Try Going Without

If you follow us on Facebook, you may have seen us mention a project called “A Patented Life.” We think it’s pretty important and would love for you to know a little more about it.

A Patented Life: Sowing the Seeds of Human Rights is a documentary-style project started by Jessica, one of our favorite Juice Bar employees and her friend Mary. They have embarked on a mission to go Monsanto-free for 6 weeks and to document all of it along the way. But what does “Monsanto-free” mean?

Monsanto, as many of you know, is a globally-powerful agricultural biotech company who “dabbles” in GMOs (Genetically-modified organisms.) Their reach goes so much further than any of us know, their seeds being grown and the product reaching our tables, cotton for our clothing, ingredients in our body care – everything. We wrote a little about GMOs a while back for Non-GMO Day, you can read that here.

Jess and Mary have vowed to go 6 weeks without eating or using anything that came from Monsanto and is GMO. It’s a lot harder than you’d think! Mary told us just how hard it is finding not just food, but simple things like shampoo, which contains glycerine derived from GM soy (“It’s in EVERYTHING!” she says.) She downloaded the Non-GMO Project GMO Shopping Guide App to help her – you should try it too, you’ll be surprised at how many of your favorite products are not “clean.”

So far, Jess and Mary told us they’re making a lot of their food at home and bring it with them because when you’re out and about and hungry, what are you going to do – not like you can just stop anywhere and find an organic, non-GMO quick bite to eat (unless you come to Dean’s, of course! ::shamelessplug::).

Jess and Mary invite you to join them and try going without Monsanto too, click here to read the “rules.” All of us here at Dean’s Natural Food Market fully support A Patented Life and wish them the best of luck – hope you do too!