enough waterand the temperature is right, they can germinate. but how do they knowwhich way to go? could they make a mistakeand go down the way? they could easily.

so they have oxygen centerswhich tell them where the greatest gradientof oxygen is. so they have all these moleculesin them, helping them to solve problems,including the seedling. i put the rabbit therebecause plants can't run away from you. plants have to stay there. so simple things-- they stingyou or they have thorns. but in addition to that, theyhave many, many nasty

chemicals in them, which thebirds, and the bees, and the sheep, and the dogs have learnednot to touch because they're poisonous. so the final reason why plantshave these beautiful colors and so forth is that we can goto the toilet and get rid of metabolites we don't want. they can't. they have to accumulate them. they just save them up.

and so we eat them, and that'swhat makes plants so lovely. the color, the taste, the smell,the texture, the aroma, all come from these compoundsthat the plant has to make its life easy. the fact that we find it tastyor good to look at is nothing to do with us. the plant is doing itfor its own benefit. now, if you look at thesephytochemicals, these are three illegal and poisonousactivities from

phytochemicals, and these arethree which are legal, but they're bioactive. so that tobacco is bioactive,coffee is bioactive. this is a [inaudible] painting of an onion peeler, whocries instantly when cut into the onions. so plants have compounds inthem that do things to us. the best example i can giveyou is this bulgarian dissident, georgi markov.

are there any bulgarians here? remember this? no? he was a dissident, you see? he was living in london,and he was murdered with an umbrella. the umbrella had a secret tipon it from the bulgarian secret service, and it containeda compound called ricin, which is derivedfrom castor beans.

that's how they managedto kill him. the photograph you see on thetop right-hand side is a group of british police raiding anal qaeda factory where they were extracting ricinfrom castor beans. that led to all sorts of jokesabout ricin beans. now the point is that, ofcourse, castor beans, like all beans, soaked for 20 minutes,it all goes away. you don't have a problem. but the point is if i wanted toput ricin into burgers, let

alone horse meat into burgers,i wouldn't be allowed because ricin is quite dangerous. but mother nature doesn't haveto answer to anybody. mother nature doesn'thave to do it. the last one i'll show youhere is quite important. this is the university ofcalifornia at berkeley. they have 590 chemicals, ofwhich 139 are natural and 451 are synthetic. they use a thing called arat carcinogen model.

now, in this model, you get asmuch of the chemical into the rat as you can. you let the rat live untilit dies of old age. and then you try to see, arethere any cancers around? now, it's not very pleasantand it's not very nice. but it saves lives becausewe don't have to be experimented on. but basically speaking, whatthey find here, of the natural compounds, 50% do produce somesort of cancer at some stage

or other in these rats. and 61% of synthetic do. or 60% of synthetic do. no difference between them. so there's no inherent reasonwhy something that's synthetic is bad, particularly giventhat we regulate it. and there's no inherentreason why something that's natural is good. because if you really like it,i can give you a bowl of

hemlock after this dinner, orinject you with some botulism, both of which are perfectlynatural, and you won't see the afternoon out. don't worry. so natural is not necessarilythe best. now, i come to organicfarming. the argument is that organicagriculture produces safer, more nutritious, and more environmentally friendly foods.

basically speaking, they saythey don't use pesticides. you say, wait a minute. wait a minute. you cannot grow crops, even inyour back garden, without using something to controlweeds and pests. everyone who grows cabbageor lettuce knows that. the slugs will have it ifyou don't watch it. so they use it. they say, oh, yes, butours are natural, and

organic, and so forth. so there's a growing interest inexamining pesticides from a holistic, environmental pointof view, looking at a wide variety of things. at the bottom part of thisslide, the things that are important are dermal toxicity,toxicity to bees, fish, and birds, run-off into the soiland leaching potential, the residue that remains in thesoil, and the half-life of the surface of the plant.

basically speaking, whatyou have here are two conventionals that scoreover 30, and then you've got four novels. two of them are synthetic,and they range between eight and 34. and two are organic, and theyrange between 17 and 30. so if you are going to takesomething that's going to kill a slug or kill a plant, rememberit's a biocide, not sort of water.

it's designed to kill. so don't expect it to be waydown the grade here. it's going to have effects onbirds and bees because that's what it's supposed to do. now, we look at theenvironmental impact, and it's argued that organic agricultureis much more friendly to the environment. in fact, when the britishgovernment commissioned this study, the conclusionwas as follows.

