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GMO's make food higher in protein or more healthy. They do not only affect food, but also can be used in some objects of our daily lives. -Bryce

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There are a lot of pros of GMO's like they make foods resistant to insects, they are tolerant to herbicides, cold, heat, and drought. - Sam G.

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GMO's help the plants, not be eaten by animals. Corn, soy some meats and a lot more foods have GMO's in them. Scientists just modified an apple that does not turn brown, that way when a kid opens there lunch box, their apples are not brown. -Kate

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GMO's make food grow faster, immune to pests and/or viruses. - Evan A
Made By: Andrew Pollack

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Genetically Engineered Salmon Approved for Consumption (Published 2015)

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The F.D.A. approval clears the way for the first genetically altered animal to enter the American food supply, despite strong opposition.

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It's very hard to not eat food without GMO's in it. GMO's are in 90% of the food we eat.-Bryce

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Some people are allergic to the Stuff that they put in the foods to make them last longer or that make it grow bigger. It can aslo increase the chance of getting cancer. Lastly there are some bacteria that is immune to the stuff that they put in to try and make the food more resistant. - Sam G

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If you've eaten anything today, chances are you've snacked on GMOs. GMO stands for genetically modified organism. Genetically modified (GM) foods are made from soy, corn, or other crops grown from seeds with genetically engineered DNA.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), GM seeds are used to plant more than 90 percent of corn, soybeans, and cotton grown in the United States. Unless you consciously avoid them, GM foods likely find their way into many of your snacks and meals.

Some people believe GM foods are safe, healthy, and sustainable, while others claim the opposite. Read on to learn about the pros and cons - and what the research says.

Scientists genetically engineer seeds for many reasons. For example, they sometimes make changes designed to increase a plant's:

resistance to insects

tolerance to herbicides

tolerance for heat, cold, or drought

crop yield

They also engineer seeds to give GM foods stronger colors, increase their shelf life, or eliminate seeds. That's why we can buy seedless watermelons and grapes. Some GM foods also have been engineered to have higher levels of specific nutrients, such as protein, calcium, or folate.

Proponents of GM food contend that genetic engineering can help us find sustainable ways to feed people. Specifically, in countries that lack access to nutrient-rich foods. The heartiness of some GM crops makes it so they can grow in marginal environments. The longer shelf life of some GM foods allows them to be shipped to remote areas.

On the other hand, some people wonder if GM foods are safe and healthy to eat. Genetic engineering is a relatively new development. As a result, research on the long-term health effects of GM foods is limited.

GM foods have to meet the same safety requirements as foods grown from non-GM seeds. But critics suggest there's more to be concerned about. Some people worry that GM foods may be linked to allergies, antibiotic resistance, or cancer. Others suggest these concerns are unfounded. Here's what the research says.

Allergies

Food allergies are a growing problem in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), food allergies in children under 18 years of age have increased; from 3.4 percent between 1997 and 1999 to 5.1 percent between 2009 and 2011.

Some people believe that spike is linked to GM foods. But there's no evidence that GM foods in general are more likely to trigger allergic reactions than non-GM foods, according to a study from Harvard University.

Others raise concerns about the transfer of specific proteins from one plant to another in genetic engineering. Proteins found in a relatively small number of foods cause most allergic reactions. Tree nuts are one of the most common triggers.

In the mid-1990s, researchers examined a strain of GM soybean that was engineered to contain protein from Brazil nuts. According to their report in the New England Journal of Medicine, the soybeans triggered allergic reactions in people with Brazil nut allergy. Those soybeans never entered the market and aren't sold to consumers.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) have since established protocols for GM foods. They require GM foods to be tested for their ability to cause allergic reactions. According to the Mayo Clinic, none of the GM foods that are currently on the market have been found to have allergenic effects.

Antibiotic resistance

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria can resist antibiotics, making them hard to kill. According to the , antibiotic-resistant germs infect two million people each year. Those infections kill at least 23,000 people per year.

Scientists often modify seeds using antibiotic-resistant genes in the genetic engineering process. Some people wonder if there's a link between these GM foods and rising rates of antibiotic resistant bacteria. No studies have confirmed this claim, but more research is needed.

Cancer

In 2013, the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology retracted a paper that linked the herbicide Roundup and Roundup-tolerant GM corn to cancer and premature death in rats. Due to concerns about the paper, the journal's editor reviewed the researchers' raw data and the peer-review process. They found the researchers had used too few rats, the specific strain of rats was prone to cancer, and the results were inconclusive.

Since then, the paper has been republished in another journal, Environmental Sciences Europe. The controversy surrounding the study's findings has continued.

According to the American Cancer Society, more research is needed to assess the potential long-term health effects of GM foods.

The European Commission requires GM food products in Europe to be labeled as such. But in the United States, no federal mandate exists for labeling GM foods. As a result, it can be hard to know if you're buying and eating GM foods.

If you decide to avoid GM foods, look for products that are USDA certified organic. Certified organic foods are grown and handled without the use of GMOs.

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Genetically modified foods are made with plants grown from seeds with genetically engineered DNA. Learn what the research has to say about their safety and if you should be incorporating them into your diet. If you're trying to avoid GMOs, we'll show you what labels to look for and how to best find GMO free foods.

