Boulder’s Alex Bogusky had a wonderful opportunity to meet with Coke’s chief scientist, Dr. Rhona Applebaum, and discuss Coke’s take (position) on various contemporary consumer & policy issues. The story is available here:
http://fearlessrevolution.com/blog/we-play-20-questions-with-cokes-lead-scientist.html
My response is below: 
The GMO Big PhooD argument on why GMOs shouldn’t be labeled is cruelly flawed, to wit: “For those who do not want GMO ingredients”…assumes that the public even knows GMOs exist let alone knows enough about them to make an informed choice. Why should people avoid them? Manipulating DNA proteins to deliver & resist pesticides, key features of GMOs, is neither normal or natural. Who would knowingly eat food bathed in and containing pesticide in every cell?
Our immune systems are working 7 x 24 to keep us healthy from what we ingest and breath from our NATURAL ENVIRONMENT. For some people food is a serious life-threatening allergen (foreign protein) and when ingested causes the body to isolate the invader via the release of histamines and sometime go into shock. There’s all sorts of physiological gymnastics and symptoms elicited from our environment and the food we eat. By making specific choices about what we put into our bodies, or not, a most intimate daily activity, we can profoundly change and improve our health. For example, when I went to a 100% gluten-free diet, life-long allergies completely ceased. No more itchy eyes, cat-like sneezing fits, dark circles, breathing and skin issues all gone. Through informed dietary choices, avoiding GMOs and eliminating sugar I also eliminated prescription dependency. We are truly what we eat. If we eat healthy food, our food is our medicine=Medicine, a treatment for the prevention of disease.
Coke’s Ms. Applebaum is a finely packaged (eat-your-own-dog food-type) corporate PR mercenary, rigorously trained in the art of corp. speak with advanced degrees in GMO twaddle, contrived science and moral relativism- …in stiletto heels perhaps… According to her, sugar is sugar …regardless of the source. By this logic, as I’ve witnessed numerous times, protein is protein, fat is fat and on we travel through the Big PhooD gauntlet of nutritional equivalence. To illustrate the absurdity of nutritional equivalence, did you know that citric acid can be, and often is, synthesized from GMO corn? Corn isn’t fruit you wonder? But in the world of processed food, it’s substantially equivalent and meets their criteria as a cheap raw material. All the consumer gets is “citric acid” on the label but not the product from which it was derived.
We are part of nature. We either align with or diverge from it. Alignment is harmony, balance and health. Divergence is dissonance, imbalance and dis-ease. Dis-ease=Disease. Each person’s DNA holds their familial and environmental genetic code from the beginning of time. All ancestral history, mother and father, is stored in our DNA. The fact that a corporation introduced new, never-before-seen GMO proteins, unknowingly consumed by millions of people, it changed the course of history, and our biology and health, in one generation. GMO Sugar. GMO starch. GMO protein. GMO fat. These unique GMO proteins, so unique they are patented, are being consumed by millions of people totally unaware of their industrialized-science origin and pesticide payload. Pesticides are designed to kill flora and fauna. What do the GMO ingredients do to our gut flora where our bodies absorb all our nutrients from food? Gut function is the foundation of our health so it’s perhaps no surprise that America is leading the world in ill-health: obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. It’s the little things that can make the biggest difference….as I’ve experienced firsthand in what I choose to eat. I choose organic, not the pesticide-drenched GMO/conventional alternatives. Eating GMOs, whether by active choice or by the default corporate-government consumer deception mode, I believe, steals health. These GMO pseudo-foods, and all the ingredients derived from them, (for a complete list visit: www.nongmoshoppingguide.com) represent a not-so-small army of foreign (protein) invaders. Each one causes a small skirmish in our bodies, perhaps indigestion, muscle aches or phlegm in our throats. It’s not significant enough to cause alarm so we continue about our lives and simply accept these symptoms as normal. And there’s tons of over-the-counter drugs and Big Pharma alternatives to address all these symptoms so why bother to address the cause? Why does cancer afflict 1 in 3 people today? I have 5 friends who died from cancer, the oldest was 54 and passed Jan 3rd. Are we being consumed from within by what we’re eating? I believe so. GMO foods that are engineered primarily for killing are NOT FOOD. GMOs are more like agronomic weaponry: big yield while killing all the weeds and insects in the field. Real FOOD nourishes us. It’s an extension of our nature and expression of love from our mother.
Ms. A-baum represents the corporation whose sole objective is profit. All her answers are woven to support it. The axiom “buyer beware” is more relevant today than ever before because the deception and thievery is being played out before our very eyes…hidden at a DNA-level in what’s being offered on grocery store shelves everywhere. Ms. A-baum is merely performing her corporate duty as a smart, articulate, thin, attractive and immaculately put together middle-aged woman who is in control of her emotions at all times…while pushing her GMO-based sugar-infused fizzy elixir to unsuspecting masses of humanity…while sipping a Diet Coke no doubt.