"there is no clear-cut answerto the question. which trolley has a lowerenvironmental impact, the organic one or the conventionalone?" let me just explain that. in order to grow plants,you need nitrogen. and a conventional farmerwill use chemical nitrogen from a plant. in this case, there'stwo options. one is to grow a cover crop.

a cover crop is of a speciesof plant that actually extracts nitrogenfrom the air. clover does it, fixes nitrogenfrom the atmosphere. then when it's fully grown, youplow it into the field. but what that means is 50% ofyour land is not used when you're doing this. that's inefficient. that's not contributingto the environment. you then have to plow it in.

plowing is one of the mostenvironmentally disastrous things on the farm. on the other hand, you can say,ah, but we won't do that. we'll just use manure. where do you get the manure? from the dairy farmer. thank you. you got to buy some of hiscarbon footprint now because you're taking his manure.

so when you look at thecomplexity of organic farming, it's not so straightforwardat all. finally, when it comes down tonutrition, there's been many, many reviews. this is from the universityof london. and basically their conclusionis "that there is no evidence to support the selectionof organically produced foodstuffs to increase theintake of specific nutrients or nutritionally relevantsubstances."

basically speaking, acarrot is a carrot. it has the dna to makeit a carrot. it can't decide halfway through,oh, i think i'll have a little bit more protein,or i think i'll do something else. it's hard work to be a carrot,and it can do nothing else. so it doesn't matter whatyou put in the soil. you can stop it growing by notputting enough in, but if you put organic in or inorganic in,it will absorb the ions,

and it will never knowthe difference. i haven't got time to go intothe cooking side of things, so i'm going to leavethat one out. i don't think i'll have timeto go into genetically modified foods in detailhere, but this is a very emotive subject. basically speaking, there iswhat i call the "agromantic" side of plant breeding whereit's all very lovely, and going out, and mixing with thebirds and bees, and so forth.

but this is worth readingbecause this guy won the nobel prize for this. he was working withdrosophila moths. basically speaking,he used x-ray radiation to zap the flies. what it does is rattle theirgenome to bits, and then it'll all fall back together again,causing mutations. he was able to speed up breedingof these flies by tens of years because he couldplay around with the genome in

a way that you couldn't do it. so that was extendedto plants then. although this is in japan, it'sno longer used, because there are much smallerversions of it now. but basically speaking, whathappens is the plant is hit with atomic radiation. and it goes somethinglike this. the radiation hits thegenome of the plant. there's the healthy plants ina circle around the genome.

then the genome was wrecked. the vast majority ofplants are useless. but the one in the circle, theone in the circle has some trait that's good. and they back breed that withthe original plant and hope to achieve something. and this is promoted bythe united nations. to speed through this,examples-- all the rice you eat in theunited states is grown by

atomic radiation. all the grapefruits you eat inthe united states is grown by the radiation. all the whiskey you drink inscotland and ireland comes from barley that was mutated. the figure is about 200,000varieties have been released by the united nations usingthis technology. if you compare thatto gm technology, it is cut and paste.

so here you have, in the blue,you've got a gene. you've got an enzymethat splices the precise gene you want. it then goes over the red geneand the enzyme takes a part of that out, puts the genein at another end, and stitches it up again. highly, highly precision. if you make a comparison betweentrying to get the same trait in a plant using atomicradiation versus genetic

engineering, you find that youhave about 30 genes with changed expression in geneticengineering compared to 1,000 genes changed in atomicmutation. you can sell the atomic mutated plants at your leisure. no rules. no regulations. no nothing. you cannot sell the gm crops.

coming to the end of my talknow, just to say that there are two types of resistant cropsso that the herbicide doesn't damage the crop. both of them have the resistantgene inserted. one is done by gm. one is done by mutation. one is very tightly regulated,and the other is not regulated at all. in my view, if you're going toregulate genetically modified

foods as we do, then you mustregulate all of the atomically or chemically mutated foods,as we don't but we should. in my view, neither of themneed the attention they're getting at the moment. and i think that the day willcome when consumers will find that it's not nearly as badas it is believed to be. now, this is basically thelast part where i talk. locally grown food is favoredfor environmental reasons. here's two apples.

the first one is grownin ireland, harvested 10 months ago. it's on the shelf. and right beside it is one grownin new zealand 10 days ago, and it's on the shelf. the one came from new zealandon a ship, and the one that came from ireland was keptin pristine condition, controlling temperature,atmosphere, and various other devices to keep it fresh.