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Farmers need the GMO's to help with their crops. If they did not have them, then we would have less of the corn they make. - Kate

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Scientists and government regulators say that they're no issues at this moment. But Biotechnology critics and other scientists disagree, arguing that there is not enough testing and regulation for the food and we don't really know if it's safe or not. - Myles

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Sixty-four countries around the world, including Australia, Japan, and all of the countries in the European Union, require genetically modified foods to be labeled. Canada does not require any GMO labeling though. -Kate

This is not ours the information was made by the company "Non GMO Projects" and belongs to them. We only used it for information purposes.

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What is a GMO? Under the Non-GMO Project Standard, a genetically modified organism (GMO) is an organism to which biotechnology has been applied. This creates combinations of plant, animal, bacteria and virus genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods. Are GMOs safe?

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Farmers also use GMO's to spray weeds on their fields of food. Scientists made a GMO's that would not kill the food only the weeds.-Bryce

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GMO's will be put into different foods, animals and not yet humans. They help the plant grow faster, bigger, healthier. But no one knows if it is healthy. To be honest, this year there has been no reports of any sicknesses from GMO. GMO's are spliced by scientists. They take one cell from one organisim and one from another. Some are sprayed onto plants, some are medicine (animals), and some they are put in the seed for plants. - Kate

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GMO's also allow food to last a longer time left out.-Bryce

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Some website's will say that it is good and fine and there is nothing to worry about with GMO's. But others say that it can be bad, and you should be worried about the choices of your foods.

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In order for it to be legal to sell in the U.S the GMO product must be approved by the U.S food and drug administration. - Evan A

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Breeding a grape that tastes just like cotton candy to capture consumers

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Breeding a grape that tastes just like cotton candy to capture consumers

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A scientist in Kern County, breeds fruits. His latest invention was called the cotton candy grape. He wanted to get costumers to want to eat them. He started this invention in the early 1970's.  He used GMO's and breeding from a different gene to create this. -Kate

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Made By: Tanya Lewis

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Genetic Literacy Project

Next time you bite into a slice of watermelon or a cob of corn, consider this: These familiar fruits and veggies didn't always look and taste this way.

Genetically modified foods, or GMOs, inspire strong reactions nowadays, but humans have been tweaking the genetics of our favorite produce for millennia.

While GMOs may involve splicing genes from other organisms (such as bacteria) to give plants desired traits - like resistance to pests, selective breeding is a slower process whereby farmers select and grow crops with those traits over time.

From bananas to eggplant, here are some of the foods that looked totally different before humans first started growing them for food.

Wild banana

The first bananas may have been cultivated at least 7,000 years ago - and possibly as early as 10,000 years ago - in what is now Papua New Guinea. They were also grown in Southeast Asia. Modern bananas came from two wild varieties, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana, which had large, hard seeds, like the ones in this photo.

Modern banana

The hybrid produced the delicious modern banana, with its handy, graspable shape and peelable covering. Compared to its ancestor, the fruit has much smaller seeds, tastes better, and is packed with nutrients.

Modern eggplant

But selective breeding has gotten rid of the spines and given us the larger, familiar, oblong purple vegetable you find in most grocery stores.

Wild carrot

The earliest known carrots were grown in the 10th century in Persia and Asia Minor. These were thought to originally be purple or white with a thin, forked root - like those shown here - but they lost their purple pigment and became a yellow color.

Modern carrot

Shutterstock

Farmers domesticated these thin, white roots, which had a strong flavor and annual biennial flower, into these large, tasty orange roots that are an annual winter crop.

Modern corn

Flickr/Rosana Prada

Today, corn is 1,000 times larger than it was 9,000 years ago and much easier to peel and grow. Also, 6.6% of it is made up of sugar, compared with just 1.9% in natural corn, according to Kennedy. About half of these changes occurred since the 15th century, when European settlers started cultivating the crop.

Wild peach

Peaches used to be small, cherry-like fruits with little flesh. They were first domesticated around 4,000 BC by the ancient Chinese and tasted earthy and slightly salty, "like a lentil," according to Kennedy.

Modern peach

But after thousands of years of farmers selectively breeding them, peaches are now 64 times larger, 27% juicier, and 4% sweeter.

So next time someone tells you we shouldn't be eating food that's been genetically modified, you can tell them we already are.

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Here's what your food would look like if it weren't genetically modified over millennia

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Bet you've never seen fruits and veggies that look like these before.

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GMO's are genetically modified organisims. This is when the Genes from one organisim are spliced and are forced into another gene from another organisim. Scientists can Genetically modify organisim by putting genes into fruits and animals. No one knows if GMO's are harmful or helpful. Some websites say different things. - Kate

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In the future insects might be able to adapt to the genes that scientists put in the food that are supposed to kill them but they might not be able to kill them. And if they try to take out that harmful gene and but a different harmful gene in then that might make the food harmful. -Myles

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We learned from the video about tomatos, that plants are breeded.

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206,136,000 or 63% of people think that GMO's aren't safe. A lot of people in that group would just like to have a label on genetically modified foods.

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While there are a lot of people that don't like GMO's