The author's story of her own health issues and her drive to find out what was wrong and how to keep her family safe was interesting. Not being a scientist, I think she confused a bit of the scientific parts, but she readily admitted that some of it was over her head. She found something that worked for her and her family (mainly switching to all non-GMO organic). Interesting read for anyone curious about GMOs, but I'd read up on more recent science as well to fill in the gaps in data, and just enjoy this story for what it is: a woman's search to find food that is safe for her and her family's needs.

I won this book via Goodreads Giveaways. ( )

When I read the review of this book in Library Journal, I knew it was a book I needed to read. For several years, the author suffered from an illness that doctors were unable to diagnose, until one doctor determined that she was allergic to a protein in genetically modified corn. Once she eliminated GMO corn from her diet (which is not an easy thing to do), her symptoms disappeared. I had a similar experience several years ago. I thought my symptoms might be food-related, but I couldn't pinpoint any one food because so many seemingly unrelated things triggered my symptoms. As I began to study labels, I realized that these foods all had a common ingredient – corn. When I eliminated most of the corn from my diet, my symptoms cleared up. Shetterly and I had something in common.

Shetterly interviewed scientists, doctors, farmers, activists, and beekeepers in the United States, Europe, and Mexico, in order to learn more about the risks and benefits of GMOs. Given the author's personal experience, her tone is surprisingly objective. She is careful to look at both sides of controversial issues and to listen to both sides of a story.

The book is unexpectedly apolitical at a time when politics is becoming increasingly partisan. Republicans and Democrats may not agree on much of anything else, but both parties have strong ties to the agricultural and chemical companies that develop and produce GMO crops.

GMOs may not be on your radar if you don't work in agriculture or live in an industrial farming region. This book would be a great place to start your education on a topic that affects everyone. My only quibble is that, while Shetterly identifies her interview sources in the book, she doesn't cite sources for the facts and figures she adds from her additional research, so readers have to take her word for their accuracy. (The acknowledgments do include her fact checkers, however.) ( )

Modified is a book of memoirs, about researching this book. Shetterly travels the US and Europe, or has long phone conversations with various researchers on all sides of the Genetically Modified (GM or GMO) debate. While much of the rest of the world is fighting off GMOs, the United States is of course still debating, much like climate change, or evolution, or any number of other settled topics. And while it debates, it is flooding the world with the product.

Section 1 is all about corn. A trip to Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa led Shetterly to meet people she had been talking to and messaging, informing her opinions on GMOs. The most startling image from that was of Iowa, where the GMO corn goes from property line to property line, she says, and there is little else. Only a couple of percent of the land is still prairie; 144 million acres are planted with GMO corn – and the pesticides they can survive. She says farmers are cancer-ridden in far higher numbers than the general population.

Section 2 is about bees and honey, and how GMO pesticides are turning up in honey, while bees literally disappear.

Section 3 is about contamination of non GMO crops and how Mexico at least is trying to stop the poisoning of its biodiverse corn heritage.

Incredibly, half way through the book, Shetterly quotes a European official saying our plants are now toxic from the roots up. And she lets it go. That should have taken the book in a whole new, deeper direction, but she just mentions it in passing. She circles back over it again in the epilog with a quote from a Harvard researcher that amounts to the same thing, but the epilog is about her family eating well, including recipes you can try at home.

This is not a hardhitting science book. You have to wade through Shetterly’s family, travel tribulations, recipes, and especially every meal she ever ordered in any restaurant, to get to the GMOs. For some, this will be a treat. For others, it will mean skipping paragraphs and pages.

The most powerful section unfortunately, is the intro, in which both Shetterly and her infant son went through endless tests with endless doctors to determine what their respective symptoms meant. Years went by. Finally, a new doctor said her condition was due to the genetic modifications and pesticides in corn. And corn is everywhere, in the gas tank, in paper products, as dextrose and other additives in too many foods to be aware of. Pursuing that environmental medicine angle might have been a blockbuster, had she only pursued it. As it stands, Modified is informative and personal.

David Wineberg ( )