which one has the biggestcarbon footprint? the one from ireland,of course. miles have of nothing to dowith carbon footprint, absolutely nothing to do. here's irish tomatoes grownin a greenhouse. that's the only waywe can grow them. there's spanish tomatoesgrown in the sunshine. those are going to have thebest carbon footprint. we have to import them,so they've got miles

associated with them. their environmental impactis much less. this is just to show you thatwhen people talk about local food, and we should go forlocal food, it's fine for individuals to do it. it's fine for restaurantsto do it. it's not possible forbig cities to do it. it's wrong to think thatyou can grow everything everywhere.

this is a plot of where soybeansand wheat are grown in the united states, and youcan see soybeans are all in the mid to the east coast. that's because the soil andclimate favors them. nobody in the west of the unitedstates grows soybeans because it just doesn'tsuit them. on the other hand, if you lookat wheat, you'll see that it's tending to go from the midwestright across to the west. and nothing on the east, becausethe soil isn't suited.

if you look at wheat itself,and you look at different types of wheat, you'll find thatit's grown in different parts of the united states. this is the second to lastslide i'll show you. if, for example, this city wasto decide, we're going to get all our vegetable oil fromlocally grown rapeseed oil, we would need the entire countylouth just to provide dublin with that oil. i don't know what cork,limerick, waterford, and

others, and belfast would do. but basically we've got louth. thank you very much. what we do for the rest ofour foods, i don't know. but it's very easy forindividuals to go after local food. it would be impossible for acity like the size of dublin, or even mexico-- take a reallybig city-- or beijing, impossible for them to thinkabout local food.

you are going to requirea huge food chain. you are going to worktrade and export. and finally, this little fellowwas born yesterday, exactly 24 hours ago, sohe's our new grandson. so thank you. i'm very happy to answerquestions, if there's any. i know you've got to goback to work, as well. by the way, the boss is here. sinead gibney: first ofall, thanks very much,

dad, for the talk. i know that some people werehaving difficulty seeing the slides, so i'll makesure that they're available to everyone after. we are recording this foryoutube, so if you do have any questions, just put youhand up and i'll bring you the mike. audience: hello. thank you for thepresentation.

so far, i've got the questionthat recently was subject to a discussion between me anda few other people. is it good, or bad, oracceptable or neutral to eat meat every day? professor mike gibney: well,it's acceptable. you can get away with it. it's not a problem. a lot of people don'tlike fish. my view would be that youshould be able to have a

little bit of variety. so i would be going for poultry,and i would be looking for a littlebit of fish once a week or twice a week. and maybe some dinner withno meat in it at all. audience: for the diversityand enjoyment reasons, naturally, you'd do that. however, the question is, do youhave any doubts, or have you come across any doubts inyour experience that would

support the health consequencesof either eating meat every day, red meatevery day, or not? professor mike gibney: there arestudies which suggest that high intakes of red meat mightnot be good for cancer of the large bowel, but there'sa big botch with this. it's not so much thered meat as the doneness of the red meat. it's whether you mutilate yourred meat on your barbecue and burn it to bits.

because the things which arecarcinogenic, or potentially carcinogenic, are not theproteins in the meat, but the way in which the proteins reactwith the sugars to cause the browning, and the darkening browning, and so forth. so the more sort of cooked itis, the more likely it is to be a problem. i'm not convinced that thedata is terribly strong. but the world cancer researchfund would say that we should

reduce our intake of redmeat, especially well-cooked red meat. audience: i was just wonderingwhen you said that basically your genetics determine whetheryou're going to be obese or not, whether you're inan obesogenic environment or not, does that mean that youkind of think people can't make their own choice? i mean, like they can makechoices, but is it kind of predetermined by your genesand your environment?

professor mike gibney: i meanin a sense, the environment will play a role, but the geneswill tell you which one of us is going to be the weakestand give into the next serving of pudding. the big advantage of going downthis road, even though we can't change our genes, is thatif we can understand what combinations of genes areresponsible for helping people to get obese, then we have achance of going to people early in life and saying, look,you have a higher than

average chance of gettingobese for the following reasons. in your case, it might be thatyou're going to be tempted to eat a lot of food. others have differentmetabolism. but we'll begin to know why. and, therefore, we'll begin totarget solutions to these people earlier on. and that's the big advantage.

