How to Tell if Your Produce is GMO.

How were the fruits and veggies in your refrigerator grown?  Have they been genetically modified to enhance thier flavor or color?  Sometimes fruits and veggies have been modified to resist pests.  They are modified to have a built in pesticide. 

You can tell how your fruits and veggies were grown by reading the little sticker on the item.  It’s called a PLU code.  PLU is an abbreviation for “price lookup code”.  Each fruit and vegatable sold in the U.S. has a PLU code. It saves time at the checkout stands because the cashiers don’t have to visually be able to identify the fruit or vegetable- they just type in the code on the sticker. 

Anyway, every item has a number, and that number can tell you how it was grown. 

• A four digit number means that the item was conventionally grown.  Pestcides and other conventional growing methods were used. 

 

• A five digit number beginning with 9 means that the item was grown organically, and no pesticides were used. 

 

• A number beginning with 8 means that it was genetically modified for whatever reason. 

Here’s an example using the above information-

4139: Conventional Granny Smith apple
94139: Organic Granny Smith
84139: Genetically Modified Granny Smith

If you start looking around the produce department in your local grocery store, i’ll bet you’ll be surprised at how many genetically modified foods there are.