of course, it would be greatif we got rid of the obesogenic environment, but it'snever going to happen. so it's much better to acceptthat this is the way we live, good or bad, and to try andunderstand how, by a knowledge of a person's genomic makeup,that we can help them to deal with it. and there is data coming out,for example, that is suggesting that certain geneticmakeups mean that the type of diet you use to loseweight is best determined by

your genes. so we'll know what's best foryou when you go to lose weight, as well. audience: if you can go backto the carrot example, what would be exactly, preciselythe difference between an organic carrot and anon-organic carrot? like i read over hear abouta lot of stuff about the difference, but what is exactlythe difference? professor mike gibney: about50 pence a kilo.

and after that, nothing. nothing. that's the thing. i mean, it is just not possibleto make the carrot anything other thanthe carrot. the mistake that the organicmovement have made is to try and embellish their approach toagriculture with advantages that don't really apply. you don't, for example,hear vegetarians.

they just get on with theirlives, vegetarians. and they buy vegetarian meals,and they live a vegetarian life, and they don't moanand groan about it. you will see the organicmovement not doing that for a very simple reason. absolutely everyone in theorganic movement has a vested interest in it. they're either farmers, or theyown shops, or they have processing units, orwhat have you.

they are in the value oforganic, the business of organic food, and they want topump up its value, and its worthiness, and so forth. so they will make out thatit's better for the environment, better forthis, better for that. but it's just not true. the carrot is simplythe same carrot. because if you take thetransmission of zinc from soil into a plant, there's nothing.

there's no border police inthe carrot saying, sorry. you're organic zinc, andyou're inorganic zinc. it's a zinc ion. that's it. like there's no difference. it's impossible to say there'sa difference between the two. audience: so build onhis question here. it's basically one big marketingscheme that is misleading us, and why are wepaying extra for it globally?

professor mike gibney: well,the way i view this is that people who buy organic food knowthat they're buying into a form of agriculture in whichit is laid down exactly what can be done. so this issue of the horse meat,maybe if you had organic burgers, i don't thinkthat could happen. because they have a far greaterstringency about it. so what you're buying intois a certainty about an agricultural productionsystem.

now, if that's all that youdo, that's terrific. what i find is that people whopurchase organic food make people who don't purchaseorganic food feel guilty about what they're doing to theirkids by not giving them organic food. that's when i step in. now, if they want to buy organicfood and say, look, i just like the idea of organicagriculture, i trust organic food, i trust their productionsystem, terrific.

i have no problems withthat whatsoever. where i do have a problemis when they start to make other people-- "would you dream of givingconventionally farmed carrots to your baby" kind of thing. audience: there is a lot ofpressure on moms to breastfeed now, and i was wondering if it'strue or if it's a myth that the advantages ofbreastfeeding are as many as they are advertised when yougo to a baby center.

everywhere, theyare everywhere. professor mike gibney: it'sprobably the most dangerous topic in the worldto comment on. but without doubt, withoutdoubt, breastfeeding has enormous advantages, not justbiological advantages, but psychological advantages,as well. in the developing world, breastfeeding is far more important. i mean, really, really, itreally has to be the case in

the developing world thatchildren are breastfed exclusively for six months. has to be. now, here, in this part of theworld, the reality is that a fraction of women cannotproduce enough milk. and if you look at dairy cows,and you look at the output of dairy cows, it is distributedexactly like any other parameter in life. it's bell-shaped.

some are good. some of bad. they breed up the ones that aregood and get rid of the ones that are bad. so it's exactly thesame in women. some of them will be excellentlactators. some will not be. nothing you can do it. the problem is that to makewomen who can't breastfeed

feel guilty about usinga bottle is shocking, in my view. now, there's another interestingarea about if women have the right to chooseor to terminate a pregnancy, say, in many countries, surelythey have a right to choose not to breastfeed. now, the counterargument to thatis the child is born and the child is entitled to thebest food, and therefore, the mother should breastfeed.

there's deep philosophicalissues there. but basically speaking, breastis best, for sure. in the developing countries,it's absolutely essential. in our part of the world wherepeople are busy working and so forth, sometimes lactationis not so easy. in which case, formula feedis perfectly acceptable. and they should not be madeto feel guilty about it. audience: i just want to ask,what are your views on diets? because now, people kind offeel that they go on diet,

they lose weightin two months. and then they want to eat evenmore and gain all of it back plus extra. this is first. and second, if losing weightcan be linked to psychological-- so you want to lose weight,and you kind of imagine yourself losing it. and you kind of have biggerprogress than you

would go on any diet. professor mike gibney: i'm nottoo sure about the second part of the question, but the firstpart, you're absolutely right. i mean, look at me. i've been on more diets thani care to talk about. there is a wonderful statementfrom the american medical association's council onscientific affairs where they talk about the five-yearcure rate for diseases. now basically, the five-yearcure rate for the worst cancer

is better than the five-yearcure rate for obesity. you can take 100 people andcure them of cancer. come back in five years, andask how many are free. so if 20 are still free, yourfive-year cure rate is 20%. obesity will be worsethan that. it is a disastrously difficultthing to get rid of it easily. it's very difficultto keep it off. it's really, really hard. it requires lifelongdedication.

take your foot of the tillerfor one minute, and whoop. you'll be back. so the advice is neverto gain weight. my advice, then, to people whoare going to lose weight, is don't lose weight untilyou really, really, really want to. and know why you wantto lose weight. so for example, if your bloodpressure is fine, if your blood glucose is normal, ifall of the other signs are

perfect, ask yourself, well,what am i doing it for? i would strongly recommendthat nobody starts a diet until they have built a littlebit of physical activity into their lives. because that is the mostimportant thing, is to get some level of physical activity,walking for 40 minutes a day. once you got that in,only go on a diet if you really have to.

but be prepared for veryslow weight loss. and you need to be at it all thetime, watching it all the time, because it'll comeback unfortunately. audience: you mentionedgenetically modified seeds and roundup resistant seeds. my understanding is thatmonsanto produced a lot of these seeds, and theyalso sell roundup. so they've investedmoney both ways. do you think there are healthrisks to eating food--

apparently, the corn and wheatin the us is genetically modified to be resistantto roundup-- health risks in eating thatcorn as a result of poison being sprayed? professor mike gibney:i can't see any-- there's no evidence that in theunited states or in south america, where geneticallymodified foods have either been fed to animals or feddirectly to people, that there's been any adverseeffect whatsoever.

and i'd go back to the pointthat you have been eating atomically mutated plantsall your life. they are a blunderbuss comparedto the precision and accuracy of geneticallyengineered foods. it's not always monsanto. it's not always bigcorporations. many of the breakthroughshave come from-- for example, the university ofleeds have developed a potato. there's a protein on the leafof the potato which weevils

don't like. they get sick, and that goesback to the point that plants have to protect themselves. the weevil doesn't like it. now, if you get the plant tuber,the potato, none of that protein is present,so the weevil has a field day on it. so what they did at leedsuniversity was, they took the protein from the leaf.

they genetically engineeredit into the potato. now, the weevil won'tgo near the potato. now, they can only takethat that far. they can't take itbeyond that. they need the monsantos, orsomeone else with the resources, to make it happen. it's the same with golden rice,where they've introduced the pre-vitamin a type betacarotene into this rice, which will now go on sale nextyear in south asia.

but for example, the greenpeacemovement completely wrecked the universityof leeds plants. they have to start doing theirwork in safer places. basf plant science, one of thebiggest gm forces in the world, have movedout of europe. so a lot of the technologywill come from labs, and they'll have to be taken by bigcorporations because no one else can do it. i can't see any dangerswhatsoever in genetically

modified foods. every cheese that's on salein this country-- in the old days, they used totake rennet from a calf's stomach and use it to helpcurdle the milk. and because of the price ofbeef, calves weren't being killed young. they were bringingthem [inaudible]. so they got a yeast. they genetically engineered theyeast to produce a protein

that did exactly what thecalf's stomach did. so for the last 30 years, everypiece of cheese that you ever ate in your life has beencurdled using genetically modified proteins. and you're not mooing,are you? so it's very emotional. it's been made very emotional. and it's quite interesting thatgreenpeace are rowing back on this.

greenpeace have begun to saythat it's not always bad. you will find people saying thatthey rubbish genetically modified foods on the groundsthat it's not going to feed the world. nobody said it was goingto feed the world. it might contribute toit, but it's not it might help. so i don't see any dangersin it at all. sinead gibney: we're running outof time, so i've got one

person with a questionhere, and maybe just one more after that. audience: thanks alot for coming. you gave the example of a tomatofrom ireland versus the tomato from new zealand. do you have any studiesthat actually show the carbon footprint? because i always find it hardto argue when people say, yeah, i only want local food.

and i say, oh, well,at what price does that local food come? and then it's always the exactargument that you made. yeah, it's shipped from theother side of the world. like without the study behindit, it's kind of hard to say how little of an effectit actually has on the carbon footprint. professor mike gibney: i mean,there are plenty of studies available in the scientificliterature on it.

apples from new zealandwas one case study. models have been done ofthe food chain and where the carbon is. basically speaking, local foodis fine for restaurateurs. at that talk in cork yesterday,this lady was saying that she lives out in thecountry, and she gets all her herbs from the side ofthe road, and all that. and i thought, what a privilegedwoman you are. i mean, i can't see everyonewalking around [inaudible]

here looking for herbs. it's a selfish thing,lucky thing. good for them. but don't start standing upthere like a saint and telling us that you're holyand we're sinners. you know? i have great faith inthe food chain. it goes wrong fromtime to time. [inaudible]

i have great faith in it. eating local is a niceconcept, but it's not going to work. our exports would collapsein this country. 9% of our gdp, 9% of our exportscome from agri-food. so if we couldn't export, we'dbe dead in the water. kenyan farmers couldn't selltheir flowers in holland, they'd [inaudible]. trade is what made the world goround since the [inaudible]

spice routes. i probably haven'tanswered your question, but buy the book. audience: hi. just interesting to hear yourthoughts around nutrition during pregnancy and howthat primes people for later in life. i was lucky enough to get yourfree copy of your book. i'm just reading the back,and i couldn't wait

to hear that bit. professor mike gibney: well,it is interesting. basically speaking, you inherityour genes from your mother and your father. and they sit into the embryo,and they nurse along. and the genes are-- well, let me go backa little bit. in my right earlobe, i havemy entire genome. and in my liver, i havemy entire genome.

but my liver doesn't hearanything, and my earlobe doesn't make anything. the reason why they differ isthe things that the liver does are switched offin the earlobe. and the things that the earlobedoes are switched off in the liver. so genes are switchedup, or switched down, or switched off. now in pregnancy, the mother'senvironment has a big say in

how the dimmer switchis operated, whether it goes up or down. when the child is born then,if they're born into an environment that matches theplan that the mother had for them, they're fine. if they don't, by the time theyget to 50 or 60, they will begin to develop chronicdisease at a great rate. so there's fabulous stuff whichgoes back to, say the dutch famine during the secondworld war, where people

entered that famine pregnant,got pregnant during it, or had a baby during it, so [inaudible]different trimesters of pregnancy. and looking at those people,those survivors, 40, 50 years later, you can see the point inpregnancy where the damage is done, where their genes werealtered in such a way to expect a very, very lowlevel of food in holland at the time. and they grow up into thisobesogenic environment, and

it's a mismatch. a very hot topic, and i'll gofurther than that to say that in the period immediatelyafter birth-- the example i was always takeis, let's say, my grandson. he's going to learn english. he's going to learn to eatwith a knife and fork. he's going to learn all thecultural things we do. a child born yesterday intaiwan is going to do something completelydifferent.

so the humans are born witha non-hardwired brain. our brain is plastic. a colt is born witha hardwired brain. it gets up on its fourlegs, and it trots off with its mummy. has nothing to learn. you can teach it a few tricks. but humans have to have thatplastic brain in order to absorb all the culturethey are born into.

what's referred to now,particularly in the developing world, is the first1,000 days. that covers conception rightthrough to two years of age. if you get nutrition wrongthere, you have trouble in later life. and it's irreversible. so for example, if you don't getproper brain development in that two-year period, becausethe brain is still growing, it will beirreversible.

you'll have a low iqall your life. if you don't get enough food tobuild the body in those two years, it will set yourheight much lower than your genetic potential. so you'll be physically stunted,and you won't have the physical capacityto do work. so there's a recognition now,a huge recognition that is important, and the unitednations have this protocol scaling up nutrition.

and they focus on thisfirst 1,000 days. hillary clinton is one of thebig champions of this, and our own minister [inaudible]. it's a really absorbing area. it's fascinating. sinead gibney: ok. i'm afraid that's allwe have time for. for those of you who were luckyenough to get books, mike will happy to signthem for you after.

for those of you who didn't,you can buy them on amazon, new city press. where else? i don't know. the book depository,i think, as well. it's great to see such awonderful turnout for one of the authors. and thank you, dad,for a great talk. professor mike gibney:thank you.

sinead gibney: that's great.

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